Muscles and Bones Blooming

Have you ever heard the sound of your own bones? Zhao Niangu had heard of it. When he was thirteen years old, he put his hand on his great-grandfather's tombstone, and there was a creaking sound from the ground - it wasn't the earth and rocks collapsing, it was the ancestors who had been buried a hundred years ago turning over. From that day on, he discovered that he could hear the bones of five generations of his family talking. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Zhao Tieliang took root in the salt-alkali flats of the Fuyang River with his strong bones. The bloody battle at the wharf established his authority, he got married and took root in the lean years, and seven sons were born in a row - seven sons with seven lives, each carrying thunder, mountain, water, painting, road, loach, and earth in their bones. During the Anti-Japanese War artillery fire, seven children fell apart: one died in Korea, one was buried in a canal, one cut off his fingers instead of painting paintings to flatter the enemy, and one walked away from the border and lost his toes due to freezing; during the Great Famine of 1963, he swallowed alkaline soil to survive, and his belly was so transparent that the shape of the bones could be seen; during the criticism, the waist bones were broken one by one, but there was a faint fragrance from the broken bones, and they healed by themselves at night. For hundreds of years, every inch of soil on this salt-alkali flat has been soaked with the blood of the Zhao family, and every buried bone continues to grow and creak in the ground. Until a faint blue flower bloomed on Tie Liang's grave. The flower seeds scatter with the wind, falling on the river embankment, under the old locust tree, in the cracks of the cement road, and even on the piece of land where you are standing. This is a national epic written in bones. Open it and your spine will creak. When you close it, you will look down at your hand - there is also a bone that has been straight for five thousand years.