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Everyone in the old capital who lives nearby knows that the old Guanyin Yuan was also called Guzi’an. It was once very popular and a good place for seeking children in the capital.
The architectural pattern of Guanyin Yuan is very clear, and it is divided into east and west courtyards across Zixin Road. The West Courtyard is on the west side of the road and is the main building of the temple. It faces south and faces north. It has a four-story hall and is a place for worship and prayer. The east courtyard is on the east side of the road. There is only a group of courtyards facing south, which are used for monks’ residences and resting places. Originally this was normal, but what is interesting is that the east and west courtyards of Guanyin Yuan are connected together through a very unique architectural form, that is – the cross-street building.
The cross-street building not only allows carriages and horses to pass through the lower part, but also allows people to pass upstairs. Functionally, it is very similar to the current overpass, which plays the role of three-dimensional transportation. When the nuns in the temple were performing rituals, they would meander away from the cross-street building accompanied by the Sanskrit sounds of the bells, which often made the people watching downstairs think about it. In addition, there are statues of gods in the cross-street buildings all year round. When people pass under the statues, they also play the role of worshiping the gods and suppressing evil and filth. In addition, on every Buddha’s birthday and the birthdays of Bodhisattvas, the nuns from Guanyin Yuan will stand on the cross-street building and give out medicines to passers-by on the north and south sides. When the medicine is put in a small basket and hung down from the upstairs with a rope, the Buddhist world and the secular world are connected by that thin rope.
The cross-street building is divided into two floors in terms of architectural structure. The upper floor is a cantilevered building, with three sides in width and four purlins in depth. It has a gray tube tile roof, crossing the ridge, and square windows between the columns. There are brick arches on the lower floor, with ten thousand strips on the lower shoulders. There is a stone forehead in the middle above the door opening. The northern forehead brick is engraved with “Golden Rope”, and the southern forehead brick is engraved with “Jue’an”. They are all signed “the tenth year of Daoguang (1830)”. )”. Today, this is actually the last remaining cross-street building in the capital. It is precisely because of this unique cross-street connection that the east and west courtyards have always used the same postal code address, both called Furuli No. 2 Courtyard.
The Hong Yanwu family moved to the east courtyard of Guanyin Yuan in 1954 after their old house was expropriated by the Meishi Street Office.
At that time, in order to accommodate the growing population, the government began to build row houses on a large scale in the surrounding areas of the city. Another measure to improve the living conditions of poor people at the same time is to change old temples into other types of buildings so that they can play more practical functions while getting rid of superstition and stopping religious activities.
Under this situation, almost all of the more than a thousand Buddhist temples in the capital were confiscated and used for other purposes, and were converted into housing, schools, institutions, nurseries and nursing homes. The Guanyin Temple in Furuli has become a place where people live their daily lives.
In fact, the east courtyard of Guanyin Yuan itself is a place for people to live. To put it bluntly, it was the dormitory of nuns in the past. The layout is three rooms in the north, three rooms in the east and west wings, plus four rooms in the reverse wing. Compared with the courtyard house, except for the fact that the courtyard door is in the middle and there is no screen wall, everything else is the same. In this area, it is considered a good house with good conditions.
The first ones to move in were the Hong family and the Bian family. The three north rooms were divided between the two families on a first-come, first-served basis. The Bian family has a small population. In addition to a north room facing the west, the other only occupies a west wing room facing the north. As for the Hong family, because they had a little bit of money when they first moved in, and the furniture in their home was large, in addition to the two north rooms, they also rented out all three east wing rooms. When the Ding family moved again, they occupied the remaining two west wing rooms and the reverse room on the west side. In the end, when the Su family moved in, there was no choice but to the last two rooms on the east side, which were dark all year round, cold in winter and hot in summer.
However, this was the period of “surpassing Britain and catching up with America”. Because of their status as industrial and commercial merchants in the old society, the Hong family was afraid of being accused of “disunity” or “backward thinking.” Seeing that the Su family had called in officials from the housing management office because of their dissatisfaction, Hong Yanwu, a good old coward, was frightened and took the initiative to vacate an east wing room and “unity” to settle the Su family.
From now on, the four families in the east courtyard have officially gathered together. The Bian family, the Ding family, the Su family and the Hong family began a life of living together day and night as neighbors for decades.
For more than ten years, the living area and conditions of the four families in the east courtyard have remained unchanged. Until last year, the famous Tangshan earthquake occurred. Only after the government’s call did the four families in the east courtyard build an earthquake-resistant shed for each family.
The houses are very simple, with broken brick walls, low rooms, and narrow windows. The roof is covered with a few pieces of black linoleum to protect it from rain, and is held down by a few bricks. From a quality perspective, it’s really not up to snuff. But after the earthquake, because there was no kitchen or vegetable cellar in the courtyard, no one was willing to dismantle these temporary earthquake-proof sheds. For the sake of convenience, everyone simply kept them all for private use.
But at the same time, there is also a disadvantage, that is, the original space in the yard has been occupied by small houses built by various families, and the very convenient way to get in and out has naturally disappeared. Now, if the four families want to enter the hospital, they can only take the only passage left to the west of the hospital gate.
This passage is very narrow, only wide enough for one person to push a bicycle in one direction. If another person is encountered in this process, one of the parties will have to give in. In addition, when the small house was built, the original floor tiles in the courtyard were damaged a lot, and chalk soil was exposed in many places in the passage, which was full of potholes and very difficult to walk. In short, the entire terrain of the courtyard is now like a trance formation. You have to twist and turn and bump up and down to get in and out. Even if a thief runs in, he may not be able to escape after stealing something.
Fortunately, Hong Yanwu did not feel embarrassed. He naturally understood these changes. So from the moment he stepped into the courtyard gate, he didn’t turn at all. He took seven-star steps, turned around the Su family’s kitchen, and headed west. This is much better than in his previous life. In his previous life, he worked as a laborer for several years after being sent to a labor camp. When he came back for the first time, he couldn’t find his home when he entered the hospital.
Bypassing the outermost Su family’s small house and entering the Ding family’s territory, the first thing Hong Yanwu saw were the persimmons and potatoes drying on the Ding family’s window sill, and then the pile of cabbage and briquettes under the wall. Not to mention, in the cold weather, there would be no need for these piles of cabbage and hills of briquettes. It feels like it really lacks the flavor of the capital city and the flavor of the alleys.
Perhaps because his footsteps were too heavy, Hong Yanwu had just reached the corner when a woman’s head poked out from the crack in the door of the west wing of Ding’s house. Probably seeing Hong Yanwu’s face, she opened the door completely and stopped him for questioning.
“Where are you going? What are you doing?”
This woman is in her mid-twenties, with loose braids. She is a pretty girl, but her mouth is shaped like a little pepper, and her eyes are raised, which makes her look unkind. Especially that arrogant and alert expression made Hong Yanwu very uncomfortable.
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Who are you looking for?”
“Looking for someone named Hong.”
“Is that the person named Hong inside?”
“Yes.”
Hong Yanwu was too lazy to say anything. He had no impression of this woman, and it was so far away that he couldn’t remember whether she was a guest or a relative of the Ding family.
At this time, a five or six-year-old girl emerged from the crack in Ding’s door, “Uncle, who are you looking for?”
Hong Yanwu recognized this little girl. She was the granddaughter of the Ding family. At this time, he seemed to remember that this woman seemed to be the little girl’s mother, the second daughter-in-law of the Ding family. Because the second eldest son of the Ding family both works in a pastry factory in Tong County, they only come back to see their children occasionally. So he had never met this woman at all.
The kindness made Hong Yanwu squat down with a smile, and he even called the girl by her nickname. “Ling’er, don’t you recognize me? I live here.”
The little girl tilted her head to identify him, rolled her big eyes and thought for a long time before she recognized him, “Uncle Wu Zi…”
Ling’er was the first acquaintance Hong Yanwu met when he came back from “traveling”. He was full of interest and wanted to tease the child a few more words. Unexpectedly, the woman tried her best to hide the child behind her as if she was afraid that he would eat her child.
Hong Yanwu squatted on the ground and was extremely embarrassed. He thought he was very gentle, but others were guarding him like a wolf.
What the woman said next was even more embarrassing. “You…are you the third child of the Hong family who was subjected to forced labor?”
Hong Yanwu’s smile disappeared and he stood up with a frown. “Yes.”
The woman didn’t know how to look at her face, and she still asked unceremoniously with her eyebrows raised. “Huh? Why were you released? Didn’t I sentence you to three years? Did you run out…”
“Are you finished?” Hong Yanwu interrupted, with a fierce look in his eyes.
The woman was startled, and without saying anything, she pulled the child and retracted into the house with a “swish”, and then slammed the door, followed by the sound of the door being opened.
Hong Yanwu was almost furious, and walked into the courtyard with a cold expression and full of grievance. But then, the voice of a woman lecturing a child in the room came from behind him.
“Who asked you to deal with him? He is a reform-through-labor prisoner and a bad person.”
Ling’er’s childish voice asked, “Mom, Uncle Wu Zi doesn’t look like a bad guy? You used to catch me Hu Tie’er (a native dialect for butterfly)?”
“Hey, you coward, you still dare to talk to me? Tell you, if you dare to ignore him again, I will twist your legs…”
The woman undoubtedly used the roughest educational method, and her scolding was mixed with Ling’er’s crying.
This heartless bitch!
Hong Yanwu’s heart suddenly ached. He clenched his fists and wanted to curse, but his throat was blocked by something and he couldn’t make a sound.
Hmph, his bad deeds have naturally been known to everyone for a long time. These neighbors definitely talk about him all the time. He could imagine how they sighed and shook their heads on the surface, as if they cared about him and felt sorry for him. But in fact, no one will be happy for him to come back. Behind their backs, they must all be like this bitch, hoping that the government will shoot him. But so what? I don’t care. I’m back. I’m still very happy. I have a full beard and a tail, no arms or legs missing. I…
With these messy thoughts in his mind, Hong Yanwu turned a corner and went around the boundary of the Bian family, and finally his ears were clear.
Hong Yanwu has known these two big, stupid black locks on the door of Bian’s house since he was born. The kind old couple felt at home at the sight of them. Uncle Bian didn’t know what he was doing after he retired, but Aunt Bian was a member of the neighborhood committee and must still be busy on the street. Aunt Bian’s scope of authority is very large. She is in charge of the five black categories, the military households with five guarantees, and the four pests, spreading rat poison, and catching people alive. The old lady worries about everything.
Under the eaves of Bian’s house is another scene. There are no piles of briquettes and cabbage, which have all been placed in small rooms. Because Uncle Bian likes to play with flowers and plants, the window sill of Bian’s house is full of flower pots and pots. Don’t look at it, they are all used to clear the ground. Uncle Bian’s real treasures are spending the winter in the house. They will not be moved out of the house until the weather is suitable for everyone to enjoy. In addition, the lotus tank for raising fish can only be left outside the house because it is difficult to move. A thin layer of ice has formed, and I don’t know how many little goldfish are still alive inside. Hong Yanwu was also quite familiar with this object. When he was a child, he secretly peed in it often.
The water pipes and sewers of the whole hospital are also located here, facing the entrance of Bian’s north room. So the Bian family built a small house in front of the north house. Unintentionally, the small house also became a dividing line, dividing the Hong family and the Bian family into two separate spaces. Then go around this small room of the Bian family and you will find Hong Yanwu’s home.
At a glance, at the end of the road leading to the house, a thick old jujube tree swayed its incomplete branches and greeted him timidly.
The jujube tree is extremely ugly, with its bare branches blowing in the wind. It has no sense of beauty at all. It looks like a monster that has become a spirit. When the weather gets warm, there is often an insect that is most feared by children in the capital lurking on the branches – “foreign bark”. In fact, the scientific name of that thing is the green thorn moth. It has hard hairs all over its body and a ferocious color. If the hairs touch the skin, it will immediately become red and swollen, painful and itchy, making people unable to cry. However, Hong Yanwu never disliked this old tree because of this. He knew its benefits.
In spring, tender green leaves will emerge from the branches, and light yellow jujube flowers will bloom here and there. No matter morning or evening, the fragrance can float all the way outside the courtyard, and passers-by often pick up the scent and follow it with their noses.
In summer, the tree invaders will cover the whole yard. As long as the sun is good, the yard will be filled with flowers and shade. Every day, the whole family eats dinner under the jujube tree and talks quietly. The father drinks wine and the mother picks up vegetables for the children.
Also, this old jujube tree is never watered or fertilized, but it is full of fruits every autumn, year after year, without interruption. As if it wanted to repay someone, when the day came, the branches were covered with white flowers and red fruits, and they were so heavy that they almost touched the ground. According to my mother’s words, the dates look like “garlic pigtails.”
Hong Yanwu walked to the jujube tree and stopped. He could see a large, vague scar more than one meter above the ground. It was a main trunk extending horizontally to the east that had been sawed off. He couldn’t help but touch the rough scar, and he felt as excited as seeing a relative in advance.
When he was a child, he would hit the tree, pick dates by pedaling on it, and practice martial arts by punching and kicking on the tree. He remembered clearly how childish he had been, how naively he had regarded this tree as a “playmate” and the best “amusement park”. In fact, it was precisely because of his naughtiness that Lao Zaoshu was innocently affected and had his arm removed.
When he was seven years old, because the diet at home was light and he was eager for meat, he “thief” took advantage of Aunt Bian’s big yellow civet cat. At that time, he stepped on the stool, hugged the branch and hung up, and coiled himself up the tree like a snake. Not surprisingly, he used the wire to snare the unlucky cat easily. Even though the big yellow civet cat flashed green eyes and purred at him, and was as ferocious as a tiger, it was inevitably hung from a tree, disembowelled and skinned by him, the “tiger-fighting hero”. After getting down from the tree, he set up the branches and played with jujube wood barbecue. Unexpectedly, the fragrant smell of meat attracted everyone in the courtyard to come out to watch. As a result, Aunt Bian, who had always been good-tempered, became anxious when she saw the “tiger skin”. She blocked the door of Hong’s house in an unprecedented manner and made trouble all day long. The father, who never spanked his children, spanked him for the first time because of this incident and beat his buttocks to pieces with a bamboo strip.
After being beaten, he thought that the matter was over, but later he discovered that the retribution for doing this immoral thing was far from over.
In the Mid-Autumn Festival of the same year, he saw his sister getting greedy looking at the heavy half-ripe dates on the branches, so he volunteered and climbed up the tree to pick dates for his sister by stepping on the horizontal branch. But while his sister was clapping and applauding, and he had just filled half a bag of dates in his hurdle vest, his second brother came over and said that his father was calling him at home, telling him and his sister to go quickly. He thought his father had found out about some naughty thing, so he ran down the tree trunk in a hurry. As a result, his chest and stomach were all scratched to pieces by the rough bark of the jujube tree.
The younger sister was so frightened by the blood in her stomach that she turned pale, and the second brother was also stunned on the spot. Probably feeling that he had something to do with it and should be responsible for his terrible belly, the second brother secretly ran to the drugstore and bought a bottle of two hundred and two (in the past, the commonly used external medicines, in addition to iodine and gentian violet, were only red drops. Two hundred and two is the red potion, whose scientific name is mercurochrome. It is called two hundred and two, because it took two hundred and twenty times to get it back. But who would have thought that after his sister applied the red potion on him, his stomach felt more like it had been disemboweled, making him feel strange, frightened, and intolerable. Now he didn’t even dare to wear clothes anymore and would dye them as soon as he wore them. In the end, I had to stand outside alone with an inexplicable red belly, not daring to enter the house at all.
I waited impatiently for my father to come out of the house and found his horrible red belly. He was immediately shocked. After figuring out what had happened, because he had played too many tricks on the tree and was afraid that he would fall from the tree one day, his father saw off the horizontal branch that he often relied on without saying a word.
At this time, he learned that his father did not ask him to go there because he had any new “criminal evidence”, but just to share moon cakes with the children at home. This inevitably made him feel dejected, and he complained to his second brother.
The past still feels like yesterday. Thinking of the red belly back then, Hong Yanwu’s eyes suddenly stretched far away.
Bypassing the jujube trees, we finally entered the confines of our home. The first thing Hong Yanwu saw was two half-grown chickens, clucking and pecking in front of the kitchen.
The Hong family’s small room is an inverted room. There is a pile of cabbage with dry skin placed under the west wall of the small room. For fear of being pecked by chickens, the piles of cabbage were covered with ragged felts. There is a linoleum shed next to the small house, and the briquettes under the shed are neatly arranged majesticly. In addition, there are several braids of purple garlic hanging next to the door frame of the small room. Under the braids is an earth basket for garbage. On top of the earth basket is a semi-rusted black iron dustpan, and a quick sweeper is tilted beside it. Broken broom with seedlings.
Go to the small house and look to the left. There are four main houses, two in the north and two in the east. There were four pickle jars placed on the windowsills of the two east rooms, but the doors were locked. Only the parents’ room in the north room had no padlock, and white gas was still coming out of the chimney. Hong Yanwu could smell it now while standing in the courtyard. There was a strong smell of Chinese herbal medicine coming out of that room.
Yes, I’m back home. After more than thirty years of going in a big circle, I’m finally back. The scene in front of me can prove everything. This is a miracle that millions of people long for but are hard to find.
The familiar scene seemed to be calling or urging Hong Yanwu to walk to his parents’ door in a few steps. But just when his hand touched the door that had been opened countless times, he suddenly felt sour in his heart and began to worry about gains and losses.
Behind the door are the traces of his growth and the imprint in his soul. Now as long as he opens the door, he can see the relatives he misses so much.
But the question is…will his relatives be happy to see him?
No need to ask, mother and sister must be happy. Where are the eldest brother and sister-in-law?
Although they have always had strong opinions about themselves, their mother will probably persuade them not to make it difficult for them. The second brother is still jumping in line in Shanxi, and his nephew is not yet an adult, so he doesn’t have to worry about this.
The most important thing is the father. Will his father forgive himself?
Hong Yanwu recalled the moment when he was taken away in front of his father and he shouted “I have no father”. Although he didn’t see it, he could imagine the scene when his father finally left.
The father, who was so thin that he could be knocked down by a gust of wind, and whose steps were staggering, must have stood looking at the entrance of the alley for a long time before turning around and leaving. The look in his father’s eyes must be as empty and distant as his broken heart.
My heart was confused and my hands were shaking. There was panic in the chaos, and there was also a tearing pain in the heart palpitations.
People will always hurt those who love them, but often they themselves will also be hurt.
In a daze, Hong Yanwu seemed to see the door of the room being opened, and all his relatives were standing in the room, looking at him expressionlessly.
His body froze and his soul had emerged from its shell.