Why is it said that village craftsmen are the original purveyors of village civilization, the village artists who walk the villages?

There are many villages scattered like bird's nests in the southern rivers and bays or in the hilly mountains. I always thought that those lively villages were initially assembled by one mason, two masons, and then more masons. Mason stone walls, carpenters make doors and windows beams, blacksmiths to build plows, rakes, knives and axes, stonemasons, silversmiths, painters, painters ...... craftsmen with their dexterous hands and wisdom of the mind to build one village after another. Those handmade products attached to the blood, sweat and spirit of the craftsmen occupy the corners of the village, constituting the survival and pulse of a village.

Today's villages, however, are erasing their builders one by one, and the artisans are disappearing from the villages like the flowers blooming in the afterglow of the setting sun.

These days, I am in the countryside to visit the countryside craftsmen. Standing in the middle of those aging craftsmen, facing their lost crafts, I know that the times are doomed, and I can only be a painful presence, but can not restore the fading reality.

It was raining when I visited the old man Yu Shishui, a blacksmith. The boundless spring rain weaves a dense curtain that cuts off the distant mountains and near water. The old Yu's home is in Shuangjing Village, next to the 700-mile Xiuhe River, more than 30 miles from the county seat. Shuangjing used to be a village with a rich literary style, where poetry and rituals were passed down, and was famous as the hometown of the great poet Huang Tingjian. In the cold spring weather, there are few people on the village road. After the Spring Festival, most of the young people in the village have gone out, making the village look very cold and quiet. However, the countryside has changed quite a lot, the original adobe houses are rare, and the dirt road has been replaced by a smooth concrete road.

My visit excited the old man who had left his blacksmithing trade behind for many years. Elderly eyes full of sacred and wisdom light, may recall the early years of burning incense to worship the master, the master how strict preaching, or by their own hands how to make a delicate handicraft out. And now the blacksmithing skills are facing the reality of the loss of the old man's eyes dim down.

These years, the export of cheap labor in the countryside, the mainland and the coastal links close up, the rise and fall of the economy outside the small mountain villages involved in the nerve. Villagers from outside to make money back at the same time, but also quietly drive the village life and rhythm of change. The village people put color TV refrigerator from the county town to the home, and even small cars also drove into the village. It seems that as long as you can make money, you can buy anything back from the market. Land, which has always been the lifeblood of farmers, is now being abandoned, with young people not farming and old people and children staying in the village. This is the current situation in the village. But I can't help but worry that those migrant workers who go to the cities, who sell their labor and don't care about their bodies, will sooner or later have a day when they can't take it anymore. When they fall, who will save those sick bodies. Or when they grow old, will they be able to expect a pension from the city? In everyday life, handmade products from the countryside are replaced by mass-produced products from factories. Although they complain from time to time that things in the market are too expensive and not durable, they are getting used to the idea of working to support their families.

Lao Yu told me that people in the village do not hire craftsmen anymore, and craftsmen no longer have the luxury of traveling to the east and eating in the west. Previously a heavy burden of craftsmanship, the main family for him to pick, he only need to walk on the village road with his hands behind his back, and constantly accept the passing pedestrians "master" "master" cordial greetings, greetings permeated with the craftsman's extraordinarily respectful. Those who follow the side of many years of iron tools were abandoned in a corner, now the old Yu can do is not make them covered with flying dust, wipe once a day, until those iron with a blue flash. In the old Yu heart, the anvil hammer shovel no longer come in handy, is becoming lazy and flabby, like people, will be old fast, have to try to stop their aging and laziness. Old Yu muffled, repeatedly rubbing, stubborn as a sick person. Suddenly I remembered an old stonemason in my hometown village. In the past, the village often from far away from the mountains to bring huge stone, stonemason stone processing into pounding rice with a stone pestle and mortar, grain milling stone mill, carved with birds and animals and flower pattern of the stone sculpture, in the village entrance to put up a tall stone pagoda, but also for the village students to make the practice of martial arts fitness equipment, such as stone locks, stone stretcher, stone barbells. Later, machines replaced these stone instruments, the stone pagoda was knocked down, the village of martial arts practice also disappeared overnight. The stonemason lost his livelihood, and shut himself up in the courtyard, where the clanking sound of steel cones chiseling stone was heard day and night. Later, the stonemason died, people realized that the stonemason carved his life full of one after another with a bloody stone monument.

Like the old Yu, now the village living craftsmen more than the old, can not do the craft work, the young no longer want to learn the craft. Even if the craft is lost, they don't feel sorry for it, not to mention that they don't really need it in their lives anymore. Nowadays, when I talk to the younger generation in the village about a certain artisan or a certain craft, they either look blank, as if they have nothing to do with it, or they look surprised, as if they are talking about something so far away.

But whenever I think of countryside craftsmen, my heart is always wrapped up in a ball of softness, as if just by reaching out I can touch those handmade products with a rural texture. Through the long years, they are still glittering in the depths of time, conveying temperature, luster and texture. In the cold winter, what brought me warmth when I was young and went to school was a gabion fire cage with a pair of delicate iron chopsticks that my uncle helped me to make. Sixty years later, the pair of silver bracelets are still shiny and glittering, a dowry from my grandmother's early years, who seldom wore it and treasured it in the bottom of a nanmu box whose paint had long been mottled but no less noble. Ancestors handed down a fine jadeite jade pipe, in the Cultural Revolution was manipulated by the family secretly taken away, become my family's eternal pain. The oil-painted statues of gods and the dull murals on the walls of the old ancestral hall are a great manifestation of the sadness and mystery of a village, or the rise and fall of a family and its legend. The abandoned waterwheel at the entrance of the village, the huge stone mill at the well platform, and even a broken wall at the old house that collapsed a long time ago, all tell the story of the village's past years related to craftsmen.

Blacksmiths, carpenters, stonemasons, silversmiths, lacquerers, painters ...... All year round, craftspeople roam the villages, warming and illuminating one village after another like torches. They are the flowing blood of the village, creating the humble and sacred, the ugly and the rustic of the countryside. The elegance and splendor of the countryside, such as women's headdresses and earrings, the gold hairpin and jade pendant, the matching of women's clothing, the tiny carvings on the window panes, the glittering of silver, the colors of lacquer ware, as well as flower-tying, paper-cutting, and mural paintings ...... are all revealed through the artisan's dexterous hands. The artisan becomes the thermometer that measures and tests a village's earnestness and abundance, joy and celebration. It is no exaggeration to say that the village artisan is the original purveyor of village civilization, the village artist who walks in the village.

Tracking the footsteps of village craftsmen, you will be introduced to one labyrinthine village after another. The southern countryside of the old mansion of the deep, the layout of the patio, the old mansion of the carved beams of the momentum of the compartment fan carved on the lifelike, the old mansion out of the man handsome and elegant, the woman is a dignified manner to love and pity. "Green trees by the village, green hills outside the slanting", is the kind of "small building one night to listen to the spring rain, deep alleys selling apricot blossoms in the morning", the beauty of the mood, the village is like resting in the Tang and Song poems. If you are in the north, since ancient times, Yan and Zhao have a lot of sadness, the villages or robbing the rich to help the poor, or pull out the sword to help. Men walking in the village road, the eyebrows through the Yingrui gas, tiger, as long as the light of a gesture, playing a whistle will be answered by a crowd, not to mention the village between those imperceptible mysterious landmarks and secret mark. Into such a village, I can not help but think of those ancient manor of the good man whistling gathering. For example, "Water Margin" in the Panto Road life and death of the Zhu Jia Village, knocking the mysterious night shift Zengtou City, the generations of good men who occupied the mountain as the king of the dangerous passes, as well as although for the water is in fact also another kind of village Shui Po Liangshan, and even the Tao Yuanming "traffic, dogs and chickens heard each other," the Peach Blossom Garden, and even the Tao Yuanming "road traffic, dogs and chickens heard each other! "Even Tao Yuanming's Peach Blossom Garden, and even the villages of the northern plains, which are well connected by roads. Walking in the ancient and modern villages, the ingenuity of their wisdom, labyrinth-like layout, fantasy towards, or noble or honorable temperament, or the concept of unity of mankind, let you fall, lost, trapped. And those organs deep, dense traps in the village defense system, shown by the strategy of the mind and God's mysterious, showing the folk another kind of boldness, resourcefulness, openness. I am convinced that those who travel in the countryside of the craftsmen is the village maze of various designers, only they can create a labyrinth of the village.

The craftsmen build the village in a calm, dignified and elegant way, without losing the richness, atmosphere and extravagance, and the mystery hides some kind of signs and codes of destiny, penetrating the warmth and whispers of the folk thought, simplicity and light. I was y absorbed, and could not help but imagine myself as a craftsman, how I would design a village. My village, the river through the village, walled enclosure, the village wide lanes, paved stone road, wide enough to run a horse, no cars screaming, exhaust emissions of wanton. The village is staggered between the stone bridge, the bank planted willows, the wind willows, friends and friends can be folded willows to send off. A deep well reflects the color of the moon, which is fresh and sweet in all seasons. Under the tent, the famous doctor Qiu Dan look, smell, ask, cut, timidly remove the villagers' diseases. Opening a study and setting up a meeting hall, the villagers know the etiquette of food and clothing. Repair ancestral hall, set up a theater, festivals or rituals, or singing and dancing. In the village, there are grocery stores, bakery stalls, noodle stores, paper-tie stores, and the mill, dyeing, oil-pressing, and tofu factories all have their own homes. In the village, no one picks up the road and closes the house at night. The villagers live and work in peace and contentment, abide by the law and discipline, comply with the people's covenant, trade fairly, and prohibit counterfeiting, forgery, and all dishonest labor. The village headman only fulfills his obligations and does not enjoy any privileges, and the villagers decide on their initiatives by deliberation, just like the Athenian city-state system in ancient Greece. In the council hall, there are "do not take the good small, do not take the bad small," "old and old people, and young and young people". Villagers strong bones, healthy body, integrity and bravery, have a vision, set up ambitious, with the suffering, *** suffering.

Lastly, I would like to solemnly announce that my village still retains blacksmiths, carpenters, stonemasons, silversmiths, lacquerers, painters and many other craftsmen. The craftsmen fight against the shoddiness of factory products with their consistent fine workmanship and exquisite handcraftsmanship, against the sloppiness and rapidity of the world with their sheer slowness, and against the indifference and vapidity of the world with their warmth and texture. In this kind of confrontation and perseverance, the craftsmen retain many valuable things for the village, such as truth, beauty, goodness, quietness and patience. In short, my village is very different from the outside world, it may be old-fashioned, lagging behind, lonely and isolated; however, it is the only one that can safeguard for the world a spirit and quality that is disappearing in a dazzling and noisy era.

This is the village I designed as a craftsman, but it can only ever be the village of my dreams.

The merciless hand of time has long since taken my village away, and it has become a dream of the past. I can no longer trace the figure of the craftsman, can no longer enter the tenderest belly of the village built by the folk craftsman. Just like the village of Shuangjing where I am now, its culture of poetry and study has passed away. The reality is as irreparable as the fading of a flower. I'm afraid that after a few decades, the blacksmith Lao Yu and his long-deserted craft will become unknown. Future generations can only find their former traces and glory in the legend; or rely on the imagination to perceive these rural crafts that once brought infinite light and warmth to the countryside. The scene, like today's face of primitive people left in the cave petroglyphs and relics, the descendants can only play a lot of mistakes in the imagination.