After the Kitchen God's Farewell Day, the Spring Festival was fast approaching. But to a child, this period still felt very long. Finally, New Year's Eve arrived. That afternoon, the women took the girls home to make dumplings, while the men took the boys to pay respects at the ancestors' graves. Visiting the ancestral graves is essentially inviting the ancestors home for the New Year. Upon returning, a ancestral shrine scroll is already hung on the wall of the main room, depicting dignified ancient figures and a few children resembling the wealthy young masters in those old-fashioned plays, wearing melon-shaped hats and setting off firecrackers. The scroll also has many grids drawn in ink, filled with the names of the ancestors. In front of the scroll are an incense burner, candles, and a few offerings—mostly candies and biscuits. More particular families also prepare bowls with cabbage at the bottom and slices of golden-brown fried tofu on top. An axe is indispensable, chosen for its homonym for "fortune." Anyone who tries to borrow the axe at this time will be met with great disapproval. The courtyard is already covered with dry grass, and a stick is placed at the gate, supposedly to stop the ancestors' mules and horses from running away.

Back then, there was no television, not even electricity. After dinner, we'd go to sleep first. Around three in the morning, my mother would quietly wake me. I'd get up, put on my new clothes, and feel a strange, mysterious chill; my teeth chattered. The candles in front of the ancestral scroll were lit, their flames flickering, illuminating the ancient faces on the scroll, making them seem almost alive. The courtyard was pitch black, so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, as if many tall horses were chewing hay in the darkness—a night so dark I'd never seen again; the nights weren't as dark as they used to be. This was the true beginning of the New Year celebrations.

At this time, absolutely no one was allowed to speak loudly. Even parents with usually bad tempers spoke softly. As for the children, my mother had repeatedly warned them the night before that it was best not to speak during the New Year. If they had to speak, they had to choose their words carefully, never uttering anything unlucky, because this moment of the New Year was related to the family's fortune for the coming year. Cooking the New Year's Eve dinner shouldn't involve using the bellows—the whooshing sound would ruin the mystery—so the best straw, cotton stalks, or bean stalks should be burned. My mother said that burning cotton stalks on New Year's Eve would produce a skilled butcher, while burning bean stalks would produce a scholar. A scholar, after all, is an intellectual, a learned person, but my mother couldn't explain what a skilled butcher was. It was probably a good profession, like a military general, but certainly not a butcher or executioner. Because the straw was good, the fire in the stove blazed brightly, illuminating half the yard. Steam billowed from the pot through the door. Plump, white dumplings were dropped into the pot. At this time, I would inevitably think of that not-so-appropriate riddle: A flock of geese came from the south, flapping and swooping down into the river. The dumplings were cooked, and my father picked up a plate with two bowls of dumplings on it and walked towards the gate. The boys followed closely behind, holding sticks with firecrackers already tied to them. Father placed a plate on the open ground outside the gate, lit the paper money, and then knelt down to kowtow in all directions. The boys lit firecrackers and held them high. Amidst the deafening roar of the firecrackers, Father completed his ritual to worship the gods of heaven and earth. Back inside, Mother and grandmothers were already laughing and chatting. The mysterious ceremony was over, and now it was time for the living to celebrate. Before eating dumplings, the younger generation had to kowtow to their elders, who were already sitting on the kang (a heated brick bed) waiting. We kowtowed before the ancestral altar, loudly announcing who we were kowtowing to: "Kowtowing to Grandpa, kowtowing to Grandma, kowtowing to Dad, kowtowing to Mom..." The elders on the kang loudly said: "No need to kowtow anymore, come up and eat dumplings!" As usual, the elders would give the younger generation a small token of gratitude for kowtowing, a dime or two, which already made us jump for joy.

The dumplings we made for New Year's Eve were filled with coins. My family used to use copper coins from the Qing Dynasty, but those dumplings had a strong, metallic taste and were inedible, a waste of a precious dumpling. So we switched to using coins. Looking back, those coins were incredibly dirty, but back then we didn't even think about such extravagance. We hoped to find a coin in the dumpling—it was our own property! The children didn't care about the good fortune of finding a dumpling with a coin. Some dutiful daughters-in-law would mark the dumpling wrappers during the day and then put the coin in their parents-in-law's bowls at night to please them. One year, hoping to find a coin in a dumpling, I ate three bowls in one go. I didn't find a coin, but I ruined my stomach and almost died.

There's another interesting thing about New Year's that I must mention: decorating and welcoming the God of Wealth. Often, just as your family was gathered around the table eating dumplings, a loud singing would erupt outside the door: "The God of Wealth has arrived! The God of Wealth has arrived! Happy New Year! Set off firecrackers! Answer quickly! Answer quickly! May your family build a tiled house every year! Take it quickly! Take it quickly! Gold and silver will climb into your home..." Hearing the God of Wealth's singing outside, my mother would fill a bowl with dumplings and have the boys take it out. Those dressed as the God of Wealth were all beggars. Some carried earthenware pots, others bamboo baskets, standing in the cold wind, waiting for people's charity. This was the beggars' golden hour; no matter how stingy a family was, they wouldn't refuse that half a bowl of dumplings at this time.

Back then, I really wanted to dress up as the God of Wealth, but my parents wouldn't allow it. My mother told me a story about a beggar pretending to be the God of Wealth. It goes like this: On New Year's Eve, a beggar went from house to house with an earthenware pot, begging for dumplings. He put them in the pot, thinking he had collected a lot, and wanted to go home and reheat the dumplings from everyone so he could have a good New Year too. But when he got home, he found the bottom of the pot had frozen away, and only one dumpling was frozen to the rim. The beggar sighed deeply, lamenting his terrible fate; he couldn't even afford to use an earthenware pot to hold dumplings. Now, if we wanted, we could eat dumplings every day. Without the allure of food, much of the New Year's fun is gone. In middle age, we feel the fleeting nature of time even more; each New Year is like a wake-up call. Without the temptation of delicious food, without the mysterious atmosphere, without the pure innocence of childhood, there is no joy in celebrating the New Year. But the New Year still goes on, for the sake of the children. The kind of New Year we miss is not what today's children are interested in; they have their own joyful New Year. Time is truly terrifying; the days slip by like flowing water.

Later, I joined the army, became an officer, and during a visit home, I rummaged through a trunk and found my fourth-grade composition book. It contained lengthy comments written in red ink by Teacher Zhang, which were quite touching. Because of the Cultural Revolution, I had a falling out with Teacher Zhang. I was expelled and returned home, avoiding him whenever I saw him, my heart as cold as ice. Rereading those comments filled me with many emotions. My nephew used that composition book to wipe his bottom; if it had been preserved, perhaps some museum would have acquired it someday.

At age 11, after dropping out of school to become a cowherd, I often reminisced about my glorious composition days. There was a villager who had been repatriated... He was a "rightist" sent to a labor camp, a graduate of the Chinese Literature Department of Shandong Normal College, and had worked as a middle school Chinese teacher. We were in the same production team and often worked together. He instilled in me a lot of knowledge about writers and novels. Things like child prodigies whose middle school essays were included in high school textbooks, writers bringing their own high-quality water when they went to the countryside, writers who had saved 30,000 yuan in royalties while in high school, and a writer with pockmarked hands who saw his lover walking along the railway tracks and jumped off without hesitation, breaking his leg in the process… He wove a dream of me becoming a writer.

I asked him, "Uncle, if I can write a book, will I no longer have to herd cattle?"

He said, "More than that, I won't have to herd cattle anymore!" "Then, he told me about Ding Ling's 'One Book Doctrine,' and about how famous writers ate dumplings three times a day. From that moment on, I dreamed of becoming a writer. Putting everything else aside, the idea of ​​eating dumplings three times a day was just too tempting.

In 1973, at 18, I went with the villagers to Changyi County to dig the Jiaolai River. In the freezing cold, hundreds of thousands of laborers from three counties gathered together, a sea of ​​people, red flags fluttering, and the loudspeakers at the command post repeatedly playing the Hunan folk song 'Liuyang River.' That scene truly stirred my emotions. That night, lying in the cellar, I thought about writing a novel.

After finishing digging the river and returning home, my face was peeling, and..." He felt a sense of transformation. He asked his mother for fifty cents, went to the supply and marketing cooperative to buy a bottle of ink and a notebook, and began writing while lying on the kang (a heated brick bed). The book was titled "On the Banks of the Jiaolai River." The first line was in bold, quoting Mao Zedong: "Water conservancy is the lifeblood of agriculture." The first chapter title followed immediately: "The Party Branch Holds a Meeting on the Lantern Festival, The Old Landlord Plots to Cut Off the Horse's Leg." The story went like this: On the morning of the Lantern Festival, militia company commander Zhao Hongwei ate two sweet potatoes and drank two bowls of red glutinous rice porridge before rushing to the brigade headquarters for a meeting to discuss the issue of digging the Jiaolai River. The old Party Secretary announced the meeting, first studying Chairman Mao's quotations, and then conveying the commune revolutionary committee's decision on digging the river. That book... I abandoned the novel after writing less than a chapter, the reason for which I can no longer recall. If I were to name my first novel, this would be it.

In 1978, at 23, I joined the army, becoming a proud soldier. As a soldier, with enough to eat and wear, my dream of becoming a writer grew ever more rampant. While on guard duty in Huang County, I wrote "Mother's Story," about a landlord's daughter (Mother) who fell in love with a guerrilla leader in the Eighth Route Army, ran away from home, and eventually led her troops back to kill her father, who had become a traitor. However, during the Cultural Revolution, "Mother" was persecuted and killed because of her landlord family background. I sent this novel to PLA Literature and Art, and while I eagerly awaited the royalties to buy a watch… The manuscript was rejected. Later, I wrote a play called "Divorce," about the struggle against the "Gang of Four," and sent it to PLA Literature and Art. Just as I was hoping to get the royalties to buy a watch, the manuscript was rejected again. But this time, the editor from the literary magazine wrote me a rejection letter in pen; the elegant handwriting still lingers in my mind. The gist of the letter was: the magazine has limited space, and for a large-scale play like this, it would be best to send it to a publishing house or theater. A bright red official seal was stamped at the end of the letter. I showed the letter to my instructor, who patted me on the shoulder and said, "Well done, young man! You've made the PLA Literature and Art Magazine hesitant to publish it!" "To this day, I still don't know if he was being sarcastic or praising me. Later, I was transferred to Baoding and became a political instructor to solve my promotion problem. Because my foundation was too weak, I had to memorize textbooks every day. I temporarily put aside my literary pursuits. A year later, I had memorized those textbooks perfectly and no longer needed to bring notes to class, and my literary dream was rekindled. I wrote a lot and submitted my work to small regional publications. Finally, in the autumn of 1981, my novel 'Spring Night Rain' was published in 'Lotus Pond' in Baoding."