This article is from the WeChat public account: Story FM (ID: story_fm) , narrator: Ma Pengbo, text: Liu funny, original title: “Those disappeared rural occupations: pig piggers, The Witch and the Maik ｜ Story FM “, picture from: Narrator Ma Pengbo


The presenter is Ma Pengbo. He was born in Baoji City, Shaanxi Province. To be more precise, it is actually a vegetable garden village three kilometers away from the county seat of Baoji Longxian County. Ma Pengbo lived in this small village for nearly 20 years, and it wasn’t until he graduated from high school that he really left his hometown and went to college in another province.


Ma Pengbo currently lives in Xi’an, doing book publishing related work, and also writing part-time. Although he lives in a city now, the stories he writes are, without exception, related to his hometown, or to his hometown in his memory.

1, the village has changed

In the past, when it was autumn, more than 5 o’clock in the afternoon, every family raised smoke.

At school, I looked at my village from afar, the roofs were staggered, the blue smoke was smoky, and the trees were dotted with it. I remembered the scene of making a big noise in “Journey to the West” I watched when I was a kid. It was exactly the same as the scene before me.

But now I can’t see such a scene anymore, the trees are cut down, and the crickets won’t let it burn. So the village became extremely cold.

■ The village where Ma Pengbo’s hometown is located

■ Ma Pengbo took the New Year’s Eve in the old house for the last time and took this photo after posting the Spring Festival couplet

2, which sells rat pills

When I was a kid, my home was a north-south-facing house. The East Chamber was home to grandparents, and the West Chamber was home to parents, me and my brother. Upstairs there is a small attic where groceries are stored. There are especially many mice where groceries are piled up.

When I sleep at night, I often hear the rat running around on the attic floor upstairs, kicking, like dancing. Sometimes, between half asleep and half awake, I often feel that the rat ran away from my quilt. I’m used to it and am happy to get up in the middle of the night to hit mice.

In rural areas, mothers usually hold their children to sleep, and keep their small heads in their crunchy nests to prevent mice from biting their ears at night.

I remember when I was seven years old in the winter, one night, I called my younger brother to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. After the quilt was lifted up, I suddenly noticed that a little mouse was sleeping in my brother’s arms, and my younger brother was asleep. I don’t know. I went up and grabbed the mouse’s tail and threw it outside.

In the past, there were many mice in the countryside, and there was a profession that was particularly popular-one that sold rat medicine. In those years, I watched the man in our village walk down the streetThe lane sells mouse medicine, and the shelf truck is replaced with a bicycle, the bicycle is replaced with a tricycle, and the tricycle is replaced with an electric vehicle.

Unfortunately, the family started to raise cats in the village, and the state’s control over rat pills became stricter. There were fewer rats in the village, and that person no longer sold rat pills.

■ Haystacks in the village

3. Piggysmith

In the countryside, a very interesting phenomenon is that each village or villages are self-contained. In this settlement, you can find any craftsman you need, such as painters, masons, Mr. Feng Shui, Godwife, midwife, and so on, you can almost find someone in the village to help you solve anything in life. However, although there are many occupations, there is often only one person in each occupation.

In the countryside, artisans from all walks of life have their own seasons. They usually appear only at fixed seasons. For example, there are painters in Sanfutian, carpenters after the fall, bowlers in winter, and spring in the spring. In the season of the pig maker, he mainly provides the service of picking pigs at the door.

I have a relative, who was originally a singer, but later became a pig maker. Every spring, he would appear in the village on time wearing an old-fashioned cyan sun suit and a locomotive hat.

Other craftsmen in the countryside, such as those who sell tofu, rat poison, and cotton, all sip while walking down the street, but the pigners do n’t shout, and they do n’t sound good. He rode an old-fashioned 28 bicycle, put the tool on the beam, and inserted a piece of iron wire in front of it. A red cloth hung on the wire, and told the villagers by ringing a bell.

When he walks a pig, the adult will tell the child to avoid it, but I also secretly watchA few times.

The pig’s strength is very strong. He must lead a few young adults to put the pig down and then tie it. Once the pig is controlled, he shoots very quickly, raises his machete in his hand, and works in a blink I heard the stern dryness of the pig. My grandmother had prepared the ashes from the hoe before, and the hogmaker grabbed it and stuck it on the pig, and then threw the cut part high on the roof.

Year after year, the pigmaker is getting old, and the craft is getting old. Often, he won’t get a few deals a year. The pigmaker later gave birth to two daughters, but always looked forward to having a son to inherit his craft. Unfortunately, in the past few years, he had just caught up with “family planning”. According to policies, his wife must be ligated.

The pigmaker was helpless, and he could only sigh “I have choked pigs all my life. I didn’t expect my wife to be choked …”

4, Witch

In addition to the pig pigner, there is another magical character in the village where Ma Peng has a large wavelength, a witch named Liu. It is said that her “mana” is very large, and she is ranked in the name for dozens of miles. .

The witch in our place is generally called “Punish” (音) , this word is a dialect, which word I am not very specific clear. Our “penalty” is basically performed by women. Their main job is to help the living and the dead talk, which is similar to the witch psychic in Western culture.

In the countryside, witches are postmen who travel between the earth and the prefecture.

The witch in our village lives in a remote house in the west of the village. It is the only way for me to go to the house of my grandfather and grandmother next door. Every time I pass, I will subconsciously speed up my pace.

Several apricot trees are planted in the yard in front of her. I will pass there when the apricot is ripe, and I will throw stones at the apricot and eat them. At this time, I suddenly heard a long and ethereal voice coming from the yard. I couldn’t see anyone, I could only hear the terrible voice, and scared to run away, because I knew there was a person who could talk to ghosts .

■ Witch House

At that time, after my grandfather died, the family invited a witch to burn overcast. The witches are sitting on a wooden chair in the middle hall, and their faces are very dark. It is said that the people in their profession will turn black because they deal with the underworld all year round, the yang is damaged and the yin is too heavy.

The witch instructed us how to burn the deceased before my grandfather’s spirituality. When a certain amount is burned, she will let some female relatives and children avoid, leaving only two people to stand with her .

Suddenly, her face changed greatly, and she seemed to be the same person. Her expression and tone of speech changed, and she became like her grandparents. She became the incarnation of the grandmother and grandmother’s undead. She asked, my aunt answered, and it took about half an hour to return. Then without warning, the witch suddenly collapsed to the ground.

Family went to help her. She looked blurry and rolled her eyes. She looked like she had lost too much blood. Several people held her up in a chair and sat down. She kept gasping and drank a lot of water. It took about ten minutes to get back to her usual appearance.

In fact, in the past, the witch had a great effect on the peasants, and some people were really sick. After being spelled by the witch, she gradually got better miraculously.

I think the role played by the witch can be understood as a counselor in rural China.

Because everyone will eventually die, everyone will think about what happened next, and think about where they will go when they die. This is a very ultimate and terrible topic. The existence of witches has brought relief to people and made people feel that things behind them have also come to pass through this medium.

It’s really hilarious!

But it’s not working now. The countryside is barren now. The harvester made a cut, the tractor pulled it, went directly to the sun and then entered the grain silo. The whole process was over in two days.

Since the first combine harvester drove into our village, the lively autumn harvest scene is gone forever, and Mai Ke gradually disappeared.

■ The lively scene in the field (Photo / Hou Dengke)

■ Group photo of Maike (picture / Hou Dengke)

6. The village is disintegrating without dignity

I know that with the development of the times, many rural occupations in the past are doomed to disappear. I just feel that they disappear too dignified, and the countryside collapses too dignified.

In the past, after the death of the rural people, the coffins had to be lifted by the young and middle-aged people in the village, and lined up to the cemetery, just like in the “White Deer Plain” TV series. After being carried to the cemetery, the young and middle-aged men sent the coffin a little bit with a rope.