Wenzhuang Siheyuan’s past and present

▲The old courtyard house with earthen walls and yellow mud floor has now been replaced by a newly built courtyard house with bricks and tiles and a second floor and cement floor.

A person's life is like a courtyard house. As time goes by, it needs to be updated inside and outside day by day.

For ten years, from 1949 to 1959, I spent my childhood in the countryside of Hsinchu, Taiwan. When I was nearly six years old, my father was transferred to Shakeng Elementary School as the principal. The family moved back to their hometown in Shakeng and lived in the principal's dormitory in a Japanese-style building next to the school. However, what I remember most from my childhood is the courtyard life in my ancestral home.

During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, our ancestors came to Taiwan to reclaim wasteland, and their descendants later settled in the mountainous area of Hengshan Township. Hengshan and neighboring towns are Hakka areas, and traditional homes are generally in the courtyard layout.

Sandpit is located between Guanxi Town and Zhudong Town. Buses pass through it and it has become a hub for residents to travel to and from nearby cities. It takes about an hour to walk from the Shakeng bus stop in the direction of Fuxing Village in the mountainous area. First, you climb over the short hill, pass through Shishi Village, and enter the Mafu Village in Fuxing Village in the mountainous area. Walk along the road and pass through a small pier. Bridge, then go uphill, and enter a courtyard, which is where my grandparents and other Wen people live. We call it Wenzhuang.

My great-grandfather had six sons. The descendants of the fifth house lived in the main hall of the Wenzhuang courtyard; some relatives in the second house lived in the left row of the quadrangle; and the sixth house - the residence of my grandfather and uncle - lived in the right row. There are doors from the main hall and the left and right side rooms to the back and extended rooms on both sides, where relatives living in the big room and four rooms form a community with a courtyard within a courtyard. If you are not careful, you will get lost. In addition, there are several courtyard houses in 80%, where the rest of the big house and relatives in the second room live. As for the three-bedroom family members, they live in the courtyard in the sandpit, right next to the school. We often play there and sometimes live there.

In the 1950s, everyone was very poor, and the materials used in this courtyard house were rudimentary. The patio is paved with yellow mud. In addition to the beams of the house being supported by large timbers, the walls are made of yellow mud or adobe bricks. There is no private toilet, but a straw shed is built outside the courtyard, a large pit is dug inside, and the top is covered with two wooden boards separated by two pieces of wood. You have to be careful when going to the toilet to avoid accidents; after using the toilet, there is no toilet paper, but bamboo chips are used to clean up the aftermath. The feces accumulated in the toilet will be used as fertilizer for future farming.

They only eat simple meals, and when guests come, they kill chickens and buy meat to entertain them, and they brush their teeth with tooth powder. For drinking water, bamboo tubes are set up to lead the mountain springs along the mountain to the courtyard, and then flow into the water tanks of each house. The bamboo tubes are connected like oil pipelines, which is a very wise approach. Electric lighting had just begun to be used at that time, so only a small electric lamp was lit at night, but it was much better than during the Japanese occupation. Every home was poorly equipped, with no radios at the time, let alone televisions. There are often chickens and ducks walking around in groups in the courtyard, and dogs bark from time to time. It is truly like "chickens and dogs hear each other."

In my grandfather's house, I entered the living room, with raincoats and different hoeing tools hanging on the wall. Entering the kitchen to the left, there is a traditional large stove with two large pots on it. At that time, we used picked branches as fuel. Later, we had briquettes, which made it much easier. Entering to the left, there is a bedroom with two traditional wooden beds with a roof and four posts, each surrounded by gauze to prevent mosquitoes from attacking. Families living with their parents have almost no private life. There is a urine bucket in the corner of the bedroom, and you will smell the urine smell when you sleep at night.

Most of the tribesmen make a living by farming, going up the mountain to work in the terraced fields every day. There are not many intellectuals in the family. Most of the elders have only attended private schools for a few years and know some Chinese characters. Most of my cousins have only graduated from elementary school. My elder brother and several cousins went to normal school and became elementary school teachers. In addition, my father was the principal of an elementary school. They were all a group of elites who were respected by the clan. I was the first in my family to be admitted to Hsinchu Provincial Middle School for high school, and I was praised every time I returned home. Later, when I went to university, I was even more prosperous. Before studying abroad, my grandfather passed away, and I went to Wenzhuang to say goodbye to my grandmother and other relatives. After the banquet, dozens of relatives took pictures in several rows in the courtyard. These black-and-white photos are among the photos I treasure overseas.

Many years have passed, and I have stayed in the United States to work hard, get married, and start a business. When I returned to Taiwan to visit my relatives, I would occasionally visit the courtyard house. With the rapid economic development in Taiwan, courtyard houses have been gradually renovated with brick walls and modern glass doors and windows. However, the population is sparse, and most young people have gone out to make a living, leaving only the cousins and sisters-in-law who have become grandparents to stay behind. After retiring from the United States and returning to Taiwan to teach in 1996, I sometimes returned to my hometown to visit graves, and I was promoted to become an elder in the clan.

Recently I returned to the countryside and the courtyard house has been completely transformed. The main hall and the houses on both sides have been built in new styles and become a building that combines Chinese and Western styles. There are modern equipment inside, such as TV, running water, gas, Western-style toilets or tile floors. Everything is missing. Although they are built next to each other, they still have a courtyard layout, and the patios have long been paved with cement floors.

Many tribesmen who have lived abroad for a long time have returned to their former homes and rebuilt the dilapidated houses. Back then we had to walk for an hour, and on the way back we had to carry sweet potatoes, vegetables, bamboo shoots and other mountain products sent by relatives on our shoulders. Now you can drive directly from the sand pit to the entrance of the courtyard, which only takes ten minutes. When I went there, there were several cars parked outside the courtyard, which shows that with convenient transportation, many people choose to live in the countryside. But except for a few residents of the courtyard, none of them knew us. It was a bit like "laughing and asking where the guests are from."

The courtyard is still there, but the inside and outside have changed, and the owners are different. Thinking of what the Bible preacher writes: "One generation has passed away, and another generation has come, but the earth endures forever." I feel a mixture of sadness and joy in my heart. Shouldn’t everyone’s life be based on the eternal foundation, and should always seek good changes and replace the old with the new?

＊Good words and beautiful essays are selected from the fourth cup of life soup "Shadow of the Heart in the Dawn"