The next day we put on simpler clothes and took a four-hour train ride to Linhe County. The exhibition was OK. There were lights and telephones upstairs and downstairs, but it felt completely different from Taiyuan. Mainly because there were no pillar industries here.

Not even agriculture and industry.

The young master came with me this time for two purposes. One is to help him collect some things, and the other is to learn something casually. Wang Quansheng’s treasures can get a few from me to give him a good start in business. Along the way

He kept talking to me and I couldn't bear it anymore, so I told him not to ask questions now, and I will teach you when I collect the things.

After arriving in Linhe County, the young master asked me if there was anything he could collect in the county. I told him that there was no need to waste this effort. Although there have been many ancient tombs near Linhe County since ancient times, one or two of them are washed out every year when the Yellow River floods, but after all, they belong to the county.

The villagers in the nearby suburbs are all aware of antique trading, so the prices here are not cheap. Unless you like something particularly good, no one is willing to come here to buy it. We don’t need to come here to buy, but you can go shopping to familiarize yourself with it.

business.

So we stayed in Linhe for a day and I took the young master on a symbolic trip to the suburbs to look around and talk nonsense with him for five thousand years, which was considered to be repaying his expenses along the way.

The strange thing is that Wang Quansheng wrote the phone number on the back of the train ticket. I called it many times but no one answered. I took some time to go to the local post office and asked what the problem was with the phone number. After sacrificing a pack of Hongtashan, an old postman told us that the number was 6.

The word that does not start with the word "county" refers to a place called Donghua Mountain in Linhe County, a small town on the edge of the Yellow River.

I thought to myself that it turned out that he was in Donghua Mountain and there might be other reasons for not answering the phone. So I told the young master that we should go to a serious place to start a business.

There is no train to go to Donghua Mountain. There are only a lot of people with small faces. The Western Han Dynasty bronze on me is valuable. It is not very suitable to get on this car, so I sent it to the post office first. Only the bronze piece is of little value. I am afraid to send it to others.

I lost it, so I found a restroom and put it on my stomach before getting in the car.

The car was bumpy and bumpy as it rushed along the mountain road. The space inside the small side was not big to begin with, but now seventeen people, including the driver, plus a lot of luggage were crammed inside, and the air seemed particularly turbid.

The journey was long, so I leaned my head against the window and looked out at the high loess slopes, hoping to find some scenery. However, this area was washed away by the Yellow River every year and was severely weathered. Many mountains and rivers had seriously collapsed, and vegetation could not grow after the Yellow River water washed away the topsoil. This was a vicious cycle.

Year after year, the landscape becomes very monotonous with only sparse trees and ravines left.

The young master was very excited along the way and chatted with people around him about Donghua Mountain.

Along the way, we were traveling with two businessmen who were going to Donghua Mountain to buy goods. One was fat and the other was thin. They were both good at chatting. They told us that Donghua Mountain is remote but specializes in a kind of traditional Chinese medicine that is said to be a prescription of local ethnic minorities for Yang Dian crazy.

It has a very good inhibitory effect, but this herb only produces one season every year, so it is very precious and they come to buy it once a year.

There are three other people, a professor and two students in the university. It is said that they study folklore. When there was a project in the university, they went to the folk to collect materials. The young master thought this was a public trip and was very envious. I told him that doing the project was very hard, especially

They have very little funding and sometimes have to post it themselves. It also has to be based on personal interests. Otherwise, who would want to come to this remote place?

Several people heard that we were antique dealers and were very interested in us. The young master was very talkative and made them stunned. So we made an appointment to go together and let them see the process of collecting antiques. I didn't agree at first, but then I wanted to follow this.

It may be easier for me to move around personally, and one of the female students named Wang Ruonan is so beautiful that it is difficult to refuse her request in the blink of an eye.

Others are primary school students who go to the county to study and only come home once a month. The rest of the time they live in the school. This is the same as when I was studying in the past, so it makes me feel nostalgic.

After six hours of bumpy mountain roads, we finally drove into Donghua Town. Along the way, we saw a few scattered low stone houses on the hillside. I know that in remote mountainous areas, sometimes these houses are just like these.

A village.

After passing a few dilapidated archways, there were a lot of stilted buildings (buildings with long wooden pillars suspended on the cliff). You can already see a corner of the Yellow River in the distance. Some students may not have seen it.

The elementary school students were very curious as they kept taking pictures of this scenery.

The driver told us that Donghua Town is an ancient town with a long history. It has been around since the Western Han Dynasty. The town has a population of less than 200 households and only has two streets. Most of the buildings are still the tile-roofed houses from the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The entire town is built on the mountains.

Ancient ancestral halls and towers can be seen everywhere on the bluestone road, which looks very quaint. Due to the inconvenient transportation, the town only had electric lights and telephones the year before last, but there are still many people who live by kerosene lamps.

I thought to myself that this is good news. If that's the case, then it sounds convenient that there won't be many calls in places with telephones.

At that time, luxury goods like telephones in mountainous areas were basically concentrated in government agencies, hotels, large factories, and even post offices. I thought that it was impossible for my nephew to stay in a government agency, and there would be no big business here.

The factory is basically a hotel and post office.

The car stopped at the town entrance because it was really difficult to turn around. We moved our luggage out of the car. The two herbal medicine merchants saw that we were unfamiliar with the place and asked us to follow them. They had to find a place to stay anyway. I quickly thanked and followed.

They entered the town. The young master followed Lei Feng's good example and helped the old professor carry things.

Most of the people in the town make a living by dredging the mud from the Yellow River. Their clothes are almost the same as before liberation. The small ancient town is quiet and peaceful with few strangers visiting us. Our arrival surprised the people here. Many people looked at us on the road.

We looked at each other strangely, and there was even a child of several years old following us, just like we were surrounded by foreigners in Beijing.

There are no hotels or guesthouses in the town. After walking for a while, I saw a government guesthouse that was comparable to the place I stayed at next to Nangong. It was the Hilton Hotel.

The drug dealer said that the local landlord's small wooden-structured tube building here was the only building here that used some bricks. During the "Cultural Revolution", the landlord was killed and it was vacated.

This tube building has been used to store debris for the town. Three years ago, a migrant worker from other places made money and contracted it to be a guest house because it was the only one in the town. Although it was shabby, the business was still good. If you don't sleep here, you have to sleep on the street.

The young master was happy when he heard this and said to me softly: "I bet this place is an ancient house. Lao Xu, please take a look and see if there are any antiques here. Let's collect them all."

I slapped him and asked him to be more polite. In those days, people who collected antiques outside could not be called antique collectors. They had to be called rag collectors. The price of collecting antiques was unbearable, and it had something to do with the Four Olds. Although it’s okay now.

But others will still feel uncomfortable after hearing it.

There is a canteen in the guest house. You can stay there and eat as you wish. I saw that it would save money on food, so I booked a room.

There were only two waiters in the guest house who greeted us. They were a middle-aged man named Lao Cai and several drug dealers who seemed to be familiar with each other. They greeted us as soon as we met. They were very enthusiastic and helped me get things. They asked where we came from and what projects we had here.

I told him that we were collecting rags and he didn’t know if he understood the code. After we settled in, he invited us to the canteen for dinner. The dinner was rice with day lily and a plate of eggs. It tasted pretty good. I think this old man

Cai Tinghuikan asked him how many villages were below here? He then took out the train ticket and asked if he knew where this phone number was.

Lao Cai took the train ticket and looked at it with a frown and said: "This number is at the ferry of the Huangsha construction site. Are you looking for someone? The Huangsha construction site is at the other end of the mountain far away from the town. The Yellow River is dry and the construction has not started yet.

Those people are all in their own villages during the holidays, so it’s hard to find someone.”

I hummed and said, "Is there anyone on duty at the construction site? I'll ask the people on duty who work together. You should know where your colleagues live." The villages here are not big. In fact, as long as you know which village it is, you can definitely find it.

get.

Lao Cai said: "What kind of shift is there when there is no one on duty at the construction site? There are only a few broken boats and there is sand. How can we be afraid of people stealing the sand? Who has the leisure time to go to the Yellow River to blow the northwest wind instead of doing other business? And the Yellow River

When the water dries up, there are a lot of weird things happening. Usually no one dares to stay there at night. It is said that people who drowned in the Yellow River in the past have come out to breathe now. It is very haunted and noisy. People here are superstitious and no one will stay by the Yellow River at night.

."

I said, "This is going to be difficult. If the phone can't get through, there are not many people here, but the span of several villages is too big and there are no lanes. I have to walk by foot and it won't take me ten days and a half to finish."

The old professor was very curious about what Old Cai said and asked: "How come the Yellow River is also haunted? But no one is haunted there and no one knows about it?"

Lao Cai sat next to us and lowered his voice: "I also heard what the old man said. I just heard that every year when the Yellow River cuts off, many people will hear the sound of iron chains coming from the Huangsha Factory section of the Yellow River at night.

When we came over, the sound sounded like many people walking there in shackles. When everyone went over to take a look the next day, they found that there were three-inch-long small footprints all over the sand. The old man said that these were the footprints of water ghosts. When the water in the Yellow River dried up, the river god let the water ghosts come up to breathe.

."

"No way, have you seen it with your own eyes?" The young master was also curious.

Lao Cai nodded: "Of course I have seen it several times. Those small footprints are as chilling as those of monkeys."

The drug dealer was also very interested and said softly: "Why don't you have the guts to go see something so evil at night?"

Lao Cai lit up a cigarette and nodded mysteriously, then looked around to make sure there was no one around before he said: "We don't dare to look, but we are always bold enough to go look. I heard that someone went there before and said it was pitch black at night, but

I saw a lot of light spots like wolf eyes floating around in the river. I don't know if it's true. But in the past few months, four people from outside the country went to see it several times, but only three people came back the last time.

I don’t know where the other one is. When I asked them, they didn’t tell me. A few of them looked very frightened. Now everyone is saying that the one who didn’t come back was probably dragged into the sand by the water ghost. Those four foreigners still live here, so this

It’s absolutely true.”

The two college students asked the old professor: "Should we go and have a look too?"

The old professor educated them: "This is superstition. Superstition and folk custom are two different things. These two things are easily confused, so we must work hard. But you can still take a look."

Seeing the tone we gave him, Lao Cai felt a little proud and said: "They lived upstairs at that time. When the three of them came back that day, I asked them what happened and they didn't say anything. But then I heard them

It was a big quarrel. Unfortunately, I couldn’t understand what they said, but they got excited and I heard one of them say something in Shanxi dialect. What do you think it was?”

This Lao Cai has the potential to tell stories. I thought in my heart that we approached his young master and said, "My lord, just finish it in one breath and don't rattle our appetite."

Lao Cai smiled and said: "One of them said: There must be something under the pond. If you don't believe it, forget it!"

I wondered: "What does this mean?"

Lao Cai shook his head and said he didn't know, but there was indeed a pond on the construction site of the Huangsha Factory. It was the Broken Water Lake in a river. The Broken Water Lake was very large and usually the last to dry up. People in the Huangsha Factory often swam in it.

I didn't hear them say they had seen anything underneath.

"So I was wondering." Lao Cai said in a serious tone, "Maybe I saw a water ghost emerging from below."

I told him that I was very curious and wanted to go to the Yellow River to see it. Lao Cai said that if he really wanted to go and see it, he could take us there during the day and he could take us there for only ten yuan per person and he could arrange it for us.

I secretly laughed in my heart that this guy must be engaged in tourism. The two drug dealers said that they were not going. They had to go to other villages to buy medicine. I thought that since I had no clue, I would go with the large group and go to Huangsha Factory first.

If I can meet one and a half people, I'll have some clues. But if I can't, there are files from that era. I'll go see if there are any clues in their office.

So I made an appointment with the old professor and a few college students to leave early tomorrow morning.

After dinner, we each went back to our rooms. The light inside the Tongzi Building was very poor. There was a light in the dining hall but not in the room. We each carried kerosene lamps and climbed up the wooden stairs to the second floor. The second floor was like a haunted house in a horror movie. There were still wooden pillars on the pillars.

Although this place is full of spider webs, it looks very strange like the Ming and Qing Dynasties, but whether we can get used to it is a question.

It was still early at this time. The young master wanted to be clean, so he went to fetch water from the well below and cleaned it. I didn't think there was anything wrong. In the past, when I was at the construction site, I could sleep on just a few grasses. I threw my things on the bed and lay down on it, drinking kerosene.

Under the light of the lamp, you can see that piece of bronze. It is said to be peeled off from the bottom of the river. The pattern on it is very special. I have never looked at it carefully. Now I have time to study it.

After just a few glances, I sat up and felt a little weird.

My research on bronzes is still based on porcelain, so I was quite bold when I collected the bronzes. Then when I looked at the bronze piece, I discovered something strange.

The patterns on this thing are very old and they are from the Western Zhou Dynasty, but the other small bronze items are undoubtedly from the Western Han Dynasty, which is more than a thousand years apart.

No, if there is an ancient tomb under the Yellow River, how come the burial objects in the ancient tomb are so long apart? Could it be that the burial objects from the ancient tombs of two dynasties happened to be washed together?
To be continued...