Talking from a Couplet of Folk Houses in Ding Cun

On the east side of Ding Cun Cultural Exhibition Hall, there is a residential building. There is a sign outside the door that says "1 courtyard", and there is an iron lock hanging on the door. This yard is probably just bought from residents and has not been opened to the public. Visitors can only look at its peripheral features. Looking at the yard from the outside, it is full of shine on you, tall and burly, with extraordinary momentum. The most attractive thing is the architectural style of the gatehouse and the exquisite brick carvings on the walls. The three gatehouses face south, with pillars in front, wooden beam structure and blue tile roof, and the east and west walls extend outward in a figure of eight. There are a pair of brick carvings on both sides of the courtyard gate, which are "Songhe Yannian" and "Fulu Shoutu" respectively. There is a pair of brick-carved couplets on the eight-character wall. The upper part is engraved on the east side with "Looking for answers in court", the lower part is engraved on the west side with "Listening to chickens", and the brick-carved plaque above the lintel is "Pei Shize".

The word "Pei Shize" is elegant, which means that the hospital should protect the favor and protect the people from generation to generation, and the couplets on both sides reflect a strong pastoral life. To appreciate the beauty of this couplet and the interest it contains, we must first understand the "pestle" and "rhyme".

A pestle is a wooden stick used by the ancients to pound rice and beat cloth. They are usually made of jujube, but they can be found occasionally in rural areas now. This musical instrument, which is often used in folk life, is called pestle in Xiangfen's folk language. In the past, cotton fabrics were wrinkled because of uneven shrinkage between cotton threads. At this time, the peasant women will fold the washed cotton cloth into a neat square, put it on a stone called a beating stone, and knock it with a pestle, and the beaten cotton cloth will be flattened.

The word "window" is used when people say reading and not reading now. The order of ancient courtyards from outside to inside is door, court, hall and room. The entrance is the court, behind which is the hall, and behind which is the room. The door of the room is called "door", there is a window between the room and the hall called "window", and the wall is also called "window".

"Looking for answers in court, listening to chickens in the courtyard" shows us a leisurely life scene after farmers return from working in the fields. The farmer sat in the yard, resting under the window, smoking a bag of cigarettes and drinking a bowl of jujube leaf tea brewed by his wife. The distant pestle fell like an answer, and the chirping chickens nearby seemed to be talking about it. Or the farmer smokes and drinks tea while asking questions with his wife who is playing cloth in court. The sound of beating the cloth masked his wife's answer. He seems to be trying to find out what his wife is saying in the thump of thumping cloth, and the chicken in the cage in the hall is also jabbering at this time, which makes the farm yard full of happy life. This couplet is ingenious in conception, unique in creativity, vivid in charm and full of fun, which can be compared with Tao Yuanming's poem "Picking chrysanthemums under the east fence and seeing Nanshan leisurely".