The author of this article is from Zhengzhou, Henan. He and his father are both river workers at the Yellow River Water Conservancy Commission. What he wants to tell is the strange stories along the ancient path of the Yellow River.
Dealing with Yellow River Evils
My surname is Bai, and my name is Bai Shitou. This name is very earthy, but it is also sophisticated. Because I am a river soldier for generations, I took the meaning of "water comes and earth covers".
River soldiers are a strange type of military force. In the 37th year of Kangxi's reign, China only established river soldiers. The uniforms of the river soldiers of the Qing Dynasty all had the word "river" printed on them. They were treated very well, but few were willing to go. This is because the river soldiers have to deal with evil objects in the Yellow River.
The Yellow River is the most troubled river in China, and it is also the long river with the most evil incidents in China. During the 2,540 years from 602 BC to 1938 when Huayuankou broke out, the lower reaches of the Yellow River burst and overflowed 543 times, and the number of bursts and overflows reached 1,590. Under that thick mud, I don’t know how many unknown secrets of the past are buried.
In the early 1950s, the Yellow River changed its course. After the river workers dug up the dry Yellow River waterway, they found a rusty iron pipe. At first, the iron pipe was only as thick as an arm. It became thicker as it went down. It took seven or eight years to dig down. rice, the iron pipe was as thick as a water tank, and it was white and shiny, as if it had been polished with sandpaper. The river workers did not dare to dig any more. When the experts came the next day, they found that the originally dry riverbed was full of water overnight, and the iron pipe could no longer be found in the turbid Yellow River water.
In the 1960s, when cleaning the ancient Yellow River Road, a copper bell more than ten meters high was discovered under the mud. The mouth of the bell was sealed with iron juice. When you opened it, you found that the bell was densely packed with skulls, and the skulls were coiled inside. All kinds of small yellow snakes refused to come out no matter what. Experts investigated for a while and couldn't figure out what the big bell was used for, and how the snake could survive in the closed bell for so many years. In the end, they could only sink the big bell unchanged to the bottom of the river. As a result, every household heard the sound of copper bells ringing late at night for seven consecutive days.
Each generation must produce a river soldier
Perhaps it is because of the weirdness of the Yellow River that my ancestors made a strong oath that only one person in each generation of my family is allowed to be a river soldier, and one person must be a river soldier. Why is this?
It turns out that among the 360 lines, there is the Jinmen line that digs gold. This is also a craft and has its own sect. As it is passed down from generation to generation, it gradually develops into four lines: "river, mountain, abyss, and cloud", each of which is responsible for finding gold. Water gold, mountain-finding gold, cave-finding gold, and sky-finding gold. Our family belongs to the lineage of "looking for water gold". We eat river gold from the Yellow River. Of course, every generation has to have someone to protect the Yellow River. This is called stealing, so that future generations will not encounter the same problem when mining for gold on the ancient Yellow River road. Natural and man-made disasters.
In my father's generation, the population was not prosperous , and he was the only man in the family. Naturally, he became an old river worker and joined the yellow committee at that time. The Yellow River Committee was established in 1933. In 1946, the Hebei-Shandong-Henan Yellow River Old Course Management Committee was established in the liberated areas. After 1949, the liberated areas were renamed Yellow Committee again. The Yellow Committee started in Kaifeng and moved to Zhengzhou in 1954.
In the late 1960s, my father retired early due to health reasons. It was natural for me to take over from my father and join the yellow committee.Counting on my fingers, it has been forty or fifty years since I joined.
People often die accidentally
The Yellow Committee is now located next to the provincial government and in the city center. It has an advantageous location, but back then, the location was very remote. At that time, it was almost a mass of graves, and there was a large sinkhole dozens of meters away. We don’t know where this tiankeng came from. We all suspected that it was an impact crater. Anyway, there was no grass growing within a few dozen meters around the tiankeng, and the soil was brick-colored, as if it had been burned by a fierce fire. There is a spring in the pit, and the spring water gushes out. It is still a cold spring, and the spring water is freezing cold. It is said that the feng shui of the Yellow Committee was destroyed by this sinkhole, so people died every year.
Not long after I moved here, someone got up to urinate in the middle of the night. The next day, he was found drowned in the sinkhole. When he fished it out, he found that the body had grown to the size of a cowhide raft. Then there was another leader from the Northeast. He was fat. Fat people are afraid of heat. They were greedy for coolness in the dog days of summer. At night, they rolled up their mats and went to sleep under the ancient locust trees. The most terrifying ghost story in history . The next day, everyone saw that this leader was indeed It was cool, my whole body was freezing, and I had been dead for several hours. Everyone thought it was all an accident at first, but then several people died one after another. Some died in car accidents, and some died of sudden illness. Anyway, they all died accidentally. The matter spread. Some said that the feng shui here was not good, and some said that we had made a mistake. Tai Sui was hidden underground, and it would be unsafe to disturb Tai Sui. Some people say that in the middle of the night, they often hear women crying from the pit.
Layout to suppress evil spirits
Later, I had no other choice. The government prohibited superstition, so I secretly used many connections to secretly pick up an old man from the southern labor camp who was regarded as a monster and a snake god, and asked him to help change the feng shui. The old man looked around carefully and then twirled his beard and said, this place is next to the mouth of the Yellow River, and there is a river monster. Let us find a Shandong man to sit here to suppress the river monster.
We hurriedly organized people to fill the sinkhole with twenty trucks of quicklime. After the heat dissipated, we spread a layer of Yellow River mud two meters thick and planted a small peach tree on the mud. A cement pond was built and two Yellow River red carp with golden wings and scales were raised. Then the Yellow Committee urgently seconded a leader from Shandong and asked him to bring a big stone from Mount Tai. There were five big characters written on the top of the stone: "Taishan Stone Can Be Dang". The stone is placed in front of the fish pond, and the five characters are facing the ancient path of the Yellow River. This is called "hiding the wind, avoiding water, and clearing the way for Pisces." In such a Feng Shui situation with trees, rocks, water, and fish, as long as it can block the evil spirits of the first seven, everything will be fine in the future.
We found that this Feng Shui bureau really worked. The first few days were uneventful. The woman's crying stopped and the two red carps were leisurely and comfortable in the water. But unexpectedly, on the night of the seventh day. Something happened again.
A heavy rain suddenly began in the middle of the night that day, and in the early morning of the next day, another person was found dead in the sinkhole. This time it was a woman who died by drowning in the river. The river we were thrown into was the sinkhole that we had sealed with quicklime and cement. Maybe it was because the cement layer was washed away by the heavy rain, or maybe it was deliberately sabotaged by someone, but anyway, all the sinkholes that were originally blocked were washed away, and a long river was formed by the rain. What's even more horrifying is that the woman is wearing a bright red robe, and she is actually tied with the invitation that came all the way from Shandong. The Taishan Stone comes…
Later, one midsummer year, a one-eyed lama who was going to Yonghegong to worship passed by here. Suddenly, as if he had noticed something, he nervously asked us to take him to the tiankeng. Afterwards, he threw the rosary beads he had kept for many years into the sinkhole, clasped his hands together and prayed, and left in a hurry without saying a word. Strangely enough, the cold spring in this sinkhole has been cut off since then, and we later filled it up as a garbage pit.
—Wonderful ghost stories are all in the ghost house: guiguaiwu.com—
This story combines elements of history, mystery and folklore to show another side of the Yellow River as China's mother river – the mysterious and unpredictable side. Through Bai Shitou's narrative, we get a glimpse of what the staff of the Yellow River Conservancy Commission faced not only the management of the river, but also those supernatural and unexplainable events. The iron pipe and copper bell incident in the story is not only creepy, but also makes people more curious about the history of the Yellow River and the secrets it contains. Feng shui layouts and accidental deaths reflect people's helplessness and attempts to seek psychological comfort in the face of unknown fears. In the end, the appearance of the one-eyed lama and the end of the sinkhole add a touch of mystery to the story and make people awe of the unknown power. Overall, this is a story full of suspense and thriller elements. It not only makes people feel the mystery of the Yellow River, but also reflects human beings' exploration and awe of natural and supernatural phenomena.