Over the past couple of days during the weekend, I came to my dad's place and talked with him about the history of our hometown, from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, and then to the early days of the People's Republic and the Reform and Opening-up period.

A major event that happened was during the Qing Dynasty, when our village and a neighboring village had a resource and利益 dispute that led to a fight. Both sides engaged in large-scale beheadings and killings, and there were even demonstrations where people were beheaded and hung at the village entrance. In the end, our village won.
This also resulted in the neighboring village and our village not marrying or interacting with each other for hundreds of years. I heard about the estrangement from childhood but didn't know the reason until today.
Later, during the Republic of China period, our village was also associated with a historical figure who shared my surname and ancestors. In his early years, after participating in the Xinhai Revolution, he became the acting county head of our county. He was the most powerful person in our area at the time, with soldiers, guns, and money under his command.
The villagers from the neighboring village, due to some incident, accidentally killed one of the soldiers under his command. Upon learning this, he quickly gathered troops from several units to demand compensation from their village.
I heard that in the end, the entire village was fined a large basket of silver dollars, and they were also forbidden from cooking for a week—they could only eat raw vegetables. Soldiers were sent to supervise them, and villagers who didn't comply would be arrested! This incident later became known as the "XX injustice case" 😂.
Next was the wartime period during the Anti-Japanese War, which my dad heard from my grandma. She said that at that time, the Northeast Army, acting as traitors, followed Japanese soldiers to their village to search houses door-to-door.
My grandma was less than ten years old then. She hid inside the house and looked through the door crack, seeing the puppet soldiers searching houses very casually—they just looked around and left without doing a real search. She later scolded them as stupid puppet soldiers. Little did she know, these puppet soldiers still had some conscience; if they had searched more thoroughly, they might have ransacked everything.
By the early days of the liberation, my grandparents had just gotten married! My dad said that at that time, my grandfather's family was quite well-off. My grandfather was a fisherman, and our area relied on the sea for fishing, which earned quite a bit of money! He was also one of the first in our village to build a house after the liberation—pretty impressive.
As for why we became poor later, my dad said it was because my grandma was extravagant with money and had many children (my dad has eight siblings). Over time, the family’s wealth was exhausted.
When I was young, I didn’t understand this. Now, listening to elders recount history, I find it quite interesting. It’s more intuitive than reading books to understand history! If I have children in the future, I will also tell them these stories, including my own experiences.