Taste the "Beijing Taste" of Camel Xiangzi

The greatest feature of Lao She's novels is the unique language with Beijing characteristics, which has almost become a symbolic thing, especially in Camel Xiangzi. Like the foreign coachman's "Pull Late", and like the brother who runs the night bus in Beijing today; "Killing and bringing it to the waist" means tightening your belt and pulling yourself together to pull the cart hard; "On the entrance" is the parking place, just like the taxi outside the railway station now; If there is anything else, you can stop at 100 yuan and ask for rice "chewing the valley"; Of course, there are also some vulgar words, such as "hanging stick" to indicate flirting, and addressing the client's boss as "old fork stick", and so on. This plain and concise writing method based on Beijing dialect is full of street color and popular interest. The language is simple and fluent, but it can be used frequently and incisively among the people.

Xiangzi, the hero of the book, is a foreign rickshaw driver who lived in Beiping in the 1920s. Supposedly, this profession is to earn money by hard work, which is also considered as a youth meal. Xiangzi worked so hard that he earned seventy or eighty cents a day, just enough to make ends meet. However, foreign rickshaws and foreign drivers were branded with the era of old China, which condensed all aspects of society in that era, became cultural symbols of old Beijing and became our common cultural memory. They are not only fixed on yellowed black-and-white photos, but also have a vague shimmer. Now you can still see them on the streets and under the city gates in Beijing, but they have become tools for sightseeing and taking pictures.

There are many descriptions about how to eat old Beijing in the book: Xiangzi came back from the army and ate two bowls of old tofu, topped with vinegar, pepper oil and chopped leek. Eating smoked sauce meat with Tigress for nothing, a bowl of wonton and a hot sesame seed cake with fried mutton on the stall, that's delicious. Seeing these words makes my mouth water.

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