I think I might be a fake Sichuanese

Before coming to Shanghai, I almost never ate hotpot. My only impression of it was a big pot of spicy oil. It didn’t even rank in my diet. After living in Shanghai for a while, I couldn’t even stand the mild spiciness of the braised chicken and rice served in the cafeteria. If you say that taste varies from person to person, then even if I don’t expose this taste attribute and do nothing, many people still don’t believe that I am a Sichuanese.

I roughly calculated that when people first met me, more than half of them thought that I was from Xinjiang, and almost half of the people (including international friends) thought that I was of mixed race, and another half thought that I was from Xinjiang. Some people think that I am a Northeastern girl because I am tall (I really don’t want to use this word to describe myself). Finally, there are some people who are mistaken. In the dark history of my slightly dark skin, they suspected that I was either from India or of Indian ancestry...

As for my appearance, this is the most speechless time for me. , when I was in high school in my hometown, a person said to me in an extremely firm tone: "You are definitely not a local!" At that moment, I felt as if I had been abandoned by my fellow countrymen...

It's not that I don't like these, but I just can't laugh or cry. I comforted myself that I might be too diverse, or gave myself ecstasy, which at least meant that my Mandarin didn’t have a Trump accent when I spoke (Sichuan-style Mandarin, I really can’t speak it). But the truth is, I could write a whole other long article about my Mandarin-induced jokes.

There is another thing that makes people around me doubt my identity as a Sichuanese. I had a roommate who was a college senior from Sichuan. After seeing that I couldn’t eat spicy food and that I didn’t look like a Sichuanese, he was surprised to find that I couldn’t play mahjong. I still can’t forget his shock and a little bit of incompetence. The look in my eyes...

I had no choice but to hold my forehead and nod in shame to admit...I really don’t play mahjong!

Sichuan people have always been famous for their love of mahjong. I remember that during the Wenchuan earthquake, engineering teams from other provinces came to the rescue. It is said that when they passed through Shifang City (which is considered the hardest-hit area), the rescue team found that people who did not dare to enter buildings to avoid disasters actually carried small benches to support them. A table was playing mahjong on the street, and at a glance, the street was full of disaster-stricken people who were busy playing cards...

When I heard this gossip, I did not doubt its authenticity at all, because Those in my family still have the habit of playing mahjong to celebrate the New Year...

But I don’t know how to play mahjong at all. Every time my dad lost money playing cards, he would pat me on the shoulder and say with some relief that this was a good habit. I smiled. Our family's fine tradition of basically losing every time we play cards may end with me.

Sometimes I wonder if I can’t play with some people because I am a Sichuanese but I don’t know mahjong?

At the high school class reunion, after lunch, some male classmates went to play games together, while others started to form a gang of four. Four or four people could fit into one mahjong table, and three of them could play a few games. Landlord fight. I, a non-card player, stood nearby for a while and found that no one except me seemed to be here, so I left alone. Blame it on me, I am a person whose hobbies are sometimes not down-to-earth. Perhaps during the Spring Festival, singing is the only form of entertainment that I can enjoy with other people. And I still don’t know how to sing the Sichuan style rap that Sichuan people like to sing during the Spring Festival karaoke...

I don’t play mahjong, don’t fight with landlords, and rarely eat hot pot. There may be fewer people like this living in Sichuan. A lot of Sichuan flavor. The kind of people who become unrestrained and enthusiastic because of hot pot, those days when mahjong becomes peppery and full of reality, and those leisurely times when you sit in a teahouse and fight with small landlords and drink some tea, these are the Sichuan life in my impression the essence of.

Some Sichuan people are so lively and live a typical Sichuan life. And some people, like me, although they don't live that kind of life every day, are used to watching the people around them live such spicy lives. This can be regarded as a Sichuan way of life.