Seeking literature: Wang's The Story of the Grain

Wang Yuanjian's The Story of the Grain

When I was a child, my family always didn't have enough to eat, so there were many stories about food.

At that time, the most important day of each month was the day of distributing rations. The production team leader shouted on the mountain ridge at the head of the village, and all households gathered in the old ancestral hall, waiting to pick up their own meals. Rations are calculated according to the work points of each family. If you have more strong labor at home, you will naturally get more work points. After finishing one load, you can choose another load to make others jealous. There are four men in my uncle's family, and several daughters are basically full-time, so they have always been big grain distributors. Of course, there are tragedies, for example, my fourth uncle's house is across the mountain and he is very poor. On the day when rations were distributed, Fourth Aunt always went to the old ancestral temple hopefully, but often returned empty-handed, because Fourth Uncle was fooling around in a foreign land, and the children were small and the work points were not enough, so the rations were not hers. When it was dark, the four aunts moved a wooden ladder, boarded their own wall, and cried her husband's name at the same time, so that the smoke in every kitchen could not float, and the women in the village had to go down the ladder to persuade them earnestly. I don't know who came up with the idea, saying that as long as Tang Ke cries and calls for a while every day, men will be flustered outside and have to return to China. As a result, my aunt's voice was very painful, and all the men, women and children in the village were worried for a while. I even hide at menstruation's house every night. Later, the fourth aunt was tired of crying, and the fourth uncle didn't come back, and there was no extra rations. Fourth aunt stopped talking and took it out on the children at home. Later, the fourth uncle returned with honor and brought back a set of hard qigong, doing everything possible. It is said that he survived all the Sundays, and his children immediately forgot their hunger and became arrogant.

The first time I heard the words "preserved egg" and "cake", it came from the mouth of my fourth uncle's child. Because the fourth uncle has been far away, he is undoubtedly well informed, so it is natural for his children to eat cakes, although my friends and I are sometimes a little disdainful. I still remember that when his children talked about preserved eggs, it was on a winter morning under the low roof of his house. At that time, the sun was a little rosy, feeling warm and without any temperature. When we kicked a small stone and started to show off the best food we had ever eaten, the fourth uncle's eldest son mentioned preserved eggs, and his high mood opened our souls' wings of imagination. At that time, there was a serious confusion in my heart: eggs made of leather should be hard, so how can they be delicious? However, I didn't have the courage to ask at that time, because I was afraid that my fourth uncle's well-informed son would joke. However, I do remember that morning and I can't forget the rosy sunshine in winter morning.

My father was a teacher in a middle school at that time, and the three main laborers in my family were all women, so my work performance has been very low. According to my mother, my family's basic food is always taken away by dozens of pounds, and it is common to go hungry. Once, there was a serious food shortage at home, and my father went to a small street to buy a handful of rotten sweet potatoes and cooked them for us without peeling them. It is said that several children in our family eat well.

Among the worse foods, I have eaten rice cooked with white rice. There is plenty of rain in the south, and it often rains during the harvest season. Sometimes, a large piece of rice is cut down by young and strong workers who are in full swing, and it begins to rain, so the rice loses its transparent luster in the muddy water, and sometimes even germinates. The rice cooked by retting rice tastes terrible. I don't know how bad it is. I only know that adults always denounce rice as the root of all evil. One year, probably because the captain made a mistake in decision-making, he planted too much glutinous rice, which was unfortunately soaked into glutinous rice by rain. Now the villagers have suffered. That year, my stomach never seemed refreshing, and I felt that the whole world was so sticky and light.

Of course, poor and middle peasants also have their own food. Because rice is always in short supply, my mother always adds something like sweet potato to rice. Peel the sweet potato, cut into pieces, and put it with rice. When the rice is steamed, the sweet potato turns golden yellow. I like sweet potatoes very much, and I won't look down on them just because they are coarse grains. Sweet potatoes are delicious and crisp when eaten raw. Red meat sweet potato is especially sweet, so we call it pumpkin stubborn. We thieves who are used to stealing sweet potatoes can recognize pumpkin stubbornness at a glance from the shape of the seedlings. Once, my partner and I were chased all over the beach by adults because we stole someone else's pumpkin. Sweet potato is also good, but it can boil sugar. Chop the sweet potato, cook it with rice, mix it with malt, then filter out a large pot of juice with bean bag cloth and continue cooking. When the juice boils, the thick syrup will come out. When cooking sugar, it is mostly before the Chinese New Year. We children run around the big pot of boiling sugar just to lick the sweet spatula.

Sweet potato candy is a good thing. After cooking, put it in an earthenware bowl and put it on the cupboard. Sometimes when I am greedy, I will secretly fry some with chopsticks and put them in my mouth to taste carefully. As the New Year's Eve approaches, my mother will soak a bowl full of sweet potato sugar in warm water to make the syrup softer, then fry a lot of soaked rice, stick the soaked rice and syrup together, pat it into squares with the back of a knife, and carefully cut it into pieces, which is the best rice sugar. What if you knead it into a ball? That's a sugar cake. You can hold it in your hand and play with mountains and rivers while eating. Cooking rice in soup is also particular. It seems that on a sunny day, the rice is half cooked and exposed to the sun on a large bamboo dustpan until it dries. Although the dry rice is hard, it is crisp after frying.

Another thing that drools when I think about it is pumpkin boiled jiaozi. It's probably early September. Mung beans are ripe, pumpkins have been in the house for some days, and slender glutinous rice is impatient to wait in the jar. It's time for tonic this season. Glutinous rice flour is used to knead glutinous rice balls and cook them with chopped pumpkin pieces, mung beans and oil noodles. You can see golden pumpkin pieces and white dumplings dancing in boiling water, and a beautiful taste that can't be described in words arises spontaneously. At this time, my mother always gives everyone a Kazuhiro Mori bowl, which is not as restrictive as usual. Boiling pumpkin jiaozi is sweet, salty, waxy, refreshing and warm, which is really an unforgettable childhood meal.

When the new wheat is ripe, every family should steam steamed bread once. Southerners can't make pasta, and occasionally steaming a steamed bun is like a holiday. It should be around the Dragon Boat Festival that the fragrance of new noodles wafted from the village will also make us excited for a while. One Dragon Boat Festival, I remember my sisters and I went fishing in the river, which was quite rewarding, so a delicious dish was placed on the table at home that day. At that time, the commune held "communication" once or twice a year, in fact, it organized a large-scale rally, one of which was on the day when the new wheat was born. During the "communication" period, farmers can buy some daily necessities that are not easy to buy at ordinary times. One year during the exchange, a master who can fry fried dough sticks was invited from somewhere. His deep-fried dough sticks can bring old people back to life-isn't that a bit exaggerated? But I still remember the madness when people buy fried dough sticks, saying that people can't step on people too much. Everyone went crazy and jumped on the iron fence with the smell of fried dough sticks. I can't describe the sight.

The most extravagant thing to eat is probably the Chinese New Year, but I really have no appetite during the Chinese New Year, so I won't mention it. Not long before the Chinese New Year, the big fat pig at home was sold to the supply and marketing cooperative, and the parents left the pig water and big oil to the children and the elderly as usual. A pot full of pig intestines, pig heads, pig livers and so on, steaming, I think that is the symbol of the so-called good life. No matter what others think, when I recall this scene, I feel that all the illusions of life can be fully explained in this image. No matter how hungry you have been, how many tears you have shed, how many times you have stolen food and been beaten, as long as this image is still there, as long as there is a steaming big iron pot, you should not be disappointed with life.

Perhaps because of the food shortage, thefts happen from time to time. I stole sweet potatoes and peanuts with my friends. The sweet potato that didn't grow up is pinched in your hand, and the mud on your broken pants crunches and tastes sweeter than anything else. Peanuts can be eaten raw or roasted. Often a group of children go to the mountains to collect firewood, and another group of children go to the beach to steal peanuts from the brigade across the river, then make a fire, simmer the peanuts steaming, and then peel them off to eat. Some peanuts are still tender, and after simmering with fire, they are just a bag of sweet water. If you are not careful when peeling, very hot water will be squeezed out, which will make your face hurt.

If it's no big deal for children to steal snacks, it's a disaster for adults to steal. I still remember that when I was very young, people in the village caught a thief stealing yam. They tied the thief's hand and hung him on the beam. Some bricks fell at his feet. Tricks are always full of tricks. When the captain whipped the thief, he gave a terrible cry. I heard from adults that during that time, dead yam vines were often found in yam fields. After investigation, it turned out that someone had stolen the yam and just buried the seedlings, so that nothing unusual could be seen in the first few days, but when the weather cleared up, the buried yam vine would wither until it finally died. So the people in the village lay in ambush in the field night after night. Finally, they caught the man who stole the yam, but it was a person from a village not far away. It is said that they are also distant relatives of someone in our village. My friend and I went to the place where the thief was hanged. I don't think the thief is hateful at all, but he is very pitiful, but the adults all say that he is not good, so I accepted it with a grain of salt. But I still don't like hitting people, just as I never like to see aunts burning incense, kowtowing and chanting. I have a natural rejection of violence in real life. I hate hanging a former landlord and my classmate's father from a big camphor tree to criticize. I hate it when my neighbors hit my playmate with flexible and sharp bamboo sticks. I hate teachers slapping students with poor grades. I don't remember how long the thief who stole yam was hanged. I wonder what happened in the end. I dare not go to that room again.

Sometimes, people in the village steal from each other. It is common that whose pumpkin is missing and whose cowpea is picked. Women are well aware of their own affairs. There are several beans on the shelf, how long they have grown, how many flowers are there on the pumpkin vine, which is the male flower and which is the female flower, how many pumpkins there are and what they look like. Remember to distinguish clearly. If the ripe pumpkin is stolen, the pain is like ripping out your heart. A miserable woman will cry and scold the village for an hour on the ridge in the west after work at dusk. The main content is to curse the people who steal pumpkins how to die a natural death, how to eat pumpkins without shit, how to have children without asshole and so on. Whenever I meet this time, I look at the thin light in the evening and endure hail-like insults in the song of birds returning to their nests. I always secretly swear in my heart that I must leave this small and horrible place.

In order to get more food at home, all children must work, especially in summer. When I was a child, I mainly picked up rice, that is, the working adults picked up the missing ears of rice and handed them over to the team, and recorded the main points of labor according to the severity. Miller seems to have painted a picture, the name seems to be "Scavengers", and he said so, but the people in the picture are all fat women who live or are very material, not children. What I do most is to look at rice fields. There was a cement field on the ridge behind the village, which was the only cement field at that time and was used to dry public grain. Every sunny day, the old breeder in the village will pick out the grain from the ancestral hall and spread it on the concrete floor to dry. Because sparrows, chickens and pigs like to steal public grain, even people earn some money from time to time, which requires a child to watch. Because I am more responsible and my academic performance has always been good, I am often entrusted with the heavy responsibility of looking after rice fields.

I call that old watchman the old water master. As soon as the sun came out, he picked the millet into the rice field. I leveled the piles of millet with a rake, and drew waves on the surface of the millet with the wooden handle of the rake, so that the millet had more sunny side. Then, all day, I will stay under the eaves of a small house by the rice field, staring at the sunshine and showing off the golden color on the rice. Sometimes I doze off, sweat slips through my dark skin, and I dream of a muntjac stuck in the mud. Suddenly, I was awakened by a whimper, as if a wolf would run out of the old water master's eyes-chicken and pig came several times during his nap.

If it rains suddenly, the strong laborers in the village will come from the fields to help us collect food. With the concerted efforts of Qi Xin's Qi Xin, the granules will return to the warehouse soon. When the weather is fine, at night, I will gather the scattered grain into a pile of rice and put it in the grain basket, and the old water Lord will pick it into the ancestral temple. When the wooden shovel, millet and cement ground rub together, they will make a very harsh and sharp cry, but to my relief, the summer sunset has a loud lemon yellow. When it falls slowly, my shadow is reflected on a white wall under the rice field, just like a movie. My shadow is so clear, so soft, so long, as if I have performed like that for several lifetimes.