There's a classic line in the movie Once Upon a Time in America: "I love the smell of the street!" "Yes, the smell of the street always drifts silently and silently through the memories and dreams of drunken dreams. Take the street side of the street that is always silently wrapped in the valley, for me, there is always a Geng Geng plot that it is better to meet than to fall in love..........
Bao Gu Cang, also known as corn stick, is a rural delicacy with a strong local atmosphere. Especially in the ripe season of BaoGu in May and June every year, the fragrant and sweet fresh and tender Baogu is the most enjoyable! The people of Bashu used to call corn a bag of grain, but wherever they called it "cake" elsewhere, the Sichuan people called it "rice", especially in the countryside. There are many kinds of rice dumplings in the countryside all year round, such as red amaranth, potato rice, green bean rice, pumpkin rice, buckwheat rice, wild vegetable rice and so on. Especially in mountainous areas, because of the soil and water sources, rice and wheat cannot be planted, and the poor and remote areas where potatoes, red amaranth and corn are the main food, in order to survive, always try to take a grain as much as possible to eat, so all kinds of porridge and rice are the first choice of the township people.
In the past, in the past, for the township people, the days of the sixth and seventh months of the lunar calendar were the most difficult, the peas, beans and wheat of the small spring had been eaten, and the red amaranth and rice of the big spring had not yet grown, so the grain sandwiched in the middle became the staple food. However, eating and eating every day, not to mention the little dolls, even adults can't stand it. Therefore, there are baogu rice, baogu porridge, baogu dumplings, baogu steamed buns, baogu gnocchi, baogu paste, etc., and all of them must be eaten with sauerkraut and kimchi. In those years, there were only these meals in the countryside to get by.
Baked buns in the township
The pain of the famine years
I remember that in the summer of 1961, my mother sent me back to the countryside of Renshou, my hometown, when natural disasters were extremely difficult, the countryside was desolate again and again, and people were hungry with wild vegetables, leaves, and grass roots. My second brother works in the county town, my sister-in-law works as a cook in the commune canteen, and in the village, she works collectively every day, eats collectively, eats twice a day, and is not allowed to eat if you do not work. The so-called "food" is a piece of wild vegetables wrapped in grain with a palm-sized piece and thick fingers. One afternoon, I was so hungry that I was spitting out my saliva, so my sister-in-law gave me her share of wild vegetables and grain dumplings, hid in the corner of the broken canteen and ate them. But when I went out, I saw my little niece, who was three or four years old, sitting under the mud wall, with a small stool in front of her, with a bowl of pickled Qinghai pepper and a bowl of cold water. The little niece grabbed a few green peppers and stuffed them into her mouth, chewed them randomly, and took a bowl and drank a large mouthful of cold water. At that time, my heart was like a cat's claw, and I quickly ran into the canteen to find my sister-in-law, wanting to ask for another bag of grain, and my sister-in-law said no, she had already given me food, and if I ate more, I would be criticized.
In the evening, I heard my sister-in-law crying quietly, and when I entered the house, my little niece was lying on the broken bed, her little belly was swollen like a big balloon, her face was yellow, and she said to my sister-in-law weakly: "Mom, I am hungry." I pulled the little niece's puffy hand and cried. The next morning, I heard my sister-in-law crying again, while shouting at the little niece, I rushed in, the little niece's face had turned purple, I hugged her, called her, for a while, she seemed to be struggling to open her eyes slightly and looked at me, then closed again, no longer have the strength to open. I watched her gasp. Many years later, until now, as soon as I saw Bao Gu, I had a sense of guilt in my heart, and I would always think that if I had given half of the wild vegetable Bao Gu To my niece to eat, she would have survived tenaciously... After this, I broke off my love affair with Bao Gucang, and I never ate it again, nor did I dare to eat Bao Gushu again.
Wild vegetables
The love affair on the way to the "Long March"
By 1966, when the original classmates were flourishing and succeeding in their studies, the revolutionary series in the early stage of the Cultural Revolution swept across the land of China. A dozen of our classmates put on green uniforms, put on red armbands, held high the Red Guard flag, and walked from Chengdu to Beijing to meet Chairman Mao. After walking for nearly twenty days, crossing the mountains and mountains to Ningqiang, Shaanxi, I finally fainted on the dirt slope on the side of the road after relying on only one pear for three days and three nights, and I could no longer move forward.
I lay unconscious on the dry slope of the earth, and I don't know how long it took before I heard a clear voice calling me: "Brother, brother! What do you do? I opened my eyes hard, and in the confusion I saw a little girl with a pigtail, wearing a red and green flower cotton jacket, and a fat round face with two clumps of apple red. I couldn't speak, I just subconsciously opened my mouth. The little girl immediately understood and said to me, "Brother, you'll wait a while!" Here we go! After saying that, he turned around and trotted along the dry field road, and quickly disappeared at the end of the loess.
After about twenty minutes, I was in a trance and saw the little girl running from the ground, and after a while came to me, took out two hot steamed buns and two pears from my arms and handed them to me and said, "Brother, you eat." "I held the hot corn bun mixed with bitter wild vegetables in my hand, and I didn't know that my heart was sour, and tears flowed out. The little girl watched, while wiping my tears with her sleeve, she broke a piece of steamed bun and gently stuffed it into my mouth and said, "Brother, eat it while it is hot, it will be a problem to eat it!" She saw me eating slowly, and said, "There is no place for my family, I can't keep you, and I am in a hurry after eating you." I nodded, and she said, "It's getting dark, you're on the road early, and I'm going back to Ha." After saying that, she got up and looked at me, smiled, turned around, and left, waving her hand back to me from time to time, and the pigtails flickered with the jump of the red and green cotton jacket, running towards the sunset that gradually sank in the smoke.
In this way, with the two wild vegetables, corn buns and pears that the little girl gave me, I finally regained my vitality, firmly gave up the "Long March", climbed back to my home in Chengdu along the way, and cried with my mother, who held my black and thin cheeks in her hands and cried: "Son, what evil have you suffered!" ”。 After a few years, because of the work relationship, I often travel to Guangyuan, whenever I have dinner in the evening, I will stand on the East Mountain silently looking at the direction of Ning Qiang in the north, and I can't help but think in my heart, if I meet that little girl again, maybe she will become my life-saving wife, hand in hand with The White Head, to spend time together.......
Bun grain steamed buns
Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Editorial Board of "Sichuan Province Chronicle • Sichuan Cuisine Chronicle" Sichuan Cuisine Culture Person Sichuan Cuisine Contributor
Author of "A Hundred Years of Sichuan Cuisine Legend", "The History of Sichuan Cuisine on the Roadside", and "Three Hundred Years of Spicy Hemp Temptation"
Original Jianghu Gluttony East 2019.02.26 Chengdu