Only the apricot blossom is just right, not high and not low, it is an ordinary town, the most intimate little family jasper flower of ordinary people. (IC photo/figure)
(This article was first published in Southern Weekend on May 9, 2019)
In march of the lunar calendar, the flowers in Jiangnan are opened, the plum blossoms are apricot blossoms, peach blossoms, peach blossoms, are so thin and weak, powder is white, the petals that fall are paved into a ground of crushed powder, my family holds the yu brother child, go out to see the flowers, take him to see the cherry blossoms of the old Zhejiang University, the wind blows, the flowers are grateful for the flowers flying, the yu brother writes the weekly diary, there is "falling cherry blossom colorful", but later the old "falling cherry" is mistakenly written as "falling cherry blossom colorful", strange only blame the memory of seeing the cherry rain is too deep, the fall of the three thousand colorful season, he took that "cherry blossom" alone.
Jiangnan town, ordinary alleys are strange, plum blossoms are some high climbing, cherry blossoms are too beautiful and oriental atmosphere, peach blossoms are too colorful, pear blossoms are miserable, only apricot blossoms are just right, not high climbing is not low, is an ordinary town, ordinary people's most intimate small family jasper flowers. "Xiaolou listened to the spring rain one night, and the ming dynasty in the deep lane sold apricot blossoms", whether it was Bao'er Lane where Lu You once lived in Hangzhou, as well as my hometown of Tangqi in Jiangnan Ancient Town, there used to be a cry for selling apricot blossoms. As the old saying goes, "It rains on Tangqi Street and can't get wet", so in the past, the peddler who sold apricot blossoms in Tangqi could not care about sunny days and rainy days, even if it was a few days of continuous spring rain, he could slowly stay under the eaves to see the wild eyes and slowly sell flowers.
Plums and apricots, peaches, are also good things. There are super mountains in the suburbs of Tangqi, famous for plum blossoms in early spring, and it is also the resting place of the great painter Wu Changshuo, there are ancient Song Mei Tang Mei in the plum garden, Wu Changshuo in the super mountains, such as The Hangzhou Lingfeng has the Northern Song Dynasty and Li Qingzhao's female poet Zhu Shuzhen, all of which are not lacking in elegance. When we were young, we did not think about the plum blossoms of Chaoshan Mountain, but the various delicious preserves produced by Chaoshan. The plums are very sour, and you have to drool when you think of this thing, but the green plums marinated with sugar are really delicious, hungry, and too hungry. The adults in the town love green plum wine, many people will brew their own green plum wine, they use cheap shochu to soak, sealed, people with good conditions, can afford sugar, put some rock sugar, sealed for a year, the next year a kaifeng, full of aroma, sweet slightly drunk, much better than bayberry wine. Peach blossoms later became peaches, and the peaches were dried by the candied fruit factory to make sweet, salty and salty dried peaches, which were also a good snack.
The best thing to eat is the dried apricot. The fruit of the apricot, I don't understand why it is yellow. We also don't know whether we often eat dried apricots from Xinjiang, dried apricots from the north, or dried apricots from local Jiangnan apricot blossoms. We have a kind of regional prejudice in our hearts, always feel that the apricot blossoms are still good-looking in Jiangnan, with black tiles, small bridges, flowing water, oil-paper umbrellas, with Wu Nong's soft language of Jiangnan Xiaojia jasper, up and down the river port of the small head of the small pieces, with a slip of bluestone slabs and fire walls from the west horizontal head of the canal to The Lane and the Qianjia Lane, this Jiangnan apricot blossom is hidden in the hour light of the years.
Jiangnan people, with the word "plum" into the woman's boudoir name a lot, "apricot" word into the name of many, compared to "peach" and "pear" into the name of the less, the Qian family has a family, gave birth to five golden flowers, the eldest daughter is called Mei, the second daughter is called apricot, the third daughter is called Fang, the fourth daughter is called Fen, the younger daughter is called Ying, not called peach and pear, it is not clear whether it will be because of these two flowers, the harmonic pronunciation is "escape" and "away". In the past, Jiangnan had a long time of stability in the present world, and then the long hair came, the Japanese came, and the chaotic world shocked the dream soul of Jiangnan, even if the jiangnan town that had no quarrel with the world was like Tangqi, the townspeople also began to "escape" and "leave", the family was broken, the flesh and bones were scattered, and many of the grandparents of my classmates were captured by the Japanese. I have a female classmate Fang, from childhood to live on the other side of the canal, when I was in junior high school, there was a period of time, I made an appointment with her from Shuibei, I started from Shuinan, met in the middle of the long bridge, and then went to school together, the two girls jumped all the way, the voice was also crisp and crisp, but there was a little bit of spring apricot blossoms. Fang's grandfather was captured by the Japanese and disappeared. Fang's grandmother, originally a lady of the silk cloth shop owner's family, later fell in the middle of the family road, had to let the elders decide, married a family worker who was more than ten years older than herself, and later after her husband was captured by the Japanese, this big lady went to the Anhui Guild Hall in Shuibei to find it. The name is the guild hall, in fact, it is located in the remote area of Shuibei, the dead bodies of foreigners are parked there, waiting for the hometown people to transport back, when the soldiers and horses are chaotic, it is really unclaimed, and people havetily buried things in the wasteland of Shuibei. Fang said that she couldn't see that my grandmother was such a big lady and had the courage to break into the Anhui Guild Hall alone. Later, she got older, her throat was thick, and she sat by the river and smoked, which was also a very imposing woman's family.
When Fang told this story, it was the spring rainy season of apricot blossoms in Jiangnan, and we were in the café along the river in the north of the water, and the white-headed palace lady was there, gossiping about Xuanzong.
I was a little surprised that the word "apricot" was actually included in the name of the Jiangnan man. My uncle was a dragon, born in 1940, and he had the word "apricot" in his name, and I guess there were several possibilities, one was that he was born in the spring when the apricot blossoms were in full bloom. Second, when he was born, there happened to be a vendor selling apricot blossoms walking through the old house at the west side of my river. Third, it may be that my grandmother loved to eat apricots when she was pregnant with him. The Wu dialect is very strange, "apricot" does not pronounce "apricot", pronounces "ang" sound, or flat sound. "Apricot Blossom" should also be pronounced as "Ang Hua".
Xu Beihong's sentence "White horse autumn wind plugged in, apricot blossom spring rain Jiangnan" is attached to my uncle's life. He is not so much like the usual Gangnam apricot blossom, he is "Ang" posture. He was "ang" all the way, and he was one of the few townspeople in that era who went out of the ancient town and met the world. After graduating from Tangqi Middle School in Guzhen, he went to a large factory in Harbin in the northeast to study with the great wave of the New China era and became a mechanic. In the factory with my aunt, an authentic beautiful Hangzhou girl fell in love, also known as "talented beauty", and later the two returned to hangzhou to work in the same factory, my uncle became an engineer. I don't know if it has anything to do with the feminine temperament of the word "apricot", my uncle is a very literary Jiangnan man, intelligent, has many hobbies, and is self-taught. He played with seagull cameras early, rode Yamaha motorcycles, taught himself to sketch, and hung on the living room wall of his home with his own sketches of Western lady Shaw, when I was a child I always stared at the paintings, and then I remembered the mournful and restrained woman Isabel in the British writer Henry James's novel "Portrait of a Lady". He can play erhu, play the violin, and specialize in the lute, which is really wonderful to think. After his retirement, his stage is basically in a folk performance group in Xixi Wetlands, in which he is a pipa master, and sometimes makes cameo appearances in erhu, and every weekend there are performances.
If he wants to drink hand-ground coffee like Su Daqiang, I guess he will make a perfect special coffee pot himself.
My uncle with the "apricot" in his name, after his wonderful life, returned to heaven a few days before the Qingming Festival, which is the continuation of the apricot blossom smoke and rain season.
Shaw ear