In the years when my grandmother was still able to go out, she dragged my father back to Hangzhou for three days and two ends.
Grandma's home is on Hefang Street, and every time she crosses Hefang Street, she will point to the house next to me and say to my father: "Xiaoling you see, this is the place where I grew up when I was a child, and it turns out that this is a bungalow..." Although every time she pointed in a different direction, she could always clearly recall the Jingyang Temple that made pickles, hu Qingyutang who grabbed medicine, and Wanlong Zhuang with ham incense.
Some things can't be remembered, such as the specific location of their own home. Sometimes I even ask my dad, "Xiao Ling, did I mean that side last time?" It seems like that's my home over there."
My dad smiled and replied, "Hangzhou has changed so much, I can't remember."
Hefang Street has been the commercial center of Hangzhou since ancient times. ©Steemit.com
Hangzhou has changed too much, there are Starbucks and McDonald's on this street, and there are handsome men and beautiful women on the stone road, but the plaque has not changed, or QingheFang.
Grandma also has an older sister, and I should call my aunt Grandma. Aunt grandma and grandma, are fat old ladies, gray hair, laughing with dimples, the voice is slow, soft, hearing the voice will feel that the women of Jiangnan even if they are old, still like a little girl.
When they reunited five years ago, they could still help each other walk through two long streets and turn into a small shop with drunken shrimp on the menu, and their aunt and grandmother loved to eat drunken shrimp.
Drunken shrimp, as the name suggests, is to put fresh river shrimp into the wine, and after a while the shrimp will be drunk. The food is delicious and full, soft and smooth.
The shrimp is alive, the clerk brings up a white bowl, and when the lid is lifted, the shrimp whiskers are still moving, but under the action of alcohol, they are no longer jubilant, covered with red chili sauce and white garlic, and the flowers are blooming. The shrimp is still a small blue river shrimp, curled up only inches long.
Aunt Grandma picked up the small river shrimp, picked the shrimp head, carefully sniffed the taste for a while, and then twisted the body of the small shrimp, and used the denture to squeeze the shrimp meat into the mouth little by little, a little spicy, eat a bite of shrimp to drink a mouthful of water. Grandma looked at the shrimp and was a little cautious: "Is it okay to eat this shrimp?" Her aunt and grandmother told her: "When I was a child, my parents didn't let us eat, saying that they were upset after eating, and then after joining the work, my colleagues ate it, and it was okay to eat for decades, so don't worry."
For every child who grew up in the Yangtze River Delta, drunks have charm. Children can't drink alcohol, but drunks are essentially a food, so playing the edge ball has become a temptation for alcohol at a young age. But often the elders of the family will not allow the child to eat raw and drunk food, worried about eating the stomach, so in the grandmother's memory, only drunken duck paws and drunken chickens are the way drunks should look in cognition.
My aunt and grandmother belonged to Hangzhou all their lives, but my grandmother's memory of Hangzhou only stayed before the age of sixteen, so this kind of stumbling live shrimp naturally exceeded her cognitive range.
Grandma's action of eating shrimp is not skilled, even a little clumsy, watching the young people next to her like melon seeds will be full of a plate of belly in a short while, a little envious, but also a little worried.
At the age of sixteen, Grandma left her hometown, and from the moment she put on her military uniform and white coat, her fate was entrusted to the troops and hospitals—and it was no longer up to her to decide when to settle in a city or when to leave a city.
My grandmother and grandfather met in Shanghai, where my father also grew up.
Drunken chicken, the chicken is marinated and cooked in Shaoxing wine, usually enjoyed in the form of cold cuts.
Whether it was living in Shanghai temporarily or at home in Chongqing later, Grandma tried several times at home to get drunk, but the response was mediocre. The drunken chicken she makes is different from what she eats in the restaurant - the drunken chicken in the restaurant pays attention to the tender and juicy chicken, and the chicken near the bone is slightly pink, and when she takes a bite, the gravy and wine aroma are inseparable in the mouth. And the drunken chicken made by grandma, the chicken meat is firewood, even the bones are broken, naturally there is not much delicious.
She always said, "It's better to be a little bit better, and if you eat something raw, you're going to get sick."
As every mom says, it seems that only "a little bit" that deviates from the delicious is a nuanced expression of the family. But these rules and regulations could not limit my grandfather. Grandpa is a tough and stubborn man, he will not say that grandma's drunken chicken is not good, but from the behavioral point of view, he only eats Shao Wansheng's drunken mud snail.
In those years, even in Shanghai, there were not many shops selling drunk goods, and to eat good drunks, you still had to go to the Ningshao Plain outside Shanghai. Born in the Ningshao Plain, Shao LiuBaotou was one of the first people to bring this hometown delicacy to Shanghai, and at first the main business of the store was north-south dim sum, but later it became famous with its hometown drunk.
Mud snails, also known as "spit iron". Oval shell, thin and brittle, large shell mouth, smooth surface, body fat slightly yellow, skin slightly transparent.
Drunken mud snails are raw and drunk, and can be done at home, but first wait for the snails to spit out the sediment, soak in salt, and then marinate with yellow wine produced in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the whole process needs to wait for a week. Grandpa can't wait, he always goes to the street to buy, and when he buys home, he ignores Grandma's nagging and smacks at the dinner table.
The shell of the mud snail is very thin, like a small tongue spitting out of the shell, not to mention how suitable the delicate and cool taste is for summer, the mellowness of rice wine and the unique freshness of shellfish can make people lose their eyebrows. Paired with two glasses of Shaoxing good wine on the table, this is the "original soup original food" of the southern population.
Dad secretly ate the family's mud snail once, after eating it can not stop, after eating half a can of it in succession only to find that the original sharp mud snail has sunk to the surface, a panic, simply even with the brine also drank a few large mouthfuls, that night on the vomit up and down diarrhea. Grandpa didn't spoil Dad, and when he saw the spit out of the mud snail rushing up, it was a beating.
It didn't make my dad lose his love of the drunken snail, which he had already bought from the Internet with all these years. But every time he eats, he will miss his late grandfather and will talk about this beating - he seems to feel his connection with Jiangnan through food, and he can also feel the bond between him and his grandfather.
As for Grandma, he still chanted every time he ate the mud snail: "Oh, Xiao Ling, you eat less of these raw!" Unfortunately, my father followed my grandfather, his mouth was hungry and stubborn, he said "be well", and pulled me aside to join the battle. Two glasses of rice wine under the belly, many years father and son into brothers. Dad said that he wished he had done the same when he was in Shanghai, replacing the people in the scene with him and my grandfather.
Traditional rice wine is brewed. ©Xinhua News Agency
In my father's eyes, the love of that era, like rice wine, was violent and subtle, with no median value like drunkenness, and no room for communication and discussion.
Speaking of my grandmother, two years ago, she answered a call from Hangzhou and returned to Hangzhou. On the other end of the phone was her brother-in-law, presumably referring to her aunt's deteriorating condition, leaving only the last few days. At that time, my grandmother's legs and feet were not good, and she had to rest every 50 meters, but even so, she insisted on dragging my father back to Hangzhou - she wanted to see her sister for the last time anyway.
Grandma and Dad have been doctors all their lives, know what the condition means, she looked at her unconscious sister at Shaw Hospital, did not cry, and no longer prayed for a speedy recovery for her aunt and grandmother. She just sat in front of the hospital bed for a long time and said softly to her sister, "Sister, I'm old, this time you will leave after watching it, and you will not come back later..."
The year my aunt and grandma left, I graduated from college and didn't return to my hometown to work. According to my dad, my grandma hasn't made a drunken chicken at home since then, and my dad hasn't bought a drunken snail in a long time — as if Gangnam has nothing to do with either of them anymore.