Some people say that this is an era of thin affection and widowhood, who will call you in the middle of the night? Who will have a meal with you in the middle of the night? Even if you drink late at night, when you touch a glass, it is full of the sound of broken dreams. Maybe I should be thankful that there are a few people around who eat late at night. My late-night canteen has nothing to do with the noise of sentient beings and the mess of cups and plates, it is a quiet gathering of some lonely gourmets. It is more suitable for late autumn nights, when the frost is cold and the moon is white, the rooster is in the nest, and the cattle and sheep are sleeping, a group of people with empty stomachs come to the late-night canteen, chewing food and feeding the hungry intestines.
My relative Mao opened a late-night cafeteria in the city on Tuesday, and the name of the cafeteria was the house number of a road. What made Ermao feel strange was that the house number was actually the number on his birthday. Ermao's canteen was still open until late at night. In front of the wooden door hangs a very ancient red lantern, swaying in the night wind, making people feel like they have traveled back to ancient times. The canteen is near the river, and the passenger ship whistles in the middle of the night, which often makes me think that the literati of the ancient lupine scarf got off the boat and went straight to the canteen of Ermao. The recipe of the Ermao canteen, the brush characters are written on the bamboo board made of green bamboo, like the bamboo Jane of ancient writing, there are more than thirty local jianghu dishes on it, most of which are the original creations of Ermao.
My favorite is the fried river prawns in the Ermao canteen. Every time I ate this shrimp, I even chewed and swallowed the shell together, and rolled up my tongue, afraid of dropping a little shrimp meat.
The river shrimp in the Ermao canteen are supplied by He Boss, who specializes in fishing and touching shrimp in his hometown in the countryside, and they are all wild shrimp.
Elder He divorced at the age of forty-three and never got married again.
One day, late at night when it was raining, I met Boss He with a flashlight and a bamboo hat in the Ermao canteen, who rode a motorcycle to deliver fish and shrimp to Ermao. Boss He said that he couldn't sleep at night, so he simply sent the fish and shrimp in advance.
In the late-night cafeteria that day, except for one person who was going to leave the city on an early flight, it was me, a lonely diner. I accompanied Elder He to drink and drink the freshly stewed pork rib lotus soup, and only then did I know that Elder He did not sleep well like me. When my stomach was full, I suddenly developed compassion and advised him: Boss, you should find another woman to live with. Boss He waved his hand and said, I don't have this idea for the time being, wait until the child graduates from college, what things have to rely on fate.
Liang Shiqiu wrote at night in Beiping in his early years, and often sneaked into the restaurant in the middle of the night to drink a bowl of pig blood soup, otherwise it was not easy to sleep. When people reach middle age, there are still many people like me who are waiting to be fed in the middle of the night. These scattered people, they told me, the homely taste of the late-night canteen is more soothing. I remembered that in the past, there were also days when there were night songs and big fish and big meat, and in middle age, it was like after a heavy snow, the earth was wrapped in silver, and the overlapping footprints were submerged. Only then did I start looking for warm firewood from a yellow clay hut.
Over the years, some people have met in life, and feeling that not seeing each other is the most firm and lasting friendship. Today, like the blood of the original villagers, only when it returns to its own veins will it stop boiling. There are many paths in this world, and many people have come together just by chance. To a certain season of life, there is only one way left, from your heart to the end of the skyline, you can only walk it alone, walk through.
The same goes for eating. When I was a child, I was fed, and later I was accompanied by relatives and friends, and more people accompanied each other to eat together. People are actually afraid of loneliness when eating, food needs to be shared, and many of people's feelings have been transplanted into food. But it's also a blessing to have a cute late-night cafeteria waiting for you. Life can't always be a bustling car, and the late-night canteen is like a lonely star twinkling, where there is a seemingly dull, but in fact thick encounter.
One night, a person who went to bed early, unable to get up at night and nibble on the brine duck claw, felt that the atmosphere was a little dull, and walked alone to a late-night canteen. Unexpectedly, he met me who was eating a plate of peanuts and rice in the canteen. This person is an old friend of mine who I haven't seen for a long time.
Late that night, this old friend and I slept under a large tree in front of the cafeteria, and the night breeze was cool and gentle, and we seemed to have regained the feeling of our first acquaintance many years ago.