Two years on, life is very magical. In the past, the usual Taste of the New Year and reunion have become less so easy, but they cherish the New Year more.
In the worst of times, know how to eat and wear will not be chaotic. The first thing that comes to my mind about the New Year is the variety of foods. In the difficult times of the past, Chinese no matter how poor and thrifty, they will also pour out their Chinese New Year's Eve meals all year round.
Nothing is easier to heal than delicious.
"Four Springs"
Two or three years ago, I saw a documentary "Four Springs", and director Lu Qingyi recorded the four Spring Festivals back home.
In the natural and interesting family life, we can see the self-consistent evening scene of the elderly couple, see the coming and going of children and swallows, see the hardship and poetry of life, and see the relationship between food and people.
Lu Qingyi's father is a retired teacher who usually likes to tinker with musical instruments, and her mother is an ordinary peasant woman with a bright personality who likes to sing and dance.
The couple raised three children, all of whom worked in the field and only had a rare reunion during the Spring Festival. Lu Qingyi is the youngest child, and there is also the eldest sister Qingwei and the second brother Qingsong.
At the beginning of the film, it is a scene of an old couple smoking sausages. They sat there, blowing air at the bamboo tube, the fire brightening, and in the rising smoke, the smell of the year was getting more and more sufficient.
The sausages are smoked so full that you can smell the aroma through the screen. Lu Qingyi left home at a very young age, and as long as he smelled the smell of smoked sausages, he would start to miss home.
The third Spring Festival recorded in the film is the most painful period of time for this family. Lu Qingyi's sister died of illness, and his parents fell into grief. It was also this year that they did not make sausages.
The joys and sorrows of life are as constant as the cycle of the four seasons. Over time, the family's trauma slowly heals, and a pair of elderly people re-engage in their lives.
On the fourth Spring Festival, Lu Qingyi's parents got busy again, and the family hung lanterns on the eaves of the house and lit firecrackers for the New Year together.
Before the children left home, the couple hid in the backyard to make sausages. While sharing the sausages, they muttered, "This part of Qingyi is brought back to Beijing, and this part is brought back to Hangzhou." ”
For everyone, the food in their hometown is a nostalgia that cannot be dissolved in their hearts. No matter where you are or how far away you are from home, whenever you see this food, you will remember the warm time spent with your family.
When I was a child, I went back to my hometown with my parents every year for the New Year, and when I left, my grandparents would always wrap up their own roast meat, wax duck, blowing sticks and other New Year food for us to take away.
Now that I have grown up and left my parents, I understand the warmth of the food in my hometown. What really impresses a person is often not the taste of mountains and seas, but the most ordinary things.
There are many works in Japanese films that use food to convey family feelings, the texture of life, and realistic relationships.
"The First Supper" is about a restructured family, which begins with the death of the father and the mother's funeral to serve the family a simple dish.
The food at the funeral is a memory of my father. In the first cheese egg, the sister and brother remember the first day of the reunion family meeting, and the dinner on that day was the cheese eggs made by the father.
The First Supper
The new life of the unfamiliar five began with this "first supper."
When she ate the second miso soup, her sister, who liked white miso, remembered that she had fought with her brother who liked red miso, and it wasn't until her mother served the mixed miso that the red and white war ended.
In ordinary cuisine, there is the wisdom of the mother's life to resolve family conflicts.
Day after day of home-cooked food also contains secrets and reconciliation. My father and brother, who liked to climb mountains, always ate a stewed mushroom for the night at the top of the mountain, and no one else had eaten the dish or the secret between father and brother.
The saury reminds her sister of a change in attitude towards her mother, a fish-eating mantra of her mother's church that makes her rarely get stuck by the fish spines.
Towards the end of the funeral, my brother, who had been away from home for many years, returned, and the reunited family prepared the beef hot pot that his father had eaten before his death.
Beef hot pot is a food that reunites family members who have been separated for many years, making people feel warm and want to cherish the day when they can eat with their families.
Kore-eda is a master at portraying the realistic bond between food and characters. In the language of his films, food is a very important emotional symbol.
The story of "Non-Stop Walking" is about a family meeting on the day of the firstborn's death.
Corn tempura is a dish that is the favorite food of the eldest son, Junpei. On every day of death, my mother would cook this dish, which carried the family's remembrance and remembrance of the deceased.
"Non-Stop Walking"
When making corn tempura, the second son is responsible for peeling the corn, the daughter is responsible for stirring the powder pulp, the mother is responsible for frying and cooking, and the whole family is careful and meticulous about cooking.
Even the father, who has an awkward relationship with his second son, will appear on time when he smells the aroma of rice.
Later, in "Deeper Than the Sea", the protagonist is still called "Liangduo", the father in the play has just passed away, and the mother lives alone in a cramped apartment.
At the beginning of the film, a lot of appearances are led by food. It was a pot of curry, and my mother said: Konjac should be cooled slowly, and it will taste better for a whole night, and the same is true for people.
Therefore, when mothers and daughters say "late success of the great instrument", they refer to the many who are nearly fifty years old and still have achieved nothing.
Many used to be an idealistic young man who wanted to write novels and did work hard, but after the first novel was published 15 years ago, it continued to fall to the bottom and never rebounded.
Unable to bear the responsibility of supporting the family, he is also accustomed to nibbling on the old. The wife could not stand such a him and left with her son.
The mother said that she had never loved a man deeper than the sea, but her love for her son was clear.
Of course, she knows what kind of person her son is, but she will still prepare The Kelpice Ice for her son's arrival at any time, will carefully take care of the orange tree that symbolizes a lot, and will take out a futon on the night of the typhoon to persuade her daughter-in-law to stay overnight.
At dinner on the night of the typhoon, my mother turned out the curry sauce that my father had made before he died. A box of frozen curry paste brings the soul of the father back to the family, and many people think of their father and how to become a father.
Maybe we will not be able to become the people we want to be, but Kore-eda tells us that even if the dream is gone, there is still a home.
Ang Lee understands the implications of the Orientals and expresses the disintegration and reconstruction of the Chinese family through food.
There are a total of six family banquets in "Eating Men and Women", and each family banquet constantly promotes the relationship between family members, with new contradictions and new changes.
The big dish of the opening family banquet, the most impressive is the squirrel fish. Only to see Master Zhu Lisuo kill the fish, slice the flower knife, marinate wrapped in dry starch, evenly pour hot oil, into the pan and fry.
"Eating Men and Women"
The fish that crow in the oil pot is actually the embodiment of Zhu Dad's inner torment. The three daughters have their own ideas, and the widowed father can't manage many things he wants to manage, and can only use the family banquet to express his love for the children.
At the second family banquet, the second daughter Jiaqian wanted to announce something, and before she could speak, Zhu Dad said that he already knew about her cheating on buying a house, and told her that she could continue to live at home, while giving her a steamed hairy crab.
The depth of Father's love does not require any words. Just like steamed hairy crab, it is simple but extremely delicious. Who says no, every Chinese New Year's Eve meal in the past, my father left me the biggest and fattest crab.
On the day of reunion, it is food that binds people together to the greatest extent possible. Many years ago, the Spring Festival movie "New Year on the Tip of the Tongue", there is a story in it that I still remember.
Qiu Chunyi, a Taiwanese girl, terminated her career in Shanghai and returned to her hometown of Tainan to fulfill her parents' wish and run a restaurant with her boyfriend Jiaqing.
This year, because Chunyi's father had just passed away, the four sisters went to their aunt's house for the New Year. Grandma's family heirloom New Year dish head plate of three-colored eggs, before I did not have time to learn from my mother, this time with my aunt to make together.
"New Year on the Tip of the Tongue"
Jiaqing took out all his skills and made a famous dish in Tainan, red crab rice cake.
First of all, we must select high-quality crab, then fry the shallot crisp, sauté the shredded pork, shredded mushrooms, dried shrimp, shredded squid, mix with the glutinous rice that is not yet fully cooked, stir evenly into the lotus leaves, and steam it with red crab on top.
Chinese New Year's Eve meal, which people regard as the most important meal in three hundred and sixty-five days.
The family sat around and looked forward to the perfect appearance of the red crab rice cake, which was dazzling in red and jubilant, pushing the atmosphere of reunion to a climax.
The aroma of crab paste seeps into the sticky rice, and everyone in the family shares the same delicious and complete joy. After the death of her parents, Chunyi still has a familiar taste of home in the New Year at her aunt's house.
Our food memories about the Spring Festival are not necessarily how delicious and rare such things are, but a ritual and fun.
Many of the modern family New Year's Ceremonies have been taken from Jane, but in memory, the Preparation for the New Year may have begun from the Waxing Moon.
Chen Xiaoqing recalled that since the winter vacation, parents as teachers have been busy with the meal that Chinese New Year's Eve.
You can eat more expensive japonica rice, the father bought rice from the grain station to go home, the mother carefully screened with a dustpan, and even the broken rice was separated separately to make porridge, when the grainy rice was placed in front of him, Chen Xiaoqing reacted: Oh, it is going to be the New Year.
The sisters would take a bowl of rice and a dime, go out on the street to find a popcorn machine, and crouch next to it and wait happily.
Chen Xiaoqing, on the other hand, put an iron pot in front of his home, put sand in it, and when the firewood ran out, he used the residual temperature of the sand to stir-fry peanuts.
Rice flowers and peanuts will eventually be made into peanuts and rice candy snacks by their fathers, which are used to fill the Chinese New Year's Eve of seven plates and eight bowls.
Many years later, Chen Xiaoqing and her parents celebrated the New Year in Beijing, and there were still dried fruit snacks in a large table of "dishes".
The living conditions have long been good, "counting" is just memories, habits, rituals, some things do not change, there is a strong warmth.
Chicken has become a faint touch of nostalgia in the heart. Cantonese people have no chickens and no feasts, not to mention the big seasons, and no chicken with food on weekends can not be called prayer.
Watch Ouyang Yingji's "Taste of Hong Kong", which has a story about chicken, which is his friend Zhu Jun's cooking at home with the old shop, one who takes care of three generations, and the other who is responsible for cooking twenty or thirty meals a day for the wholesaler.
On Sundays, when the guys don't go to work, all the budget will be concentrated on the host's table, which is naturally more exciting than the usual meals, the white cut chicken must not be less, and the soy sauce chicken will also make a cameo.
A white cut chicken or soy sauce chicken, how to count well, Bamboo Jun does not know. It is probably the harmonious warmth of the family sitting around that makes the Sunday meal a ritual, allowing the family to locate the image of family reunion in the future.
I feel the same way. There are so many famous chickens in Guangzhou, but there is no roasted pork shared by my family, and for me it is just a "fried chicken rice" fast food.
Even if I cross the ocean, my requirements for white cut chicken and soy sauce chicken will always have only one standard: Dad's product.
Although there are no live chickens, I have asked my father to write me recipes for white cut chicken, soy sauce chicken, papaya soaked chicken, and rice cooker chicken. At least that smell is the last stubbornness of the wanderer's New Year.
A dining table, a taste of life. When everything is sad, if there is still some delicious food, it can still be optimistic.
The taste of the food, the taste of home. Eat well and drink well in the New Year, filled with blood tanks for the coming day.