Earth rice fragrance

China's emerging woodcut "Autumn Harvest", by Zhang Yangxi, 1938.

Local

Li Xiao/Chongqing

In the warm weather of autumn, the Harvest Festival of Chinese Farmers was ushered in. The aroma of fresh rice made me miss my homeland again.

After an autumn rain, Lao Zhou called me to the countryside to eat new rice. Old Zhou is a friend of mine in the city, and he has a rice field in the mountains. Before the rice was harvested, I went to the mountains once, and Lao Zhou was like a pious and humble old farmer, his body crouched in front of the heavy golden rice, sniffing the rice with his nose, and when the wind blew, the rice in the field swayed with the wind, like a mother who was about to be potted, immersed in the joy of welcoming the arrival of life.

Freshly dried rice is beaten out of the rice, and rice porridge is cooked over a wood fire, and in the wood stove, there are pine branches that burn like laughter. In the steamy pot, the new rice porridge grunted and bubbled, floating on the top layer, Lao Zhou said, that is rice oil, drink a sip, it will be a little sticky.

Remember reading that of all grains, rice has a soul. It hit the atrium of my heart.

The fragrance of new rice, throughout the year, in the autumn season, is grandly unveiled. A grain of rice, starting from the seed to returning the grain to the warehouse, accompanies the journey of half of the twenty-four solar terms. From spring to autumn, a grain of rice has experienced wind, rain, thunder and lightning, and the sweat of farmers creeping on the ground.

My first feelings for a grain of rice were in my childhood in the countryside. When he was six or seven years old, he carried a bamboo basket and picked up the rice seeds left in the rice fields after the harvest, and each ear of rice was like a string of pearls. When the rice left in the rice field was picked up, the sunset had completely engulfed the thin figure of a child. Grandma treated me at night with a jar of rice cooked over a wood fire. It was the most fragrant rice I've ever eaten, my most obsessive first kiss for rice.

In those years of poverty, rice did not become a staple food for farmers, most of which were corn, sweet potatoes and potatoes. When I was 13 years old, my grandfather was seriously ill, and the day he choked, he weakly called out to grandma, he wanted to drink a bowl of rice soup. Grandma trembled and trotted all the way to another family to borrow a bowl of rice, cooked rice, brought the rice soup to Grandpa, who rolled his throat knot, swallowed a small and a half bowl of rice soup with difficulty, stretched out his two fingers and pointed to the roof, tilted his head, and left. What did Grandpa mean by the two fingers he held out, and now I seem to understand that he has fulfilled his wish to go for a walk in heaven, hoping that there are also rice fields to grow there.

Rice nurtures us, it is so ordinary that sometimes its existence is neglected. It's like a person who is closest to him, and sometimes suddenly blurs his appearance.

When I reach middle age, I have not yet achieved the calm and quiet like the rice lying in the rice pot, and sometimes I am impulsive and willful like drinking spirits and sorghum. How much rice I have eaten, I can't count, but my affection for rice is buried in my heart, like well water hidden under thick soil. Now, I want my words, word by word, to grow out of the rice fields of my soul like grains of rice.

Mi Xiang, as soon as I think of this word, in the wind blowing rice waves, I seem to quietly turn into a standing rice plant, understand the vicissitudes of the world, and understand the tranquility of all things. Rice incense, it is the eternal fragrance emitted by the thick earth, the rich fragrance of thousands of destinies blooming.