Qin Wenjun: The Story of Coffee

After the sudden outbreak of the epidemic, every New Year's Festival, we do not go to the restaurant, crowded in the old mother's house for dinner, everyone made a home-cooked meal with seven hands and eight feet, I prepared a large and heavy coffee machine, after a tight, hot meal, let the old mother and the family of young and old, everyone hand a cup of coffee, slowly taste.

My enlightenment about coffee came from my mother. In the 1950s, my mother worked in the government office, and like many new women in those years, she was independent of her work, but she did not love housework, commonly known as not living a life.

Her mother loves shopping and spends money generously, perhaps related to the fact that she passes through Huaihai Middle Road after work every day, and along the way she sees fragrant pastries, beautiful household items, fresh flowers, and fashionable movie magazines, and she will be excited to buy home.

At first, coffee was not involved, but she loved malted milk, proudly bought it back, and every morning she made a cup of milky malt milk for her family, which made her look very sweet at this moment.

Malted milk is sweet and mellow, and my brother and I are even more obsessed, and even like the malt milk creamer jar. In the middle of the deep round jar, there is a tight little round lid, like a paint bucket, sealed tightly. Every time you gently pry open the lid, there will be pleasure in your heart.

The empty round cans also became treasures, and the mother left a number of cookies to listen to, and the number of round cans gradually became considerable, and she carefully numbered them one by one.

Soon, my brother and I had a new discovery, malt milk extract to eat more mellow, enjoyable, so we quietly pried open the small round lid a little, wait for malt milk to slowly return to the tide, clumping, a large piece of human hand, for a time honeycomb malt milk creamer sweetened the tip of the tongue, the excellent taste lingered in the heart, replaced the most delicious sweet honey toffee, became the first delicacy in the childhood world.

My mother didn't agree with our dry malted milk, thinking it was a tyrannical thing. In the era of material scarcity, she had deep hopes for this cup of malt milk, not only because of the excellent taste, but also because it is a nourishing nutrient for the body. She insisted on maintaining the orthodox way of eating on the malt milk creamer instruction manual, thinking that it was also, in that era, it was only 0.16 yuan to buy a pound of rice with a grain purchase certificate, and the price of a can of malt milk creamer was as high as tens of yuan, which was really a luxury. We understand that my mother attaches great importance to it with a little look-up.

The first time I touched coffee, it was also under the leadership of my mother, once the whole family went to the German Western Cuisine Society to eat Portuguese chicken and drink borscht, and after the meal, my mother ordered two small cups of coffee and ordered desserts for me and my brother. Coffee came up, but Father went outside to smoke.

I only looked at it, and I was fascinated by the silver-rimmed coffee cup, the aroma of the invading coffee, and the sugar cube in the small plate also made me vaguely excited, so I told my mother that I wanted to taste the coffee.

My mother asked me to take a sip to try, and she was hit by her, and I was choked on the first sip of coffee, and its bitterness and bitterness extinguished the enthusiasm I had accumulated. Strangely, although I did not experience the beauty and comfort in the first sip of coffee, I still had vague and beautiful fantasies about coffee. On closer examination, I cannot help but say that this good feeling comes from malted milk, I feel that some of the aromas in the coffee are vaguely related to malt milk, and I am also impressed by the charming plate, the angular sugar cube, the mother's gentle gesture when drinking coffee, and the brilliant look.

Growing up, in the junior high school era, I drank a cup of mocha coffee at my friend's house, added sugar, milk, and added cocoa powder, thick, hot cup to drink, too satisfied, think that such coffee is the world's first-class.

When I was 17 years old, I was assigned to the Heilongjiang forest area to go up the mountain and go to the countryside, after experiencing young hardships, I could not resist whenever I was sick and weak, and there were no relatives around, and the only thing that supplemented my body was brown sugar water to stir-fry wheat flour, boil two eggs to take.

Unexpectedly, one day, a companion rummaged through the bottom of the box and found a small can of instant coffee.

This can of coffee is regarded as the call of the hometown of Shanghai, the nostalgia for the western life of the distant metropolis, and this coffee naturally becomes the treasure of the entire collective dormitory. Each time you drink, each person is only willing to sprinkle a few particles at the bottom of the cup, add a few large spoonfuls of brown sugar, and brew an unprecedented coffee brown sugar soup. In the incomparably cold winter of northern Xinjiang, once we drank it, a large number of flowers bloomed on the cold and vast mountains outside the tent, and we were extremely excited to encounter each other's abundant youthful vitality.

Eight years later, I was able to return to the city, quickly found my soul belonging, devoted myself to the creation of beloved literature, and every time I finished a book, I would leave myself some leisure time, shuttling through movie theaters, museums, restaurants, bookstores, personalized teahouses, cafes. As a returnee who has spent eight years in a remote and distant territory, he will never live up to the beauty and colorfulness of the metropolis, and he has one more obstacle in his heart.

Shanghai is the world's largest number of cafes in the city, my closest relatives, there are children in the coffee industry, one year heard that he won the industry award, so I went to the coffee shop to see him in the state of work, the first glance felt very strange, dyed hair, and cutting-edge fashion music showed a little different. He loves coffee too much, a cup of hand-brewed coffee, from grinding beans, pouring coffee powder, injecting hot water, steaming, drip filtering, completing professional actions in a casual sense of ceremony, perhaps outsiders will feel that such a set is a bit of a pendulum, but he is happy, did not let himself live tired, maintain his dignity and secrets, this is the cute gesture of children in the new century.

I carried the heaviness of age and experience, drank a cup of mocha, the kind with sugar and milk, immersed in my own memory and state of mind like a child, free and relaxed, even if it was just a person, loneliness and sadness can be fragrant, and coffee tastes the fragrance of apples in a few bitters.

Over the years, I have been to many cafes around the world, written down some scattered experiences, and after a friend saw it, gave me coffee-related gifts. In the past ten years, My friend Ms. Gui from Taiwan has given me three sets of beautiful coffee cups, one large, one medium and one small, which I still use today.

Recently, two groups of literary friends came to me, and one group of people asked me if I intended to transform Xiaoxianggu Reading House into a beautiful café, still continuing the new concept of children's reading, most like Xiaoxianggu, raising a loyal and lively Shiba Inu and raising a weird kitten who loves to fry up.

Another group of people came to persuade me to join their café, saying that coffee provided a lasting focus on the writer's creation, and that Balzac's ability to work 17 hours a day stemmed from his 50 cups of espresso a day.

I believe in the magic of coffee, and I think that in a nihilistic café environment, it may really make the writer spiritual. However, why bother to open a café? There is a café downstairs in my house, but it is higher and I can't smell the aroma of coffee. I plan to create a small corner in the living room, with chandeliers, embossed coffee cups, and glass screens, to give it a Haipai café atmosphere. In this way, as long as I am happy, I will write in the imaginary "café", and there will be a steady stream. (Qin Wenjun)