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Drunken memories of hometown mash
Deng Siping
"Once raw, two times cooked, three times four times to buy wine valley!" The mash in the hometown of northern Sichuan is not drunk when eaten, and the people who eat it are drunk. In addition to being rich in beautiful women and charms, the quaint hometown is also tempting with its aromatic and intoxicating mash.
The taste is delicious, the flavor is unique, the craftsmanship is exquisite, and the production is exquisite. Ordinary type, packed in clay pots, covered with a big red shiny oil paper, red silk belt wrapped around a turn, firmly tied, sealed, very similar to the movie "Red Sorghum" in the big red paper written with the word "wine" in the big wine altar. There are also bottles of transparent glass, which are like the graceful Maitreya Buddha, graceful and generous, and the mash, soft, crisp, white flowers, floating, clearly visible. The price of the gift-type mash is higher, and it is decorated with blue and white porcelain altars or ceramic jars, and the porcelain altars are painted with dragons and phoenixes or various flowers and plants, which are antique and simple and generous, making people suspect that it is a very valuable porcelain in Jingdezhen. Open the jar, and the altar is filled with only fragrant mash, scoop a spoonful, sweet, cool, thirst-quenching, refreshing, full of incense.
The most common way to eat mash is to boil it with a small amount of well water, knock one or two eggs or pinch a few sticky rice dumplings in the pot and cook for a while, scoop it out of the pot, put it in a bowl, and taste it. The mash of the hometown, because of its unique koji medicine formula, coupled with the basin climate, the newly produced mash is fragrant and soft to eat, the entrance slag, sweet but not greasy, refreshing and pleasant, endless aftertaste, so it has always been unforgettable.
When I was a child, every New Year's Festival, I went to visit relatives and friends, followed my parents to "pick my feet", and when I arrived at my relatives' house, I washed my hot water face and brewed a cup of mint tea, followed by a bowl of steaming mash, fragrant, hot, steaming, and smoke. When I was a child, I used to follow my mother to my uncle's house in the countryside as a guest. Uncle is a very amiable person, medium-sized, thin, dark-skinned, although uncle is only an honest farmer, but knowledgeable, simple and generous, hospitable. When the diligent aunt saw us coming, she would greet us warmly and then go to the kitchen to wash the pots, make a fire, and boil water to boil the mash. Mash can fill hunger, sweet water can quench thirst, drive away the wind and cold all the way, unload a tired body, and show the warmth and preciousness of family affection.
A pack of less than a pound of white sugar rock sugar, a handful of aged dry noodles, can actually go to several homes repeatedly, although the gift is light, the friendship is very strong. Before lunch, drink mash, called "hitting the platform". Adults also often tease our children that the heat when eating mash cannot be blown, and if it is blown, in the future, when the mother-in-law goes to the old grandfather's house to pick up the mother-in-law, it will rain heavily and take the slippery road. Blowing mash on the face will also grow wine one by one, like Deng Mazi in the medicine shop on the Yongxing field, the face is full of nests... Therefore, when I was a child, when I was ignorant, when I drank mash at my relative's house, although the mash boiling water was steaming with smoke, I did not dare to blow the hot air in the mash bowl, afraid that blowing that hot air would rain heavily when I went to my grandfather's house to pick up my mother-in-law, the road was slippery, and I was even more afraid that if I blew the hot air on my face, I would really grow the same wine on Deng Mazi's face, which was really ugly...
Because of its simple raw materials and convenient production, mash can be brewed in the countryside, whether rich or poor, and there is no shortage of four seasons. At that time, Xianhui's mother often brewed mash by herself: first the glutinous rice, also called wine rice, was soaked in water, put into a pot to steam, spread it with boiled water or cool sweet well water after boiling, sprinkled with koji medicine, mixed well, and then put into a large washbasin at home, sprinkled with chaff shells and pressed tightly sealed, and even covered with thick things such as cotton wool. Sometimes it is simply tucked into the bed, and after a day and a night, the whole house is full of fragrance, as if the August laurel flowers are fragrant everywhere. The brewed mash is packed into the porcelain altar, covered with a lid, put in the kitchen bluestone water tank, eaten for ten and a half days, the mash in the altar is still delicious as ever, it will not be sour at all, it will not be bad at all, and the effect of preservation is even much better than the current refrigerator. If you want to brew wine, then you need to use koji medicine, so that the mash taste is too strong, not very tasty, but the wine rate is high, the juice in the mash, is rice wine, the degree is not high, mild, mellow, a bit like the current beer. Later, reading "Water Margin" read that Wu Song, who had fought tigers in Jingyang Gang, once ate eighteen bowls of wine in a row, I think that should actually be the rice wine brewed in this kind of mash, the degree is very low, if it is really the kind of old white dry baked in the distillery about 60 degrees, if it is really "grunting" to drink eighteen bowls, not to mention going up the mountain to fight the tiger, first do not collapse on the ground drunk, it is strange?
When I was a child, I used to steal the mash that was held in the large porcelain altar at home, sometimes greedy, drunk too much, drunk like guan gong with a flushed face in Sichuan opera, walking shakily and stumbling. Many times, I sat under the cabinet next to my own rice bucket and fell asleep. When I woke up, I didn't know where I was.
At that time, on the streets of my hometown town, whenever there was a day on the spot, there was an old woman who came from Xinglong Field to Yongxing Field to rush to sell wine and song. The mother-in-law, with gray hair, waddled, carried a small bamboo basket, and whispered in the bustling crowd on the street to sell mashed wine songs. Sometimes, the mother-in-law who sells koji also spreads a piece of shiny oil paper on the ground in the corner of the bridge, and spreads the koji in the cloth pocket and sells it on the ground. The ququ medicine is boxy, snow white, just like the dice used to play mahjong now, wrapped in paper, a pack of three, a dime a packet, brewed mash, delicious and sweet to eat, the entrance slag, not greasy at all, the taste is really wonderful. Time flies, the kind mother-in-law who walked the streets and sold wine and music and the virtuous mother are no longer alive, and now, I can no longer eat the mash made by my mother's own hands, and I feel like I have lost it, but the sweet fragrance and sweetness of the mash have long been integrated into my memory, life, and blood!
Many, many nights later, I often can't help but miss the people in my hometown, and the vivid smiling faces are like the turquoise lotus leaves in the pond of my hometown and the ripples of the wind and water, as well as the faint fragrance of osmanthus flowers and the strong smell of mash, which easily drunk me again and again...
Love to the depths of people lonely, drunken memories of hometown mash incense...
About the Author
Deng Siping, born in May 1974, a native of Peng'an County, Sichuan Province, graduated from Southwest University with a bachelor's degree in Chinese language and literature. He is a member of the China Essayists Association, a librarian of the Deng Xiaoping Former Residence Museum, and the editor-in-chief of Peng Safe Search, Peng'an Xinwen Network, and Sichuan All Network Search. Since 1989, he has published more than 400 literary works in newspapers and periodicals such as China Teacher Daily, China Tourism News, Young Writers, Sichuan Daily, etc., and has won many national, provincial and municipal literary awards at all levels, and many essays have been selected into various literary anthologies and primary and secondary school students' language unit test papers. Among them, "Drunken Memories of Hometown Mash" was selected to be included in the modern literature classic reading textbook published and edited by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Source: Sichuan Provincial Local History Work Office
Author:Deng Siping (Peng'an County, Sichuan Province)
Pictured: Fang Zhi Sichuan
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