Thanks. Guo Hongsong painting
Ciqikou Ancient Town, Shapingba District, Chongqing City, is full of lights and celebrates the Spring Festival. Photo by Sun Kaifang (People's Photo)
Wind and snow return on the night. Manchi Wei painting
At Chinese's house, the reunion dinner Chinese New Year's Eve can be called the most grand and luxurious meal of the year. Whenever at this time, the family members who are far away in the end of the world, do not quit running thousands of miles, despite all difficulties, they also have to rush back to eat this meal, in order to reunite the family, wish each other peace, and try to be auspicious.
Whenever this happens, no matter how poor people are, they must make this meal more decent. In literary and artistic works, Yang Bailao hid from debts, Chinese New Year's Eve secretly went home, carrying "two pounds of noodles" in order to make dumplings with Xi'er for the New Year. In Yang Bailao's place, this was his Chinese New Year's Eve's luxurious banquet. In the past, the Poor Family's New Year was very sad, but now of course it is different.
In my hometown of Fuzhou, I remembered that the reunion dinner Chinese New Year's Eve was also the hardest and hardest meal of the year for my mother. Entering the waxing moon, the mother began to prepare. The footsteps of the old calendar years are getting closer and closer, and the mother's labor is getting worse and worse. After the complete dust removal inside and outside the house, she gradually entered the "war" state. Fuzhou people value the food pickled in red and rotten at the banquet, and chicken, duck and fish can be pickled with bad. Washed, dried, oiled or otherwise processed, then preserved products are placed in an urn with condiments and red residue, sealed, infiltrated, fermented, and formed over the months. The urn is open, the smell of wine is fragrant, and the air is full of drunkenness. This food is the most laborious and time-consuming, which is the mother's New Year's offensive. Later, it was steamed rice cakes and various kinds of food such as rice dumplings. After these more complicated programs have been done, the year is also approaching.
The abundance of the reunion dinner depends on the family's circumstances, but it is generally always necessary to strive for a good omen. The feast of the Chinese New Year's Eve is solemn and joyful: every house, red candles, smoke, staggered, and reached the night. Keeping the age is a joy, firecrackers rise and fall, flower lights and shadows are enough, children wander around, and female relatives sit around playing cards. Busy is still the mother, the leftovers, the processing stopped, she will continue to prepare for tomorrow's luncheon (that is, the first day of the first lunar month) overnight. The luncheon of Xinzheng is the first feast of the opening of spring, and its importance is second only to that of Chinese New Year's Eve feast. The difference is that Chinese New Year's Eve is a feast of big fish and big meat, but this meal is vegan and elegant.
On the first day of the Spring Festival, the first thing is to respect the ancestors and the heavens and the earth, according to the customs of the family, serving the Buddha or worshipping the ancestors should be vegetarian. After the rich and flamboyant luxury, this time it is the splendor of green vegetables and fresh fruits. The mother is still confident and not chaotic. She was going to prepare ten large dishes in one go for this completely different vegetarian feast. At this point, I marvel not only at my mother's amazing perseverance and determination, but also at her aesthetic vision. My mother had never been to school and was illiterate, but she definitely had a cultural background. When the family had not woken up from the drink, she was still alone, and magically displayed a table of vegetarian dishes on the solemn and solemn offering table.
Remember that there are many kinds of ingredients used in those dishes, vegetables are Jiaodong Chinese cabbage, spinach, cover vegetables, mung bean sprouts, carrots, white radish, winter shoots and zibai; soy products include white tofu, fried tofu, gluten, tofu shredded, vermicelli; dried goods include fungus, shiitake mushrooms, yellow cauliflower, kelp, seaweed and so on. Through the skillful hand of the mother, these ingredients are transformed into plates of exquisite dishes with bright colors, harmonious combinations and aesthetic effects. For example, wood ear russet white, carrot gluten, winter shoot mushrooms, Jiaodong cabbage vermicelli, or fried, or fried, or braised, it is really dazzling.
The most impressive thing is that when my mother fried spinach, she deliberately left the red roots and leaves to stir-fry together. (That's how I learned that the roots of spinach are edible.) I have been following this habit to this day. This is fried together with the root of the vegetable and immediately has a miraculous effect: green leaves and red roots, red and green, shining with the luster of vegetarian oil, what a realm! But in her mother's place, her vegetarian stir-fried spinach is not only a delicate dish, a delicacy rich in aesthetic significance, but also a delicacy that embodies the culture of spiritual and religious level. I vividly remember her explanation of this dish: red root, is an auspicious word for praying for the family's continuity and blessings.
In the early morning of the first day of the first lunar month, the snoozing family members who had been watching last night got up. Rinse, salute, firecrackers, bow down. On the table are my mother's sleepless masterpieces: ten plates of gorgeous, bright and elegant Spring Festival dishes. Worship the ancestors, worship the gods, and perform rituals as if they were ceremonies. At the end of the cigarette, it is nearly noon, and it is a happy time for the family to sit around and celebrate the New Year. In fact, when it comes to the way of eating, it is also about relaxation, people are tired of the continuous wine and meat feast, once they face this vegetarian table, of course, they feel comfortable. It was the smell from the spring fields, mixed with the smell of cooking smoke and dew.
(Xie Mian, born in Fuzhou in 1932, is a literary critic, poet and writer.) Professor of the Department of Chinese, Peking University, currently the Honorary Dean of the Institute of Chinese Poetry at Peking University and the Director of the Institute of Chinese New Poetry at Peking University. He is an honorary member of the National Committee of the Chinese Writers Association and the editor-in-chief of poetry theory journals "Poetry Exploration" and "New Poetry Review". He is the author of "History of New Chinese Poetry" and other works. )