#My hometown is in Nanyang #Taste of Hometown I was born in the mountains of northwest Nanyang. Here, there are hundreds of miles of mountains, and a winding sheep's intestine trail between the high mountains and valleys leads to the outside of the mountain

#我的家乡在南阳 #

The taste of home

I was born in the mountains northwest of Nanyang. Here there are hundreds of miles of mountains, and a winding sheep gut trail between high mountains and valleys leads to the outside of the mountain, passing through the ancestors...

Nature has always been so mysterious to human beings. Despite the harshness of the environment, it is desperate, but at the same time it is touchingly generous. In my childhood years, the mountain that gave birth to me and raised me, like a selfless mother, gave joy and hope to these children in the mountains.

The mountains surprise people all year round.

In the spring, I can find yam eggs and shandandan (small lilies) from the freshly green mountains. Their young shoots have just emerged from the ground, and if they dig down, they can dig up large and small yam eggs and shandandan. In the beginning, I dug it out and ate raw, sticky, sweet. Later, my mother cooked it for me to eat. There are also thatch buds on the hillside, needle buds that can be seen everywhere, ramie roots in the field, mulberries and elm money on the trees... Accompany me through one hungry and unbearable spring after another.

In summer, on the slopes of the hills, on the banks of the ditches, on the mounds, there are knotted needles (thorns) everywhere. The vines of various knots are covered with blindfolds, red, black, yellow, purple, one by one, string after string, like pearls, like agate, sweet and sour, thirst quenching and hunger resistance. However, although the mengzi are delicious, the spikes on their bodies are not easy to mess with! If you are not careful, you will be stabbed and bleed. If you want to eat it, you can't do it without the courage to "cut through the thorns"!

Autumn is even more a paradise for us hungry cats. Walnuts and persimmons belong to the public (production team), but they dare not move! But hazelnuts, gobies, mountain jasmine, starfruit (kiwifruit), and wild grapes are all given to us by "God" and have become the delicacies in our mouths. Early in the morning, I went into the mountains and forests, only to eat sore and bloated, and I could still go home with a bulge.

Even in winter, we can still find good food in the mountains. In the early winter, the tang pears on the hillside are ripe, turning black and red, full of branches and grunting, and eating sour and sweet. At this time, the starfruit was the most delicious, soft, gently broken, greedily sucking, full of raw mouth. If you are lucky, you can also find piles of woolly chestnuts in the crevices of the stone, which is the winter food stored by squirrels, but it has become the spoils of our "little hairy thieves".

After the snow, the first fruit in the mountain called "Strange Jujube" ripens. The fruit is small, only the size of a peanut grain, and is shaped like an "8". In the mountains and forests, mature "strange dates" fell on the snow, and the ground was black. It was caught and filled in the mouth, and the more it was chewed, the sweeter it became, and people named it "Sweet Midnight".

Bucket turns to stars, four hours of reincarnation. The tang pear blossoms on the cliffs of the mountain have bloomed again, and the wild fruits in the forest have grown up with me. If there is no accident, I will be like my father's generation, slash and burn in the mountain land of the poor ridge, and eventually grow old in the mountain forest...

Fortunately, my life changed at the end of 77! The country resumed the college entrance examination, and fate opened a door for me, and I was able to get out of the mountains.

In the deep reaches of the outer realm, the hometown is the hometown for a long time. In the blink of an eye, more than forty years have passed. Even though it is a long time, the mountain that gave birth to me and raised me still haunts my soul and is unforgettable!

Year after year, when the school is on winter and summer vacations, I specially lead the children back to their hometown in the mountains, following the footsteps of their childhood, to the hillside, the small river, the woods, to find and taste the wild game that they relied on when they were children.

That's the taste of my hometown! It is a memory rooted in the bones!