Fried rice dumplings are one of the "New Year goods" that every Hakka family must have during the New Year. Photo by Wang Jingmiao
The park is full of fiery red lanterns, and the atmosphere of the new year is strong.
Photo by Wang Jingmiao
What is The Taste of the Year? Although the Spring Festival has passed, you can still smell the New Year's eve when walking in the streets and alleys of Jiaoling.
It is full of lanterns and couplets hanging from shops, fireworks and firecrackers that sparkle in the streets and alleys, and gifts and red envelopes that come to meet them. Steamed buns, croquettes, stuffed tofu... The Hakka New Year flavor of Jiaoling is colorful in the eyes of writers.
Books warm the year
Yau Yanrong
The annual list of new year goods must have the item of "book", send your own, send your children, and send students. "New Book greeting the New Year" has become a kind of ceremony for my New Year. Spring Festival reading is the right time, visit relatives and friends, push cups to change cups, lively, but also need to let their souls resign from the old and welcome the new, absorb new nourishment, and nourish their spiritual world with books.
Every time at this time, I will relive the first time I went to the bookstore to buy books when I was a child.
When I was a child, it was an era when both material and spiritual were relatively scarce. I have almost no extracurricular books except textbooks. The few villain books I had on hand were given to me by my brother and the brother next door, and these books simply did not satisfy my thirst for books. At that time, the people I most envied were my cousins and cousins who lived in the county town, not envious of their ability to go to the county primary school, to eat the white rabbit milk candy, and to have clockwork tin frogs, but to envy them for having a lot of books. "Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales" and "Grimm's Fairy Tales" were first read from my cousins and cousins, and the great name Shakespeare was also read from the books of my cousins and cousins. Back at my home, looking at the neatly stacked elementary school textbooks and a few rotten little people's books, I was sad for the first time about the poor family situation. At that time, it was good for the family to eat meat once or twice a month, where was the money left to buy me books?
Several times I wanted to ask my mother for money to buy books, but I held back. That Spring Festival in the fifth grade, I somehow plucked up the courage and said: Mom, is it okay to give me a little money for the year? When he finished, his face turned red. I have always been a well-behaved child, and my mother taught me that pressing the old money is a human interaction between adults, a left hand for a right hand, and besides, I also have to stay up to pay your tuition. Therefore, I never moved any heart and eyes to hide the old money, and I always received it and handed it to my mother immediately. My mother looked at me and asked: What do you do with the money? I said: Buy a book. My mother said: What to do when buying books, you can't eat or wear, just read the books in the school. Just when I was disappointed to leave, my mother gave me five yuan and told me to go to the bookstore to pick books related to study. I nodded like a chicken pecking rice, pressed the excitement in my heart, carefully put away the five yuan, turned my head and invited my classmates to walk to the bookstore.
The countryside is a full six kilometers away from the Xinhua Bookstore in the county seat, and it takes an hour to walk all the way. I didn't feel tired at all, and when I arrived at the bookstore, my heart "popped", half because of the long rush, and half because of the excitement of fulfilling my wish. I pretended to be "rich and powerful" and turned around in front of one bookshelf after another, but I was obviously underwhelmed. Because it is not easy to find a book whose price matches the money in his pocket and matches his mother's requirements and his wishes. Finally, I saw a book that was both literary and interesting, and covered the knowledge of language and mathematics for primary school students. I was so happy that the few cents I usually saved were fortunate not to buy candy to eat. So a book thicker than a brick belonged to me from then on.
As soon as I got home, I couldn't wait to write my name, with a sense of pride in establishing sovereignty, and plunged straight into the book. My friends told me to pick up firecrackers, pick up sugar paper, and go to the ancestral hall to hide and seek, and I shook my head and never even lifted my head. As soon as I read the book, people are stupid. But, I know, my mother was happy in her heart.
Decades later, there is a story in that book that I still vaguely remember. It was a story about the teacher, roughly about how a baby-faced, small-sized teacher used wit and love to subdue a thorn-headed student who was taller than her, and the story was extremely vivid and funny. At that time, I had already vaguely sprouted a dream of becoming a teacher, and I didn't know if this story made my dream path clearer. A few years later, the baby-faced, small-skinned me really became a teacher.
"Books cannot be read unless they are borrowed", in fact, it is a kind of helplessness. As with "a woman's closet is always one less piece of clothing," I always say I have a lot less books in my bookcase. Even though the family is already "full of books", I still buy new books again and again, and I still like the new and not tired of the old, and I want to clean up a batch of them several times, but I am reluctant to lose any of them. The first book I bought in the fifth grade that belonged to me was still reclining on the shelves made by my father, reminding me again and again of the book-scented Spring Festival.
It's spring festival again. Before the winter vacation, I had to hurry up and buy "books" for the New Year. The fragrance of books is an indispensable part of the taste of the year!
rice cake
Chen Guangxing
In our memories, what could be happier than the New Year's Eve as a child?
Entering the coldest winter of the year, the smell of the year is faintly spread. The family will successively go to the city to buy some New Year's food, such as: rice noodles, melon seeds and candy, couplets, firecrackers and so on. With the gradual upgrading of the purchase of New Year goods, the taste of the New Year is becoming more and more intense, and the enthusiasm of children for the Year is getting stronger and stronger...
In the previous rural life circle, who wanted to have a good taste, most of them could taste it, neighbors, small partners will share together, even if it is a piece of sugar, it can also be broken, one person to share a little, not to mention the larger food like rice cakes! Thick, sweet, soft, bouncy rice cakes, in those days, is there anything more delicious than this?
Rice cake is one of the must-have New Year goods for every household in our Hakka family. Rice cakes have a certain symbolic significance, rice cakes, rice cakes, high every year, life and work rise year by year. Rice cakes are delicious, but the fly in the ointment is that steaming rice cakes is time-consuming, expensive, and difficult to cook. Nowadays, almost all of them use natural gas and liquefied gas, and few people will move the idea of steaming rice cakes, only in the New Year Festival, families with large pots and stoves in the countryside will continue this ancient traditional practice. To be honest, the rice cakes in the countryside that are hand-operated and steamed over a wood fire are particularly soft and sticky, especially chewy and resistant to storage. Nowadays, most of the New Year is to go to the market to buy a small piece of steamed rice cake, far less lively and interesting than the steamed rice cake in the countryside when I was a child.
Before dividing the field to the household, all the grain is divided according to the head, the amount of glutinous rice is even more limited, in addition to the people who do the happy event will share more, the average family is very small, so in a year, eat a few sticky rice or boiled round rice even if it is a kind of enjoyment, the remaining glutinous rice will be used in the New Year steamed rice cake and fried balls.
Steamed rice cakes must have a special set of cooking utensils, that is, copper or aluminum pots specially steamed rice cakes. At that time, not every family had it, and families without these utensils would often wait for their neighbors to steam and borrow them. In my impression, to make rice cakes, the glutinous rice is first soaked in water, and then the glutinous rice syrup is ground with stone grinding, which is squeezed to dry the excess water, constantly kneaded and steamed in a large pot, and the rice cakes made by this traditional process are particularly delicious and chewy. Stone mill, this ancient appliance, each village has several families to buy, convenient for the villagers, the most common use of farming is to grind soy milk to make tofu.
Steaming rice cake is a tedious and tiring project, each process must be carefully operated, and mastering the heat is the master. After adding enough water to the large iron pot, a person should be specially arranged to master the heat, and the rest will be left to time. Generally speaking, because most of the steamed rice cakes are eaten at home, the technical difficulty is not large, but it must be able to withstand the temperament. How much sugar is put in steamed rice cakes varies from person to person, some people like brown sugar, some people like white sugar, but most people use brown sugar, because the steamed rice cakes are yellow waxy, and there is an appetite at a glance.
In the 1970s and 1980s, when the material was not abundant, the rural women lived a full range of colors and fragrances, soft, hard, sweet, sour, steamed, boiled, wrapped, burned, meat, vegetarian... It was the result of a year of hard work, and it was also a great expectation for the coming year.
The taste of the hometown has made our generation unforgettable memories. Every New Year's Day, the sound of firecrackers in the village rises and falls, and the houses are more festive because of the red couplets at the door, with smiling faces, table reunion feasts, and blessings, in a happy and peaceful atmosphere, starting a new year full of hope.
I remember the old man said that after eating rice cakes, we were older or a year older. Life is constantly pounding everyone, and we cannot resist the time law of cold and summer, spring and autumn. "Old age and new years, spring is more good flowers." New Year is the year after year of good looks. May the mountains and rivers be splendid, the country and the people be safe; may the harmony and prosperity be happy; may our life be as soft and sweet as rice cakes.
Nostalgia for the Spring Festival as a child
Guo Xinhui
By age group, I have passed nearly 50 Spring Festivals in middle age. Recall the Spring Festival spent in Shizhai's hometown as a child, those delicacies, new clothes, firecrackers, pressing money... It's all a beautiful nostalgia.
New Year is the most solemn festival. On the 25th day of the twelfth month of the lunar calendar, it is called "entering the annual price", and every household begins to clean up, indoors and outdoors. We children also help adults to move tables, stools, chopsticks, pots, etc. to the river, scrub them with fine sand or grass roots, and then move them to the drying valley to dry. In addition, adults are busy frying "oil fruits", playing "rice courses", frying "crispy horns", making "shortbread"... These are New Year's snacks and "waiting" for sending relatives.
Dad is very particular about playing "rice", boiling sugar water until it is viscous, and sautéing glutinous rice and peanut rice; before crushing "rice", he will definitely wash and dry his hands, and hang a towel around his neck. He said: "Many people play 'rice course', because the hands are not dried, the raw water on the hands or the sweat on the forehead falls, resulting in sugar water is not viscous enough, will be beaten into a block of 'scattered'. "The little one has no interest in the skill, just the sweet smell of the delicacy. Dad has been gone for years, and we still miss that smell.
Chinese New Year's Eve is the liveliest. Every household sticks spring leagues, door gods, slaughters chickens and ducks, and is full of aromas of wine, meat, rice, and oil fruits. Chinese New Year's Eve morning, according to the customs of the hometown, each family must prepare "three animals" to the ancestral hall to worship the ancestors. The couplet at the entrance of the ancestral hall reads: "If you want to declare respect and love before entering the church, you must solemnly crown the crown from outside the door." "Every time we worship our ancestors, my father would remind our three sisters to arrange our clothes at the entrance of the ancestral shrine and tell us not to make loud noises and to worship with devotion.
Old people often say, "Chinese New Year's Eve those who don't bathe will turn into cows." "So, after lunch, my parents boiled hot water and told our three sisters to take a bath and put on new clothes." Dad once went to the old tailor Keming's second uncle to learn. Therefore, our new clothes for the New Year are "experimental products" made by dad, and the fabric seems to be a native cloth called "indeed card", which has no warm function, and the warmth inside depends on the woolen clothes woven by the mother.
Chinese New Year's Eve, my family has always eaten Chinese New Year's Eve meal very early, because grandma said "early in the early years". Grandma stewed chicken soup every year, and she used to say, "Drinking chicken soup means 'one year older.'" "This is probably because Grandma is devout and hopes that the whole family will have good signs and good expectations for the New Year."
When I was a child, my parents had to give their money outside to their grandmother to "run the house". Therefore, after our three sisters ate Chinese New Year's Eve meal, they waited for Grandma to send "pressed old money". Grandma gave us very little money, basically a blue 5 cent ticket, a red ticket of 1 yuan at most, plus a Teochew orange. My sister would use wool thread to help both of us weave a "citrus mesh bag" and put Teochew oranges inside and hang them around our necks. Sometimes, when you are really hungry, put teochew orange to your nose to smell it, or put it to your mouth and lick the peel of the orange. The younger brother was hungry, and before the third day of the New Year, the oranges were secretly eaten by him. Then my brother always followed me and asked me when to peel the oranges and eat them, and I must give them points.
New Year's Day, the happiest thing is to set off firecrackers. Probably because of the "one-year-old in the sound of firecrackers, the spring breeze sends warmth into tusu", Chinese New Year's Eve night from the time of the child, until the early morning, every household must set off firecrackers to welcome the new spring. Hearing the sound of firecrackers, my brother and I secretly got up and went to every door in the village with flashlights to pick up the firecrackers that did not explode. When you go to the door of the house, you must say good words and auspicious words, even if you don't pick them up, you can't say "nothing", otherwise you will be scolded by the lord's house. Since the beginning of the year, our greatest pleasure has been to set off firecrackers with our friends on the valley flat. At that time, the sound of firecrackers was a scene of the New Year in the mountain village, and it was also a toy and fun for our children. Now, our whole family will go back to their hometown every year for the Spring Festival, and my brother will prepare "ten thousand sounds" of Liuyang "full of red" firecrackers and various fireworks. He said: "When I was a child, my family was poor, and I still remember the situation of picking up firecrackers from others, and now when it comes to the Spring Festival, I want to set off them to the fullest. ”
There is a passage in Mo Yan's "Past Years" article: "When people reach middle age, they feel the difficulty of time, and every time they pass a year, it is like ringing an alarm bell." Without the temptation of food, without the mysterious atmosphere, without pure childlike heart, there will be no fun in the New Year, but this year still has to go on, for the sake of children. ”
The New Year I miss, now the children are not interested, but they have their own happy "year".
The Snack Complex of the New Year
Li Dongxiao
"Children and children, don't be hungry, after the eighth year is the year." One day, as I passed the supermarket door, I was attracted by a child carrying a bag of snacks and drinking a drink, and when he noticed that I was watching, he squeezed my eyebrows and looked triumphant. This childlike scene brought my mind back to the early 1990s.
At that time, I was in the fifth or sixth grade of elementary school, and my family's life was relatively tight, but I could still receive a little pocket money from my parents sporadically. Because it was not easy to come by, I have accumulated it, just for the joy of the New Year that I have in mind. The usual diet at home is very light, and if you want to eat something more fragrant, you have to rely on the snacks of the Spring Festival.
Spring Festival is the home of snacks, in addition to the family economic conditions, or some careful thinking in it, because the New Year pays attention to festivities, eat more snacks Adults will not be angry. In order to turn the Spring Festival into a snack festival, a lot of homework must be done before the festival. The first choice is sunflower seeds, not only its fragrance is very good for my taste, but also sunflower seeds are affordable. Don't look at the small business, there is really a doorway. When I come home from school, I pass the Zhenshan Theater, in front of which is a small park with more than a dozen cabins in a circle. This is a snack resort that clings to the mouths of children, selling popsicles, cooling, sodas, fritters... There are definitely sunflower seeds. In the choice of to do some "puzzles", generally listen to the students to comment on which stores of sunflower seeds fried fragrant, and then use the school organization to watch movies, school games and other opportunities, first buy some to try, personally experience. Sunflower seeds are sold to children basically do not need to be weighed, probably a dime a teacup, which is to see which store scoops sunflower cups are relatively large, and strive to maximize the income of sunflower seeds at the same price. Sometimes I also look at which salesman is better at talking, maybe a few good words, a smiley face, he may scoop a little more. In this way, before the final exam, the wooden box containing books under the bed became the hiding place of sunflower seeds. There is also an advantage of preparing in advance, don't worry about the reward of parents cutting off snacks in case the final exam is broken. Thanks to the repeated oral exercises in the New Year, I eat sunflower seeds basically semi-automatically, as long as I throw them in my mouth, the seed shell is separated very thoroughly, the more chewy the more energetic, naturally I also dream of growing up to achieve sunflower seeds freedom.
The Spring Festival always eats sunflower seeds, and it is inevitable that the taste is monotonous, so it is necessary to invite out the treasured delicacy - "sand tea blocks". This treasure is recommended by his cousin, he lives in the East Street Vegetable Market, which has a lot of Chaoshan food, fish rice, kelp, seven-colored vegetables, olive horns, etc., the most distinctive and most suitable for snacks is not "sand tea block". This thing has a very inconspicuous appearance, open the package of oil paper, and inside is a small cube of dark brown. Eat it, but it has a different flavor, wrapped in peanuts, shrimp, garlic, etc., both salty and sweet, but also a little spicy, can be described as a variety of flavors. The price of this thing is more expensive than melon seeds, you can only reserve a few, try it during the Spring Festival, and enjoy it. It is said that "sand tea blocks" are mainly used for rice, and it is salty to eat as a snack. Often eat a piece, while the tongue smacked straight, while grunting and drying a large glass of water, action interpretation, expression play as heroic as adults to make a glass of wine, refreshing, but also the Spring Festival of the occasion.
Watching the Spring Festival Gala is the time when "high-end" snacks are grandly debuted. This food is now very ordinary, everyone has eaten it, and it used to be a "luxury" for children. You can eat it dry or soaked in hot water, and you can also come with a packet of spices. Yes, you guessed it, it's instant noodles! At that time, there were very few varieties of instant noodles, such as Huafeng brand, the price was not cheap, and it could only be bought in a pack. For me, instant noodles can not be eaten often, and adults do not make staple food, so they can only use it as a snack "big coffee" for the spring festival finale. Of course, from the perspective of a child, you will definitely choose dry food, and you must make a sense of ceremony, and eat when you wear new clothes and watch the Spring Festival Gala. Brothers and sisters also have to divide evenly, even the remaining small pieces in the bag must be clearly divided, and then one person pours a little seasoning and eats! The spices that cannot be eaten can be wasted, and they must be collected and turned into high-grade condiments when eating steamed buns or buns. In that era, this novel way of eating was very tempting for children, chewing a bite is fragrant and crisp, is a food memory that many people remember in their minds.
What is The Taste of the Year? Everyone has their own experience. I think that the deepest feeling for the taste of the New Year should be children, no matter what era they are in, a small spiritual satisfaction will give birth to a big New Year vision.