Text | Zhan Enhua
In the past years, when talking about nostalgia, I would say: I am a person without nostalgia.
The words are very frank and true.
Why is there no nostalgia? Because in my memory, my childhood hometown brought me only endless bitterness and sorrow.
The house is an earthen house, and the road is a dirt road. Tsuchiya is most afraid of rain. When it rains, it rains outside and inside; it doesn't rain outside, it still rains inside. Pots and pans of water are everywhere, clanging and crackling, knocking people's hearts out of mind. Water droplets on the bed and sleeping at night are problematic. The house leaks rain, and you can't just go to the roof for repairs, because if you don't get it right, you will collapse the roof. The next day's rain, to step on the mud for ten days. Travel, how difficult it is. The saddest thing is that there is no dry firewood on rainy days, sometimes even the rice is not cooked, and starvation is inevitable.
For many people today, these near-fervent things are simply incredible. And this true story is deeply imprinted in my mind. It is also based on this that nostalgia cannot be talked about.
But who would have thought that a handful of tsubaki buds this spring would make me chew out a different kind of nostalgia.
Recently, a friend from Dong'a Town sent me a handful of toon buds. I took the tsubaki bud in my hand and looked at it for half a day: the green leaves were glowing golden red, and when I put it in front of my nose, I sniffed it, and the thick aroma went straight to the lungs. At noon, two dishes were made: a tsubaki sprout mixed with tofu and a tsubaki sprout scrambled egg. I drank two glasses of wine from Fudi Longquan.
The food is beautiful, the wine is beautiful, and the beauty is nourishing. After two glasses of wine, looking at the two small dishes related to toon that have not yet been eaten, a kind of nostalgia that has never been felt before generally floods from the bottom of the heart. Unconsciously, two huge teardrops rolled out of the corners of his eyes.
I was born in the early sixties of the last century, and I have lived nearly two decades of hardship. In those days, many times it was necessary to wrap the belly of wild vegetables in the field and the leaves of trees. Locust leaves, poplar leaves, elm leaves, and tsubaki buds are all foods for hunger. Among these foods, the only one that can be used as a delicacy and can be eaten for a long time is toon.
Toon is divided into purple toon and green toon. The first buds of purple toon are purple-red, shiny, fragrant, less fiber, rich in oil; the canopy of green toon is upright, the first buds are greenish brown, the fragrance is slightly lighter, and the oil is relatively small. Naturally, the taste is also worse than that of purple toon.
Toon is cultivated on Chinese soil, but in the north. As far as our county is concerned, the most intensive toon cultivation is Dong'a Town. Most of the villages in its territory have plantations, Qiaozhuang, Beizhang, Mengzhuang, Renhe, Nanshi, Yinliu, Wangzhuang, Xinzhuang, Taihe, Houzhuang, Qiaolou and other villages have a patch of toon forests, and nearly 1,000 acres have been planted in Nanshi alone.
The toon produced here is of good quality, rich in aroma and nutrients, and is very popular with people, and the products are exported to large and small cities inside and outside the province.
In 1982, after graduating from university, I went to pingyin ninth middle school to teach. I have a colleague from Dong'a Town, and I came to his house as a guest and ate tofu mixed with tofu. Although the dish is not expensive, it is very delicious. The rich fragrance of toon and the fragrance of tofu blend together, the taste is so harmonious, so chic, so tempting, eat into the mouth and tongue fragrant, swallowed into the taste, swinging intestines.
Before leaving, I took a finger-thick toon seedling and planted it in the yard of my hometown. My family belongs to the fertile plains, and within a few years the toon seedlings have grown tall and thick. After tillering, this toon tree gave birth to many more. Every spring, in addition to enjoying it at home, I also send some to my neighbors. The rest, take the set to sell, get some money to supplement the family.
Tsubaki sprouts are often used as fried eggs, tofu mixed, or fried "Tsubaki bud fish". Just like egg tea is not tea, Tsubaki bud fish is not fish, to put it bluntly, it is fried Tsubaki buds. At that time, people could not afford to eat fish, so they replaced fish with tsubaki buds to comfort the desire to eat fish.
If you can't eat it, you can make salt into pickles, which can be enjoyed for a year. The toon of the first stubble tastes the most beautiful, and the second stubble is much worse. If the buds grow into large leaves, they can hardly be eaten. But what the common people have is wisdom. They would take the old stalk out of the stone and roll it, and the skin would fall off the stalk, and then, they would chop the skin into pieces and put it together with the half-crushed okara to make vegetable tofu. This dish tofu has a great taste and is eaten in pancake rolls, which is enough to make people feast.
Tsubaki buds are the best of hospitality. The ancients also often used Tsubaki buds to entertain guests. The Ming Dynasty official and scholar Li Lian (1488-1566) wrote a poem called "Village Residence".
The first time return family.
The wine is still floating in the urn, and the spring wind blooms its own flowers.
Hold the grandson to explore the bird boat, and stay the guest to cut the tsubaki buds.
Unlimited village pleasure, everyone dares to boast.
Treat guests with Tsubaki buds, guests are happy, they are also happy, and a few words of "boasting" show a sense of pride, which is also a feeling of happiness. My grandfather lived in Taiwan for a long time, although he was not a guest, every time he came home, his family would "treat him as a guest". My grandfather traveled south and north all his life, and it was also common to eat mountain treasures and seafood. Every time he goes home, in addition to the Shandong steamed buns, his favorite food is tofu mixed with tsubaki buds. His return to his hometown is not always spring. In order to let him eat "fresh tsubaki buds", I created a way of preserving freshness: cleaning and blanching, cooling and bagging and freezing. Such toons can be maintained for a year without diminishing their taste.
My grandfather died and was buried in the cemetery of his hometown. Nowadays, the Qingming Festival sweeps, does not allow burning paper, and offers flowers. Every year, I sweep the grave of my grandfather, and in addition to placing flowers in front of my grandfather's grave, I sometimes put a bouquet of toon. I think that the smell of this toon may be more comforting to the spirit of the old man in heaven!
In my mind, toon is really a heavenly treasure. It not only tastes good, can hang people's appetite, but also very nutritious. Experts say that toon buds contain a lot of vitamins, fiber, protein and aromatic oils, as well as rich in calcium, phosphorus, iron and other essential nutrients.
In addition to being rich in nutrients, it also has the effect of healing diseases. Toon has a special fragrance, can promote the secretion of digestive juices, for people with low appetite, no appetite, eating toon can be a good way to enhance appetite. It also has obvious effects in dispelling heat and dampness.
Another year of Tsubaki bud green. When I ate Tsubaki buds mixed with tofu again, I thought of the forty-year-old toon trees in my hometown that had grown for forty years. A few years ago, because of the relocation, the tree was all killed. Recently, I went back to my hometown and looked at it, and the original village had become farmland and planted with wheat. The wheat is turquoise and spreads to the sky. At this time, there is also my strong nostalgia that spreads across the sky.
In my hometown, in the place where the toon grew, I stood in a daze for a long time. As soon as the wind blew, two more lines of tears were shed.
This spring, from a handful of tsubaki buds, I chewed out a different kind of nostalgia. Leisurely, spongy, long, with no end in sight.
About author:Zhan Enhua is a member of Shandong Writers Association. He has published a number of works, including the collection of essays "The Watch of the Spiritual Homeland", "The Long Talk of Caolu", and "The Feast of Life"; the poetry collection "Pingyin Yinzan"; the long-form reportage "The Earth as a Guide", "The Witness of Qiangshan Mountain", and "Casting Dreams"; the reportage collection "Questioning the Earth"; and the long novel "The Old Affairs of Meizhuang". The novel "The Past Affair of Meizhuang" won the 8th "Literary and Art Quality Project" Award of Jinan City and the 9th "Literature and Art Quality Project" Award of Shandong Province. Long-form reportage "The Land is a Mirror" (co-authored) Shandong Province's Ninth "Literary and Art Excellence Project" Award.
[Editor and production: Slippery, real name Liu Jian, senior teacher, founder of Huanpai Literature. On the title page of his book "Slippery", it is impressively written: "Humble is fine, fine is humble." / The one who is humbled is dying, / The spirit is coming to an end because of the essence. / Life is different, / People die together. / Alive, once red-faced for a chicken feather, / Can sacrifice one's life for a girl to forget death; / Dead, not proud of the tens of millions of beautiful women in Guangsha, / Not depressed...]
One point number Chinese literature slips