Cover news reporter Zhang Jie Intern Jiang Ruiyao
Even though the world is not stable, every spring is exciting. People's desire for spring has never stopped.
Plants have always been the most important part of the four monsoons, the fruits and vegetables that people eat, the dyes on their clothes, and the cures. Starting with plants is perhaps the best way for us to explore spring.
In the spring of 2020, Dai Rong, a teacher at Fudan University's School of International Cultural Exchange, saw a drone filming cherry blossoms at Wuhan University online. That spring, there was no one under the flowers and trees, but the cherry blossoms bloomed like clouds. This may have been the impetus for her to write "Spring, I Want to Go to the Field to Pick a Flower."
Dai Rong said: I like to make friends with people who can recognize flowers and trees, can distinguish common grasses, wild birds and insects, these skills may not be useful in real life, but the more you know about nature, the softer your heart is, and the more you can resist the anxiety caused by high-speed daily operation.
In this book, Dai Rong wrote about 20 kinds of seasonal flowers and plants that are very representative of spring, including the famous flowers in the "Qunfang Spectrum", such as peonies and begonias; and wild grasses in the field, such as February orchids and wild peas. Some of these plants appear in parks, botanical gardens, the wild, and some are daily vegetables and fruits. They all have a very strong seasonality and representation, closely related to China's solar terms and phenology and people's daily lives, and are a cross-section of the daily life of Chinese spring.
In the book, she writes about the relationship between plants and food, eating buds in spring. Toon, marlan head, goji berry head, pea seedlings. Bamboo shoots are also eaten with new shoots of bamboo. Chinese has a very long history of eating bamboo shoots, and the Zhou Li has a record of "the truth of adding beans, bamboo shoots and fish", and the "Book of Poetry" also has verses such as "its Yi He, but bamboo shoots and pu". Cold northern fresh shoots are rare, and Dai Kai's "Bamboo Recipe" of the Jin Dynasty also says that bamboo shoots are "cold in nature although they are winter in quality." The Nine Rivers are freshly bred, and the Five Ridges are prosperous."
Dai Rong also wrote that she had read a joke before, saying that there was a southerner who invited a northerner to dinner, the northerner did not know bamboo shoots, and the southerner told him that it was bamboo, and the northerner went home and split the mat and boiled it. In the past, children in Shanghai alleys were afraid of eating "bamboo shoot roast meat" if they did not obey, and at that time, every household had bamboo brooms, feather dusters and thin bamboo strips, and adults could let children eat the pain of skin and meat. "Bamboo shoot grilled meat" is not a delicacy, but the black humor of the southern city well.
Through plants, we can understand spring, learn about the world, and then get a deeper spiritual experience. As Dai Rong wrote in the book: "Ordinary people can only go to the fields, and all they see are ordinary flowers and plants, but the happiness of being close to them is the same." ”
(All images courtesy of the publisher)