■ Li Qingsong
The first time I ate August fried was in the Qinling Mountains.
That was a few years ago. At that time, a rough-looking wild fruit on the plate had its mouth open —I don't know what kind of fruit it was, but a local friend said it was a good thing. What is a good thing? I peeled off the shell, ate a bite of the flesh, and immediately went silent—because the tip of my tongue was upside down, the sky was spinning, and the sweetness was so sweet that people almost jumped off the earth. Fortunately, there was no jump, and the jump was also a white jump, and the August fried was so sweet - it was a thrilling sweetness!
March blossoms August melon,
The heart is self-indulgent.
Usually shy not to see guests,
Open the door today and laugh haha.
The August melon in the folk song is august fried. In August, the vine is fried and entangled with the plant, and the main vine is divided into branches, and the vines are wrapped around the branches, and the branches are hooked with the vines. The number of branches and vines is uncountable. However, the flourishing of vines does not mean that the fruit will bear more. Generally speaking, a tree bears three or two fruits, and the number of more is seven or eight. Before the fruit is ripe, the color is generally green, and as the ripening period approaches, the fruit will gradually change from green to purple-red and then to ephemeral, and a white line will quietly appear on the central axis of the abdomen - danger and accident lurk on the white line - this is the part where it will explode.
When the season comes to white dew, it is too late to be sad, and summer has passed. Perhaps, all wild fruits in nature have their own logic and rhythm, and most wild fruits slowly count the number of days and gradually mature. After ripening, if no one pays attention, and no insects or birds pay attention, they fall to the ground bored, sighing, mourning and desolation. August fried, is also so low-key and quiet. On weekdays, it is so hard to hang on the tree, hidden in the leaves. However, this is an illusion that everything that seems ordinary is accumulating an extreme energy.
At some point in the late August to the beginning of September, when there is a bang, it explodes, revealing the white flesh inside, and the aroma is pervasive. In an instant, the sun shines in, and the sunlight in the shell also has an aroma. I don't know how ants, bees, flies and other insects got the news, they came from all directions as fast as they could, competing to enjoy the most delicious taste in this mountain forest.
Then the birds came. The bird was Sven, and did not show a gluttonous side. It first sang in the tree, singing tired to rest, and then look around, and then look at the sky to see the ground, see no predators appear, so it tucked its head into the fruit shell, the tail cocked, and in a few moments, the August explosion became an empty shell. The insects such as ants, bees, and flies in the shell have disappeared, leaving only sunlight, lonely and lonely. Finally, the bird did not even let go of the sunlight, pecked hard, and flew away.
Once the August explosion exploded, it changed its previous low-key and quiet, and its temperament became generous and agitated. At this time, it needs to be fried and eaten, and the time to eat it is only one or two days. The unexploded pulp cannot be eaten, and is light and tasteless. If the mouth is fried for a long time, it cannot be eaten - the flesh has oxidized and turned black and dry. Later, when I walked around the mountains of Yungui, Northern Sichuan, Gannan and Western Fujian, I also encountered August fried many times, but I never ate it again, and I always had a little regret - or the season was not right, or the season was right but it had not exploded, or the flesh of the fruit was blown up but disappeared.
The seeds are fried in August, and the grains are full. Black, hard as iron grains, can knock off the teeth, people can not eat, to spit out. The flesh hugs the seed tightly together. Perhaps, anxious people can't eat August fried, because August fried is not more flesh than seeds, but more grains than pulp. How many grains are there in a fruit? I haven't counted, it should be more than many — it takes time and patience to remove the pulp from the grain.
August fried is also called Nazi, August Na, Ma Teng Bao, Mu Tong Guo, Wild Banana, Wild Papaya, Foreseen, Shengwu, Pressure Shock, Clover Wood Pass, Beef Loin Fruit, Dog Egg Egg, etc., aliases can be listed in a long list. There are elegant names, there are common names, and there are also indecent names - I will not list them all.
Foreknobi is the name of the August fried in Chinese medicine. Why is it called a precognition? There is a note in Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica", to the effect that its fruit has the function of early warning - take two fruits and embellish them on the collar, and when there is poison, the fruit will make a rattling sound, so it is called foreking. I have not verified whether this statement is true or not, but I prefer to believe Li Shizhen. But what is poison? There are three solutions: one is that Gu Jiuji will become a poisonous insect that can fly, and be called a clam; one is that witchcraft will kill people, making people unaware, and the law of murder is called a deception; one is to take a hundred insects and put them in a dish, and after years of opening, there will be a worm that will eat all the worms, and this worm is a clam.
A slug is a slug, and a poison is a poison. Poison is not necessarily all cunning, but cunning must carry poison.
Deception is suspenseful, poison is cruel, and collusion between poison and poison often leads to bad things. However, where there is poison, there must also be something poisonous. "Kaibao Materia Medica" and "Medical Forest Essentials" are all recorded, predicting that the child kills insects, cures all kinds of poisons, and wards off snake and insect poisons. Perhaps, there is really some element in the August fried fruit, and when it encounters poison, it will have a fierce reaction, and then eliminate evil and detoxify it. However, I am curious, is the fruit on the collar a green fruit? Or dried fruit? Or the remnants of an open mouth after the explosion? Li Shizhen did not make it clear.
As an August fried of Traditional Chinese medicine, how to take it into medicine, the "Materia Medica" is clearly explained - "its root taste is bitter, the sex is extremely cold, and its effect is healed by the seed (fruit)." The mountain people are holy and carefree. Winter moon mining, yin dry, stone mortar pounding, under the sieve, where the poison, then fry the three money dagger, warm service, standing. ”
Lo and behold, the roots and fruits of the August fry can be put into medicine. From the perspective of medicinal efficacy, the root is stronger than the medicinal effect of the fruit. Fruit, can be milky, can be started. Roots can kill clams, can drive away poison, can cure diseases, and can also cure diseases that are not sick. Regular eating August fried can strengthen the body and refresh the body is certain. In terms of authenticity, the August explosion in Shuzhong is the best, and the Yunnan is also rare.
Bird is August Fried's best friend. The sowing of august fried mainly depends on birds, and the birds eat the seeds fried in August into their stomachs, but they cannot digest them, and they are discharged together with feces, and they are just sown. The vitality of August fried is extremely strong, it does not choose the terrain, is good at climbing, and grows arbitrarily. Whether it is a barren mountain or a ruined mine; whether it is a river ditch or a bare rock cliff, it rejoices and rejoices, multiplies into a family, and takes advantage of the situation to extend. The August explosion, the phenomenon of self-"explosion" from the inside out, may be the wisdom of the survival and reproduction of this wild fruit.
"August melon fried in September, not fried in September." It was the season of explosions in August, and friends in the Qinling Mountains called and said that they wanted to express a few fruits to let me taste them, but I refused. Because I know that eating August fried takes a kind of chance and luck, a wild passion and an atmosphere of the scene.
That thrilling sweetness is still hidden in the memory. Some things, space and time change, the taste fades. The taste is weak, and the state of mind is not the original state of mind.
Li Qingsong is a writer of ecological literature, a member of the Reportage Committee of the China Writers Association, and a judge of the 6th Lu Xun Literature Award. Graduated from the Law Department of China University of Political Science and Law. He has long been engaged in the research and creation of ecological literature. He has published more than ten monographs, the main representative works are "Believe in Nature", "Saihanba Time", "Pangolin", "Tribute Sable", "Notes on All Things", "Grain Full", "Geoethics", "Vincentri: Alien Species Invading China" and so on. He has won the National Outstanding Short and Medium Story Reportage Award, Xu Chi Reportage Award, Beijing Literature Award, Yanoda Ecological Literature Award, Feng Zikai Prose Award and other awards.
Excerpted from China Campus Literature, Youth, No. 3, 2021
[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 for a chicken feather red face, / can sacrifice oneself for a girl to forget death; / Dead, not proud of the city full of thousands of beautiful women, / not depressed with dogs for the company of sheep as wives. 】
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