Grandpa's liquor store
Author | Feng Enchang
Grandpa was an alcoholic and loved to drink when he was young. He used to brew mountain fruit wine in the courtyard of my family's hut, fill more than a dozen large black jars with wine, seal the altar cover with yellow mud, and store it in a side room, enough to drink for a year. In the early 1950s, after the implementation of the land reform, he did not allow individuals to make wine, in order to drink alcohol, he opened a small liquor shop in the street cottage next to the gate, specializing in bulk liquor produced by the county distillery (early Qinchi liquor), day and night in his beloved liquor shop, selling wine, drinking wine, and the strong aroma of wine overflowed half of the village street.
Wine is Grandpa's god and Grandpa's soul. He drank wine at three o'clock a day, and the first thing he did when he got up in the morning was to drink the wine of the hour. He was very particular about drinking, and every time he used the tin wine pot that held two or two, scalded it with hot water, and then poured it into a small wine cup the size of bull's eye, and "squeaked" it into his mouth. His wine dishes are nothing more than a few small dishes of the farmhouse, and the coriander stir-fried meat is what he is good at. He cut the non-skinny and fat into small strips of meat, put it in a casserole and stew it thinly, add some coriander stalks, put it on the table, drink a cup of wine, and then import a handful of dishes, chew slowly, and fully enjoy the aroma of wine and vegetables.
Before Grandpa drank, he was lazy, showing that the emperor did not like to move under the holy will, and those who came to buy wine were too lazy to talk, but as long as the first cup of wine was drunk, he would immediately shake his spirit, talk more sweetly, walk lightly and quickly, drink three or four cups, his face overflowed with rosy brilliance, as if he deeply felt the happiness and satisfaction of life. The second dish he likes is hemp sauce cold mixed pork head meat, ten miles away in the small mountain village there is a pig killing Lao Du, and he is the same age, three days two heads to the village knocking on the stick to sell meat, Grandpa every time cut a little raw meat and meat (cooked meat), the time is long the two people became friends, Lao Du every time after selling meat in Grandpa's shop for one night, the two people talked about drinking. Grandpa often praised Lao Du's delicious meat, and Lao Du praised the loose wine sold by Grandpa for being delicious. Since then, Grandpa has met with wine friends, pig buyers from Weixian County, hoop stove makers from Zibo, and onion sellers from Zhangqiu, often come to my house to stay, and Grandpa will entertain with loose wine, and they all say that the wine produced by Linqu Distillery is pure in aroma and slightly sweet in taste, which is really delicious. Some guests are fascinated by this Linqu wine and don't want to leave after staying for a month.
Grandpa's small liquor store became a friend's inn, a hotel for guests to live in. How many people's hearts have been drunk by the fragrant loose wine, and how many people have become immortals here!
Feng Enchang was born in 1937 in Linqu, Shandong. He once served as the deputy director of the Propaganda Department of the county party committee and the chairman of the Literary Association, a member of the Chinese Writers Association, a member of the Chinese Folk Artists Association, a director of the Shandong Prose Literature Association, a standing director of the China Vernacular Poets Association, a famous poet and writer of the National Pastoral School, a representative of the "Rural Small Courtyard School", and was known as the god of Oriental poetry. His works have won many awards at home and abroad, and have won the honorary title of lifetime achievement of the highest award of folk literature in the Asia-Pacific region, "Golden Flying Eagle Award", and have been named the title of world cultural celebrity and national first-class artist, the inheritor of the legend of Feng Weimin, and has published 23 literary monographs, "Sugar Gourd" and "Hometown Cicada Song", which have been selected to read textbooks in full-time middle schools nationwide.