Among the Cultural Symbols of China, there are several fruits that are famous, such as peaches, the allusion of "two peaches killing three soldiers" is still alerting many narrow-minded people; there are pears, Kong Rong let pears, which is the most common story about humility between brothers when we were young; and the contemporaneous people who let the pear's Kong Rong live in the contemporaries is the master of power Cao Cao, who hung the plum of "hoping for plums to quench thirst" on the fruit list of Chinese cultural history, and at the same time used the allusion of "green plum boiled wine" to argue the authenticity of the hero.
"The taste of pears" actually came from the mouth of a great Man in China, who said, "If you want to know the taste of pears, you have to taste them yourself." "Simplicity, imagery, and starkness, which also made me have a special interest in the fruit of pears.
In memory, the pear that I ate the most in childhood was the frozen pear, which is also called Qiuzi pear in the northeast, and there is a more beautiful name: perfume pear. Frozen pears, often in a large pot of brown-black frozen hard state appearance appeared in front of us, soaked them in a basin of ice water, they quickly froze and fell asleep, a body of ice shell faded, hard into soft, this time pick up a dark frozen pear, wash, bite through the peel, is sour and sweet rich juice.
This frozen pear is full of the taste of childhood, and when you grow up and go north and south, you will eat more pears. I remember when I was in Yunnan, the first thing I ate was baozhu pear, which was produced from Chenggong, and the green baozhu pear was like a round pearl, and it tasted very fruity and crispy, almost no slag, and its sweetness and its crispness left a deep impression on me. It is said that the Baozhu pear is the sapling of the Sydney pear brought by a senior monk named Baozhu in Dali to Kunming to preach, and the crisp peel and snow-white flesh have received the beautiful titles of "Gentleman of Fruit" and "King of Pears in Yunnan".
When I was in the army, I screened movies as a film projectionist for the villagers in Luliang' area. Lu Liang produces a pear with a beautiful name called honey pear, this pear is half light red, half tender green, not large, but the taste is indeed sweet and fragrant, so it is called honey pear. I remember that when we finished the movie for the villagers, the old branch secretary would carry a straw bag made of straw mats to our projection car, which was filled with one round and rolling pear after another. Lu Liang's honey pear with the friendship of the military and the people let us share the sweetness of youth, and a film projectionist as a propagandist of the People's Liberation Army enjoyed a kind of enthusiasm of the villagers.
In addition to honey pears, I also accidentally ate snowflake pears in Yunnan. Snowflake pears are produced in Zhaozhou, Hebei Province, and at that time, two years later than us, there were a group of comrades-in-arms from Jinxian County, Hebei Province, who had been in the army for a long time, and they returned from visiting relatives in their hometowns, bringing snowflake pears from their hometowns. This pear is the largest pear I have ever seen in my life, each weighing almost a pound, with spots of snowflakes on it, and when this huge pear is eaten by several comrades-in-arms, the taste is wonderful. It is said that this pear was once a tribute in the Northern Wei Dynasty, and its crisp, sweet and tender taste was its most important feature.
After talking about the snowflake pear, I remembered that in the mid-to-late 1990s and a group of writers visited the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. It was a day in September, we stopped at the Korla Tiemen Pass in Xinjiang, and the host introduced us to a pear orchard, and the trees were full of the famous Korla fragrant pears, which should be miniature in the pear queue, but it was also a special kind of pear that I saw that tasted very good when plucked directly from the tree. It is said that the Korla pear is a tree species brought by Zhang Qian when he traveled through the western region, so it has a history of at least two thousand years. A man named Xie Bin wrote "Travels in Xinjiang" in 1917, and he described the pear trees at the Iron Gate Pass on the Peacock River in Korla as follows: "The pear trees on the opposite bank are forested, the pears are sweet, and the so-called Korla fragrant pears are also." "Our encounter with Korla pears made me know that the beautiful Xinjiang not only has fruit ditches, not only cantaloupes, but also Korla pears that I accidentally saw, which is indeed the "delicious pride" of pears. Later, I checked the information to learn that at the 1924 French World Exposition, the gold medal was won by their own French white pear, and the silver medal is this Korla fragrant pear, known as the "Chinese pear queen" and "prince of the fruit", its important features are thin skin and fine flesh, rich aroma, sweet and smooth taste, melting in the mouth, and there are many centuries-old pear trees in the iron gate that selflessly and try their best to dedicate their famous fruit Korla fragrant pear.
Since then, my feelings for Xinjiang have come a little closer. Later I learned that the fame of Korla pear is very large, it is known as "Chinese famous fruit", or an important raw material of Chinese medicine pear paste, and Chinese medicine together to make pear paste to moisten the lungs and cough, especially in the dry and hot summer, with a bite of Korla pear made of pear paste will make you refreshed.
When it comes to pears in Beijing, the most famous is naturally the Beijing white pear. Beijing white pear is more ordinary, but the taste is still amazing, the old Beijing people do not have a bad mouth of this Beijing white pear, the love for it even exceeds the big duck pear in Tianjin, although there are several restaurants in Beijing signs are written "big duck pear" 3 words, this is a powerful advertising campaign, Beijing white pear seems to have no such advertisement, but the children in Beijing still like, love, gluttonous Beijing white pear.
Next, I would like to talk about a chance encounter with male pears, which was the first time I knew that fruits were divided into male and female pears.
That year, I traveled to Huainan, Anhui Province, an important town in Anhui Province, where bagong mountain also has many famous historical allusions, such as "under the Bagong mountain, the grass and trees are soldiers." On the way to Bagong Mountain, I saw lush pear orchards everywhere, and the villagers were picking pears in groups of three or five, and they were usually stacked on the side of the road to sell.
These pears are indicated as Hejiawei pears, which are actually a kind of pear, which is extremely delicious and juicy. When he bought pears, I found that the pears here were like crabs to distinguish between male and female, because he was chanting and picking, saying: "Male pears are not delicious, I buy more female pears." His words were addressed to the old man who sold pears, and the old man nodded his head, with a look of understanding.
I couldn't help but be curious, so I got out of the car and asked the male and female pears how to distinguish, the old man who sold pears, yile, said that the mother pear was large, smooth, and the "navel" he said was actually the top of the pear. What about male pears? Naturally small, pockmarked, shallow "navel", he added.
So my accompanying friend bought back a bunch of mother pears and ate them, and the mother pears were indeed juicy and fatty, and they were quite fresh fruits.
When I came back, I talked about this with some friends, but no one was surprised, they said that pears are the same as people, there are gender differences, and the mother pear is like a woman, and the taste is better than the male pear!
If you think about it, the ginkgo tree is divided into male and female, the plant flower also has stamens and pistils, the bamboo also has male bamboo and female bamboo, and the animals and plants in nature are originally arranged by the same creation, and it is not surprising that the pear is divided into male and female.
That time walking in Huainan, in addition to tasting the world-famous Bagongshan tofu, with the tomb of Liu An, the king of Huainan, there was also a little more common sense about the life of the male and female of the Pear.
Pear is a good fruit, it has a special and "separated" "close" sound, so many good friends break up and say goodbye, generally do not use pears to cut, apples and peaches do not have this taboo. Therefore, pears have accompanied human beings for a long time, leaving us with comfort and happiness in taste, as well as a special cultural meaning.
The pear blossoms are in full bloom at the moment, and when the pear blossoms that are as white as snow come to become pears, they must be a special taste again. Gao Hongbo
Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition