Author: Li Li
In 1926, Xu Guangping, a young radical Guangzhou girl, wrote a letter to Lu Xun, a teacher who was teaching at Xiamen University, describing Guangzhou's colorful cuisine, and their books in the two places, in addition to talking a lot about work, were already sharing subtle and interesting things in life. Lu Xun's heart has long been buried in the dark loneliness, lu Xun's love, is introverted, difficult, dodging, hesitation. In the vigorous wave of female teachers that year, Xu Guangping was the leader of the student side, and Lu Xun was the representative of the teacher side, they encouraged each other, supported each other, and they began to communicate during the Beijing period. But it was not until June 1926 that Xu Guangping graduated from the Women's Normal University, and on August 26, Lu Xu and the two left Beijing in the same car, Lu Xun went to Xiamen, and Xu Guangping went to Guangzhou. In the xiamen-Guangzhou correspondence, the process of Lu Xu's feelings developed rapidly. I don't know whether I was infected by the youthful vitality of the young girl or really admired the food of Guangzhou, Lu Xun agreed in his reply that he would come to Guangzhou at the end of the year, and said: "I want to eat a snake and taste a little dragon lice." As a result, everyone later knew that in January 1927, Lu Xun, who had worked at Xiamen University for less than half a year, resolutely resigned and went to guangzhou to teach at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. In the year when he lived in Guangzhou, Lu Xun, under the guidance of Xu Guangping, the food leading party, should have tasted a lot of southern cuisine. Another year later, Lu Xun settled in Shanghai with Xu Guangping and officially began to live together. Whether Mr. Lu Xun ate snakes, the letter diary does not record, as for the dragon lice, I bet that Lu Fuzi must have seen it but did not dare to eat it!
Dragon lice, also known as water turtle insects, water turtles, also known as shooting turtles, urinary tank thieves, etc., belong to the insect class Coleoptera dragon lice family Oriental hidden dragon lice insects, widely distributed in the south of the Yangtze River such as Hunan, Hubei, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Sichuan and other places where water and grass flourish, in order to catch small fish, tadpoles for food. He has a strong swimming ability, and at night, dragon lice can fly in mid-air. Dragon lice not only into the dish, but also into the medicine, but also into the wine, it is said to have the effect of nourishing the yin and tonifying the kidneys, invigorating the blood and strengthening the muscles. Specialized in the treatment of the elderly at night urination frequently, children enuresis and other diseases. Therefore, in the south, there are often parents who go to the street at night to buy dragon lice for the elderly and children to eat, which is both relieving hunger and therapeutic. In my hometown of Wuzhou, Guangxi, the local custom is to call dragon lice as a living worm. When children wet the bed, the older generation will teach: Eat urine worms!
Dragon lice literally means lice on a dragon's body, but dragon lice are not as petty as lice, they are water killers who are so fierce that even the bone scum of prey will not be left. They are lions among aquatic insects and will even attack prey much larger than themselves in swarms. Dragon lice poles can be disguised, they will hide between lush water and grass or cover themselves with sand, and once there is something to be hunted, they will quickly draw out and hunt it. The larvae of the dragon lice are commonly known as water tigers, and the larvae can also fly in the air. The larvae are tigers, the adults are dragons, and the life of dragon lice can be described as the transformation from tiger to dragon. Dragon lice, young and old, are rather voracious predators, they never have enough to eat, spend most of their day hunting, and cannibalize.
When this underwater insect that is fiercer than the tiger has become a delicacy for southerners is no longer known. Dragon lice in Wuzhou have been made for hundreds of years. How does dragon lice taste? People who have not eaten it generally feel extremely disgusting, and people who love to eat it from snacks to large, feel that they can't get tired of eating. Outsiders generally do not dare to taste it, because they think that the dragon lice that are potted on the table or sold along the street are only more like cockroaches, because they are afraid of cockroaches, so they are also afraid of dragon lice and do not dare to taste it. In fact, the black and dull dragon lice, if you look closely, do not look like the flexible cunning of cockroaches, but closer to a bit like a hard shell insect, shining like ugin armor, while cockroaches are a little brown, biologically classified, they are two different insects.
Dragon lice are usually eaten in two ways: Wadashi dragon lice and pretzel dragon lice. The former is boiled in boiling water, stopped and soaked for a while, soaked in boiling water to remove the odor of insects, and then seasoned with oil, salt and spices, marinated for a while, and steamed in water after flavoring. The latter is seared and fried, then mixed with pepper salt. The former is thick and the latter is fragrant. I think the best thing to do with dragon lice is "harmony", and the so-called "harmony" means peace and lightness. Cantonese cuisine pays attention to "chicken has chicken taste, fish has fish taste", the same reason "insects have insect taste", its core meaning is that you can not use fried, oil pepper and other heavy mouths to cover up the original taste of insects. Street vendors make it easier, burning dragon lice, seasoning, draining, and sautéing in oil. The most exquisite of the dragon lice is the Phnom Penh Dragon Lice, which is the female dragon lice. It is named because of the pale gold trim on the edge of the insect body. Phnom Penh Dragon Lice is small, soft-winged, odorless, and can be thrown into the mouth like peanuts. Female dragon lice are more delicious than male dragon lice! How to distinguish? Unfold to see if there are suction cups on the forefoot, the male dragon lice have it, and the female dragon lice do not.
Phnom Penh dragon lice are uncommon because they are small and difficult to catch, so they usually eat male dragon lice. How to eat it? Pick up a dragon lice, pull off the head, peel off the foot wings, and see the neck exposing the white milk-colored contents of the belly, under the black hard wings, lined with white and brown alternating back lines, when removing the head, pay attention to the thumb and index finger gently swirling, and pull out the internal organs of the dragon lice to connect the head to remove the bitter smell of the internal organs. People who don't understand it use too much force when twisting the head of the dragon lice, tearing off the thread at once, the intestines are still in the body, and it is a bit fishy to eat, after all, the dragon lice are fierce carnivorous insects! Dragon lice itself has a slightly salty taste and does not require additional seasoning. Put it in your mouth, chew it slightly, clatter, in fact, there is not much meat to eat, just a little salty and umami, it is completely addictive.
I remember when I was in elementary school, my parents were busy at work, and they gave me three cents a day to eat breakfast on my way to school. When the gluttony comes up, I will deliberately save a little money for breakfast, such as changing the three-cent bowl of buttoned meat pho (or beef brisket, char siu, steak, pork knuckle, snail and other meat dishes with pho) to two dimes of humus vegetarian powder, green vegetable flour, and even a dime of net powder jatropha powder, so that after school, there will be one or two cents of pocket money to spend! What can you buy for a dime? You can buy a handful of dark shiny Wataru lice! The vendors can also let me choose by myself, although they are all about the same size, but there is always a slightly larger fat dragon lice, almost half the palm of the hand, it feels more mellow to eat! The vendor wrapped a triangle bag in a piece of kraft paper for me, and ate it all the way, the dragon lice were eaten as a snack, one by one salty and crispy, full and fat, and could be chewed in the mouth for half a day.
I remember that I wrote a "Southern Cockroach and the Primordial Land" before, the cause was that at that time, the Network set off a big debate between the Northern Cockroach and the Southern Cockroach, the so-called one side of the water and soil to raise a small strong, it is said that the northerners who came to the south, none of them did not have a reverence for the arrogant southern cockroaches, and they were strongly frightened. Southern cockroaches are simply not too scary! From Guangzhou to Xiamen, from Nanning to Haikou... The screams of northerners are all over many cities in the south, and when they come to the south where snakes and insects are infested, northerners can only sigh "laugh and live"! In fact, to say that the southern cockroach is a flying god martial general is mostly a spoof, right? It was so scary that it made people shudder. The so-called poor mountains and bad waters, the scent of mosquitoes and insects, in fact, is the ecological environment of nature is good, and everything is leisurely born. You say, isn't it common to live in a place where the little strongmen are jumping around and haunting, when they go out on the street or even when they dance in the air, and the idle kung fu throwing their hands and crying and screaming, picking up whatever object is at hand, carefully approaching, and then quickly and fiercely slapping it to death, or stepping forward and squashing? What's not to be afraid of? If there is a psychological shadow on the fat southern cockroach, then the dragon lice, which is somewhat similar to the cockroach, but more dark and shiny, is not a creepy "dark dish"? You say, when the northerners see an old Guang coming from the street, bite a pretzel dragon lice crunching and crunching, and mistakenly think that the southern barbarian is swallowing cockroaches, will they be shocked and flee? Oops, don't run! I haven't said anything about steamed sandworms (a sea worm), fried scorpions, white-seared earth dragons (earth dragons are earthworms), boiled osmanthus cicadas (an aquatic insect that looks like cicadas), fried bamboo worms (a worm that parasitizes in bamboo tubes), fried bee pupae, grass worm baked eggs (grass worms are also known as sand silkworms, a kind of bug that grows in rice fields, alternating yellow, red and green colors, with dense wart feet)... I found myself talking happily, there was no one around me, and the people who ate bugs were always lonely to the point of no friends.
Therefore, I can bet that even in the process of Lu Xun and Xu Guangping's love affair, Lu Xun promised to taste a little dragon lice, but he probably couldn't bite it in the end. But Xu Guangping, a warm and unrestrained southern girl who dared to eat dragon lice, wrote a declaration of her love to the dull and repressed world and to the 17-year-old teacher Lu Xun in an environment full of rumors with a determination and bravery, with a forward-driving posture. It's not legal! It has nothing to do with us, it has nothing to do with you, in short, the wind is my love! ”