"Lamb dumplings are a wonderful combination that satisfies taste buds in the barren land of the Yellow River Basin" - the CCTV program "Chinese Image Chronicle" speaks of Hancheng dumplings, and the opening sentence is like a stroke of God. I have to admit that Hancheng people have a wonton plot, the taste of Hancheng that collides with the slender and powerful soba noodles and the sour and spicy oily lamb soup is touching the taste buds, but what remains is the deep love and attachment of every Hancheng people to the homeland.
■ Image source network
I went to high school in Otachi in 2000, and before I knew it, it had been twenty-one years. At that time, the stall selling wontons was propped up on the side of the road, with a bowl of meat one piece of five, not a piece of meat. On weekends, we often clean up, we have to run to the street, eat a bowl of dumplings at my classmate's mother's place, float a handful of emerald green leeks and snow-white green onions on top of the soup with red oil and red oil, put one or two sesame roast cakes, mix the rice vinegar more, and eat the stomach round, very comfortable.
■ Oike Kou Junior High School
Twenty years later, when you pass here, the old streets are very, very deserted. Like many old streets that are still nagged by people after the evacuation of townships and towns, Dachi Mo has also been red-hot, lively, and remembered in the past, saying that it is an old street, but a county road, a village road, two sides of the façade, the countryside every two have a set, the intersection of the T-shaped intersection has several birds stalls, a typical "road and bridge economy". Especially before the harvest of wheat in May, three days after the first to third day of the first year, sickles, sticks, wooden shovels, brooms, straw hats, etc. are full of utensils, the crops are all coming to buy the household goods for harvesting wheat, the people who plant melons, fruits and vegetables in the nearby villages to exchange pocket money, the sound of shouting is very loud, in a small empty field there are also pigs and cows, livestock trading, the trafficker god mysteriously put his hand into a person's sleeve to pinch the price, everything seems to be steaming, bustling, especially lively. We followed the adults, loved to see the liveliness, and the most worrying thing was the bowl of lamb dumplings.
Pressing the birds is laborious, and it is generally done by men. The reconciled soba noodles are put into the bed, and as soon as I lift my ass to sit on the long bar, the thin noodles twist and twist and fall into the boiling pot. The man's feet fell to the ground, the noodles were cooked, and the two long bamboo chopsticks were fished out and then iced into the cold water. The woman who scoops the dumplings is clean and neat, the sound is good, you are anxious to work under her hands but you are not hurried, take a bowl and first divide the pressed dumpling noodles into a handful and put them on the grate, you say you want a bowl, she opens a bowl and soaks it in hot water, grabs a handful of birds and puts them in the bowl, puts them in the hot water twice, scoops up the oil soup from the pot that "boils but does not boil, opens without rolling", sprinkles with leeks and green onions, and twists and twists from the bottom of the pot to fish out three or five tempting pieces of mutton and put it on the top, it is really full of color and fragrance.
How many loaves? The woman selling the dumplings asked, you just said two, the man who beat the oil layer baked cake over there has already handed over a stainless steel plate to the sesame cake with a crispy and fragrant and hot mouth. Lamb dumplings can't be separated from the freshly baked sesame cake, just like the cold skin in the "Sanqin Set" can't be separated from the meat sandwich steamed buns and ice peaks, which are born a perfect match.
Today, the national highway has been rerouted, the townships have been merged, the hospitals have closed, the schools have also been shut down, those familiar shops, restaurants, and dumpling stalls, some have moved to both sides of the new national highway, some have closed their doors, especially the small shop at the entrance of the school, the old two families who we went to school are sixty or seventy years old, twenty years later, the old house is gone, the former small poplar has sneaked into the sky, the caterpillar-like Poplar has fallen to the ground, and the daughter is happily picking up, which reminds me of many, many past events.
Time is changing, it has quietly changed everything.
What doesn't change is the taste of the bird, which is the nostalgia of all the Wanderers in Hancheng, no matter how far they go, how long they go out, they want to eat a bowl when they come back. This bird is also strange, unlike the Chengcheng water basin Da Li hand torn noodles Bao chicken rolling dough skin, the shop can be opened to all parts of the country, it leaves Hancheng, can not be found anywhere, even if someone bothers to get the noodles and cheeks to Xi'an, the township party members eat it and say that the taste is not quite right. The guest said that the water is not right, the lamb bird can not be separated from the water of our Hancheng!
One side of the water and soil to support the other side, the habit of the stomach, is cultivated from an early age. In Hancheng, whoever has a full moon, a full moon, and an old man's birthday is generally a happy event, as long as it is said that eating lamb dumplings, there must be a lot of people.
I remember when I was a child, every first day of the first lunar month, my father would take me, take the incense horse (yellow paper) cannon and other sacrificial supplies, go to a mill (big stone millstone) at the head of the village to offer the grandfather (sacrifice), respectfully kneel, year after year, until I turned twelve, under the chen (the agate lock that cut the necklace), they explained the reason to me. I still have a brother above me who did not take care of it, and when I had it, the old man who understood in the village said that he must recognize the mill, tie the baby, and let the grandfather bless. My father recognized me on the mill and made a wish—when she turned twelve, she would kill a black goat and let the villagers eat lamb dumplings.
I was twelve years old in 1999 and my family was still poor. For three students, a few acres of thin fields to exhaust the strength of that little grain can not be sold, just rely on my father a tile knife to build a house for people, really can not afford to buy a sheep. They discussed killing the black pig that had been in captivity for a year, and invited a distant neighbor to eat a meal of Hancheng wontons.
By the full moon of my daughter in 2016, the conditions were much better, and my father had found the mountain early and ordered a black goat, he said that God blessed our family, we must dedicate our grandfather, we must return the wish.
That day, before the sky was light, he and my three fathers pulled the goat back. The poor black goat stared at the big dark eyes, not knowing what it was going to face. In the courtyard, there were sacrificial steamed buns and incense horse cannons on the table, and the elders who knew the number of rituals took the wine bottles and laid wine on the sheep's head and ears, saying that the sheep wanted to tremble, and as soon as it trembled, God received the gift. Looking at the scene in front of us, I suddenly remembered that when we were young in school, the teacher said that the meaning of sacrifice was the pig, cow and sheep for sacrifice, and this lamb was "sacrifice". The sheep turned in many circles, shivering without I do not know, but the cannon battle that day was very loud, the lamb that day was fragrant with oil, and the people who helped the village said that it was delicious. The father, who never drank, was so drunk that he was rarely happy and happily left in tears.
Parents are really broken hearts for their children. Every time I eat a bird, I think of the black goat, think of the two words of sacrifice, think of my father who has suffered for a lifetime, and remember that he loves to say that "man is a black-headed worm, and he is tired for a lifetime." In this world, every parent who works hard all his life is sacrificing everything for the happiness of his children.
Nowadays, Hancheng on the bank of the Yellow River has already undergone earth-shaking changes, and the once barren mountainous areas have rarely been planted with buckwheat, and the big red robe peppers on the slopes have made the people's days more and more prosperous, and the land of "seven mountains, one water and two fields" has exuded a new atmosphere and new vitality of the new era everywhere. Hancheng with stories, journeys with taste, the Yellow River Longmen, the Ming and Qing Ancient Cities, Sima Qian ancestral hall, Dangjia Village, Gurui Guo, a business card attracts tourists from all over the country, friends from other places, enthusiastic Hancheng people are invited to eat a bowl of lamb dumplings. However, in the past, the dumpling stalls were rare, most of them entered the storefront, with Yuxiu, Zhixiu and many other good shop names, on the food street, the host cleaned up the shop, greeted visitors from all over the country, welcomed the return of the wanderers, and also let the Hancheng people who were about to go out again have a mouth addiction, and the eternal taste was also packed.
It is said that the ancestor who invented the bird was first a Mongol, and sometimes think about it, the vicissitudes of the sea and the mulberry field, it is so little by little that it is inadvertently generated. The development and progress of society does not allow you to immerse yourself, and those beautiful things have become distant past. In the blink of an eye, our parents are old, we are all parents, we have experienced many, many things, sweet and sour, hidden in the heart, silently, as if we are unwilling to tell.
Sometimes, I suddenly miss the carefree days of eating wontons at the stalls when I was a child, and I miss the days when I could follow my parents to the market to eat wontons.
Time flies, years are like songs. Alas, how many things, at that time, only the Tao was commonplace!
Lei Jia sang in the song, a bowl of water, a glass of wine, a cloud, a lifetime of love.
The so-called nostalgia, for the people of Hancheng, is it not the same taste of the bowl of dumplings?
Author | Huang Hewa | Hancheng people