Reject pop, I just want to live "old-school"
The somen of Xiyuan Temple Hong Aizhu / Photo
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Hong Aizhu, author of "Old School Girls' Shopping Route", is from Taipei, and she came to Suzhou at the end of July to do activities, which is her first time returning to the mainland after many years.
During the two-day trip, she visited the ancient city of Suzhou, eating somen from Xiyuan Temple, drinking Su-style mung bean soup, and visiting art gardens highly recommended by friends. In one day, the City Walk reached 14,995 steps. She walked another 5 steps in the hotel room and gathered 15,000 steps.
Young writer Zhang Yiwei grew up in Shanghai, went to Taiwan to study, and now lives and works in Shanghai. She considers herself a sensitive and melancholy E person, who likes three shrimp noodles and chicken head rice, and came to Suzhou by half-hour high-speed train, just to fulfill her happiness of eating a bowl of sugar porridge across the city.
An old-school girl from Taipei who loves to eat and write and a Shanghainese girl cross the strait and meet Gusu this summer. In the era of noise, they take the traditional civic taste, transfer daily experience, and give shape to life and life experience again.
There are many stories in the small town
Visit the night market and braised pork rice
It's all humane
When Hong Aizhu mentions Taipei, she often says that "there are many stories in small towns". Taipei is small, but it has mountains and seas – climb the suburban mountains in the morning, go down the mountain to eat a set of baked cakes, visit the vegetable market in the morning, soak in the hot springs in the afternoon, and eat seafood or night markets in the harbor in the evening. Zhang Yiwei studied and lived in Taiwan, and was taken by Zhu Tianwen to the Shanghai restaurant that diners only knew, and tasted many local dishes that he had not eaten in Shanghai.
The memory of a city is as much about food as it is about people. Those inconspicuous small town stories are always slowly fermented with the taste of human feelings, making people feel the truth and tranquility of life.
Hong Aizhu: There are many stories in Taipei, and the pace is very suitable for life.
Braised pork rice is one of Taiwan's iconic snacks. If you go to Taiwan, you can see a variety of braised pork rice, cut into thin strips is the braised pork rice from the food stall, and a piece of pork skin connected to different parts of pork is the controlled pork rice that Taichung Changhua will have.
I look at braised pork rice, which is a collection of many of Taiwan's essence products in a small bowl. Rice from Zhuoshuixi in central Taiwan, soy sauce made from black beans, and locally raised black pig are cooked into a good bowl of marinated pork rice. The braised pork we make at home is a bit like the braised pork in Shanghai, which is small cubes. The advantage of braised meat at home is that its shallot aroma is obvious, which is not the same as braised pork, we cut the shallots thinly and then fry them with lard, mainly to eat the aroma, the taste and color of the sauce are not so strong. I think the various versions of Taiwanese braised pork rice are worth experiencing.
In recent years, it has also been spread through film and television, and has a new understanding of the mainland's diet. For example, in recent years, I like to watch "Breakfast China", there are Beijing bean juice, Chengdu's shosho, Chaozhou's kueh juice, Fujian's Xiapu Sansha's Minnan paste (I make it dry at home, and only make it during the New Year, this version is actually soup, the color is also light), Taipei's fresh fish soup (this is my husband's favorite shop, he wrote in the book, many Taipei people may not know, but it was also photographed, really insider).
Illustration of "Old School Girl Shopping Route"
Zhang Yiwei: Taiwan is very slow, but it is very humane.
When I was studying for a doctorate in Taiwan, I was still a student, and I didn't know much about luxurious Taiwanese food, but I ate more snacks, Shiji spicy hot, and Lin Dongfang beef noodles. I have written articles myself, like a towny izakaya with Taiwanese Japanese food, such as green bamboo shoots, Ming Taizi flower branches, saury sashimi from the Taiwan Strait, or Penghu seafood.
The pace of life in Taipei is slow, but very human. Sometimes I go to buy coffee near the school, and it's past noon, and the boss says, "I'm sorry I haven't ground the beans yet, you have to wait for me." "I went to buy soy milk, and the lady would say: "Auntie is so tired today, she didn't grind soy milk, I'm sorry." ”
My mentor in Taiwan was engaged in the study of Ming and Qing dynasty novels, writing about the ethics of worldly feelings, especially about "love"; And my doctoral thesis research "Journey to the West" is also a "difficult" writing. The research of the tutors and scholars is very rigorous, and I also learned to look at the details of life in the novel in this way, and understand the "human feelings" - the treasures in the book, the utensils used by the girls, the gifts exchanged to and from them, which are all symbols of sociality and social relations.
The experience of studying and living in Taipei made me feel this very classical way of life, and also felt the traditional "human touch". Just as the relationship between life and food is mentioned in Ms. Hong Aizhu's works, how food can become a way to connect family affection and remember loved ones. Through the practice of food, she gets up early to go to the market like the older generation, cooks dishes, side dishes, and restores the taste of her mother, which is a very classical way, a manifestation of "love".
Illustration of "Old School Girl Shopping Route"
It's dark and rainy
Aesthetic things are needed
Some indirect and tortuous
Speaking of the original intention of writing, Hong Aizhu confessed that her mother was seriously ill at that time, and she has been insisting on creating and painting while taking care of her mother, hoping to leave something for herself and her mother, and finally found that only taste can grow on her body. Zhang Yiwei's creation also began from the beginning of her life, and the memories of Shanghai Workers' New Village fully nourished her writing, which she has used to this day.
The "old-school" life brews timeless and gentle words, which also prompts a person to constantly reflect on the current society and life, and the keen perception of words prompts people to go profound.
Zhang Yiwei: Old things loosen, new culture formed.
After I moved out of the workers' village, I lived near Fudan, and the houses in the neighborhood are not very new, basically more than 20 years old. I myself miss the traditional market that I saw in the Shanghai Workers' New Village when I was a child, like the one Mr. Hong wrote about in his book. The vegetable market is the result of Shanghai's modern development, and people go to a designated building to buy vegetables. It's a modern process – we used to just set up stalls. Mr. Hong wrote a lot of traditional ingredients, spices, fried goods, and some special raw materials that are not available in hypermarkets. This evoked a lot of memories for me, I bought a lot of online food, and I suddenly remembered an ingredient when I didn't know where to buy.
The living space of different historical periods determines the way people live, and these are related to the different communities in which they live. East Asia as a whole is being influenced by many currents, such as Professor Yan Yunxiang's "family descensionism", which believes that young people no longer believe that they will become ancestors, so they focus more on themselves and the next generation, rather than on upward sacrifice.
In the patriarchal structure of the traditional family, the status of women is rarely considered, but gradually many women are beginning to observe the fragility of the family, or the paradox of blood ties. There is a very mysterious side to genetic inheritance: a person's strengths will be like those of their parents, and their defects will be very similar to their parents.
And the development of science and technology will also give women new fertility opportunities. For example, the novel will write about how the offspring of artificial intervention will look at their physiological parents and ethical parents 20 years after they grow up. Fiction represents a possibility, and you can imagine what the future would have been like if the event had already happened. It's interesting how people talk about what happiness is and what a new family is.
A lot of old things are loosening, and new cultures are being formed. I'm not so pessimistic, and I hope girls write more about their feelings about family, especially in East Asia. For example, the Korean writer Han Jiang, she will write about a girl who seems to have a good and gentle family, but she has been vomiting - she does not show abnormalities in life, but her body expresses resistance. Various manifestations in literature, resurrection, split personality, anorexia, vomiting... Use rhetoric to remind young girls if there is a different possibility. Writing in a surreal way about real feelings in family life is a great place for literature.
But with constant washing, the language we use is very different from that of twenty years ago. The language we use every day is the same as the written language, which sometimes brings some confusion to creation.
I like to observe the use of Chinese in various places. Literature lovers should have a smart ability to absorb different languages, like to listen to different people express the same thing, and detect the subtle differences between the two. The fiction of language itself will combine different words, so that you have an artistic conception or reverie, or sound beautiful, you will feel that this is a good, poetic language.
The writer Charman Ramboam says that in their dialect there is no word for "star," only "eye of the sky." There is a lot of poetry in the dialect, if we only use "stars", of course, "stars" are also beautiful, we can even name stars, but there are many indirect expressions, just like in Taiwanese, elderly couples are called "holding hands", which is also beautiful.
This kind of word is very ancient, highly condensed, expresses an image, and indirectly expresses the relationship between people. On the contrary, our current Internet buzzwords want to express something explosively, to attract people's attention in a striking form, but aesthetic things have to have some indirect and twists.
Hong Aizhu: The article is a development of personal memories.
The "old-school" life I chose was a slight personal resistance to the times. For the infinite pursuit of high efficiency, at the same time high waste, as well as the rush and impetuosity in society, a kind of silence is the opposite.
There is a premise here that the era does not advance linearly, but a continuous process of screening and revision. It is not that the new things are infinitely good, the old ones must be abandoned, such a simple binary distinction. Of course, I know that we are living in contemporary life, and we also use our smartphones to surf the Internet, so we don't have to go to the well to fetch water, and we don't have to tie our little feet.
But I have seen the lifestyle of the elders, such as going to the traditional market to buy vegetables, such as doing many things by themselves, such as their gentle way of treating people, many of which are very valuable, good for the body, and also for the environment, so I choose to follow it.
"Old School Girl Shopping Route"
The second aspect is that old things, even old people, are often the result of precipitation and have the power to calm the mind. In this era, I feel washed and manipulated by a lot of information all the time, and in order to resist this endless distraction, I go to burn four dishes and one soup, go to the market to talk to hawkers, reduce online shopping, go to physical stores to buy things, and go to the temple to worship. A little away from the times, people will be much more comfortable.
I'm actually an amateur, and "Old School Girl Shopping Route" is my first book, so I completely have life before words. It's a lot of going to the market, a lot of interacting with people. I have been cooking for many years, and before my mother left, I began to cook a lot of traditional Taiwanese dishes, even when our family sacrifices had to have three lives, that is, chicken, fish, pork, and white chopped chicken. Writing back blood relatives, family dishes, and deceased people in the family, I rely on memory, not thinking. These articles are a development of personal memories.
I believe that the Chinese language is ancient and flexible. If the writer is sensitive, he must pay attention to the form. Do your best to find the right wording and words. Some of these words, such as local dialects, may have a strong regional style at the same time, but they can achieve universal communication. For example, in Taiwanese, "the sky is dark and rainy" means that the sky is covered with dark clouds and is about to rain. Short sentences, yet contextual, quaint and concise.