For me, who works at the "Youth Daily", I can contact primary and secondary school students from various schools every week because of my work, so I can quickly understand what children are playing and eating, and some colleagues laughed that "it is not easy to get old by doing this job." In fact, old is definitely old, but because of being with children, it is true that the mentality can extend the shelf life. Some time ago, a student reporter took advantage of the winter vacation to come to the newspaper office to help, "Teacher Gu, let's order a drink in the afternoon!" "Okay! What do you junior high school students like to eat now? "We love to eat whatever you like, so order it on my phone." Ah, now children after school, it turns out that adults also eat snacks and drinks that adults like! A few simple conversations, but it evoked my memories of once after school. In the era when after-school tutoring classes did not blossom everywhere, and after school you could eat what you loved in the alley, we also had fun, and the children's "afternoon tea" was very different from that of adults.
A string of small meat corners, a string of rice cakes, baked potatoes to see the size, one dollar, more than three yuan is a giant Mac. That's the snack menu for after school in my childhood.
At that time, I was studying at the middle school of The Chinese Middle School on Yongjia Road, the junior high school was located in a lane, said to be a lane, and its novelty was like the magical bathhouse of Tang Grandma in "Spirited Away", eating, drinking and having fun. At that time, the lane snacks outside the school gates would usher in two business booming moments every day: one was a break after lunch (many schools allowed students to leave the school at noon at that time), and the other was after school in the evening. What to buy? At least I was impressed by these things: small meat skewers of red and green, a dime and a skewer, a dollar of meat skewers in the hand is quite domineering, after crispy frying, in fact, the meat taste has been very light, more is the taste of fried food. At that time, if the friends who went around the alley together shared a bunch of meat with you, it was definitely a good brother. At a class reunion a few years later, everyone recalled the cheap meat at that time, and some people couldn't help but say, "I don't know what kind of meat?" "I hurriedly said, don't think about it too much, we grew up happily anyway.
Together with small meats, the "Big Three" are also small rice cakes and chicken hearts. The three skewers lie quietly on the foam plastic paper tray next to the aunt during class, covered by plastic wrap. As soon as the bell rang at the end of class, the students walked out of the school gate, and the food stalls immediately became hot, some students came to a string of three kinds, and some paid ten small meats for one dollar. It should be said that this kind of pleasure is exclusive to students, and I have never seen adults buy these skewers. Along with this, there is also the business of flashcards, yo-yos, and even tapes in the alley.
Salty must also be sweet. The top spot for sweets outside the school gates, in the summer belongs to a variety of ice cream and drinks, and in the winter, it is not baked potatoes. It is the aunt who sells the skewers, and the old uncle who sells the baked potatoes. Roasted potatoes of different sizes are placed in a large blue, somewhat rusty iron drum, and the baked potatoes are baked one after another and placed on top of the iron barrels. Students generally do not buy too big, not because of expensive, but the big tube is full, after eating home dinner will definitely not be able to eat.
When buying baked potatoes, there was a detail that impressed me with the brand of the times, that is, I could use the bus advance ticket to check out. At that time, the face value of a ticket was one yuan, and a stack was 50 or 100 tickets, and many parents would prepare some for their children who took the bus home by themselves. There was a female classmate in the class who took the bus to elementary school, and there was a stack of pre-sale tickets as thick as a small book in the bag, and a few clever and mischievous boys would always ask her for tickets. "You ride to and from school, what do you want this ticket for?" A boy told the secret, and the old man who sold dried potato accepted the purchase method of exchanging tickets for roasted potatoes.
In the winter of 1997, the female classmate's ticket became the "baked potato checkbook" in the class. One to eat two to eat well, at that time we did not have a concept of money, plus the girl was generous, so everyone felt that this was a free benefit without money. The only time I asked her for a ticket with curiosity, exchanged it for a one-dollar roasted potato, and proudly told my mother when I got home, but I didn't expect to get criticism. "This is the ticket that the parents of the classmates bought with money, in fact, it is money, you think, do you mean to ask the classmates for money?" And if you take it this way, your classmates will have one less ticket in the future. "It was one of the few money-related educationS I received as a teenager, but I still remember it vividly.
Nowadays, in the winter, there are many fewer people selling baked potatoes on the street than in the past, it is quite strange to see them on the road, and occasionally I see one, choose a baked potato and hold it in the palm of my hand, and I will always think of the scene of taking out the bus pre-sale ticket to pay the bill. But the reality is that next to you are blue and green Alipay and WeChat payment codes, see them, quickly take out your mobile phone to scan the code.
At the mouth of Lane 478, Xiangyang South Road, Xuhui District, the signboard "Grandma Onion Oil Cake" written in chalk is large and eye-catching. Zhaojiabang Road, which borders Xiangyang South Road, is a main road, and many people who pass through this place to the north have just stepped into the "Hengfu Style Conservation Area" with one foot, and the Onion Oil Cake is already here to greet everyone with aroma. Working five days a week, taking two days off, in my grandmother's words, "As long as you go to work and school, I will open." ”
Although the people who buy scallion oil cakes do not line up, there are always two or three people standing on the side of the road with hot cakes. There are always some diners who come to nostalgia on purpose, some of them ride small motorcycles of literary and artistic fans, and some come in groups of three or five, in a word, all for the feelings of childhood. I am one of them, and I always remember passing by here after junior high school, and the picture of the steaming shallot oil cake with my friends for the first time, the satisfaction after the hunger and hesitation, which is now impossible to replace the Michelin restaurant.
Before the Spring Festival, I inadvertently brushed the "Grandma Onion Oil Cake" on my mobile phone, but I didn't expect that it was still open for business after many years, and it had become an Internet celebrity snack. I hurried here before dark, except for the grandfather who was replaced by the daughter of the grandmother, everything seemed to have changed. Scallion oil cake 3.5 yuan, plus eggs 6 yuan, plus ham sausage plus 2 yuan, take away if you help you set a bag, if you eat it now, fold it in half with a piece of paper, the corner of the city seems not to be affected by the passage of time, still in its way for people to bring satisfaction to the past.
"Grandma, I've been eating Nong's bread since junior high school and high school, and now I'm in my thirties. Nong's after-school children who are fed with cakes must be more than the number of people in a school! "After many years, I chatted with my grandmother for the first time, and I learned that my grandmother is 85 years old, she used to work in the spinning mill on Zhaojiabang Road (in the later Location of the Dynasty Hotel), and after retiring in 1985, she began to make scallion oil cakes, and it has been thirty-five years. In Grandma's narration, her lane cake stall witnessed the change of the times - at the earliest, the onion oil cake sold for one dime and fifty, in the eighties, flour had to be bought with a grain purchase certificate; in the nineties, after school, the alleys on the road were full of children playing, every day at 4 p.m., and there were naughty children who had tipped over the flour she had put in the corner of the lane; in 2001, the APEC meeting was held in Shanghai, and the cake stalls along the road responded to the request and shrunk into the lane; in 2004, The Shanghai Higher People's Court officially moved to No. 308 Zhaojiabang Road, and became a neighbor across the road with "Apo Onion Oil Cake", and since then this intersection has become solemn and solemn... The story in Grandma's mouth has been strung together for more than thirty years in the southern section of Xiangyang South Road.
I don't know how many children still have time to eat shallot oil cakes or baked potatoes after school, or whether they have eaten lane snacks that belong only to children, but I am sure that children of every age have their own happiness, especially in eating this. Meat skewers or net red milk tea, they not only fill our stomachs, but also skewer and hold the happiness of generations of students in their spare time.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Shen Yilun Text Editor: Shen Yilun Image Editor: Shao Jing
Source: Author: Gu Lidan