Speaking of the shouts of selling things in the old streets and alleys of Xi'an in the 1960s, they are really diverse and colorful, and these shouts are not only rich in the color of the times, but also a reflection of a unique folk culture in the ancient city. Looking back now, it is really unforgettable that it is sour, sweet, bitter, spicy and salty, full of five flavors.
Something interesting is that at that time, every yard had a well, and there were often cases of dropping barrels into the well. Thus, the profession of fishing barrels was born. I saw only a man, carrying a bamboo pole on his shoulder and hanging a hook. As he walked, he shouted, first: "Catch the bucket!" Who dropped the barrel into the well? The second time, he said the opposite language, to make people laugh and attract attention, and shouted: "Fish the bucket!" Fish the well! Who dropped the well into the barrel?" Wang, the surname of the bucket, lives in a cave dug on the earth cliff between Hanguangli and Sizhi Village, and he has a son, who seems to be about the same age as us.
Then there is a lantern seller, every evening when the street lights are on, he will carry the burden on time through the West Zizi Street and the area of Egret Bay, shouting: "Osmanthus Lantern!" Seeing that no one bought it, he shouted: "Osmanthus Lantern, Kneeling Ha (below) knife!" At this time, there were naughty broken dolls chasing after the Osmanthus Lantern and shouting: "Kneeling Ha knife come!" Who buys a kneeling knife? Selling the Lantern was angry, scolding: You dog cubs, people say: City Gate Tower, you say that you have a long grin on your Jiri, people say that the City Gate Tower is grinning, you say that the on your Jiri is good! Can be very sticky! ”
"Jirizi", Xi'an native dialect. For example, there is "Falling grinning Jiriko squat". There is also "Jirizike", which means a person who violates the yin and yang; "Sharp Jirizi" means a person who can't sit still and loves to move; "Jingjiri is a wolf, bold and shameless". The so-called "Spermjiri" refers to the bare buttocks.
For example, there are: "Vaseline, alabaster, selling to buy and carry, no bottles and bottles with paper packages." There is also a white-haired old man who sells apricot core (Hu) cool eye medicine, who only goes out of the stall in the summer, shouting along the street, and his voice is clear and high-pitched, "apricot core (Hu), cool eye medicine", a throat exit seems to have cool air. The old man who bought apricot kernel (Hu) cold eye medicine, sold from the west of Xi'an to the street of the east end, there were naughty and mischievous inferiors who followed and shouted: "Apricot kernel (Hu), cool eye medicine, order one, blind two." The old man is a Xingping person, and also calls his eye medicine "Xingping apricot core cold eye medicine", which is a bit of a brand meaning. The old man sells in the area of Egret Bay in the west head, and no one in the alley dares to stir up the old man, and the adults are not allowed to bully the elderly, who dares to shout: "Order one, blind two." "I'm going to beat my parents up!"
At a primary school reunion, speaking of Xi'an's shouting, my classmate Zhang Yunxia told me a winter "ask the goods man whether it is cold or not." And against the cold wind, the street seller shakes with a drum and makes a voice similar to "not cold, not cold, not cold and cold" to answer you "he is not cold", listening to people Wan'er.
"Plucking Lang Drum" is a double-sided small drum with a handle held by the cargo lang, which is tied with a rope on both sides, and when it is shaken, "bu lang" sounds, instead of shouting, in order to attract customers, hence the name. Also known as "Bulang Drum" and "Bulang Drum". Yuan Guan Hanqing The third fold of "Four Spring Gardens": "My family is a cargo boy, when I come to this street market, I shake the drum to see who comes." The third fold of the Yuan Mingshi's "Fishing Tree": "Here is the head of Liu Ergong's house, shaking this drum." "I remember when we were young, there was a naughty baby waiting for the seller to deal with the picky customers, and when he was busy with the fire, diao took a step forward, drew his other drum from the cargo man's waist, and shook while running. The angry cargo lang hurriedly shouted: "Broken cub doll, run slowly, be careful of falling!" "Actually, I was afraid of breaking his drum." I remember a children's song that sang: "Rattle, round face, like the big jaw wearing earrings." The left one, the right one, singing with joy in their jaws. ”
Of course, there were also shouters, and there was a blind man who sold groceries with a tall hemp face, and when he walked the streets and alleys, he shouted like this: "Yang alkali incense pancreas, selling wooden combs and selling castor, people Dan Baodan Bagua Dan, ten thousand gold oil to ten spirit elixirs, who wants to come to whom to speak." When encountering a strange trickster in the alley, he will add a scolding sentence of "who doesn't want it, less farts." I love to see the process of counting accounts and finding money when selling groceries to people in the courtyard of No. 12 yard, she said to me: This blind person who sells groceries loves to wear a pair of long socks, and the big and small money are placed in the socks sewn up and down with 4 small pockets, the action is sharp, although the eyes can't see, but it will never be misplaced, and the money is not bad. When a cargo man sells a wooden comb, he will say, "Comb, peach wood." "Peach wood to ward off evil spirits, that year the peach comb was still a dowry for a woman to marry."
I remember that there was a "poke lottery" with a little bit of a small gambling nature, in a box divided into squares, each square put a piece of sugar, or a pinball or something. Let you poke open the layer of paper covered on it, bet on luck, if it is a snack on the top, then you lose, because a penny can buy two pieces of sugar at that time? If it's a slip of paper that might say a small packet of crisp beans, a pencil, a pencil knife, or something, you've earned it. Of course, in the end, on average, it is still the merchants who want to make money, but they make small money. Soliciting business is even shouting and singing: "Poke the lottery, try your luck, personally pay money to get things, can't eat losses, can't be deceived, a penny wave after a wave." The so-called "wave" of the Xi'an people means to turn, play, and scatter the mind. There are waves to go to the street, to the city god temple wave, to the waves outside the city and so on. Maybe people are a bit gambling, "poke" this thing is specially loved by small dolls.
There are small merchants who sell paper windmills, that is, children's toys made of paper folded in the wind. Selling paper windmills will shout: "Sell windmills, turn luck." Good luck and good luck. "Hawkers generally push a modified elevated wagon, the roof is one person high, the upper side of the two rows of wooden planks, with colorful paper windmills inserted on it, the vendor shook his head when he shouted, very proud.
The hawkers shouted so much because the windmill symbolized auspiciousness, and the windmill symbolized freedom and dreams, symbolizing smooth sailing. There is a saying that "the wind blows the windmill and turns, and the happy year turns". It also symbolizes "running qiankun" and "feng shui good luck".
Paper windmills, that is, windmills made of paper folded. It is the most direct sustenance in childhood memories of longing to fly and yearning for the blue sky. Paper windmills also have a long history, and this object is already in the Collection of the Southern Song Dynasty painter Li Song's "Cargo Lang Diagram" in the Collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing. Unfortunately, there is no sound, I don't know how the Southern Song Dynasty goods lang shouted eight or nine hundred years ago?
In the 1950s and 1960s, there were also specialty children's toys. Kicked shuttlecocks, beaten wooden monkeys, rolling iron rings, jump rope with wooden handles.
The most peculiar kind of glass products that can be blown and sucked with the mouth, the bottle mouth is thin, the stomach is large, the bottom is thin, and when it is sucked and blown, it will make a jingling sound, so this toy is called "ding-dong". Hawkers along the street came pushing carts and blowing jingles while shouting: "Ding-dong ding-ding "The student doll will hear it from afar and will shout: Sell jingles to come! Not far from the Egret Bay where I live, the middle school passed through Xia Jia Shi Zi and Liang Jia ArchWay Road, there is an alley called Dingdang Lane, which is said to be named for blowing glass products during the Ming Hongwu years. Tinker Bell Lane used to be a place where this toy was manufactured and sold. At present, this alley has disappeared because of the transformation of the old city.
The most attractive to children is that one is to sell mirrors, one-inch size round small cage drawers, put glutinous rice, sugar, green and red silk, walnuts, etc., and steam on a small stove. After steaming, it is tied up with a small piece of bamboo, and a dessert like a small round mirror is eaten, so it is called mirror. It's good-looking and delicious, and the shouting voice is two words, short and urgent: "Mirror Yu!"
The second is marshmallow, the sugar into water, after heating, the use of air pressure to spew out a clump of cotton silk flocculent things, a small bamboo skewer stirred, it has become a big knot, this is called marshmallow, its puffing process can be magical, when eating puffed, the entrance is melted, the feeling is wonderful. This reminds me of the popcorn everywhere in Xi'an, a black bomb-like iron lump, put into a small vat of rice, covered and sealed on the charcoal fire and burned, burned for more than 10 minutes on the line, put the lid on the mouth of a sack, untied the lid and deflated, only to listen to a loud noise, a small vat of rice will become a full pot of "rice flowers". In the 1970s, I heard people gossiping that popcorn had brought this thing to the United States and shocked the Americans! From then on, he did not dare to provoke our Chinese, and hurriedly sent Kissinger to Beijing to establish diplomatic relations with China. Because China has mastered this new technology called food expansion, it will not be able to feed itself 600 million people in the future, and the Americans will be able to stain it? It's so unbelievable! Such ridicule and self-deprecation really made me laugh and sad at the time.
I think back then, the economy was relatively backward, people dug up their mouths all day long, and the people took food as the sky! All day long, different snacks take to the streets at different times. From morning to morning, it is tofu brain, egg mash, soy milk fritters, and at noon it becomes oil tea twist flowers, fried oil cakes, and sometimes there are three original oil cakes. Before and after lunch, there are hot oil towers selling crispy beans and hemp leaves, pork and hot noodles. The hand that sells the pork takes a stick while walking and knocking, generally do not shout, with the sound of the zizi instead of drinking, shoulder a flat rectangular wooden box, there is a grid inside, put pig liver, pig lung, pig head meat or something, mainly the large intestine. I remember that he always crossed from the streets of Dongxi Zizi City to Bailu Bay, and then to Longqu Bay Xia Jia Shi Zi. Generally do not go east, probably because there is a small shop of Zhang Sanzi meat in DongziziShi Street and Land Temple Shizi, Xi'an is the most famous. I don't know if this seller of pork from Zhang Sanpuzi hoarded, hoarding, Xi'an dialect, that is, wholesale.
Hot noodle hot oil tower, is a well-known traditional precious snack in Xi'an, because its shape is like a wisp of gold wire coiled, like layers of towers stacked, that is, "with chopsticks to pick up like gold thread, put down like a pine tower", so also known as "golden wire oil tower". I remember eating it once or twice, looking strange, eating it tastes good, soft and smooth, oily but not greasy.
Then there are the rock sugar gourd and melon dates. In the evening, there is a Lantern Festival, filled with roses and osmanthus flowers. There are also soybean milk fritters, and the morning is not the same, selling soy milk may come so from Hanzhong, because there is rice in the soybean milk, but also put a few soybeans, called "rice soy milk". Selling rice and soy milk with fritters is also small, sometimes eight or nine o'clock in the evening to come out of the stall, the stall is relatively fixed, the burden hangs a red lantern on one head, sold until about ten o'clock in the evening, equivalent to supper. In the 50s, my aunt Zhang Zhixuan's family lived in the door of the teaching field, that is, for small business, sold fritters and soy milk, as if they were out of the stall in the morning and night, and changed into "sweet pulp" at night. At that time, it was not easy to make small business profits, it was not easy to take care of a big family, and my aunt had to sew clothes for people at home, embroider embroidery pieces, embroider pillows, embroidered uppers and so on, so that her eyes were embroidered badly, her eyesight was very poor, and she often cried in her old age.