Author: Liu Qinghua
Just after the Qingming Festival, the "old watch" who lives in his hometown wanted to come to Nanjing to see his grandson, and called me to wait for him at home, saying that he had brought me some gifts and said that he would surprise me.
What a gift?
In my impression, there are no local products in my hometown, and there is nothing to surprise people. Besides, now you can buy whatever you want. Come on, what kind of gifts do you bring!
There are guests from afar, and they are very happy!
Two and a half hours of waiting, waiting for the guests from the hometown, waiting for the gifts from the hometown.
At noon, the guest arrived.
As usual, the "old watch" is still the same, and he can't change his outfit anywhere, carrying a cloth pocket and a tissue bag, but the car he drove has been changed again. I looked from head to toe to see what surprised me.
Welcome guests into the room, drink tea and chat, and the topic will naturally start from the hometown. Talk about some rural fields, local dialects, seven aunts and eight aunts, short parents, and interesting stories about neighbors. When asked about any surprises, he took out a plastic bag from the cloth bag and said, "All the surprises are here, see for yourself."
What is this?, I asked.
This is a gift for you that I was busy with your cousin for most of the day yesterday.
Gifts, and I've been busy for most of the day!
Open, four yellow is not yellow, black is not autumn, and gray-brown steamed buns are presented in front of you.
"Don't you know?" said the old watch, "This is what you can only eat in your hometown when you were a child, during the Chinese New Year, wheat flour steamed buns without bran, noodles ground by stone grinding, and steamed firewood in the earthen stove." Your cousin-in-law specially explained that I would hand it over to you. The flour of the new wheat grind is pure and original. I haven't eaten it in years!" the old watch emphasized.
"Ahh "I was really overjoyed!
This "gift" is not an ordinary gift, it is like a cultural relic, it is too valuable, and it has been sealed in my mind for decades!
As the old watch said, this steamed bun can only be eaten during the Chinese New Year, and it is usually porridge, how can there be black steamed bread to eat!
At noon, I want to leave my old watch to eat and drink two glasses. He said that he would rush to his son's house to see his grandson, saying that he was waiting and looking forward to it!
This "gift" from my hometown, a plastic bag of black steamed buns, is made of wheat flour without bran, although it is as hard as a scale, but it is soft when it is distilled in the pot, and the taste also wafts out with the heat, and a primitive wheat fragrance fills the kitchen, and the smell of rain and dew in the countryside in a house.
I've lived in the city for a long time, and I'm used to eating white steamed noodles, and at first glance, it's really a little rough, but the more I chew, the more flavorful it becomes—the kind full of fragrance.
In daily life, people are accustomed to the whiter and finer the steamed bread, the better, when eating the steamed bread without bran, only to feel that the white steamed bread lacks is the fragrance of the field. So I wondered if it had something to do with the over-sifting of the wheat in the process of processing it into flour, and whether the original taste of the wheat was also sifted away along with the bran?
Wheat is directly ground with a stone mill, not sifted or sifted, the rustic taste of wheat husk, the fragrant fragrance, are retained in the noodles, such noodles are kneaded into steamed buns, the rain and dew in the countryside are kneaded into, and then the earthen stove is slowly steamed with straw branches, and the steamed bread taste of the cage is not comparable to the white flour and fine noodles.
Although the surface of steamed steamed bread without bran is rough and grayish, the original taste of wheat has not run away, has not dispersed, and has not been lost. Therefore, the identity of this steamed bun has become a "gift", and the white and fine fine powder steamed bun does not have such treatment.
The preciousness of the gift is hidden in the invisible smell.
At noon, I serve steamed buns. For this meal, the dishes on the table haven't had time to move the chopsticks, and I have already eaten two black steamed buns.
I don't care about how I eat.
About author:Liu Qinghua (Dahua), retired from China Railway, member of the Communist Party of China, senior political engineer, works for Xinjiang Hami Daily, Propaganda Department of the Party Committee of Urumqi Railway Bureau. He is a member of the Literary Association of Urumqi Railway Bureau and a member of the Association of Jiangbei New Area of Nanjing.