Eating, ready-to-eat, is a big deal for everyone and every country. As the saying goes, firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea, each piece is related to eating; Food, clothing, shelter and transportation, food is in second place, but in fact, it is also the first demand.
1. Before the reform and opening up
Before the reform and opening up, there were two main modes of eating: the large canteen model and the small family model.
A still from the movie "Alive".
During the Great Leap Forward and the People's Commune stage, we had tried to set up a collective canteen on a large scale, allowing the whole village, that is, the whole community, to eat together, men, women, and children, "without money", and to eat openly.
As a result, we gradually returned to the family model in terms of eating, and it was also a pleasure for the family to have a happy meal, and it was also a pleasure for the three generations of the old and young to eat together.
In some places, such as my grandfather once lived in Baoding Lixian County, he said that the locals eat more outside to see whose life is good, and who does not come out to eat is not able to eat.
To make a comparison, it is not necessarily Lixian
In addition to family meals, various units or large factories are generally equipped with canteens. For example, in "People Are Iron and Rice is Steel", there is a scene where everyone goes to the unit canteen to eat.
Stills from "Man is Iron and Rice is Steel".
In addition, in "Love in the Courtyard", Silly Zhu is also the chef of the canteen of the unit, and in that era, the chef was a good profession. Although the leaders of the unit strictly inspected the chef for taking private furniture, there were many opportunities for the chef to cook for the leader part-time.
Before the reform and opening up, the economic situation was not very good, and people did not eat well. Therefore, there is the sentence "eat more when you are busy, eat less when you are free, eat dry when you are busy, half dry and half thin when you are free, mixed with sweet potatoes, green vegetables, radish, melon beans, taro and the like", which basically reflects the situation before the reform and opening up.
2. The Eighties and Nineties: A state of basic contentment
In the 80s, with the deepening of reform and opening up, the life of the peasants gradually improved.
In rural areas, rice and flour and other fine grains gradually entered thousands of households, the author also ate some sorghum rice, cornmeal wotou and other coarse grains when I was a child, and when steaming sweet potatoes at night, my mother would put water in the enamel cup and add rice, which is considered a nutritional supplement for children.
When individual peasants enter the city, they will eat in restaurants, and Chen Peisi's sketch "Eating Chaos" depicts the state of peasants eating in restaurants.
In the major townships, i.e. communes, there are usually restaurants where people buy food on food stamps. In the 80s, I often went to the commune restaurant for my teacher to buy fried cakes and fritters.
Red and white ceremonies in rural areas are already relatively large-scale operations. The main family needs to find someone to "fall (lao4) busy", find a lot of people to help steam rice, stew meat and fish, the happy event is generally a big three-day event, the author is most impressed, is a clan in the late eighties, from the first night to eat, the next day to eat all day, the third day also ate morning and noon. At that time, there were still few socialized services, and when families ran errands, they needed to find relatives and friends to borrow tables, chairs, benches, and sometimes even dishes and chopsticks.
The author's father once complained: Your mother is too wasteful, and when she lends out a good bowl, she gets back all the untidy and rough bowls.
By the 90s, some people who had the foresight and courage to have a wide range of ways began to buy more dishes and chopsticks and do a business of renting dishes and chopsticks.
3. Contemporary
With the improvement of living conditions, in today's China, even in the daily meals of small families, chicken, duck and fish can be seen everywhere, which really fulfills the sentence: in the past, the landlord's family has never been so wide during the New Year.
When holding events such as red and white ceremonies, promotion to students, etc., most of the people in the city choose to handle them in the hotel, and look at the economic level of the city from 800-2000, as for the higher level, it is not capped, and it cannot be said.
In rural areas, it is no longer fashionable to find someone to help with errands, and with the progress of urbanization, the rural strong labor force is gradually decreasing, and it is more difficult to find someone to help. As a result, mobile kitchens with a chef and a few women gradually became popular. Chefs mostly use tricycles or cars to carry related supplies, most of them are in the form of 500-800 table reservations, of course, if the host has special needs, the price can still fluctuate.
Spending a wallet to cook, or going to a restaurant, although it seems to spend more money, but it saves a lot of things, and avoids the disadvantages of the main family finding people who are not easy to find, people who are not good to return, and things are wasted. Wildly popular.