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When I was 20 years old, I opened a small shop of only ten square meters in the city. At that time, the days were embarrassing, which was embodied in many details, such as going to an Internet café street next to eat skewers of incense, you had to mentally calculate which dishes to eat, and how many sticks to eat were within the budget. But what I remember most is the scene with my husband to share a bowl of chutney powder and a piece of sweet water noodles. It was one of the most beautiful fragments of the memory, and it was also about the city box, the longest taste.
At that time, on chengxiang street, there were vendors who pulled tricycles to sell snacks every day. At first, there was only one, a slightly fat and not tall sister who pulled a tricycle along the street every day to sell. As long as the shout of "cold noodles, boiled noodles, sweet water noodles, chutney powder, rice dumplings" sounds, nearby store owners, neighbors who rush to the market, and neighbors on the street, there will always be some people who will walk over, gather around a pile, and buy a bowl of their favorite snacks.
For a long time, the old customer knows that this big sister's surname is Chen, so they call her "Big Sister Chen", of course, more people omit her name and directly shout: sour and spicy powder or sweet water. As soon as she heard this shout, Sister Chen immediately stopped the tricycle and skillfully mixed seasoning, boiling flour, or mixing noodles. When people take the sour and spicy powder from her hand, in the moment of suction, the sour and spicy taste can not only spread throughout the taste buds, but also drift far along the street. Sister Chen's trick of making chutney powder is also often rumored to be "pepper should be hemp, sea pepper should be spicy", but no one can copy the unique taste that she personally concocted.
As a famous snack in Chengdu, sweet water noodles are the best skills of Sister Chen. The noodles are all kneaded by her hand, the noodles are evenly formed, the thickness of chopsticks, the entrance is quite chewy, and the tendons are elastic. But to do this step is only to give the sweet water surface a plump and tough body, to give the sweet water surface soul, the secret is in that spoonful of sauce. The sweet and spicy sauce mixed with red pepper oil, copied soy sauce, crushed peanuts, chopped kohlrabi, garlic paste, etc., makes a bowl of sweet water noodles a hometown memory of countless city people.
At that time, Sister Chen's mobile snack cart often passed by the storefront I operated, and my husband and I naturally could not withstand her delicious temptation, but the hardships in the early stage of entrepreneurship also let us know that we should be thrifty. So, most of the time, we just buy a bowl of noodles or flour and eat it in pairs with two people. Sometimes eating flour, the toppings inside, we always give up to each other, if you eat sweet water, two people also have to push for the last noodle for half a day. Think about it, although I was young at that time, I already knew how to love.
The town is not large, but there is a history of 1600 years of establishment and 1400 years of county history, And Sister Chen's snack cart has been wandering in this small city with a turtle back system pattern all year round, embedding itself in the time and shade of the small city, becoming a scene in the story of the small town, and also achieving a wisp of fireworks in the lives of people in the town. The stories that happened around this food truck are always seen, remembered, and forgotten. Nowadays, all I can remember is a few fragments of this food truck, although these are some small things, but I always feel that the human touch of the small city is in it.
The usual route of Chen Dajie's snack cart through the streets and alleys is to first turn around the streets and alleys, and then go to the school buildings of the Zhuoma Steel Factory, the Second Iron Bureau, the Bearing Factory, and the Steel Filing Factory. She understands the rise and fall of every shop and factory in Chengxiang, the potholes of every road in Chengxiang, and every homeless man on Chengxiang Street. One of the things she used to do was to bring a bowl of flour or noodles to beggars and lunatics on the street.
One winter, chengdu fell a rare heavy snow, and the temperature was unusually cold. That day, at the entrance of the old cinema in the city, an old man in rags crouched in the corner, shivering unceasingly. Many people passed by him with pity eyes, and Sister Chen also passed him, but she didn't go far, stopped the tricycle, boiled water and hot powder, and then brought a bowl full of steaming sour and spicy powder to the old master. At that moment, no one praised Sister Chen's kindness, and the old man was not moved to tears when he ate the powder, everything happened naturally, and it ended naturally. The snow was still drifting, and one by one it fell on everyone.
It was not until I recalled that scene many years later that I found that the source of the bloodline that made the small town of Chengxiang continue for a thousand years was the warmth of human feelings, ordinary love, and instinctive goodness. These beautiful and simple emotions have never dissipated, just like the hot air of Sister Chen's bowl of sour and spicy powder, which can warm countless cold winters.
Three years after my little shop opened, because I got married and had children, I closed the storefront and left chengxiang town. Later, whenever I think of that small town, I think of Sister Chen's "mobile snack cart". Later, I went to many places and ate a lot of snack bars, but I never ate the good taste of the bowl of noodles and a bowl of flour.
Sometimes, I also go back to the city to walk, and every time I walk down the street, I hope to hear the familiar shout. In the first few years, I could occasionally meet Sister Chen's snack cart in the streets and alleys, but later I couldn't find it everywhere.
Two years ago, I saw a "Chen Ji Sweet Water Surface" at the entrance of Qiuyu Lane in the city, and I guessed whether it would be Chen Dajie's shop, so I went inside to find out. As a result, two young people were busy on the stove, and they felt lost in their hearts. Until the bowl of sweet water noodles was brought to me, I took the first bite, and I said to the gentleman next to me with great certainty: "This must be Sister Chen's shop, or the taste." The gentleman took a bite and immediately agreed.
It's really good that Sister Chen's mobile snack cart has finally become a shop, and she can be found in a fixed place later. In the past two years, every time I went to the city, no matter how hurried, I had to go there to eat a bowl of chutney or sweet water. During the period, she met Sister Chen, who said that she had now entrusted the storefront and craftsmanship to her son and daughter-in-law to take care of, and she came to help when she was free.
I was very curious whether Sister Chen remembered me, and after confirming it several times, I got such a sentence: "There are too many old buyers, and I can't remember it clearly." "The sense of loss in my heart immediately needed another bowl of sweet water to make up for it." However, the number of times I went later made me know more about the story of Sister Chen. In that story, it is a sour, sweet and bitter life, and it is also a simple and moving little daily life.
Sister Chen's name is Chen Hongying, and she is 57 years old this year. In the 1990s, she worked in a West Street snack bar, cooking noodles, frying twist flowers, pulling fritters, making oil tea... Her craft of making snacks was learned in the shop. While the family was trying to earn money to change their lives, her husband was laid off. In order to live, she quit her job at a snack bar, bought a tricycle, and began to run her own "mobile snack truck". That year was 2000, and she became the first woman on Chengxiang Street to pull a tricycle and sell snacks.
At first, Sister Chen was still very embarrassed to do this kind of small business. Because she is a native of the city, she used to be a neighbor, and she was always afraid that others would look down on her. But with good craftsmanship, her old buyers are more and more, the business is getting better and better, she is naturally relieved, small business is more and more handy, but also understand some of the old people in the town often say, such as "eat by your own craftsmanship, there is nothing embarrassing." ”
By pulling three rounds to sell snacks, Sister Chen arranged the family's life properly. Her chutney powder rose from the first 1 yuan a bowl to 5 yuan a bowl, and then to the 8 yuan a bowl in the store today, and the price alone has witnessed the change of the town in the years.
Although The price of Chen Dajie's snacks is always on the market, she will never increase the price arbitrarily. I remember that when the Wenchuan earthquake occurred in 2008, most of the townspeople no longer dared to go back to the old house to live. At that time, Sister Chen still insisted on pulling a tricycle out to sell snacks, but every time she could not walk out of Kuige Lane where she lived, all snacks would be swept away. At that time, her powder and noodles were only selling for 3 yuan a bowl, and many people said to her, "You can increase the price at this time, and you can sell out." But Sister Chen insisted on her own 3 yuan a bowl, never wanted to increase the price, she knew that she could not do such a conscienceless thing.
After more than a decade of pulling a tricycle to sell snacks in the wind and rain, she finally opened a fixed storefront in the city. Recalling the days when the old tricycle walked the streets and alleys, she felt that there was bitterness and sweetness, "Every day there is money to count, and it is also a kind of happiness to let the family eat and wear without worry." Sister Chen smiled.
Now walking into the sweet water of Chen Ji, it is not Sister Chen who is busy on the stove, but her daughter-in-law Juan Sister. I sincerely praised the young Juan Sister for being able to sink her heart into the role of "the inheritor of the taste of the old city", but Juan Mei'er said: "The last thing I liked since I was a child was pasta, when I was a child, I cried when I ate noodles, and I never dreamed of doing the noodle business one day." But after my mother gave me the craft of making sweet water noodles and boiling chutney, I felt that I was not at ease to give this shop to anyone to make. Juan Mei'er said to me while she was busy.
"Juan Mei'er is more like my own child than my son, and when I was pulling a tricycle, she often helped me sell snacks. Make this shop for her, I am also at ease. Sister Chen praised her daughter-in-law. Such a harmonious mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship adds to the warm atmosphere of the small shop.
That day, while we were chatting, the guest at the next table also interjected, "I came to eat your sweet water noodles with my niece today." I have been eating your sweet water noodles for 20 years, and everywhere I go I think about this bowl of sweet water, I say that the sweet water noodles in our city are the best. ”
Hearing this, Sister Chen and Sister Juan both laughed. Juan Mei'er also proudly said: "Our sweet water surface has also been sent to Wuhan Le, and people in the city who have walked to Chengdu, Shenzhen and Guangzhou can't forget this taste, and as soon as they come back to the city box, they will come to our home." ”
If the city box is a roll of Qingming river map, pulling a tricycle along the street to sell snacks is the way Chen Dajie appears. Sister Chen said that the most important thing in making snacks is to be attentive, followed by the configuration of spices. I think that Juan Mei'er must have felt that intention, so she bravely took on this storefront. And those who are obsessed with the sweet water surface and sour and spicy powder in the city must have already felt the intention in the food.
That day, in that small storefront, I finally understood where the simple taste that always lingered in the city box came from, and there was no doubt that it must have originated from the original intention of "living with heart".
Text/Zhuo Xi
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Source: Zhuo Xi, Xingang Literature and Art