Text: Upper Savo
Figure: Source network
The Tibetan Plateau is a mysterious place with brilliant sunshine, white clouds, pure sky, thin air, rolling snow-capped mountains, and quiet lakes. In this Buddhist holy land, there are many temples, devout believers, here the folk customs are simple, and the whole people believe in Buddhism. If you want to choose a smell that represents the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, whether it is the smell of the cold air from the snowy mountains of the plateau, or the smell of grass in the sunshine of the snowy plateau, or the smell of ghee from pastoral areas to agricultural areas, from homes to temples, as long as there are people, you can definitely smell the smell of ghee.
Yes, only ghee, an indispensable presence in the life of the highland people. Tibetans eat ghee for three meals a day, the fried noodles and fruits are mixed with ghee, and the guests are served a cup of butter tea first, and the temple for the gods and Buddhas must light ghee lamps. The special atmosphere of this plateau "milk gold" is the unique wind object of the snowy plateau.
Ghee is a type of butter that is processed with fats extracted from cow's milk or goat's milk. The surface of the good ghee is yellow, and when it is ready, it is stacked together like a gold nugget. Refining ghee is commonly known as "hitting ghee", and the tool can be operated by only one barrel and one stick, one or two people. Every summer month, the grass on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is fertile and beautiful, and it is the best season for refining ghee.
When beating ghee, the yak milk is first poured into a copper pot to heat and ferment, and then the water and oil are separated before pouring into the bucket. Tibetans hold a wooden stick that goes deep into the barrel and sing the trumpet while beating the ghee hard. After thousands of repetitions, the ghee in the milk is completely separated from the water and floated to the surface, and then fished out and put in a basin of cool water to solidify. In the meantime, you must continue to squeeze with your hands and squeeze out the water thoroughly to get a pure butter lump. After the ghee is shaped and placed in a bag sewn from cowhide, it can be stored for a long time.
Ghee can be used to make rice dumplings, ginseng fruits in oil, and fried noodles. The addition of ghee to food prevents chapped lips. Ghee can also be medicated, and external application can stop bleeding and treat burns. Ghee also softens the leather in order to rub leather ropes and leather strips, and in pastoral areas, young men and women also use it to wipe their faces to protect the skin, sun protection and cold. However, the most important uses of ghee are to worship the gods and make butter tea.
Butter tea is made by pouring ghee, tea and salt into a wooden barrel and stirring and heating it. Ghee is rich in nutrients, tea can relieve greasiness, and the two are a perfect match. Plateau life is bitter and cold and lacks fresh vegetables, for Tibetans, "it is better to have no food for three days than to go without tea for a day."
Butter tea is a specialty drink of the Tibetan people. Mostly eaten as a staple food with rice dumplings, it has the effect of cooling the mind and refreshing the brain, quenching thirst. This drink is processed with ghee and strong tea. First, put the appropriate amount of ghee into a special barrel, accompanied by salt, and then inject the boiled strong tea juice, and repeatedly mix it with a wooden handle to dissolve the ghee and the tea juice into one, in a milky shape. Tea contains vitamins that can alleviate the damage caused by the lack of vegetables in the plateau. The color of butter tea is similar to that of strong cocoa tea, and when you take a sip of tea, the tea is very fragrant, the milk aroma is fragrant, and there is a special aftertaste.
Butter tea is a daily must-have drink for the Tibetan masses. It is necessary for life on the Tibetan plateau. One can cure altitude sickness, the second can prevent the lips from bursting due to dry weather, and the third can play a good role in keeping warm. When it is cold, you can drive away the cold, when you eat meat, you can be full of hunger, when you are sleepy, you can relieve fatigue, and when you doze off, you can also clear your mind.
Tibetans often use butter tea to entertain guests, they drink butter tea, and there is a set of rules. When the guest is allowed to sit at the Tibetan square table, the host takes a wooden bowl and puts it in front of the guest, and then the host lifts the butter teapot, shakes it a few times, and pours the guest a full bowl of butter tea. Just poured butter tea, guests do not drink immediately, first chat with the host, and when the host again mentions the butter teapot standing in front of the guest, the guest can pick up the bowl, first gently blow in the ghee bowl, blow the oil flowers floating on the tea, and then take a sip, and praise: "This butter tea is so good, the oil and tea are inseparable." ”
The guest puts the bowl back on the table and the host fills it up again. In this way, while drinking and adding, not finishing, the enthusiastic host always has to fill the guest's tea bowl; if you don't want to drink again, don't move it; if you drink half of it, don't want to drink anymore, the host fills the bowl, you put it; when the guest is ready to say goodbye, you can drink a few more sips in a row, but you can't drink dry, and the bowl should leave some bleached oil flower tea base. In this way, it is in line with the customs and courtesy of the Tibetan people.
Rice dumplings are a staple food of the Tibetan people. Tibetans have rice dumplings for three meals a day. The name sounds fresh, but it's actually fried noodles with green trees. It is a fried noodle with green barley, finely ground, but sieved, which is somewhat similar to the fried noodles in the north of China, but the fried noodles in the north are first ground and then fried, while the Tibetan rice noodles are fried first and then ground, without peeling.
When eating the rice dumplings, put some ghee in a bowl, pour into the tea, add the fried noodles, and stir by hand. When mixing, first use your middle finger to gently pound the stir-fry towards the bottom of the bowl to avoid the tea spilling out of the bowl; then turn the bowl and press the fried noodles into the tea with your fingers close to the edge of the bowl; when the fried noodles, tea and ghee are mixed well, you can knead them into a ball by hand and you can eat.
When eating, use your hands to constantly knead in the bowl, knead the dough, and send it to your mouth with your hands. Tibetans eat – they don't use chopsticks or spoons, but only grasp them with their hands. Because the rice dumplings are eaten in a simple way and easy to carry, they are very suitable for nomadic life. When the herders go out, they always have to hang a rice bag around their waist, and when they are hungry, they grab it from the pocket and eat it. Sometimes, they take a wooden bowl from their arms, fill it with some rice dumplings, pour some butter tea, add some salt, stir a few times, grab it and eat it. Sometimes, while eating rice dumplings, drink butter tea. Sometimes, the rice dumplings are poured into a leather pocket called "Tanggu", and then the butter tea is added, and the mouth of the bag is grasped with one hand, and the bag is grasped and pinched with the other hand, and after a while, the fragrant rice dumplings can be entered.
Every Tibetan New Year, Tibetans also use barley noodles to mix ghee and knead ghee flowers. Kneading the oil dough into the shape of a Buddha, animal, or flower or tree and dyeing it with color is the Tibetan word for "Zaidzhuo" (ghee flower). Butter flower is a unique sculptural art, it uses ghee to knead various mineral pigments to shape different forms of images, from large mountain and river figures to small flowers, grasses, insects and fish, all of which are realistic and delicate, lifelike, and have high artistic value and aesthetic value.
The production of ghee flowers is divided into six processes: tying the skeleton, making tires, molding, drawing the gold beam, putting on the plate, and opening the light. The large butter flowers in the temple are mainly religious themes, as well as Tibetan opera, myths and legends, and historical figures. When the ghee flower is shaped, the temperature requirements are higher and the production is more difficult. A butter flower, from the overall point of view, dozens of pavilions, characters, walking animals at every turn, as large as one or two meters of bodhisattva Kongo, as small as tens of millimeters of flowers, birds, fish and insects are all prepared, relief and round sculpture combination, character and scenery combination, Buddha and mortal combination, dynamic and static combination, time and space are divided and continuous, objects and images are complex and not chaotic, colorful, integrated, breathtaking.
When Tibetans worship the Buddha, devout Tibetan Buddhist believers worship the gods and offer offerings to the Buddha, lighting lamps, simmering mulberries, etc. are inseparable from ghee. The butter lamp was the most familiar and sacred magic weapon in their hearts. When hundreds of butter lamps are lit in front of the Buddha statue, the burning and jumping fire is regarded as a heart lamp for dialogue with the gods. Tibetan Buddhism holds that when life is nirvana, without a butter lamp, the soul will be lost in the darkness.
Standing on the grassland, listening to the whistling of the wind in your ears, watching the raised shepherd whip suck the sun again and again. The distant slope was turquoise, and large swaths of sheep floated on it like clouds, and the back of the bow carried a quiet dusk. Approaching, you will hear the meek and shy cry, and see the gentle and kind eyes, you have to exclaim: "All this is so pure!" "It's the closest place to heaven, with a mystery that has been circling for thousands of years.