The hometown is in Tengchong, and the new year is approaching. The strings of longing for my hometown were suddenly plucked up, and I felt the call of Tengchong bait to me.
The plan of the year lies in the spring, and the plan of the day lies in the morning. The light of the sun sprinkled the sky, and the earth gradually brightened. Tengchong Border City, located in the hinterland of Gaoligong Mountain, is slowly waking up. In the streets and alleys, there is a bait shop almost every few tens of meters. The mist rises in the saucepan, more than a dozen kinds of bait wires are lined up on the stove, and the condiments of large bowls and small plates are arranged in an orderly manner on the board. Some guests shouted," "Come here with a bowl of red rice bait." Some guests said, "Boil the bowl of small pot bait." "Shopkeeper verbal" uh! belch! In response, his hands and feet kept turning left and right, and bowls of steaming bait were gradually handed to the guests. An idyllic picture of breakfast life. The life of Tengchong people in a day is opened by a bowl of bait.
In Tengchong, breakfast is mostly bait silk, bean flour, fritters, buns, noodles, these are just a supplement to the breakfast diet, and people like it without a doubt is bait silk. Before I left the small cottage in my hometown, I thought that bait silk was a delicacy exclusive to my childhood memories; before I walked out of Tengchong, I thought that bait silk was only Tengchong's unique cuisine; when I left Tengchong, I learned that bait silk is a famous food with historical connotations circulating in the land of western Yunnan.
In the year that the package arrived, Chinese New Year's Eve, and my father announced: "Tomorrow roll out the bait and eat it!" "I don't know whether to treat me to study hard or to celebrate that rice is enough to eat all year round." As soon as these words came out, everyone in the family was excited. At that time, no one sold the bait silk, and they wanted to eat it and roll it themselves.
Still at the dinner table, my father repeatedly told my mother, who had been working all day, to "make good rice!" Father had just stopped the bowl, but taking advantage of the interest of a few grunts of earth wine, he was busy with the board and rolling cylinder with his rosy old face. Because this is the first time, the board is pushed and milled with the idle decoration board at home, and the rolling is made of bamboo. We were busy setting off firecrackers, resigning from the old age, keeping Chinese New Year's Eve, opening the door of wealth, chanting auspiciousness, and welcoming the New Year. Say goodbye to the cold to the winter snow, warm to bring the spring wind.
On the first day of the Chinese New Year, the sky was just dark, and the fire in my mother's stove hall had burned red. I saw my mother pour the rice that had been soaked all night and turned white into the basket, control the dry water, and then scoop it into the zhen on the cauldron one by one. After a while, Zhen Zi was angry, the mother opened the zhen cover, brandished a pair of huge chopsticks, while stirring while sprinkling water, stirring evenly, repeating twice (steaming), in a few minutes, Zhen Zi steamed, the rice was cooked, and the mother issued instructions that could be scooped. Although there is endless farm work in the countryside, the first day of the first year is taboo to go out to do work. The big family of the four generations, more than a dozen people around the mother's big Zhenzi meal.
A pot of piping hot rice is sent into the mortar, and under the control of the brothers and sisters-in-law, the fine and tender rice is suddenly scooped into a very elastic rice dumpling. The father followed the hot rice bowl with one hand, and with the other hand, he poured wax oil (beeswax and sesame oil stewed) on the surface of the board, used it together with the rolling cylinder, kneaded and rolled while hot, and the rice ball was helplessly squeezed into a thin and uniform sheet of the tight plate surface, and several pieces of the board were covered with white "bait pieces" in a short time. Father gestured and paused for a moment. He rolled up the freshly rolled bait silk pieces, put them on the rolling tube and gently rolled them, and carefully hung the bait pieces on the bamboo poles in the courtyard, and the bait pieces that "emitted white smoke" quickly cooled. A rod of bait silk swayed in the breeze, like raw white cloth woven by grandma herself. I followed my brothers and sisters-in-law, one moment adding food to the mortar, and the next handing over the scooped "soup dumplings" to my father to roll. Occasionally, the speed of the wooden pillar is not mastered, and the rice is knocked over. At this time, it is inevitable to be blamed by the mother. But I didn't pay attention to it, and soon I was circling around my mother's stove again, helping to burn the fire, helping to peel garlic, helping to mash garlic in the stone mortar, and helping to prepare the bait "hat".
Like a roll of cloth, the mother rolled up the cold bait pieces one end at a time and cut the silk along the other. I wondered: Barely enough to feed, just able to eat pure rice (before I had to mix grain bitter buckwheat grains), why toss it like this? Are these rituals nothing to do? But the eyes are always staring at the pot, watching the mother chop the fresh lean meat, peel and chop the yogurt eggplant, mix and put the condiments into the pot and stir-fry, the aroma just jumped up, the mother a scoop of water down, pop! With a loud bang, the smoke was everywhere, and the fragrant aroma went straight to the beams of the room, overflowing the entire kitchen, penetrating into my chest cavity, refreshing the heart, and the breath stirred in my stomach, making me mouthy and hungry. I really liked the sour aroma, which heralded that it wouldn't be long before I could eat the bait.
The sun shone warmly into the home, and the rice full of Zhen Zi became a pole of bait silk that hung all over the courtyard, and the family that had just finished busy surrounded it. The mother boiled soft and freshly cut bait with boiling water, filled each bowl with half a bowl, and then put a spoonful of freshly fried hats and a spoonful of stew in the pot "Poof! Poof! "Boiling, boiling hot soup made of pork barrel bones." One person filled a large bowl, each holding a place such as salt, garlic paste, spicy oil, ginger, soy sauce, chives, and coriander according to their own preferences.
I put a little more spicy oil, the bowl head was full of red oil flowers, looking at the strength, hungry, eating and sucking, sucking and sucking, sweating. After eating and adding, I don't know how many times I added, but I remember that each time was less than once, until the belly rolled round, and the mouth still wanted to eat, but I couldn't eat anymore. Since then, I have eaten a variety of bait silk many times, but I have never felt the taste of fresh memories and lingering teeth. I don't know if it was the time to run, or the spur of this heart-warming ritual, but that year, I was admitted to the city to study, and since then I have begun a journey of nostalgia.
Later, I came to know another form of bait silk - fried to eat, called "fried bait block", also known as "big rescue". According to legend, the Yongli Emperor in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties escaped and arrived in Tengchong, and when he was exhausted and hungry and cold, a family of Tengchong people made him fried bait, and he sighed while eating: "It is really a great rescue driver!" "Its meaning: There are both praise for the beauty and delicacy of the fried bait blocks, but also the loyalty of the Tengchong people in the chaotic world and not abandoning the old lord, and even more hate Wu Sangui and other traitors, watch the wind make the rudder, betray the country and the lord, fall into the well, and lament that if the civil servants and military generals of Daming can be like the people of Tengchong, why can't the Jiangshan be protected! Since then, the "great rescue" has spread, and it is precisely "the dragon returns to the night cave clouds are still wet, and the musk passes the grass and wood fragrance of the spring mountain." ”
Once, because of the difficulty of preserving the freshness of the bait silk, the boudoir was in the deep mountains, "smelling its voice and not seeing its people", just like the Tengchong people, it became a well-known "hometown treasure". Nowadays, bait silk has become a lingering piece of music in the blood of Tengchong people. "Lightning" transportation, thousands of miles a day, the original taste to meet the customer's mouth, the flower of bait silk blooms all over the land of western Yunnan; processing mechanization, stable quality, efficiency improvement, labor intensity reduction, a wide variety. Eating methods are constantly innovating: boiling bait silk, stir-frying bait fast, three fresh bait silk, sour soup bait silk, beef bait silk, grilled meat bait silk, thin bean powder bait silk... It can be said that the retreat can be used as a snack fast food, and the entry can be used as a luxurious banquet; as well, the dry bait silk that is convenient to take away, and the convenient bait silk that is eaten in the water.
Leaving Tengchong, sometimes I still can't help but miss my hometown, miss the people and things there, and want to eat a bowl of bait. At this moment, I will find a bait shop and eat a bowl, but when I pick up a bowl of so-called Tengchong bait silk, the entrance is not the familiar taste. Every time I can return to Tengchong, although the opportunity to make bait silk by myself is gone, I will still go to find an authentic bait silk shop to soothe my deep nostalgia, come to a sea bowl, if one bowl is not enough, then another bowl.
Text: Ann Lee
Source: Tengchong Cultural Creation