"Audio" vernacular | In those years, I was obsessed with tofu

"Tofu in the Years" is broadcast in Cantonese

Text/Wang Juxiao Audio Production/Zheng Ziwei

I have a soft spot for tofu.

As a child, although I was fostered at my grandmother's house, I had to go home to help work on weekends or holidays. At that time, the family was poor and relied on his grandmother for many years. But my mother was very good at running the family, and she could always use the little money that my father sent back from the Hunan coal mine to the most appropriate place.

When I came home, my mother always wanted to make something for me to eat, and she was shy in her pockets, and she could only afford to buy five cents or a dime of tofu, and when she came back, it became my happy dinner. Sometimes the tofu is sold out, and I can only buy a few cents of tofu heads, but stir-frying with raw onions is also a delicacy that can make my saliva drip and break my intestines.

After the tofu is bought, it is generally put away first, and then "concocted" after the mother returns from work.

My brother and I couldn't wait, so hungry that we couldn't help it, so we secretly started and dug a corner to eat. If you can drop a few drops of soy sauce and sesame oil into the tofu corner and mix well, it is the best in the world. If you mix it with half a bowl of rice, it is even more beautiful.

But many times digging a corner is always not enough, so I dug the second, third, and fourth, and wait until a knife of tofu has no four corners, and we no longer dare to start, because the tofu has been tossed by us. However, my mother would never say half a sentence to us, and she could also fry the hornless tofu into a delicious meal table.

When I was a child, my stomach did not seem to be full, although I did not experience the painful years of my father's generation, but the days were quite bitter. I don't know when I learned to steal rice from home and take it to the polder to change things to eat.

Most of the time, I change to tofu. In exchange for tofu but no ingredients, I can only eat raw. Eating raw tofu is easy to diarrhea, and I'm glad I've never been tricked.

But my mother finally found out that I was stealing rice—maybe she had already found out, but just let me go—she didn't beat me or scold me, she only said, "Take the tofu home and eat it with salt and oil so you won't eat bad belly." Then I noticed her turn around and secretly wipe away her tears.

I thought my mother must have blamed me for getting bad before she cried. It wasn't until I started a family that I could read my mother's bitterness of turning around and wiping away tears: she hated herself for being incompetent, and even the little tofu couldn't satisfy her son.

Only then did I understand that my father was far away in Hunan and could not manage his home, and she was bitter enough to support a family as a woman.

The summer before I went to the city to study, one day I couldn't help but steal rice out of the polder for tofu to eat.

This time, my mother cried in front of me, and from under the pillow, she felt a neatly folded fold of loose money in one minute and two cents, one dime and two corners, and sprinkled it on the ground fiercely, shouting for me to take it to buy tofu.

I know that it was to buy milk powder for my little sister. The little sister was picked up, and the mother had no milk to feed her. Because I want to buy milk powder for my little sister, my family has not bought tofu for a long time. Looking at the change in the field, I cried loudly. After crying, I never stole rice again.

I still love this white and tender tofu, and I feel like I'm missing something every week if I don't eat it. If I go out to eat, I will order a plate of dried fried tofu.

My wife often said that tofu has a plaster cast, and eating too much will produce stones, but I still eat it correctly. My son also said that tofu, a bargain of a few dollars, can it be used so obsessively? I always laughed and didn't answer, or he said I was going to give him some hard political lesson.

My son was fortunate to live in an era of abundance, and could never experience the delicious taste of tofu polished, fermented and precipitated over the years. (For more news, please pay attention to Yangcheng Pie pai.ycwb.com)

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Source | Yangcheng Evening News Yangcheng Pie

Editor-in-charge | Izzina