Sorghum porridge, stick noodle porridge, leek-stuffed bun dipped in sesame oil – childhood in the 60s

Text/Qing Ning

Society is accustomed to dividing people into the second generation of the rich, the second generation of the poor, the second generation of the red... and my father's generation has come from Kannai to the northeast from a young age. At that time, the people who broke into the Kanto, the forerunners, gained a foothold in the Northeast and engaged in the profession they were good at. Then the villagers flocked to the village, and everyone was engaged in the same work. My grandparents would save buckets, and most of them went into the pickle garden. Shandong people will split iron, and they will see that there are a large number of Shandong people gathered in the loading and unloading company at that time, "What do you do?" "Splitting iron.". When I was a child (in the 1950s), the area around Kunshan Road in Shenyang' Changjiang Street was filled with the rural sounds of Henan, Shandong, Hebei, and most of my playmates at that time were second-generation. When I was a child, we were here in a patchwork of shantytowns, and the residents in the bungalow courtyard were some self-built small houses, some were uniformly flipped and redistributed by the real estate bureau, and the residents also saw the stitches and needles squeezed in. People's professions are five elements and eight works, three teachings and nine streams, and most of them are engaged in the work of leading the flow of pulp sellers. Speaking of words is also a southern dialect and a northern tone. In our yard, there are carpenters, bricklayers, and painters of construction companies, those who grind scissors and sell roasted sweet potatoes in the streets and alleys, the shelvesmen on the construction site, and the workers stationed in the factory, each of whom is busy with their own livelihood. My father worked at a large state-owned enterprise. I have seen my father's work card with a gilded inscription "The First Ministry of Machinery Industry of the People's Republic of China, the Second Machinery Industry Administration, Shenyang A Certain Factory." Although they live at the bottom of society, they are all real working class and are called the eldest sons of the republic. The house we lived in had a mud floor and a thatched roof. Later, the dirt floor was upgraded to a red brick floor, and finally covered with a cement floor, which was luxurious. There is a public foreign well (pressure well) outside the courtyard, when you go to fetch water, the bucket should be filled with water, then one hand presses the well handle, the other hand holds the bucket, tilt the water into the well gourd, press it a few times, you can hit the water. At the end of the 1960s, it was upgraded to running water. In winter, there is a thick layer of ice under the tap, and the thickest part of the ice is half a bucket high. To fetch water on a cold morning, you must carry a pot of boiling water to open the frozen tap. After that, it runs long water to prevent freezing. The water flows down into ice, and the ice continues to expand outward, becoming a small ice rink.

Most of the current second generation of intruders are full of faces, and in the tone of yang Zhenhua, a cross-talk master, they have eaten chaff during difficult times, those who have gone to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, and those who have reduced their personnel and increased efficiency and left the factory, all of them do not eat fragrant miles.

Yet our childhood was a sunny, carefree paradise of joy, a wonderful time that children cannot reach today. I cherish the childhood paradise that I miss incomparably, full of innocent and innocent innocent angels, and I sincerely feel that where there is childhood, where is the hometown!

Children's nature is to play, everyone does all kinds of games together, there are countless tricks, and there are endless children's songs. The friendship we played as a child is buried deep in the heart, integrated into the blood, and timeless.

In the courtyard, the friends divided into two groups, and one group sang:

Ride the bell,

Happy Horse City,

Ma Chengkai,

Call a lady to send a letter,

Which one?

Another group of children stood in a row hand in hand and loudly announced who they liked:

Want Jiang Fen!

Jiang Fen, who had two buns on his head, walked out of the queue, while the cat waist was ready to impact the posture, while opening his eyes and quickly searching for the other party's weak point, a scream in his mouth, he rushed to the other party. There were two slender little hands, although they were also tightly held, but they could not withstand Xiao Fen's impact and were knocked away. Everyone cheered, and the victorious Xiao Fen could choose a prisoner of war to bring back to the home front.

If anyone chooses the wrong object when impacting, the other party is too strong, and instead of crashing into the wall of the arm, it is like hitting a strong rope, and will be knocked to the ground by the force of the rebound. A belly pier that makes you grin your teeth and gasp for air will hear a loud laugh next to you, and you will say with embarrassment:

"People's butts are half in half, and they're laughing."

While enjoying this tireless game, I heard my mother's cry:

"Swallowhead——,'re eating!"

I pretended not to hear, I was on my head, I really didn't want to go back. My friends will tell me: Xiao Yan, your mother called you to go home and eat.

In the first few years, there was a popular post on the Internet, "Jia Junpeng, your mother called you to go home for dinner", which is a deep call to the childhood that cannot go back.

In our hometown, a child's name is followed by a header. This is the colloquial characteristic of hebei region. I remember reading a memoir written by the writer Haoran, recording the events of his childhood. His family lived near Tangshan, when he was a child, his family was poor, the house was built next to a dung farm, his name was called "stinky", when he was shouted, he was called "stinky head ~".

Tangshan belongs to Jidong and is known as Lao Tan'er, and its dialect is very distinctive. He often refers to his legs as The'er, and when he says it, he says "Lame jump high, Ander (legs) are good". From Tangshan to the south, it gradually enters the Tianjin dialect area. It is still characterized by the use of a lot of child rhymes, and the more prominent one is: "Introduction (this) can really be a child." Further south to Cangzhou, tianjin's taste gradually faded, and it began to transition to Shandong dialect. My hometown of Wuqiao, in the southernmost part of Hebei, is adjacent to Shandong, and the spoken language has a Shandong flavor.

Grandma Wang, who grinds scissors next door, is a small-footed Shandong old lady. Whenever her family made something delicious, she flipped a pair of small feet, carried a rice bowl full of food, and pushed open the door of my small courtyard while shouting, "His second sister-in-law, are the children at home?" I'll bring you something delicious. "At that time, in the small courtyard, as long as there was a stew and chewing, everyone tasted it.

One day I was writing homework at Wu Qin's house, and her home was our study group. After writing, we danced in the courtyard, and we danced and sang nursery rhymes:

sorghum seed porridge,

Stick noodle porridge,

The bun stuffed with leeks is dipped in sesame oil.

Hurry up, hurry up,

Shoulder drops...

Ear drops...

Small drops...

Big deal.

Jump to this point and complete a round.

Writing this narrative article the day before yesterday, I can't remember what the first two sentences of this children's song are. I acted sloppily as a child, and did not really know what those two sentences were, but just followed the grunting of the gang singing shadow, singing similar tones, and now I want to actually write it, I feel inappropriate. I only felt that it was "three petals autumn, three petals autumn", the voice input was converted into Chinese characters, and what jumped out was "three fat autumn, three fat autumn". Quan Dang is three fat people autumn bar, but is this related to the bun stuffed with leeks dipped in soy sauce? Zhang Xinhua reminded me that it was not three fat people, maybe four fat people. Hey, where there will be so many fat people, sixties.

Zhang Xinhua, who speaks quickly and quickly, speaks sonorously and acts like the wind. Often people have not yet arrived, and the voice comes first. One night, a large group of classmates were frolicking at my house, and Xinhua suddenly said that he was going to find Xiao Fen. As we talked and went outside, someone said wait a minute and let's go together. Before the words could be heard, she had already run out. Immediately after that, there was an "ah-ah" cry, and everyone went out to take a look, and it was pitch black outside the house, just coming out of the light, and nothing could be seen around. Xinhua, the night of the black and ancient winter, there is no shadow. Where did she call just now? Xinhua, did you get on the golden carriage and be pulled away by the prince? Or did he cast an invisibility spell and was watching us panic and laughing?

It was a dreamlike night.

After taking a few steps, my eyes were blurry, as if it were a big pit. I suddenly remembered that it was an unfinished vegetable cellar. We probed our brains and touched the edge of the pit, fixed our eyes on it, and Xinhua was sitting at the bottom of the pit. It turned out that she came out of the house and ran, and in a hurry, she stepped into the air and went into the pit. It was really frightened, frightened, seeing that the classmates rushed to call her on it, she couldn't help but laugh out loud, and then "giggled" endlessly.

Fortunately, there was a bunker below, and no one was in the way, but a little frightened. If it is during the day, the big guys are not allowed to jump in line, will someone still turn over and play the head-to-head style and perform the vaudeville?

Or Wu Qin's mind is bright, and she remembers it sincerely. Writing "sorghum seed porridge, stick noodle porridge", in a word, makes people open up, it is really reasonable and seamless.

When I sang the "Three-Eight Style Song" when I was a child, I didn't know much about the lyrics, but I just followed others to learn a model, and sang with confidence: "The people's soldier sings and sings", and now that I think about it, I am really full of embarrassment, you don't know that the word is called "Loud and Bright?".

This side is singing "leek stuffed bun dipped in soy sauce", suddenly there is a burst of bun aroma, it is the fresh smell of leek stuffed buns, a strong drill into the nostrils. It's an illusion that can't be so real, and it's not amazing to be able to sing something.

At this time, I saw Grandma Wu Qin walking over with a plate of buns and asking us to eat one each. The white, fragrant bun made me salivate. I knew that if I didn't hurry up, my perseverance would not last more than two minutes.

In the 60s, white bread, can you eat it casually? If you eat one, people will eat one less, everyone has a ration, who dares to come here.

I hurried home and pestered my parents, and I had to eat leek stuffed buns.

The impression left in the era of lack of clothing and food is not sad, but warm and sweet.

Jianhua Home is another paradise for us. In her small courtyard, there is a magical gourd rack. In the summer, you can always see gourds of all sizes hanging on them. After these gourds mature, they become water scoops on the lids of each tank in the courtyard and digging scoops in the rice box cabinets.

On the night of Tanabata, when you come to the gourd rack, you can hear the whispers of the cowherd weaver girl in the sky telling the pain of acacia. He can also pray that the goddess will make her mind skillful. Later, I can put on a pair of scissors and cook a shovel, and I can go up to the hall and the kitchen. Not only that, but grow up and work with your skill, or be a good doctor, or a delicate textile worker, or a skilled female tractor driver, what a heart-pounding yearning!

In the sweltering heat of summer, the gourd rack can shade us. We jumped under the shed, jumped to a small lift, and then moved into the yard.

Sometimes a few of us would form a circle, put one leg on the leg of the previous person, and stand on one leg, called a flower basket. Singing a song while clapping:

A pair of scissors stand upright,

Two pairs of scissors with glasses

Three pairs of scissors blowing trumpets,

Four pairs of scissors drill holes in the ground,

Five scissors are steel hammers,

Six pairs of scissors holding dolls,

Seven pairs of scissors weave flower baskets,

There are children in the flowers,

Weaving flower baskets...

Everyone clapped their hands and jumped on one leg in a circle. Tired of jumping and putting down the legs, the flower basket was scattered, everyone was shouting with joy, and a string of silver bell-like children's voices sounded in the small courtyard.

There is also a small shed in the Courtyard of the Jianhua Family, which has a stove, which is specially used for spreading pancakes, and there is always a pancake on it. There are more than ten families in the courtyard, and whoever wants to spread pancakes will carry a basin to her house to spread it. People come and go, through the smoke from the stove to fall ash, the fire roasting exacerbated the summer heat, Jianhua family never cares. The affection of the small courtyard warms every family. So much so that when a family has something to do, every family echoes. In those years, brown rice noodles were our staple food, and people jokingly called themselves brown rice noodles. Everyone eats all year round, and sometimes when they get tired of eating, they call it nest heart. Daily spoken language also always has a nest head, can not see who is not used to, just say that he is "the nest head turned over a big eye". If you can have a pancake stall, it is similar to eating snacks and improving your life.

Whenever I went to seal the stove the night before and prepare to come over the next morning to spread the pancakes, Jianhua Niang would have to talk to me and pull the family routine, so as not to feel cold as if I was a child. Before leaving, he told me not to worry about tomorrow, and to come back after picking up at home. What a kind old man, what a lovely little courtyard, how I hope it will always grow, the small courtyard family affection comforts us, and the sunshine of childhood warms the initial formation of our benevolent character.