My Mooncake Story
Text/Weekly Line
I am seventy-one years old and have spent seventy Mid-Autumn Festivals, how many kinds of mooncakes have I eaten during this period? It seems that this problem is a bit abrupt, but behind it is a "mooncake" story.
At the age of twenty, it was a turning point in my life's destiny. Before, I was born, studied, and worked in a poor rural area; after that, I left my hometown to join the army for more than twenty years; and then I returned to a local television station to work as a reporter for more than twenty years. I've been out mixing for more than half a century, and I've experienced a variety of Mid-Autumn Festivals and tasted mooncakes of various flavors.
However, the past is full of ups and downs, ups and downs, compared to comparison, in the end, the real highlight in the heart is the hometown Mid-Autumn Festival must eat the "sugar fire", if according to today, it can also be called "stupid moon cake". For example, the popular stupid chicken stupid duck stupid fish stupid pig stupid cow stupid corn stupid soybeans, etc., perhaps because they are "stupid" without genetically modified and clenbuterol, and are doubly loved by people. However, can today's "stupidity" really be equated with the "stupidity" of decades ago? I am skeptical of this.
It is precisely the "sugar fire" in the depths of the years that is always firmly rooted in my memory.
At that time, the wheat production team's wheat production was generally about 100 catties per acre, and the wheat distributed by each household in a wheat season was pitifully small, and no one dared to open up the white noodles. This past is unbelievable to those who have not witnessed it. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, if you don't pay homage to your loved ones and friends, no one will go to the supply and marketing cooperatives to buy mooncakes. But the poor also have to celebrate! What's so great about mooncakes, isn't it made of white noodles and brown sugar?
As a result, parents began to be busy a few days before the Mid-Autumn Festival. He was busy with the crops in the field, and he also took advantage of the noon to rush to the market to buy one or two pounds of brown sugar, half a pound of meat, and buy a few pears or persimmons, plus the dates on his own trees. Poor, poor, but very attentive.
It is not easy to eat "stupid mooncakes", for me, from the age of six or seven, I have been busy with adults, pushing and grinding, grinding wheat into flour, tired and sweaty, unable to support. Now that I think about it, "all grains are hard" does not just mean sowing, ploughing, hoeing and harvesting, but it is a long and arduous process for a grain to reach a person's stomach.
Harder than we are is the mother. She not only pushed and grinded with us, but also stayed up for most of the night or even a whole night, and noodles, and then spread out a large pot of noodles into dough and flattened, and closed with brown sugar to form a "full moon". Then, sometimes in an iron pot, sometimes with a hammer, slowly simmered, and later when I wrote articles about the use of the word "long boiling", I often associated with some details of my mother's smoking fire in the kitchen. That's how the "stupid mooncake" that feels extremely sweet and sweet to eat comes from. Authentically, downright, every step is stupid kung fu!
The "stupid moon cake" is placed on the dinner table on the evening of the Mid-Autumn Festival, first placed on the incense table and "tribute" with the fruit for a while, the ancestors and immortals, the grandmother who believes in the gods and immortals also has to close her eyes and chant for half an hour, and then the grandfather distributes it to the whole family to taste slowly. You can eat without restriction, but you can't contaminate half an unlucky word. Especially the mother, whenever there is a festival, whether it is the Spring Festival or the Mid-Autumn Festival, she wants us to strictly follow her "exquisite" to do, such as not being able to insert chopsticks vertically in the rice bowl, eating enough, either quietly leaving, or saying "eat well" and then leave, but must not say "finish eating!" The elderly are especially taboo against words like "finished". At that time, we were full of a sense of awe and sacredness for the elderly, for the festival, for the "stupid mooncake", and even more for a warm feeling that was difficult to describe.
But I never dreamed that there are many times more "exquisite" food in the world than "stupid mooncakes"! In the years after I left my hometown, I ate the famous Guilin mooncake, Changsha mooncake, Shanghai mooncake, Beijing mooncake, Hong Kong mooncake and so on. In the career of a journalist, I have seen, tasted, and interviewed a lot of food industries, the "mooncake world" is getting bigger and bigger, and perhaps I have also eaten adulterated mooncakes, mooncakes with additives exceeding the standard, and its packaging is luxurious to beautiful mooncakes, and the outer packaging is many times more expensive than the mooncakes. For me, mooncakes are not only food, but also a carrier of history and culture, or a "decoration" in the world, or a gimmick of opportunism, or a miniature version of "modern drama" staged by a pattern renovation.
However, in my heart, in my whole life, there is no mooncake that can replace the status of "stupid mooncake", it is "stupid" unforgettable, "stupid" is clean, "stupid" is full of family affection, "stupid" has no luxurious packaging, no additives. The "stupid mooncake" is rough but strong, and it may also be the only "mooncake" that does not shed the slag. In today's Mid-Autumn Festival, in the face of the flowers and whistles of the mooncakes, I especially miss the stupid mooncakes of more than fifty years ago! Without personal experience as a background, without vertical and horizontal contrast as a reference, people have to say that I am full of food.
Now that I taste it, when I am poor, the "stupid mooncake" is richer than the foreign mooncake. However, to tell the truth, I was afraid of poverty at that time, but I always missed the "stupid mooncake". Nowadays, the mooncakes I have eaten can be arranged in a long and long line, but the leader is still the "stupid mooncake" that has never been on the big table.
In the sky, it is still the bright moon; in the feelings, it is still the "stupid moon cake", and the mid-autumn moon is still "hometown Ming". The author was born on February 16, 1949 in Huangnan Village, Nanzhan Town, Wenshang County, Shandong Province. Looking back at the road, it is precisely the two "boy skills" given to me by my hometown: "stupid" and "clumsy", which make me inexhaustible and endlessly reminiscent...
(Written during the Mid-Autumn Festival of 2020)
【About the author】Zhou Changxing (male), a peer of the Republic. Veteran; member of the Chinese Writers Association; senior journalist; poet. Major works: self-selected collection "Great Us", long character biography "Don't Get Drunk don't Say Qiao Yu's Love of the Great River", novel "Hun Man Eight Pounds", poetry collection "Sentence Team" and so on.