Text/Willow Shade
Chunlan opened a bun shop, and when I was a child, one of my favorite dishes was the big meat bun in my hometown.
There is a people's hotel in the hometown of Taixing Hengduo Commune, which serves large meat buns every morning, which are very large and white, and there is a lot of meat in it. Every time I pass by the entrance of the hotel, I see the steaming buns piled on the roadside desk, I always suck my nose hard and repeat two words in my heart: true fragrance. At this point, the saliva in my throat was already rolling...
At that time, buns were not casually eaten, and they cost one or two food stamps and five cents. Money is not an issue, just an egg, suffering from the shortage of food stamps. In that era of planned economy, everything you bought had to be ticketed. Fortunately, for rural people, the probability of using food stamps is not much, and fathers often say: Every month, food stamps are bought for children to eat. Buns are not something you can eat every day, buy them every three to five, buy two at a time, wrap them in gray thick paper, and hold them in your hands in winter. Hold it all the way to the school, put it on the desk, and then slowly open the wrapping paper, like opening an art treasure, or a rare antique, and then take a sip, and then hold it with two hands, eat little by little, and it is clear that I am showing off to the whole class: I ate buns today.
The table was a girl, very thin, with two pigtails, a pair of bright eyes embedded in her face, and puddles. Whenever I ate buns, she always secretly looked at me and seemed to envy me. Her family is not rich, her grandfather is a landlord, often criticized, classmates call her "landlord wife", for this, often see her secretly shed tears. As a teenager, my heart was too soft, and it bred sympathy. Since then, I have given her one every time I eat a bun, and at first she won't ask for it, but after a few times, she never refuses again. She was beautiful when she ate the bun, and her face showed a happy shyness.
I called her Chunlan and she called me brother.
Her father had bad legs and feet, and it was said that on a dark night, he went to the fields adjacent to the production team to dig up a few potatoes, burned potato porridge for the children to eat, and was caught by the qingqing and broke his legs with a stick. Because he didn't have money to go to the commune hospital for treatment, he found a tulang who used a few wooden boards to clamp the injured limbs and lay quietly at home to recuperate. After more than ten days, he got out of bed with a stick to do some hand work, fell, and the scab that had just begun to grow was broken again, and later became a cripple. Because he could not do heavy work, he opened a sheep soup shop at home, buying sheep, killing sheep, simmering sheep soup, and earning some foreign oil and foreign fire money.
If I smelled a smell of mutton soup, it would be Chunlan standing behind me, and immediately I would hear the sweet "brother" cry. One day after school, Chunlan took out a small bag of newspaper bags from her school bag, handed it to me, and said, "Brother, my family's simmered lamb, for you." After saying that, he jumped three times and ran away, and the figure disappeared into the sunset...
Later, I went to junior high school in the city and never saw Chunlan again.
When I was in junior high school, my living conditions were better, I no longer used the headache of food stamps, there were several bun shops in front of the school, there were more people watching, but fewer people bought, doing the business of students. I also walked in with a big swing once, like Kong Yiji walked into the Xianheng Hotel, asked for two large meat buns, a bowl of soy milk, and Sven ate it, but I was a little disappointed. The bun is still so big, still so white and tender, but the filling is not so delicious. It turned out that the meat filling was not chopped by hand, the reaming machine was hinged, and some starch was added, and the mouth chewed it was not tendon. Since then, the desire to eat buns has never been so strong. Maybe it's not that the bun tastes bad, maybe it's some other reason?
After going to work, I have been to Tianjin, and the streets are full of the guise of "dogs ignoring buns", and I have the desire to taste it when I am born hungry. It is said that Yuan Shikai once presented the "dog ignore" bun as a tribute to Empress Dowager Cixi, who tasted it and said: "The beasts in the mountains are in the clouds, the cattle and sheep on the land are fresh on the seabed, and the dogs do not pay attention to the incense, and the longevity of food is also long." "The empress dowager applauded, how can she let it go?" I asked for a cage, but when I came to the table, I found that there was only one, and it turned out that the steamer cage was very small, and I wanted two cages in a row. The shape of the bun is good, not out of shape, not off the bottom, not leaking oil, each one in the shape of a chrysanthemum. Eat, thin skin and large filling, mellow taste, tender and palatable, fat but not greasy. It's the best bun I've eaten in recent years. However, the buns of the Hometown People's Hotel in my youth are chewy, and the meat filling is slightly mushy. Maybe you are in a foreign country and can't taste the taste of your hometown, right?
I guess that if Yuan Shikai had offered the big meat bun of his hometown to Lafayette, the reputation must be no less than "dog ignoring".
One year, I studied in the Yangzhou Literary Creation Workshop and stayed at the century-old Luyang Hostel. Three or five wenyou and the teacher inadvertently pulled on the bun, and talked about the story of the bun and the bun with excitement, and heard that the three buns of the Fuchun Tea House tasted good, and they were interested. The next morning, I went with a poet and asked for a large boiled dried silk, a cage of three buns, and a pot of jasmine tea. The so-called "three dings", that is, chicken diced, diced meat, diced bamboo shoots, chicken diced using new hens, both fat and tender; diced meat using five-flowered ribs, moderate head; bamboo shoots are fresh bamboo shoots in the hometown. The bun was on the table, white as snow, steaming, eating, soft and tough, fat but not greasy, food without sticky teeth. The filling is crispy and tender, fat but not greasy. The two shouted "good buns" twice in unison, worthy of the favor of literati and inkers.
Is it really three cloves as delicious as the big meat buns you tasted when you were a kid? Maybe not, maybe I met someone who ate buns together.
After working in Changzhou for 14 years, I have also tasted local buns many times. As the "food capital", it is a pity not to taste traditional snacks. Wenyou informed, said that a steamed bun in a steamed bun shop tasted good, recommended me to try three buns and small steamed buns, taste it, the taste is average, the filling is a little sweet. Later, someone recommended me to taste the meat bun of a fast food restaurant, and I also tasted it, and the meat filling was also machine-hinged, and I always felt that I lacked some original taste. Later, someone recommended adding crab cages, supplemented by balsamic vinegar, tender ginger food, thin and transparent skin, rich marinade, crab fragrant, fat but not greasy, rich juice, meat filling, perhaps this is the best bun tasted in Changzhou, at least ok. As for the pet small Yangsheng fried bun in recent years, I have also tasted it, I do not like it, the bun is a bun, or the traditional steamed palatable, raw fried after it will lose its unique fermented aroma, the entrance is dry and chai. Maybe it's the environment that affects my tasting mood.
A few days ago, I received a phone call, a familiar and unfamiliar voice: "Brother, where have you made a fortune all these years..." It is her, it is her, Chunlan.
It turned out that Chunlan returned to her mother's house with her children during the Mid-Autumn Festival, met my wife at the vegetable market, and asked for my mobile phone number. My wife told me that Chunlan did not graduate from junior high school, so she married a Jingjiang man, a man who was a construction worker, followed the construction team to Daqing to work, and in the second year after the birth of the child, he left in a safety accident, leaving their mother and daughter... Alas, since the ancient red face is so thin, I sighed. The young Chunlan did not remarry, working in a crab yellow soup bun shop in Jingjiang, and let the child finish college and go to work. Later, she opened a restaurant by herself, made crab yellow soup buns and stir-fried vegetables, said that the business was good, and invited my family to taste.
The old family has the habit of eating buns in the morning and noodles in the evening, on my birthday, I brought my mother, wife, son, and daughter, and came to the Chunlan soup bun shop early in the morning. Chunlan had already greeted us at the entrance of the store. After a few words of cold noise, I looked at her. The innocence of the little girl in the past has disappeared from her, but the figure is still so slender, it looks like a mature beauty, although it has been subjected to wind and frost for half a lifetime, it does not look haggard, there are not many wrinkles on the face, and the skin color is thin and reddish than when she was a girl. Chunlan told me that the water in the Jingjiang River is good and raises people. I don't think so. I said: You are still so beautiful. My wife quietly pinched me...
The bun was on the table, a bun, a plate of rice vinegar, a few bunches of ginger shreds, a laugh. The soup bun is as white as jade, crystal clear, and the folds on it are delicate and even, and the whole is just like a full and rounded, tightly wrapped with thousand petals, and the buds are about to open. It looks like the skin is as thin as paper, like a blow that is about to burst. Suddenly, I woke up, isn't this the green garlic years that we disappeared? Open the window to suck the soup, the soup is clear enough, the crab flavor is rich, mellow but not oily, the taste is unusually delicious. Isn't this the long- and long-lost taste that Morning's thoughts are looking for? Perhaps, this is the most beautiful bun I have tasted in forty years, exactly forty years. Chunlan asked me how about the buns? I said: The bun is beautiful, the person is beautiful, and the aftertaste is even more beautiful. The answer was: Old is not serious!
Walking out of Chunlan's shop, the ginkgo biloba leaves in front of the door are like butterflies floating in pieces, and the pieces are golden. Chunlan said: We are all old, and we miss the big meat buns when we were young. I whispered: I want to take another bite...
