【Long Shang Mid-Autumn Festival, Zhangye Chapter】Burning Pot Helmet——
The taste of mid-autumn
Pot helmet
Tweezers
Wen \Wang Shengjun
In the Mid-Autumn Festival in Zhangye, the pot helmet is a very ritualistic thing. A few days before the festival, the three or five women of Zhuangzi would meet to burn pot helmets together.
The pot helmet has to hold up the tweezers, chop wood, set up a fire, knead the dough, if one family does it, a person not only can't take care of it, if there is no second one to pick up, the newly heated tweezers, the burning firewood will be wasted. There was only one tweezer on Zhuangzi, and several women agreed on a time to bring the good noodles to the people's homes with tweezers. According to the order of first-come, first-served, regardless of you and me, women came together, kneading dough and setting up fires around the stove... After doing the Zhang family to do the Li family. These days the whole village is filled with the smoky smell of firewood, wheatgrass and pot helmets.
The process of the pan helmet is similar to that of the steamed bun, and the pot helmet is called because the shape is like a pot like a helmet. In the distant Han Dynasty, Hexi was desolate and the Gobi was vast, and the soldiers carrying cauldron helmets on their expeditions were also steadfast. The day of the invention of the pot helmet seems to be in the Mid-Autumn Festival, and the pot helmet has become a souvenir of the Mid-Autumn Festival. The thoughts and hopes of the pot helmet in people's hearts are also full of energy.
The tweezers are made of pig iron, and the bottom of the tweezers and the lid are half an inch thick. The chains are set on the adobe pot table, and the iron chain is tied to a wooden stick using the principle of leverage to carry the thick chain cover and tie it to the roof beam. Wheat grass is burned under the tweezers, covered with chopped wood, and the heat is just right, and the pot helmet is steamy, green and yellow, and crisp to eat. Because the pot helmet is immersed in a lot of oil, it will not change its taste and will not produce insects when left for a long time. The dried pot helmet rat makes a crunching and crunching sound to eat. After a long time, it is the cold winter waxing moon, whose children eat the pot helmet of August 15, the incense seems to be contagious, until people salivate.
In Zhuangzi, every woman had to practice the craft of the pot helmet. The woman who is not good at branding the pot helmet seems to be very faceless. The heat is operable, the difficulty is the noodles and alkali. The noodles are too long and too short, and the steamed buns are not steamy; the alkali is mixed more, yellow, stiff, and bites like a rag; the alkali is less, sour, and it is not in front of people. The little daughter-in-law makes steamed buns, worries about it, and waits until she is about to become a mother-in-law, and she is a veteran. The noodles, the heat and the alkali are all dependent on the woman's feelings and experiences, and there are no specific and operable procedures.
The women in the village will use a lot of clever careful thinking on the pot helmet, and the dolls who are partial to their own will always envy Sun Wukong and the moon on other people's pot helmets... For a few years, I was called by my aunts and sisters-in-law to paint Sun Wukong and the moon on the pot helmet, which was highly praised. But within a few years, they eliminated me. The clever aunts and sisters-in-law have already painted Sun Wukong and the moon vividly. More women are proud of it, and set Linze jujubes on the pot helmet and spell out various patterns. Not only the taste has improved, but also the specialties of the hometown, their own inventions, the beauty, and the laughter of the hip-hop are all proud.
When the moon comes up, a table is placed at the door or window where the moonlight can shine, and pots and helmets, melons, grapes, wine, etc. are placed, which is also the official ceremony of the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is a celebration of the harvest and a prayer for the smooth wind and rain in the coming year.
A family, or a brother or a neighbor, eats pots and drinks wine while admiring the moon. It wasn't until the moon went down and people were sleepy that it ended.