Township tone | A bowl of tea taste nostalgia

Text/Liu Wenying

The hometown is in eastern Guangdong, which is a Hakka town in the Chaoshan region. The Rong River meanders next to the town's historic middle school.

There are whole rice paddies, olive trees with roots surrounded by dense grass, Hakka mountain songs with vivid and interesting details, and a special taste that I can't erase in my memory - Hakka tea. It is a part of my life. Like a small bud, when you look back inadvertently, it has grown into a towering tree.

Tea is a hammer made of a specific tree (such as an oil tea tree) in an earthen bowl, which is constantly stirred, stirred and mashed. In order to make friction easier, there are also many fine lines in the bowl.

Those raw materials are peanuts, sesame seeds and various aromatic plants such as leaf mint. Slowly stirring, these raw materials have become finely chopped powders. When you boil the water, you will find a green tea soup with a rich aroma. The aroma of sesame seeds and plants blend together to form a unique flavor.

Some places gave it a very special name: Sansheng Soup. Without deliberately checking the origin of this name, I think maybe it is a taste that sansheng iii cannot forget?

But I like to beat tea, not only because of its special taste, but also because it constituted the first background of my childhood, and my first taste perception of the world when I was a child.

Life was simple. After drinking porridge in the morning, I ran to the alley, the field, and the mountain forest, and played crazy with familiar friends, ran wildly, bounced, climbed trees, and touched fish.

When you get home at noon, you'll meet many uncles and aunts on the road, and they'll ask enthusiastically, "Where are you going?" They will also be heard greeting each other: "Where are the vegetables going in the morning?" "Yeah, it's hot in the morning, and I'm going to make tea at noon."

Drizzle, in Hakka, is the meaning of pouring vegetables; boiling tea is the tea that was mentioned earlier.

This is a common form of lunch for villagers. After the tea is beaten, rice, various cooked vegetables and tea soup are also brewed together. A simple combination is a large bowl of dishes with vegetables, rice and soup. It warms up the simple and hot summer days, and is also the most affordable full meal for the townspeople.

The sesame aroma, intense and with a fiery temperature, went straight to the deepest part of the nasal cavity as soon as it smelled, as if it had burned every cell. The fragrance of that leafy mint is the most silent companionship and comfort in all unhappy times.

This taste and feeling, rooted in the deepest part of my memory, grew desperately, just like the history of the Hakka people's upheaval and displacement, has long become a complex, roaring and rushing in the blood, indelible, unshakable. When you grow up, it's nostalgia.

In fact, the journey back home is not far away. However, such years and months seem to be photos that have fallen into disrepair, and have faded and yellowed. This feeling, others may not understand, in retrospect, there is always a little farewell to the past when the reluctance and loss, and a bit like the song that was sung a long time ago, a listening always feels as clear as yesterday. (For more news, please pay attention to Yangcheng Pie pai.ycwb.com)

"Rural Voice" essay column welcomes submissions.

The manuscript requirements are documentary, mainly essays, and closely related to Lingnan culture.

Please send the submission to the mailbox: [email protected], and take the "Xiangyin" essay as the subject of the email.

For personal information, please provide your telephone number and ID number.

Source | Yangcheng Evening News Yangcheng Pie

Editor-in-charge | Izzina