Xiao Jun once said that his original name was Liu Honglin, and his pen name was Xiao Jun, who was modeled after Xiao En in the Peking Opera "Fishing and Killing Family", and because he was born in the army. And Xiao Hong gave herself this name after following Xiao Jun. As for the later "little Red Army", it is obviously a political bright color painted by posterity. However, after a series of misunderstandings and breaking each other's bones, Xiao Jun had a new relationship with the sister and artist Wang Defen of his acquaintance Wang Deqian (a former female student of Shanghai Zhengfeng Literature College) during his stay in Lanzhou, and immediately completed the flash marriage. On July 18, 1938, Xiao Jun and Wang Defen came to Chengdu.
Xiao Jun said of himself: "I am a person with a violent personality. "I often give in to any outsider who dares to infringe on my dignity, and fight to the death; but I tolerate the weak." Even tolerated to the point of tears, using mutilation of abusive limbs to quell the anger that was about to erupt... This pain is known only to oneself. "It is not difficult to imagine that such a person, even if he likes something, has the heat of love.
People say that "the taste is in Chengdu", but the one with the power of "all-you-can-eat" in the north and south is of course Chengdu snack. However, for Xiao Jun, who was born in the northeast, what he has not forgotten for decades is the cheapest and most popular thing in Chengdu snacks - "sweet water surface". The so-called "sweet water noodles" are actually very ordinary spicy dan dan noodles, but according to the taste of Chengdu people, a little sugar is added, and a little sweetness is added. Snacks make writers so dreamy, I'm afraid it's not just the unique flavor of snacks.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in Chengdu, the literati lived very irregularly, Xiao Jun always drove a night train to write and edit, and when he was really hungry, he ran out to eat a few bowls of "sweet water" and buy two pots and helmets. In fact, Xiao Jun, who was born in the northeast, originally liked noodles, and he loved to eat snacks such as wontons, pies, and tofu brains at street stalls, which were very popular and informal. It is said that because he was afraid of being run into by his friend's family, he was not a "gentleman", and sometimes he had to go hungry and stop eating. Moreover, he also had the experience of longing for a bowl of "sweet water" when he was hiding from the air raid siren and squatting in the air raid shelter, but these experiences have long existed in Xiao Jun's memory.
Wang Defen recalled in "50 Years of Wind and Rain with Xiao Jun" that the price of goods in Chengdu was very low, and the two people could eat enough for a meal and two triangles, Xiao Jun not only ate sweet water noodles, but also ate seven or eight plates, he also loved to eat "Mandarin Duck Noodles": a bowl of noodles was half white fine vermicelli, half was brown buckwheat noodles, desperately put chili oil, pepper oil, this is enjoyable.
Later, they moved to the courtyard of Mr. Li Jieren in Guihua Lane, who was still directing the street to open a restaurant, named "Xiao Yaxuan", and often invited Xiao Jun and his wife to eat and taste authentic Sichuan cuisine. But Xiao Jun still felt that it was still sweet water to enjoy.
Until more than 40 years later, in 1982, when Mr. Xiao Jun was a guest in Chengdu, he got off the plane and went straight to the city under the guidance of the accompanying personnel, anxious to find something in the alleys of Chengdu: authentic "sweet water surface" to solve the "sweet water addiction" that had been suppressed for decades. And after decades of vicissitudes, he has been unable to identify the Chengdu in his memory, and the Guihua Lane located on Changshun Upper Street is still there, but he can no longer find the old appearance, and the taste in his memory has become his most loyal guide. When Xiao Jun asked the reception staff at the airport to taste the "sweet water surface" first, the receptionist was momentarily confused and did not know what Mr. Xiao Lao's "sweet water surface" was. Later, after being reminded, it was learned that Xiao Jun's so-called sweet water surface was the "shouldering noodles" that are now known to women and children in Chengdu. The reception staff suddenly realized, that is, they took Xiao Jun and his party from the airport to the famous "Dongzikou Cold Powder Shop" at that time.
Li Jieren pointed out in "The Burden of Sweet Water Surface in the Imperial City" that sweet water surface should appear at the end of the Qing Dynasty. The most famous of the 1940s was the "sweet water surface" of Chengdu Baiyun Temple. The sweet water surface disappeared during the "three years of natural disasters" and began to recover in the 80s. The sweet water surface of the "Dongzikou Cold Powder Shop" may not be as authentic as the "Dandan Sweet Water Surface" of baiyun temple in the 1940s, and perhaps after decades of accumulated "taste memory", I think, even taking the orangutan leopard fetus cannot compensate for the pain of this acacia.
Che Spoke has a passage in "Sichuan Cuisine Miscellaneous Talk : From Dongzikou Cool Powder to Say Go": "Cool powder, city snacks, but for the famous chef Zeng Guohua used as 'cold powder crucian carp', is a famous dish of 'Shu Feng' before the founding of New China." According to records: Zhao Jinshan, the boss of "Dongzikou Cool Powder", used to open "Dongzikou Zhao Liang Powder" next to the old South Gate Bridge, which was very popular with the evacuated citizens. The area around Wuhou Temple is also a place of "running alarms". As soon as the local farmers heard the alarm, they were busy cooking rice and stir-frying, waiting for visitors to come to the door. In the rumble of the Japanese air raids, a group of cooking experts who made "anti-war fast food" emerged in Chengdu, gradually forming their own flavor characteristics, and eventually becoming local famous snacks.
Old Man Xiao Jun could no longer care less about these sermons. It is said that Mr. Xiao Jun sat down, buried his head in hard work, ate 3 bowls of sweet water noodles in one go (another said 4 bowls), and talked with interest about the anecdote of running to the air raid shelter to eat sweet water surfaces while eating them. Finally, he said, "At that time, if you can have a bowl of smooth and delicious sweet water noodles to eat at noon, it will be very good." Another theory is that Xiao Jun tasted the sweet water first that day, so that he delayed a symposium specially held for him.
After the meal, he went to the conference room on the 5th floor of the Sichuan Writers Association and frankly said to everyone: I hope that the writers will exercise more and persevere, and give examples such as Du Fu's "Hu Ma holding a bow and carving a bow, and the strings are not vain", Lu You's "getting on the horse to attack Hu, getting off the horse to draft the army book", and so on, and said something that he practiced in person.
This time back to Chengdu, it has been 54 years since he left Rongcheng, and Xiao Jun is considered to be full of addiction to "bearing the sweet water". Until Li Rong embarked on the return journey, the mystery contained in the sweet water surface of Chengdu was still not understood. He confessed: "I don't quite understand your sweet water noodles, and the red soy sauce you add to the noodles is sweet, which is also rare among the pasta I have eaten in the whole country." Adding peppers to the sweetness is even more peculiar, but when eaten in the mouth, it is very delicious, delicious, and has an aftertaste, which is not done anywhere else. ”
The main raw material of sweet water noodles is hand-rolled noodles, about the thickness of chopsticks, pay attention to "tendons". Made with chili oil, peppercorns, red and white soy sauce, brown syrup, garlic paste, tahini, soy sauce, pea tips, it is a kind of noodle mixed purely from the seasoning (a bit like Yibin's burning noodles). The sweet water surface uses Sichuan's hottest Chaotian pepper, which is the most spicy of all Sichuan spicy snacks, and many people will also be spicy and sweaty. The sweet water surface is characterized by the full use of the extreme power of spicy, sweet and tahini. Interestingly, if any of the flavors of spicy, sweet, or tahini in sweet water noodles are removed, it will become greasy or dead spicy after eating, but sweet water surfaces do not feel this way, so it creates a trinity of harmony.
Look, such a complicated ingredient, Xiao Jun did not understand until his death.
(Source: "Notes on Chengdu", Jiang Lan / by Sichuan People's Publishing House)