Text | Xu Shaoping
As the saying goes, "Weak water three thousand, only take a scoop to drink", originally from a story in the Buddhist scriptures, reminding people to be content, because in "Dream of the Red Chamber", Cao Xueqin used this sentence to describe Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu's love, and now people use this sentence to describe love.
Rank, do you know scoops? Have you ever seen Scoop? It is estimated that few modern people know about it. In the past, in the rural countryside, the scoop was a must-have appliance at home.
Urn, also known as gourd, is grown by every household because it is easy to grow and easy to live, basically does not need to be managed, and is one of the most popular vegetables. It can be boiled in soup, braised, or pickled. When the urn was old, it could not be eaten, so the farmer took it off and hung it. After air drying, sawn in half, remove the middle of the melon to become a "scoop". There are also sawn off heads, in the shape of a treasure gourd.
The newly made scoop, the skin is a faint fruit green, air dried for a few days, becomes an oily orange red, after making a scoop for a period of time, it will become a permanent old yellow, and the more it is used, the tougher and harder it is.
Every household in the village has a number of scoops, each of which performs its own duties, and is divided into water scoops, rice scoops, pig food scoops, dry scoops, and even face wash scoops according to their uses. Those who saw off their heads are not called scoops, they are called gourd jars, and can be used to hold food, grain, seeds, and so on.
In the dragon jar where my family holds rice, there is an old scoop lying for many years. The mother said that a scoop of half a pound of rice, general cooking, do not need to weigh. This old scoop has been used for at least ten years, and every time I use it to take rice, there is an indescribable sense of ease and closeness. It was not until a few years later, when it lost its horn twice and broke its handle, that it was abandoned. The moment you throw away the scoop, you will inevitably have a kind of sadness of "the scoop abandons the honor without green, and the furnace is like red in fire", perhaps, this is our broom self-cherishing.
Scoop, the most suitable is to scoop water. Placed in a water tank, it will neither sink nor be damaged, and it is more suitable than any enamel or iron one. Every time I come back from school, I have to open the lid of the water tank, scoop a scoop of water, and grunt the cow to drink, which is really cool!
Somehow, when I was a child, I often associated it with beggars. At that time, there were often beggars in the village, and the standard image of beggars was that they were disheveled, ragged, on crutches, and holding a dirty scoop in their hands. Whenever this happened, my father would always toss a few coins in the scoop. Scoop also became a symbol of the suffering of that era.
In fact, the role of scoop is really quite a lot. The ancient "dagger" is a musical instrument, which is made of gourds, which is a kind of "eight tones". In yunnan ethnic minorities, it can be made into reeds, gourd silk and so on.
Not long ago, I returned to my hometown, and on the melon and fruit rack on the west side of the yard, there were many urns. At the very top, a huge old urn, hanging there heavily, seemed to be showing me something.
Oh, I get it! That big gourd, I'm going to make it into two gourd scoops— the "Fluke" scoops, one to take home and one to leave for my mother.
About author:Mr. Xu Shaoping, senior teacher, vice principal of wubao primary school in Xiaoji Town, Jiangdu District, member of Taizhou Writers Association, member of Yangzhou Poetry Association, winner of the first "Most Beautiful Charity Star" in Jiangdu District, Yangzhou City. Many prose poems have been published in provincial and municipal newspapers and periodicals. Now retired from the second line, living in Hailing District, Taizhou City, Jiangsu Province.