A person who likes to eat something is not necessarily because it is delicious, but because there are many childhood memories

Plant Series:

Childhood in persimmons

Of all the fruits, there is a special love for persimmons.

I encountered it in the earliest enlightenment as a child. "Red lantern, a sucker". In my hometown, almost every adult has guessed this riddle for children who have just learned things. The other is a slip of the tongue: "The old lady eats persimmons, and the light picks up soft pinches." "Very lifely, very graphic, but it is a metaphor for a kind of character.

It can often be seen in the mountains of late autumn in the north. Sometimes, the leaves are gone, and only persimmons are left on the trees, and on the dark branches, fiery red or golden persimmons, holding the beauty of the season, are very suitable for painting.

In his later years, Qi Baishi painted persimmons, with red and yellow and round squares. In addition to the circle, other shapes of persimmons, I only saw when I grew up.

Every time I see a persimmon, I think of my grandmother.

My hometown is in the northern Henan Plain, a horse flat river, not even a little undulating. When the weather is good, looking northwest from a high place, you can faintly see the outline of some mountains. It was the remnant of the southern section of the Taihang Mountains, where Grandma's house was.

It is a distance of thirty miles, but in the past, it was far from the edge of the sky.

Grandma only went back once in years, each time on foot, for a day, with a rest in between at a relative's house. When entering the mountain, try to be as early as possible, do not walk at night, there are wolves in the mountains, and people often see their figures. At that time, in the mountains, at night, I don't know which time, there will be a wolf or two howls from afar.

That time, for the first time, I saw so many persimmon trees.

My grandmother's family was called Tiger Palm Ditch, and for a long time I heard it as "Monk Ditch". It was remote and poor, and there was a shortage of water, and when the girls grew up, they all looked forward to marrying into the villages of the plains, so there were often people who could not find a daughter-in-law. One of my cousins, because people are too honest, played a bare stick all his life. In addition to the pronunciation of the hometown dialect, this is probably one of the reasons why I misheard the place name.

However, it was in that mountainous area that there was once a big man named Jiang Ziya, who was famous for fishing, and was later assigned to Shandong and became the first generation king of the State of Qi. I think that in his vast wisdom, there must have been persimmons that gave him sweet nourishment. Jiang Ziya is also called Lü Shang, and the village where he was born is called Lü Village, and there has always been an ancestral hall to commemorate him.

In Hupaogou, many families live in cave dwellings, and in the ravines around the caves, on the slopes of the hills, next to the mountain roads, the most grown persimmon trees are the most. It was late autumn when I went there, and the red, red, yellow and yellow persimmons were among the sparse leaves, dotting the life of the people in the mountains from a high place.

Because it is the first time to go to the mountains, it can be regarded as addictive, persimmon trees climb one by one, persimmons pick one by one to eat one, until the stomach feels bloated and painful.

Persimmons that have grown ripe are called "baked" persimmons, and they can be eaten when plucked from the tree. If it is not yet ripe, after picking it, it should be boiled with warm boiling water to remove the astringency.

Persimmon is almost a craft, with strict procedures and sophisticated experience.

In my hometown, when every household builds a stove, it has to make room a few centimeters by the hearth and build a ceramic clay pot with a thick bowl. The stove was set up, and the fire began to cook, and the water was continuously fed into the tile jar, and the water was warm all year round, and it was used to wash the face and brush the teeth in the winter. Its name is also called "temperature tank", which means both the temperature of water and the verb.

The water used for persimmons needs to be constantly temperatured, and the temperature tank is the only tool. Grandma carefully put the persimmons in one by one, closed the lid, and opened them after a while. In about two days or so, the persimmons will be eaten. The whole process, without tasting, she could make a judgment just from the color. In the whole family, only my grandmother can do that, and after her death, there are no persimmons in the family.

The sweetness of persimmons, there is a feeling of near honey, plus more moisture, every time you eat, although it is not a "sucker", but always have to suck carefully and quickly, and apples, pears are not the same, persimmon sweetness is pervasive throughout the mouth, but also with a cool autumn.

The color of persimmon is also particularly pleasing to the eye, yellow, red, wet, moist, crystalline, and glowing with sweet color, as if in the process of growth, the sunlight is absorbed as much as possible.

When I was a child, eating persimmons was not only eaten, but also had a kind of fun. After eating persimmons, the broad bean-like cores are reluctant to throw away, one by one bite open, the cores are divided into two halves, the middle of which hides the persimmon sprouts, white, crystal clear, like a miniature spoon, always have to play in the hand for a while.

Although persimmons are delicious, their economic value is not high, and even in today's high prices, they cannot sell at a good price. Just like the people in the mountains, life has become more and more prosperous and luxurious, and their days are still poor and lonely.

Only one year, I saw persimmons on a fruit stall in Hainan, placed among the many southern fruits, priced at one dollar a piece, but rarely asked.

At that time, it was even more so, persimmons were not easy to store, coupled with the restrictions of transportation conditions, the mountain people made most of the persimmon cakes, persimmons were picked, and put in the sun over and over again until it collapsed, condensed, leaving the sweetness inside.

Persimmon cakes were also my favorite thing in my childhood. When I was a child, I was short of sugar, and persimmon cakes could almost be eaten as sugar, especially on its surface, which precipitated a layer of mist-like white frost, which was particularly attractive. Eat into the mouth, sticky soft and sweet, can chew for a long time, the content is swallowed little by little, and there is still a lingering taste in the mouth for a long time.

I heard a joke that satirized the women in the mountains. It is said that in ancient times, a peasant woman in a mountain village was very envious of the Niangniang in the palace, and she thought hard, and she couldn't think of what good things Niangniang ate all day. One night, she had a dream that she had become a bridesmaid, and of course she could eat whatever she wanted. So she shouted in her dream: Baby daddy, get me a bunch of persimmon cakes!

Persimmon is indeed a commoner fruit, ordinary, ordinary, difficult to climb the elegant hall, there are not too many requirements for the barren environment, but also has its own blossoming life, contributing to the harvest and sweetness every year.

A person especially likes to eat something, not necessarily because it is particularly delicious, but in the process of eating, many childhood memories will surface and haunt.