Chapter 15 wild vegetables

I thought there were no wild vegetables in Beijing.Or to be more precise, I thought Beijingers didn't like to eat wild vegetables.Those who talk about wild vegetables are mostly immigrants from the south.For example, the article written by Zhou Zuoren in Beijing, I think the best one should be: "A few days ago my wife came back from Xidan Market to buy vegetables, and when she mentioned that shepherd's purse was sold there, I remembered the thing about eastern Zhejiang. Shepherd's purse It is a wild vegetable that people in eastern Zhejiang often eat in spring." Hearing the news about shepherd's purse, he clearly had the feeling of meeting an old friend in his hometown.Decades later, Wang Zengqi also wrote a series of essays on the same topic, and also favored the shepherd's purse in the south of the Yangtze River: "Shepherd's purse is a wild vegetable, but it can be eaten in my hometown... Beijing also occasionally sells shepherd's purse. In the vegetable market The ones sold are grown in the garden, with large stems and white leaves, lighter color than wild ones, and no fragrance. Some old ladies in the south of the farmer's market picked wild ones to sell, but they were too thin, like a mess of hair, making It’s not as tasty as the wild ones in the south.” He also misses the wild vegetables and his hometown surrounded by wild vegetables with a touch of regret.The taste of wild vegetables is the taste of hometown love.

Wang Zengqi is a foodie who can write articles, and a writer who loves to eat wild vegetables—there are fewer and fewer such writers.There are fewer and fewer bosom friends of wild vegetables.Mr. Wang once told me personally before his death that he also found opportunities to pick wild vegetables to stir-fry and make tooth-making sacrifices in Beijing.Once passing the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, I found a lot of gray vegetables growing outside the wall, which were extremely fat and tender. I couldn't help but bent down to pick some and put them in my schoolbag.The guard came over and asked, "What are you doing?" He didn't say anything until Mr. Wang showed him the gray vegetables in his schoolbag, and walked away.Afterwards, Mr. Wang laughed at himself: "He probably thought I was planting a time bomb." Imagining an old literati who is indifferent to fame and fortune, squatting outside the wall of the State Guest House and digging wild vegetables with glowing eyes, I seemed to see a plant that is most likely to be taken by ordinary people. The burning heart of a child touched by things in the world - and a certain simplicity of life.

In our generation, we don't have a deep memory of wild vegetables.All I know is that it was life-saving food during the Red Army's Long March.Absolutely can't tell its breed, can't recognize its characteristics.What wild vegetables bring to modern people is a feeling like a world away.Living in a reinforced concrete city all day long, where can I find traces of wild vegetables?Wild vegetables will never grow on asphalt roads.Wild vegetables simply symbolize rural China, an idyllic era far and far away from the industrial civilization in which we live.So I thought wild vegetables had disappeared from our lives.I thought there were no wild vegetables in Beijing.

However, Feng Shui has changed, and eating wild vegetables has become a fashion again.I went to the suburban counties of Beijing for meetings several times in a row, and I could eat wild vegetables every day, including cold salads, stir-fried dishes, and soups... Especially the restaurants in Huairou mountainous areas use wild vegetables as their main signature.It even attracted many people from the city to drive a special trip to eat - the purpose of going to the countryside is to taste the taste of wild vegetables and taste the taste of a certain old-fashioned life.It can be seen that wild vegetables are almost becoming a nostalgic food.I also gradually became familiar with a series of ancient nouns such as purslane, wolfberry head, bracken, and Artemisia arborescens.I even remembered Wang Zengqi's comment: "In the past, people in my hometown ate wild vegetables mainly to survive the famine, but now they eat wild vegetables to try new things." Modern people may have many feelings about eating wild vegetables, but they certainly cannot relive the suffering. taste.The faint bitterness and fragrance of wild vegetables seem to be the compensation we are looking for after we are tired of eating big fish and meat.When I paid the bill, I paid attention to the prices of various wild vegetables, and secretly clicked my tongue: If it were placed in the old society, the poor would definitely not be able to afford it.This at least verifies a truth: Rare things are more expensive.