Chapter 23 Five Poison Cake

In order to commemorate Qu Lingjun, a senior official in the Warring States Period, who died by jumping into the Miluo River on May 5th, the Chinese people wrapped the horned millet (commonly known as zongzi) with zongzi leaves in all parts of the country, regardless of the north and the south.The custom of eating zongzi on the Dragon Boat Festival has a long history, but in addition to making zongzi, Beiping also eats Wudu cakes. This is a unique snack in Beiping during the May Festival, and I am afraid that other provinces do not have it! Several time-honored bakery shops in Peking, such as Zhengming, Yumei, Lanying, etc., have a red paper notice on the door of the first day of May, "This account has added five poisonous cakes".Wudu Cake is about the size of a walnut cake. The stuffing is nothing more than pine nuts, walnuts, jujube paste, and bean paste. It is made out of jujube wood molds, baked in a hanging oven, and then painted with pulp after being baked. , the convex and concave patterns on the dim sum are particularly conspicuous.

Legend has it that at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, a descendant of a certain generation of Zhang Tianshi in Longhu Mountain, Guixi County, Jiangxi Province, traveled down the mountain and came to the capital before inheriting the orthodoxy.Just in time for a long drought and no rain, the epidemic was rampant. Unfortunately, he contracted the epidemic and suddenly fainted in front of a pastry shop.The shopkeeper of that pastry shop is a kind-hearted old man. When he saw a handsome young man lying on the front of the door, he immediately asked the staff to carry him to the cabinet room, and scraped him personally, followed by acupuncture and moxibustion. Doing both, actually saved the young man's life.Knowing that he came to Beijing alone and had no relatives or friends here, he set up a bed in the back cabinet and sent for medical treatment.Jiang was raised for a long time, until he recovered from his illness before he thanked him and left. The young man never revealed his true identity.The shopkeeper of the pastry shop only thought that he must be a son of a wealthy family in the south with a lot of background, but he never thought that he was a direct descendant of Zhang Tianshi.

After a few years, he followed the orthodox lineage and became a celestial master. He suddenly remembered the life-saving grace of the shopkeeper who was lying on the side of the road when he was sick, so he drew a talisman with a Chinese ink brush and stamped it with the golden seal of the real person of Qiankun Taiyi on Longhu Mountain. , sent someone to Jinjing to give it to the shopkeeper of the pastry shop, and kept it for the purpose of exorcism and epidemic prevention.The pastry shop received a handwritten talisman from Zhang Tianshi, and it was regarded as a treasure, and it was immediately pasted on the upper beam of the back cabinet workshop.

At that time, all bakery shops employed craftsmen who specialized in carving dim sum molds. There was an ingenious craftsman who watched the talisman attached to the beam all day long. Pick and choose, according to the stroke order of the talisman, carve a model out of it.It was accidentally discovered by the shopkeeper, and he thought it was novel and unique, so he used date paste to make stuffing, carved dozens of date paste cakes, and baked a furnace of date paste cakes. The preparation was not easy to sell, and he left it for the colleagues in the cabinet to eat.Unexpectedly, as soon as this batch of dim sum is put out, no matter where it is placed, there is no need to add a gauze cover, and there will be no nuisance from flies and mosquitoes. On sale for one day.Everyone has heard that the five poisonous cakes do not attract flies, and can also drive away evil spirits and avoid epidemics. Once the cakes are baked, they are always sold out.

Seeing this situation, all bakery shops in Beiping rushed to follow suit, and every family made a fortune. However, the mold of their five poisonous cakes, because there was no magic charm of Zhang Tianshi, could be extended. The five poisons, toads, snakes, and bees are engraved on the mold, and it has become a veritable five-poison cake.The wooden mold has been used for a long time, and the natural lines are blurred. A pastry shop specially invited a Jiangnan painter who is good at painting flowers, birds, insects and fish to draw a picture of the creeping monster. The skillful craftsman followed the gourd and carved a wooden model.The old Jiangnan painter is from Wujin, Jiangsu. There are centipedes in the south (the common name is Baijiao, there are very few centipedes in the north, there is a kind called Qian Chuanzi, and there is a kind called scorpion, which are very similar to centipedes) but no scorpions, so the south paints five poisons, Replace the scorpion with a centipede.Therefore, in Beiping, there were five poisonous cakes of the southern school and five poisonous cakes of the northern school.

Chen Banding, a painter at the time, said: "In the Peking Opera "Hunyuan Box", there are only centipedes but no scorpions in the five poisons. Luantan is from south to north, and scorpions are rare in the south.” Mr. Ban Ding was born in Beiping from the south, and his statement is quite insightful. Some careful people ate Wudu cakes on the Dragon Boat Festival, and found that there were centipedes and scorpions on the molds. There was a very heated pen battle with Dai Huaisheng of "Qunqiang Daily".The author remembers eating five-du cakes during the Dragon Boat Festival when I was young, which is indeed different from centipedes and scorpions.As for the five-poison cake made according to the impression engraved by Zhang Tianshi's spiritual talisman, I just heard the rumors from the elders, and I have neither seen nor eaten it.

It’s a festive season, and not many people know about this short story of Wudu cakes, so I wrote it specially to help the elders in the Central Plains drink realgar wine and eat rice dumplings during the Dragon Boat Festival!