Chapter 4 Fat seeds, shavings, acacia

In the past, a helpless old woman in Beiping had a unique business called exchanging fat seeds. Later, due to the evolution of the times, no one used the fat seeds, so she also exchanged them for lamps (Peking people call matches "receiving lamps") , so it is also called exchange for lamps. This kind of earning a living is small and profitable, and the load of walking through the streets and alleys is not heavy, so it has become the profession of poor and elderly women and Taoists. Young and strong people are dismissive.When they went down the streets and alleys, they carried a bamboo leather basket on their backs, and they yelled out to exchange the lamps for fat seeds. Whoever had waste paper, rags, glass bottles, and tin cans, they would accept them and exchange them for some. Fatseed or Danfeng red-headed matches.It is said that they go to the Danhua Match Company to buy matches in batches, and they can only buy 400 small boxes of matches a month. The factory only charges half the price of the factory. Feng, but can not change the black-headed insurance matches.Ordinary shop tenants are also in line with the purpose of caring for the old and the poor. You can change as much as you want. Few people compete with this group of bitter people.

Speaking of fat seeds, because no one has used it for several years in the mainland, most of the younger friends have never seen it, and may not have heard of it, but as far as I want to come to Taiwan from the mainland Masters, you must be no stranger to fat seeds!Because it was used in the mainland to apply the film back then, it was necessary to use fat seeds to soak the mucus, and the film was soaked to be submissive before it could be pasted on the forehead and temples.Although it is not known what kind of film is used in Peking opera now, but when it comes to being fat, I still have some impressions!Wood shavings were also an inseparable thing for women to comb their hair back then. Although carpenters in the north also planed piles of wood shavings when planing wood, it is said that the wood shavings in the north are not sticky enough, so most women like the wood shavings in the Suchang area. wood shavings.Because the wood shavings in the south are highly viscous, if mixed with ice flakes, they are not easy to stink. In the early years, this kind of wood shavings were sold everywhere in Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou and Hangzhou. Women in the north had no choice but to rely on southern vegetables.The so-called southern vegetable burden is also a special kind of sole proprietorship business. Most of the people who do this kind of business are from the Shanghai-Hangzhou area. A pair of bamboo strips are woven into a polished and lacquered burden. The things they bring can be said to be all-encompassing. .They wear xiangyun gauze, lychee silk, lake crepe, and Hangfang. Cosmetics include Yangzhou duck egg powder, Suzhou banrouge, osmanthus hair oil, borneol prickly heat powder, Zhengzhuang shavings from Suxi and Changkun, and pink powder puffs wrapped in silk. , a set of boxwood combs of different sizes, and grates of different widths and densities, these are all orchid dowry furniture that cannot be bought in the north.When it comes to snacks, there are many kinds of snacks, such as Hangzhou torreya, Guangzhou peeled sweet and salty olives, cinnamon lychees, bad eggs, wind fish, flat tips, mussels, yellow mud snails, drunk cockles, and a lot of dried plums , Yunnan kohlrabi, dried bamboo shoots, beans and radishes.They all follow the sea and go north. After disembarking in Tianjin and arriving in Peiping, most of them stayed in small hotels, and some had a lot of friends. the meaning of).Some people say that this group of people goes to Guangzhou several times a year on the Nanyang class steamer. At that time, the burden of southern goods becomes the burden of northern goods, such as eight pieces of snacks, various dried fruits and preserves, and Beiping silk flowers and velvet flowers. Hairpins and bone hairpins are the most popular things in Lingnan.It is said that Xue Juexian, a famous Cantonese opera actress, liked to use fat seeds instead of wood shavings. He said that when the fat seeds were dry, add a little water, which will not bite the meat and look cool. If the shavings are dipped in water, The loose curls are slanted, and the makeup is going to be done again.Whether this is true or not is not entirely convincing, but the older generation of Cantonese actresses know that they will carry a few bags of fat seeds with them, and that is true.

Not many people know about the term "japonica", and even fewer people have used it.When I was a child, I saw acacia locusts and knew how to use them, but I never used acacia locusts as soap.After victory, I went to Tai County, Jiangsu Province, my second hometown. I lived in Xipu, outside the North Gate, and next door was a big bathhouse called "Yinxiang".According to the habits of ordinary people in Tai County, the bathhouses usually serve soup at one o'clock in the afternoon, but people who take a bath do not come until after four o'clock.So I go to take a shower at one or two o'clock every day, and it's almost a full house, except for the lonely family, there is almost no takeaway.The little boss, Chen Sixiao, likes to hear some new things about Beiping and Shanghai, so whenever I come, he comes to greet me and do the work.One day I asked him, do you have any acacia here? Rush, compared to taking a bath with ordinary soap, it is much more comfortable and clear.The four-story acacia locust is found everywhere in the northern Jiangsu area. The tree is three or four feet high, with a straight trunk and tall gills.The leaves are double-folded, and yellow or white flowers bloom in summer, which can repel mosquitoes and gnats.The pods are solid and long and flat like a knife. The pods with small white flowers are shorter and thicker than the yellow ones. People in northern Jiangsu call them "soap pods".Having said that, it is not known whether it is effective or not. When I first came to Taiwan, I saw the pods of the pods of the pods, which are very similar to the acacia. I don’t know if it also has the effect of the acacia after drying.A few years ago, a friend rummaged through the bottom of the box and found a few pieces of "goose oil introduction soap" produced by "Huahanchong" (Rouzhi Huafen shop) in Beiping. They were all wrinkled. Go to a laboratory test, it is said that the content is some moisturizing and beautifying ingredients, which is not worse than the current noble skin protection cosmetics.I expected to wash my body with acacia, and my whole body would be light and clean after washing. It would be more comfortable than taking a bath with water and soap, and it would probably be good for the skin too!It's a pity that it has not been formally tested.