Chapter 10 drink peck

——One drink and one peck all follow the heavenly merit, because of the power of people, the thought makes people grateful; as for the table, there is the grace of feeding, the essence of sharing chopsticks, the love of the hometown, the relatives of the soil, Nothing but awe-inspiring -- Every year in late autumn, I always go to buy a few big white pomelo. I don't know why, this thing has been done year after year, and then it has become a prudent and ceremonial behavior. Most people only eat Wendan. Wendan is thin, slender, and soft. I think it is too sweet and weak.I like pomelo. The pomelo grows huge and heavy. Not only is it round, it can be regarded as flat. The petals of good grapefruits always swell too much, and the valves can burst, which is incredible.

Most of the time we eat pomelo is in the middle of the night, when the child is asleep, and my husband and I slowly peel off the fragrant and attractive green skin under a lamp. Pomelo petals always remind me of the universe, of all kinds of products that tie each other and fit together.We ate it petal by petal with an almost reverent mood. The human world could have been full and complete, compatible with each other, like a grapefruit. When I was old, when the autumn wind chilled my shoulders, would you still take me to the market to buy a white pomelo, the circle of soft yellow under the lamp—the two hairs gradually became reeds on both sides of the bank, you were still with me Eat a plump and plump white pomelo together?

The food I can't resist the most is cereal. Bread, scones, and translucent rice grains all made me suddenly hungry.Modern people are, in a sense, the "meat-eating generation", but I am dishonorably insisting on liking noodles and rice. Once, on a rainy day, I watched a stranger’s funeral on a mountain in the countryside. The officiant held a basket of millet and sprinkled it while chanting, “Fulu’s descendants—there are—” suddenly felt hot in the eye sockets, and suddenly I feel that the five grains are so gorgeous and perfect, and the fragrance of millet can be recommended to the gods and comfort the dead.

When I was thirty years old, one day, I was slowly chewing a mouthful of rice, and suddenly I was shocked, and found that the rice in my mouth was full of seeds.When I think of the seeds, I immediately feel embarrassed. I don’t know if they are rice seeds from the paddy fields in the south of the Yangtze River. Pingtung, a small town where sugar cane is described by poets as sweet as "a cube of sugar", but no matter where the rice comes from, I am grateful. There is deep affection in it, from Tang Yu to the present. I also love bread, very much. The bakery is always filled with the smell of baking, and sometimes I go in and smell it even if I don’t buy anything.

It’s really a blessing to meet the time when the bread is out of the oven in the winter afternoon, even the air in the street is noisy for a while. The master chef is running quickly with a black iron plate in his hand, delivering the bread that is baked yellow, crisp and burnt to us like a myth. in front of you. I especially like the big, round, bran bread, which I sometimes foolishly buy a bunch of.According to the legend, Taoist cultivators must "avoid the valley", I don't want to "avoid the valley", I want to be a human being, and I want to smell the fragrance of rice and wheat for a lifetime.

Sometimes I can't figure out the real reason why I like bread or rice. Do I love the bright white and simple taste that is far beyond the taste of sweet, bitter and spicy?Do I love its humble origins that have always been food for the poor?Am I fascinated by the sacred and solemn emotion that makes me suddenly feel like seeing the ancestors, or do I just love the strange joy of the first cooking pot and the first opening of the oven? I don't know, I only know that in this chaotic century, it is a happy thing to be able to walk the long street and stand in a bakery waiting for the bread to be baked.

Whenever I think of that story, I feel a little sad, a little joyful, a little melancholy and helpless, but infinitely at ease. That was not actually a story, it was a small piece of news at the end of the newspaper. The main character was Wang Zhenzhi's wife. He really rushed over, and the audience in front of the TV all over Japan went crazy!His two children are of course even crazier! Afterwards, as usual, a reporter went to interview and asked Wang Zhenzhi's wife to express her feelings--reporters are so strange, they always assume that other people's minds are full of feelings.

"I was cooking in the kitchen - I only found out when I heard the kid screaming." I don’t know if it’s the first time she’s cooked. The children have to eat after watching the game, and the husband has to wait after the game. She guards the kitchen day after day—no one counts and records for her, not even her I haven't counted myself.It seems that there is no woman in the world who counts and records her three meals a day. If a woman survives her golden marriage for 50 years, she will cook more than 54,000 meals. The fire offerings of the ancient temples have become temples.She herself is a life-long priest, more devout than any monks, raising fire three times a day, wind, rain, cold and heat, there must be some persistence in it, there must be some kind of tenderness that makes people weep.

Let the world go crazy over that one, for a lifelong batman, every home run is really the same as another, both a perfect achievement, but equally okay It is a kind of blow that is as sacred and free as breathing.Everything good in Eastern philosophy is a state of "constant". On that day, there were probably only two people in Japan who were not standing in front of the TV, only two people were not staring at the record board, and only two people were not crazy, and they were Wang Zhenzhi's wife and Wang Zhenzhi himself. When the Chinese toon buds first emerge, they are dark red, as if a stream of ground fluid can be seen spraying up, filling every young leaf with blood.

Every time I go back to my natal home in Pingtung, I always pick a big bag of Chinese toon buds. The children are not at home, and my parents are sitting in front of the four Chinese toon trees in the front and back yards. Of course, there is no time to eat them. In my memory, my mother didn’t plant any trees, and the seven children were enough to form a row of trees. She always said, “If everyone is sent out, there will be no trees!” But now, everyone is gone, and the parents are Made flowers and trees all over the courtyard. I stand on tiptoe and pick the tallest shoots. For some reason, the toon tree is regarded as a tree that symbolizes the father in traditional literature.To me, the toon tree is the father, the toon tree is also the mother, and I am the child standing under the tree to pick the buds.Picking it calmly, picking it with peace of mind, as if to be a Chinese toon tree should give these buds.

Year after year I take, year after year, the tree gives. My fingers are used to the feeling of touching the soft and wet first-time leaves. The kind of climbing is amazing. The pulse of the earth can still be felt on the extremely delicate shoots. All trees are one-way from the earth. The blood vessels that flow, and the Chinese toon buds are the most delicate microvessels on the earth. I bend the trunk, the tree endures, I pull down the branches, the tree endures, I pick the buds, the tree is silent.I left the tree and turned back, and the scars of the tree were scarred by my own efforts, and new shoots grew again for me to climb next time. I brought the tree buds back to Taipei and put them in the refrigerator. From time to time, I took out a few branches, chopped them, and fried them with eggs, and put them on the dining table. My husband and children argued that there were too few fried. I put the Chinese toon into my mouth, eagerly tasted the strange and strong smell, the world seemed to freeze for a moment, the words that I still couldn’t say after all the earthly joys given by Faust’s devil , I think I can say it. "It's so perfect, let time stop at this moment!" Not purely for the delicacy of the tree buds, but for the reasons behind it, the small town at the southernmost tip of the island, the old house in the city, the hometown of the old house, the tree in the garden, the tree that symbolizes both father and mother. All things are so friendly to people.Eating can be as solemn and solemn as religion. Sometimes I took a detour to Section 4 of Xinyi Road just to buy a few leek zygotes. I don't like the fried one, I like the dry one.When buying leek zygote, the mood is cheerful as usual, even if I wait in line, I feel happy-because after all, it proves that I am not alone, and so many people like it!I like to see a pole and a kang where the two people work together seamlessly. There seems to be a rhythm between the beautiful combination, the perfect rhythm that is as harmonious as the perfect rhythm of bells and drums, or the perfect rhythm of the cycle of day and night. . I actually don't like the strong taste of leeks, but I still buy them—just because I like to buy them, and I like to watch the moment when the hot and bulging zygotes are turned out by a long iron fork. I also like the word "combine". All "forgiving" foods make me feel mysterious and interesting, such as buns, dumplings, and spring rolls, each of which contains a strange small world, like the universe containing the Milky Way. A zygote also contains a small universe. Zygote is the food in the north, and it seems to be able to chew the entire Hetao Plain with one bite, those wheat fields, those grains, and those calloused hands!Those freshly cut spring leeks in the backyard after a shower. I love this food. Once, I found Zhangzhou Street to buy Shandong pancakes (an extremely thin pancake made of mixed grains), but I went too late and the house was demolished. Take the steel bars, I don't know where to find the lost pie. Fortunately, leek zygote is still sold all over the street. Am I going to buy something to eat?Or are you looking for a piece of nostalgia that you can touch and chew? My husband likes melon seeds, and I gradually fell in love with them, and I went all the way to Xining South Road to buy them, because they had the word "Xuzhou" printed on the envelope.Xuzhou is my hometown that I have never been to. Man is a troublesome creature. We didn't have to have a roof, but we do. Originally there was no need for four walls other than the roof, but we do. Why is there not an autumn-scented green lamp between the four walls?Why is there a table under the lamp?Why do you want a pot of tea when you have three meals on the table?Why do you have to serve melon seeds with tea? However, we want, because we are human beings, we want our own arrangements. Desires can also be upright, or they can be "this heart is worthy of heaven and earth".Occasionally, in the middle of the night, we each read a book or a newspaper, ate melon seeds, and chatted with each other. The next sentence might be worrying. The little daughter got a cat from nowhere and secretly put it in Raised on the balcony, the middle sentence may be about the marriage of an old friend twenty years ago, and the following sentence may suddenly reflect on how much money is needed to organize a group to perform in the United States. As we talked, the melon seed shells gradually piled up into a mountain. Many things, many things, many said and unsaid things are all done at the moment of eating melon seeds. Children also love melon seeds, but they don’t know how to crack them. We put the gnawed white melon seeds on their little white hands, and they always eat them in one bite, and turn around and say, “I want more!” We laughed and sent them away. Eating melon seeds is one of the Chinese New Year projects for me.When I was young, I heard adults say: "If you have money, you celebrate the New Year every day, but if you don't have money, you pass the customs every day." And eating melon seeds makes me feel like celebrating the New Year every day. In fact, which night is not New Year's Eve?Every night, we have to bid farewell to our predecessors, and every dawn, we have to face our new self. Tonight, shall we sit with each other in a pot, share a plate of melon seeds with a lamp and a table, and talk endlessly? I took my youngest daughter to walk along Yongkang Street, and on both sides were the aroma of pancakes, shallots, roasted chicken drumsticks, roasted corn, and roasted sweet potatoes. Walking past the stalls of "rice tame" and meat bran, I took her to stop in front of a pot of oyster noodles. "Do you want a bowl?" She looked at the sticky noodles in amazement and agreed. I ordered a bowl for her and stood by to watch her eat. She ate a bowl and said: "It's so delicious, I want another bowl!" I ordered another bowl for her. Later, she became a fan of oyster noodle noodles, and later, somehow, the family set a legal oyster noodle day, and stipulated that they must take them to eat once every Tuesday as a midnight snack.This matter was not serious at first, but it was not until one day that we couldn’t take them there because of something, and the little daughter hid on the bed and cried secretly. We found that the matter was more real than we imagined. After that, on Tuesday, even if it was raining, we had to go and bring back a bowl.When it wasn't raining, we went hand in hand to sit by the stall, eating while watching the colors and sounds flowing all over the street. In a bowl of oyster noodles, there is our love for this land. A Hunan native and a Jiangsu native met on this island, fell in love, and gave birth to a son and a daughter. The four of them sat at a stall on the edge of the street. It makes me sad and happy. Around Yongkang is Lianyun, Linyi, Lishui, and Qingtian (what a place that produces such good stones!) And a little farther away is the Tongshan Street that belongs to the mother’s hometown. , a little farther away, there is Changsha Street that belongs to the father of Haishou. The place where I was born is called Jinhua. Jinhua is now a street. The places where I lived are Chongqing, Nanjing and Liuzhou. Chongqing, Nanjing and Liuzhou are each on the same road. Farewell That piece of mainland is in Guangzhou. When I go to Guangzhou Street, I always feel sad. The place where I disembark is Keelung. Strangely, even Keelung has a road. The road of Taipei stretches out its vertical and horizontal arms to embrace the territory of China, but Taipei does not lose its identity as Taipei. Just eating a bowl of oyster noodles, just in the small and narrow Yongkang Street, but we and our children have infinite love for this land.