Chapter 33 wooden fish chaos

Late at night, I went to Linyi Street to visit friends. I happened to meet an old wonton seller whom I had known many years ago in an alley. " More than four years ago, I lived in Linyi Street, and I often worked late at night. Every day at about 1:30 in the morning, a clear sound of wooden fish always rang into my window facing the street.The sound of the wooden fish is very punctual, and it rings in the early morning every day, even when the wind and rain come. At the beginning, the sound of the wooden fish brought me a mysterious feeling, which often made me stop working, looking at the sky outside the window in a daze, and kept thinking in my heart: who made the sound of the wooden fish in the middle of the night?What does it symbolize?Is there someone chanting scriptures near my residence at 1:00 every morning?

In the folk, there used to be monks who knocked on wooden fish to announce the dawn. Every day at dawn, they wore cassocks and straw sandals and walked around the streets and alleys. , to make people sleep less and cherish the time; second, to make people get up at the fifth watch when the mind is clearest, read scriptures and chant Buddha, in order to purify the spirit;I have always felt that this kind of knocking on a wooden fish to repay the Buddha's voice is an excellent proof of the compatibility between Chinese Buddhism and folk life. However, I am puzzled by the fact that this long-lost tradition in Yanxiang appeared on Linyi Street in Taipei.So whenever I heard the wooden fish ringing in the small building at night, I couldn't resist the urge to find out.

One day in winter, the sky was falling with a weak, sparkling light rain. I was reading a beautifully printed Diamond Sutra. At the end of the reading, "All conditioned dharmas are like dreams and bubbles, like dew and electricity, and should be viewed in this way." For a while, the sound of the wooden fish happened to come from a distant alley, which made people feel Wu Tianwuji. I sat up with my clothes on and held an umbrella, determined to find the source of the wooden fish's sound. The wooden fish was beating very heavily and vigorously, and it flew out from the rain all over the sky. It knocked and stopped, and it was far and near, not at all like the wooden fish that fell in a hurry when reading scriptures in the temple.I followed the track of the sound and hurried through the alley. From a distance, I saw a little old man in a loose cloth coat and a felt hat. He was pushing an old cart and was swaying from Coming from the other end of the alley.A forty-candle light bulb is hung on the stall, swaying in the light rainy dark passage with the bumps of the road.The wooden fish sound that has been confusing me is what the old man knocked out.

As soon as I got closer, I realized that it was just an ordinary stall selling wontons. I asked the old man why he chose the wooden fish percussion, and his answer was very simple. He said: "Old customers who like to eat my wontons, once Hearing the sound of my wooden fish, they will come out to buy wontons.” I couldn’t help but be dumbfounded, it turned out that the wooden fish with him was like a bell rang by a bean curd seller in the country, or a trumpet that attracts children in the hands of a vendor selling ice water. It's just a signal that couldn't be simpler. It's me who associates the wooden fish too far. In fact, it is sometimes just a tool for hard life.

The old man also saw my disappointment, he said: "Sir, you can eat a bowl of my wontons, it is made entirely of lean meat, without any green onions, even chefs in big restaurants like my wontons." " So I abandoned my obsession with the wooden fish, stood in front of a red door with an umbrella, and ate a bowl of wontons by the light of the old man's booth.In the wind and rain, I tasted the old man's wonton, which is indeed a delicacy in the world, no less than the wooden fish knocked in his hand. Later, I also gradually became a loyal customer of the old man. I worked until the early hours of the morning, heard his wooden fish from afar, and waited for him in the alley. After eating a bowl of wontons, I continued my unfinished work for the day.

After getting acquainted with the old man, I realized that his choice of wooden fish as a signal of wonton has his unique ingenuity.He said that because his business was in the middle of the night, he really couldn't think of a tool that could be heard by people far and near without waking up the sleeping people. Moreover, he felt that he was losing his dignity by shouting loudly like a zongzi seller in the middle of the night. In the end, he chose the wooden fish—so that the awake people can hear his call, but it will not interrupt the sweet dreams of the deep sleepers. Wooden fish is always wooden fish, no matter how you look at it, it still has its cuteness, even in a wonton stand.

I ate the old man’s wontons for more than a year, and I lost contact with him until I moved. But whenever I work in the quiet night, I still miss him and his wontons. The old man is an ordinary person in the corner of our society. He has sold wontons in the Linyi Street area for 30 years and has become a well-known person in the nightlife in that area. Very confident, the ravioli he delivered with the sound of a wooden fish has also become a gold-lettered signboard in that area.Wooden fish is a part of life for him and for those who eat wontons. When I met the old man that day, he was still dressed in commoner clothes, and he was still knocking on the wooden fish that had been knocked for thirty years, but the old man had completely forgotten about me. I think, the years are just a series of voices in the calm and clear.I stood at the entrance of the alley and watched him slowly push away the small stall and disappear at the corner of the alley. I could still hear the sound of wooden fish passing through the night sky, warming the hearts of late sleepers.

Wooden fish is so beautiful in the wonton stand, full of the beauty of life, I thought about it when I left, sometimes it doesn't matter if I read the scriptures or not. — October 27, 1982