Chapter 39 Taste of Sydney

I don't know why, among all the fruits, my favorite is pears; no matter what time of day, pears always give me a feeling of desolation.On Tonghua Street near where I live, there is a fruit street. When I walked past it, under the mercury lamp, pears always jumped out of the stalls in white, as if they did not belong to the fruit in the stall. I always remember the first time I ate pears. Children who grew up in the countryside have no shortage of fruits in all seasons, but pears and apples have no chance to meet each other, and they only appear in dreams. The first time I ate pears was at the home of a relative who had just returned from a foreign country and brought back a box of precious pears, and repeatedly emphasized how difficult it was to travel across thousands of mountains and rivers.I hugged the pear and sat in the corner of the living room and ate it. Because I thought it was such a precious fruit, I chewed it carefully. I imagined that the pear would turn yellow before I ate half of it. I stood up and told my relatives: "This pear is broken."

"How could it be?" The relative's child was surprised. "Look, it's all yellow," I said. Although my relatives have repeatedly emphasized that the pears must be eaten in one sitting, otherwise they will turn yellow, but no matter what he says, I will not eat any more. Although the taste of pears is so delicious, my stubbornness makes adults confused It was very embarrassing, and finally the relative smiled and said: "This is the first time this child has eaten pears!" I later learned that the yellowing of the pears was due to oxidation. I felt sorry for the adults in my heart, but it was too late to remedy it.From then on, when I saw pears, I remembered the blushing past when I ate pears in my childhood, and since then I have especially liked eating pears, as if I was trying to make up for something.

In my hometown, there is an old custom that pears cannot be cut and eaten, because cutting pears is considered a symbol of "separation" in the concept of the villagers.There are five children in my family, and I often look at one or two pears and sigh. The brothers give way, but the pear always ends up in my hands. The reason for my mother is very simple: because I am weak and I like to eat pears. . Until the family’s economy improved, Taiwan also produced its own pears. At that time, I was studying abroad. Every autumn, when I went to school after school, my mother would secretly stuff a few pears in my luggage and let me take them on the bus. eat.Although I can appreciate my mother's love, I don't know the meaning of pears. "Until I stepped into the society, I often went home in a hurry. Sometimes when I returned home in the middle of the night, I would return to the city in the early morning. My mother would also get up early to buy two pears in the market and put them in my pocket. On the fast-moving train, I rubbed the pear repeatedly, reluctant to eat it, and then realized that a small pear actually represents how much love and longing my mother has. When eating pears, these emotions are like pear juice. , overflowed.

One summer vacation, I went to Lishan to work part-time because of my love for pears. The morning in Lishan was cold, and the pears were chilled by the dew all night.Because the owner of the farm let us eat pears for free, the guys who worked with me were afraid of eating pears within a few days, but I never got tired of eating pears, and I went to work every day when I was full of pears.The summer vacation of that year was the happiest summer vacation of my student days. Sometimes the pear not only symbolizes separation, but it can also be full of warmth. I remember my father told a story that they were born in the era of Japanese dominance. When he was in elementary school, the Japanese teacher would show them apples from Yantai and Sydney from Tianjin, saying that one day they would overthrow China and they would be able to live in Shandong. Eat big apples, eat the best Sydney in Tianjin.Dad's memory of pears is a little sad because of this. He told us this story every time he ate pears.In order to eat good apples and pears, the Japanese slaughtered tens of millions of Chinese compatriots with samurai swords.

Once, when my wife and I went to Hong Kong, it was the season when pears in Tianjin were in abundance, and a lot of pears were sold to Hong Kong. The fruit stalls in Hong Kong offered "Sydney juice", a cup of five Hong Kong dollars, just right downstairs in the hotel where I stayed. There is a fruit shop that sells pear juice. Before we go out every day, we stand on the side of Tsim Sha Tsui street where people and cars are noisy and drink pear juice; the color of pear juice is transparent, as cool as jade, and the fragrance is endless. I still can't describe the taste in words; because in the transparent juice, we always drink the nostalgia that seems to be broken.

The world-famous Tianjin pear has green skin and is very big. When you cut it with a knife, the flesh is as clear as snow, and the pear juice drips to the ground immediately with the blade.I thought, if such a pure white pear was stained with blood, it would look extraordinarily bright red. I told my wife the story of my father’s elementary school days, and my wife said, “I don’t know how much innocent blood was splashed under those pear trees!” It's a pity that the blood had long been buried in the soil and was not stained on the pear, so that many descendants of later generations have lost their memory of the flesh and blood flying under the pear tree.It's a pity that the Japanese still can't forget the deliciousness of Tianjin and Sydney!

Water pears are now a common fruit that is sold all over the street. Every time I eat pears, various flavors come to my mind; the strongest flavor is given by the Japanese, who once killed our compatriots under the pear trees , and still yelling at the pear trees, passers-by all over the street, who would have thought that eating pears would sometimes make people sad? — October 13, 1982