Chapter 10 Section 10 The red thread on the chicken leg

My mother-in-law is from Chengguan Town, Daye, Hubei. My mother's mother is not called grandma or grandma in Daye, but mother-in-law. Nowadays, the petty bourgeoisie in the city are called "Jiajia".The mother-in-law's status in Daye's spiritual life is very important. For example, in the old days, the publicity was announced on the list, and the scholar's notice was received. The first thing to do was to wear red silk and ride a fast horse to the mother-in-law's house to announce the good news. Outside my mother-in-law's kitchen is Daye Lake. When the water is high, I sit on the back threshold to fish. There are water birds and ducks on the lake. There are fishing boats and cargo ships transporting yellow sand, and there is a faint sound of wooden spoons scooping water. There was a collision, followed by a muffled, muffled scraping sound between the wet wooden spoon and the boat plank, a splash of water splashed on the lake, and so on, until the boat moved away and the sound of the oars disappeared.What impresses me deeply is that I still eat it. My mother-in-law cooks a big bowl with glutinous rice cakes, sorghum cakes, rice cakes and bacon, and puts green garlic, spinach or cabbage cores. I always want to eat well.

In my memory, Daye's spiritual civilization norms are relatively complete, or it can be said that all kinds of folk etiquette are complete, but the material life has been in a long history, and there are some shortages.Daye has been mining and smelting copper since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. It is one of the birthplaces of Chinese bronze culture. By the middle of the Tang Dynasty, three townships in Ezhou were designated as special counties for smelting. The emperor wrote the name: Daye (Daxing Furnace).Since Daye came down from the Three Kingdoms, the term "wars and chaos" is related to it. The people of Daye in modern times, as well as most of the people in southeast Hubei, all immigrated from Jiangxi.Lack of supplies will cause many civilized behaviors to mutate, especially eating etiquette.Eating etiquette is mainly divided into two parts: persuasion and taboo. Persuasion is always the same, but taboo is different.In Daye, the boatmen are not allowed to turn over the fish when eating fish, it is suspected of "turning over the boat".At other important banquets, the last whole fish could not be eaten, so the chef wrapped the fish in flour and fried it until it was hard fried like a big flying target.If you can't eat it, you have to make it strong.Its meaning lies in "more than every year".There are fish and more than enough. This homonym is interesting and a symbol of beauty.

Chicken legs are not such a taboo.In the 1930s and 1940s, according to the etiquette and customs of Daye, when such important guests as nephew and son-in-law come to the door, they must first order a bowl of chicken noodle soup, and there must be a chicken leg in the noodles.There is no shortage of noodles. Daye is located in the middle of the Mubu Mountains and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. It is a compound planting area of ​​rice and wheat. The shortage is chicken legs.On weekdays, visitors can just kill a chicken to treat them, but during New Years and holidays, guests come like a revolving lantern, one with one leg, two with a pair of legs, so what if you open a chicken farm?The key point is that there were no chicken farms in the old days, and there was no place to buy chicken legs. All the chicken legs had to be obtained from their own chickens. The really rich and big families probably could afford so many chickens, but they wanted to buy whole chickens, but they only got whole chickens. The cost of buying dozens of chickens for two legs is too high.Therefore, all internal customers in Daye know that it is inedible to eat noodles with chicken legs buried like tank guns. When you serve the bowl with chopsticks, you pick up the chicken legs and put them back into the bowl to eat noodles and drink soup.When another guest came, the chicken leg was buried in the next bowl of noodles.Of course, those are all clean noodles, and there is no hygiene problem.

That's it, it's easy to get rid of sporadic guests, but it's hard to get a group of people. If you order three or five bowls of noodles at a time, the chicken legs will increase to three or five.In the days when chicken legs are not enough, you usually need to borrow from neighbors. The east family borrows one and the west family borrows two, and you can make up three or five chicken legs.Plump chicken legs, strong chicken legs, fragrant chicken legs, but the chicken legs must be returned immediately. During the Chinese New Year, neighbors will come to visit immediately, and the turnover frequency of chicken legs is high, so chicken legs must be marked.Of course, no writing or embroidery can be done on the chicken legs, so a red silk thread is tied at the joints of the legs.It is also possible to tie green silk thread and yellow silk thread, but everyone likes red silk thread, so just increase the number to distinguish, it is not a legal requirement.

When there were twenty guests, they borrowed a pot along the street, and borrowed a pot of chicken legs back, buried them in boiling noodles, and then put them back into the vegetable bowls, put them back in the pot, and returned them from house to house along the street.In the old era of shortage economy, it was an act of mutual assistance among the people, and visitors from other people's homes also borrowed.There is also auxiliary work. One is that the customer eats chicken legs by mistake. It is unfortunate that an accident occurs, and the customer will feel uncomfortable.If you are the owner or agent of Ping An Insurance, you should greet loudly: there are chicken legs in there, eat it!eat!Hearing the reminder, those who forgot to put the chicken legs back into the bowl immediately put the chicken legs back into the bowl with shame on their faces and put them aside.In another case, there may be a master of ceremonies whispering to non-local guests and young guests that the chicken legs are put in the noodles to show respect and cannot be eaten.

History has turned the page with difficulty. In an era of abundant materials, etiquette and customs are gradually disappearing, because burying a chicken leg in noodles is not considered hospitality anyway, so the etiquette of burying chicken legs in noodles was simply cancelled. , but the tradition of chicken soup has been handed down. Later, Daye had a brand of chicken soup called "Si Dou Liang Chicken Soup", which was well-known and sold all the way to Haikou. Knowing the red silk thread on the chicken legs, you know that Daye can be good. Chicken soup is not without reason.