Chapter 28 Congee rice and

Supreme Directive— The great leader Chairman Mao taught us: "Eat less when you are free, and eat more when you are busy. If you are not busy, you should not be busy." Chairman Mao's words come from ancient Chinese folk wisdom. "Eat rare" refers to eating porridge, and "eat dry" refers to the work of eating dry rice.As for "free time" and "busy time", it is also necessary to explain here: "Eat thin when you are free, eat dry when you are busy" is the original source of Chinese rural areas (there is a similar saying in the farmhouse, called "eat dry when busy" , eat thin in leisure time, eat dry in the field, and eat thin in the home"), in terms of traditional agricultural production, "idle time" is slack, and "busy time" is busy farming.When farming is busy, more "real" cooked rice should be used to supplement the physical strength of excessive expenditure;

The busyness and leisure mentioned by Chairman Mao are the guidelines for rural diet and life in times of economic difficulties. The busyness and idleness in the city are sometimes even opposite to those in the countryside.For example, when autumn is high and the air is clear, you have just completed your summer sales task and your boss is away, so you plan to go on an autumn outing with your wife away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and leave the housekeeping to the nanny.Unexpectedly, your little nanny also asked you for leave at this time - your destinations are all in the countryside, and those ripe ears of wheat in the fields are your common goal, the difference is: you are for leisure, she is for busy farming .

In fact, people in the city often "eat porridge when they are busy": for those who have to rush to work early in the morning, Chinese-style porridge or Western-style oatmeal presented in a semi-liquid form not only saves time, but also wins Smooth in absorption. As Li Yu said: "The two things of rice and porridge are the daily necessities of the house, among which the casing is unknown to everyone, so how can we use Yuezu as a substitute to make a speech?" , it is possible to establish a new model in the two different states of life and rice, and then produce another experience of rice in this model.For example, "Never idle, not busy, not busy, not busy" is not easy for urban people to understand, although it is neat in logic and sentence structure.In other words, the judgment of what is "not rare and not dry" food depends to some extent on what time to what time is considered "not busy or busy" in a day.

Whether thin or dry, porridge and rice are two different ways of eating grains. Before Gongshu Pan invented the stone mill, the Chinese had always been a nation that ate only grains. Even wheat could only be boiled into rice or porridge and eaten in grains. Tease it, shake it and knead it, release it for the old man, and steam it for floating." Noodle food not only greatly enriches the form, cooking and taste of Chinese staple food, but also seems to be a criterion for judging the difference between men and northerners to some extent.Mr. Lin Yutang said: "You see, all the emperors who established their capitals in the past came from the north of the Yangtze River, and none of them came from the south of the Yangtze River. Therefore, the Chinese have a saying, that is, those who eat noodles can be emperors, but those who eat rice cannot be emperors. Zeng Guofan was unfortunately born in the south of the Yangtze River, and it is also a rice-producing area in Hunan. He ate too much rice, otherwise he would have become an emperor long ago."

Since the abolition of the imperial system, the difference between southerners and northerners in terms of grain and powder food has gradually narrowed and blurred.However, within the grain food camp, this kind of difference continues to exist, but it has changed from being an emperor to being an entanglement between the poor and the rich. Cooked rice or cooked rice with added ingredients was a symbol of wealth from the beginning.The first and second ones in "Zhou Bazhen" are Yizhen Chunao and Erzhen Chunwu, namely rice and millet. At the same time, the reason why porridge is regarded as the staple food of the poor is there. : Using one catty of rice to cook rice can satisfy and restore the appetite and physical strength of two or three people; if the same amount of rice is used to cook porridge, it can often satisfy four or five people, even if there is dissatisfaction in the "heart", but barely It can also satisfy the "meaning".

Of course, the poor also have time to eat. If "leisure" refers to the absolute poverty of the poor, then "busy" refers to the relative affluence of the poor under absolute poverty. For the poor, the function of porridge is to divide and conquer the appetite, which belongs to the irrigation articles in the BBS.Completely eliminating the interference of soup and dry rice in the form of dry steaming is different, so I believe that people do not need saunas, but they can only succumb to bathing halls for the time being. When a Guangzhou person wants to show a realistic attitude, he will say: "If you have porridge, eat porridge, and if you have rice, you will eat rice"; and before this person wants to take some decisive action, he will encourage himself like this: "Eat porridge or eat rice." Rice, success or failure depends on it.”

Obviously, porridge is not only the staple food of the poor, but also a symbol of failure. What's more, eating porridge for a long time may be one of the reasons for the country's weakness and national misfortune.In this layer of meaning, Wang Meng used the mouth of the son of that family to make a grand narrative incisively and vividly in the novel: "Eating steamed buns, gruel, and pickles in the morning... Oh my God! Is this the enjoyment of modern people with upper-middle income in big Chinese cities in the 1980s? It's terrible! It's so ignorant! The gruel and pickles themselves are East Asian. The symbol of a sick man! It is chronic suicide! It is ignorance! It is the shame of the descendants of the Yellow Emperor! It is the root of the decline of Chinese civilization! It is a sign of the decline of the Yellow River civilization! If we always eat buttered bread instead of porridge and pickles in the morning, 1840 Can Britain win the Opium War in 1900? Did the Queen Mother go to Chengde in the Eight-Power Allied Forces in 1900? Did the Japanese Kwantung Army dare to launch the "September 18" Incident in 1931? In 1937 Do the little devils dare to start the Marco Polo Bridge Incident? The Japanese army came over and saw the butter cream that the Chinese were mouthing. Could they not go into shock? If after 1949 our leaders made up their minds to wipe out the rare Porridge and pickles, the whole country eats butter bread, ham, sausage, eggs, yogurt cheese, jam and honey chocolate. Hasn’t the average number of China’s national strength, technology, art, sports, housing, education, and car ownership reached the forefront of the world long ago? After all, rare Congee and pickles are the root of our nation’s misfortune, and the root cause of our society’s lack of development and progress! Eliminate gruel and pickles completely! If gruel and pickles are not eliminated, China will have no hope!”

The first time I read it was ten years ago. Here, I just want to add a dispensable footnote to it: Congee, called Mi in ancient times, only the very rare kind is called porridge.Therefore, the word "thin porridge" is purely superfluous, and whether it is hard or not is another matter. Poor people eat porridge to survive, while rich people eat porridge to keep in good health. This is the paradox of porridge. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that eating porridge can maintain health, so there is a series of "rich porridge" customized according to the changes of the four seasons for health preservation: eat taro porridge, red date porridge, dog meat porridge, and chicken porridge in the cold winter morning, and the whole body will be warm after eating. Energetic; eating mung bean porridge, lotus seed porridge, hawthorn porridge, and lotus root porridge in midsummer evening has the effect of cooling, nourishing and supplementing nutrients.In addition, there are honey porridge, lily porridge, wolfberry porridge, etc. that are eaten by the elderly and infirm.

Porridge also appeared in the imperial diet of the Qing Palace, namely polenta porridge and rock sugar porridge. The former was the "coarse grain" used by Qianlong to regulate appetite, and the latter was the beauty product of Empress Dowager Cixi. The best product in "Fu Gui Porridge" must be bird's nest porridge. "Health Preservation Essays" wrote: "Top-grade bird's nest porridge, boiled porridge and eaten lightly, nourishes the lungs, resolves phlegm and relieves cough, nourishes but not stagnates." Open it, except for hormones, the air is full of the smell of bird's nest porridge.Baochai, Baoyu, Daiyu and Qin Keqing are all masters of eating bird's nest porridge.The conversation about bird’s nest porridge between Bao Dai in the forty-fifth chapter sounds like two young women discussing the effect of a kind of cosmetics today: “He who eats grains is born, and what you eat on a daily basis can’t add to your health.” It is not a good thing to nourish the spirit, qi and blood... Yesterday I saw that in your prescription, ginseng and cinnamon are too much. Although it is said to nourish qi and nourish the spirit, it should not be too hot. According to me, the first thing is to calm the liver and strengthen the stomach. If the liver fire is leveled, the soil cannot be suppressed, the stomach qi is healthy, and the diet can support people. Get up early every day and take a tael of rock sugar and five qian of the best bird's nest, and use silver pickle to cook porridge. If you get used to it, it is better than medicine , the most nourishing yin and qi."

Compared with young people, Jiamu seems to like porridge more, but don't be fooled by her tone of "you can eat some porridge". "Half a bowl" of porridge is actually not fuel-efficient. The porridge is cooked with "Yutian rouge rice". According to Liu Tingji's "Zaiyuan Magazine" in the Qing Dynasty, rouge rice is a good variety of Yutian Dao that Kangxi planted in Fengzeyuan Yutianbu. For internal meals.Reddish beige and long-grained, fragrant and full-bodied. Although the Cao family was once rich and honored, when Cao Xueqin lived in Huangye Village and wrote the book, he lived a miserable life of "the whole family ate porridge and wine on credit".

Mr. Suiyuan wrote: "Seeing water but not rice is not porridge; seeing rice but not water is not porridge. It must make water and rice harmonious, soft and greasy, and then it is called porridge." According to this standard, water and rice go their own way. The paofan is like a third power between porridge and rice. Paofan used to be a must-have standard breakfast under the eaves of every Shanghai, and it was also one of the catchphrases of Shanghainese among the non-local population.I once read an article by female writer Jiang Liping mocking Shanghai women in a newspaper: "When you talk about Shanghai women, you must play with 'sentiment'." (Note: The following keywords include: bar, coffee, wine glass shaking with lights, Antique furniture, party). But in my opinion... If you choose a fancy dress, it is just as normal as if you ate a bowl of pickled rice and pickled cucumbers today... Isn't it just writing about life? What's there to show off?" It’s true, the Paofan that Shanghainese eat at home in the morning is indeed quite different from the bars on Hengshan Road.The so-called Shanghai Paofan is to get up in the morning and wash the leftover (or leftover on purpose) rice with boiling water to make a pot of rice that doesn’t look like rice, or porridge like porridge. The heating process, using the temperature of boiling water, is also a side-by-side hit with pickled vegetable fried dough sticks. In all fairness, apart from the unavoidable shabby feeling caused by "overnight meal" and "boiled water", running a meal is actually not very unpalatable. Once the overnight cold meal is awakened by the first pot of boiling water in the morning, Not only is there no stickiness and lingering like porridge, but the order is clear, and there is a feeling of waking up from a big dream.In addition, Paofan is also environmentally friendly.Of course, in order to obtain this pleasant feeling, one must have no food in one’s heart, nor have porridge. This is not porridge, nor is it rice. Taiwanese also eat pickled rice, but 90% of what they cook is Japanese-style ochazuke, also called tea pickled rice. The basic method is: a bowl of white rice, one person likes to sprinkle bonito powder, white sesame, shredded seaweed, and salt , green tea powder, sesame, fish fillet, chrysanthemum, etc., or put a plum, egg yolk, and finally sprinkle an appropriate amount of sencha... That kind of taste, there is a bit of ethereal sweetness in the warmth and warmth, and a bit of faint bitterness. It's a film by Yasujiro Ozu.