Chapter 46 Grass oven cake

Two years ago, I saw a mainland novel "Eight Thousand Years", in which a frugal rich man always ate a kind of oil-free sesame seed cake called Caolu cake.Only then did I suddenly realize that a boring gourd from forty or fifty years ago was finally broken. After the fall of Shanghai in World War II, hawkers hawked it every day: "Horse...caolu cake!" In Wu dialect, "buy" and "sell" have the same pronunciation as "horse", and "fry" sounds like "grass", so it is first regarded as "fried oven cake". I never thought that there was a stove dedicated to burning thatch.The singer who sells cakes has a loud voice, the word "horse" drags on for a long time, the next word is raised, and at the end, the word "oven cake" pops and dances crisply, and then suddenly chokes.It is a young and strong voice, far away from the old hoarse throat of the stinky tofu seller, they are both good voices.The wonton sellers didn't make a sound, just knocked on their clappers.Wonton is a midnight snack, only available at night, and dried stinky tofu only appears at dusk, and he is alone in the daytime.Perhaps because his customers are not residents along the street, but passing rickshaw tricycle drivers, cart pullers, bicycle deliverers, and various hawkers, the most during the day.You can hold it in your hand and eat it on the go - the most convenient bento.

During the war, there were few cars, and the sound of cars and the city was relatively quiet.Hearing this long cry from afar on the tall building, my aunt and I have said more than once: "I don't know what this fried oven cake looks like." "Many people eat it now." Once my aunt said quietly, if there is Thoughts. I just said "oh".In my impression, it doesn't seem like flatbread and fried dough sticks are a civilian food, but it is poor.My aunt probably thought so too. Our lodger's maid bought one one day, and it sat on the kitchen table like a slice of cake on a painted tablecloth.It was cut from a large round pancake one foot wide, but it was not a pancake, it was more than an inch high, and maybe a little sesame seed was sprinkled on it.Obviously, it is not fried in a pan like fried rice cakes, it will not be "fried oven cakes".Can't think of a word anymore, unless it is "dry"?In fact, the "dry stove" doesn't work at all. Are there still non-dry stoves? Caolu cakes in "Eight Thousand Years" are pasted on the stove and baked.Such a thick pancake can never be "sticked to the pancake". The background of "Eight Thousand Years" seems to be the northern Jiangsu area before the Communist Party came.The Caolubing there is probably in its original form, smaller and thinner.Jiangnan's caolu cake is suspected to be a new development in modern times, because it is too similar to the big cake that did not exist in China.

It disappeared after the war.It seems that once the hard days of wartime are over, no one will eat them. I met it once on the street, passing by, the basket on the peddler's arm was covered with a cloth, and a corner was lifted to reveal a large pancake with scorched spots, the surface of the pancake was slightly yellow, and there might be two or three in a stack.The white cloth was washed into an even dark gray, which looked a little disgusting.Taking a quick glance, I was only busy looking at the famous food that I had heard about for a long time, and I didn't pay attention to the person carrying the basket, who seemed to be a pale, barren, middle-aged man.I didn't expect it to be too disproportionate to that young singing voice, or too thin to look old.

There are many places in Shanghai, but native Shanghainese are rare.Those who sell food are all purely local accents.Some aborigines unexpectedly have the darkest skin color in the country, at least among the Han people.Moreover, the black is grayish, which is different from the general purple chest color. It is more like the charcoal gray skin color of small islands such as Guam in the South Pacific (Micronesian) and Australian aborigines.I went to the middle school where I went, and the dormitory supervisor was from Qingpu—the name of Qingpu is the opposite of Huangpu, and they were all located by the Huangpu River—and she was dark and pretty, and the nickname given to her by the girls behind her was Ahhui.Her fellow countryman probably worked outdoors for many years, and she got even more tanned.

Along the street are the backs of houses in semi-old concrete alleys. The windows are placed extremely high to prevent thieves, and there are thin black iron bars protruding from the windows.The sycamore trees on the street, the straight white cylindrical trees with light brown scars, were reflected on the large square bricks of finely grained cement on the sidewalk, and completely disappeared under the dazzling sun.Right now, the whole place is white and faded from the sun, and suddenly there is such a "half thick ink" ghost shadow on the white paper, the slightly hunched and thin sliver, it seems to have a round face originally, but it is so dark that you can't see it clearly, it's scary at first sight .

Just such a basket, how can it be enough to sell, and it will be called all day long?Is it just a basket of cakes, such a small business, it is really a pocket book.Or are you so thin that you can only hold a basket, and go back to get it when it's sold out?That's always close.Here are all residential areas, followed by thoroughfare, and there are no shantytowns.In fact, the location is good, but he has to monopolize it all by himself, so he must go out of his way, and the police will pay some money.It's not like a countryman who came to the city because there are Japanese soldiers and peace forces in the countryside, and he can't survive. Selling a basket of cakes a day is better than doing nothing.

I only remembered these things when I wrote them here, and I just felt a little appalled at the time.It was only for a moment, and after that, when I heard the cry of "horse... Caolubing", it was still purely sweet and sweet, and I completely forgot about the strangely black and thin man.At least as far as I'm concerned, this is the "Sound of Shanghai" of that era. The pop songs of Zhou Xuan and Yao Li are just the noise of the neighbor's radio, the background music, not the theme song.My aunt finally bought a piece one day, and when she came back from get off work, she put it on the kitchen table and grunted impatiently, "Hey, fried oven cake."

The newspaper held a corner of the pancake, and I smiled and tore off a small piece and ate it, but I couldn't eat anything after the dry compress.I don't know if my aunt ate it or gave it to the tenant's maid.