My hometown is a small county with a long history - the ancient city of Yuzhou. It is located in the south of Zhangjiakou City, Hebei Province, close to Beijing. Although her economy has developed well in the past few years, I heard from the elders that it used to be quite poor, surrounded by mountains, with poor roads and trains, and very underdeveloped transportation. But perhaps it is precisely because of the long-term poverty and isolation that a lot of regional culture with traditional characteristics has been preserved here. The rich culture adds a rich flavor to the hometown.
"Culture on the Tip of the Tongue" should be the most distinctive. It mobilizes rich imagination about hometown. The food crops grown in Weizhou are very unique, including millet, tartary buckwheat, oatmeal, etc. People beat tartary buckwheat into flour and made a noodle-like food called 饸饹. People will also roll the oatmeal noodles into cylindrical shapes, noodles, and flat sheets, steam them in a steamed bun-like basket, and serve them with soup, which gives them a unique aroma. Specialty pasta like this would be expensive in the capital. But in Weizhou, it is a regular staple food on every family's dinner table. Thinking about it this way, eating every day will give you a feeling of "earning money". Wouldn't it taste more delicious?
Not only the comparison between regions, but also a kind of wild vegetable from my hometown that impressed me deeply was called Kuzhuangcai. This dish clears away heat and relieves heat, but its taste is extremely bitter. After eating, your mouth will be full of bitterness. Even though there are many benefits, the child is unwilling to suffer and eat this "extreme suffering in the world" by himself. Every time I have to eat, the adults always hold candy cubes in their hands to coax and tease them, chewing the bitterness and thinking about the sweetness. This contrast between flavors seems to have made me, a child, understand the principle of "bitter first and then sweet" early on.
After savoring the bitterness and recalling the sweetness, let’s try Yuzhou’s fried cakes. Local people grind millet into yellow cake noodles, add water, and steam it over a very delicate heat. It can be eaten directly as a side dish as a staple food, or it can be wrapped with stuffing and put into a frying pan to make fried cakes. This yellow cake is golden in color, exquisite and translucent, plump inside, and overflowing with oily aroma. It tastes crispy in the mouth, and then glutinous and chewy. Every time we go back to our hometown, we will bring a few bags of cakes and noodles and ask my mother to make fried cakes for me.
The taste of Weizhou is not only on the tip of the tongue, but also contained in the richness and simplicity of her traditional culture.
The stilts and yangko performed during the festivals are red and green. Although the soil is crumbling, they are simple, enthusiastic, festive and lively. Fireworks are set off here every year during the Lantern Festival. Among them, "Dashuhua" has now developed into a tourism project with local characteristics. The performer will hold a willow wooden spoon, scoop up a spoonful of boiling hot molten iron, and throw it on the wall. At that moment, a hot and spicy heat will hit his face, and he will feel a "thousands of trees and thousands of trees". It feels like "the tree is on fire and the flowers are blooming", and the molten iron is like little elves flying away, colorful, brilliant and dazzling. Li Bai also once praised: The fire of the furnace illuminates the sky and the earth, and the red stars illuminate the purple smoke. That kind of visual fullness, coupled with the liveliness and splendor that fills the heart, is the sweet taste of a happy life for hometown people.
When it comes to culture, I have to mention paper-cutting. There are many types of paper-cuts: opera characters, birds, animals, fish and insects, human scenes, etc. These works have full compositions, vivid shapes, bright colors, rich yet delicate, delicate yet simple, exceptionally exquisite and clear, colorful, and full of distinctive local characteristics. It gives people a harmonious and generous local atmosphere, and a cheerful, bright and fresh atmosphere blows in the face. After appreciating it, I can't help but admire the exquisiteness of the artist's technique and the ingenuity of the concept. I always want to buy more and take them back to decorate my room and embellish my life. The appreciation and pursuit of beauty is also the taste of loving life!
Today, Yuzhou is attracting more and more tourists with its unique and traditional taste. As for me, I am getting farther and farther away from my hometown, and the times I go back are getting less and less. No matter whether it is bitter or spicy, what remains in my heart will always be sweetness and warmth, because those symbols have been imprinted on the deepest corners of my heart, and what I pick up are always the most precious fragments.