The Story of Grain by Wang Yuanjian

When I was a child, there was always not enough food at home, so there were many stories about food.

at that time, the most important day of each month was the day of distributing rations. The production team leader gave a shout on the mountain ridge at the head of the village, and everyone in each family gathered in the old ancestral hall, waiting to pick up their own food. Rations are calculated according to the work points of each family. If there are more strong laborers in the family, there will naturally be more work points, so you can choose another one after you finish one load, which will make others jealous. There are four males in my uncle's family, and several daughters are basically full-time, so they are always big grain distributors. Of course, there are also tragedies, such as my fourth uncle's house across the mountain, which is very poor. On the day of distributing rations, my fourth aunt always goes to the old ancestral hall with hope, but she often returns empty-handed, because my fourth uncle is fooling around in a foreign land, and the children are small, and the work points are not enough, so the rations are not hers. When it was dark, the four aunts moved a wooden ladder, boarded their own wall, and cried her husband's name while crying, so that every kitchen smoke could not float, and the women in the village had to go under the ladder to make a bitter persuasion. I don't know who came up with the idea, saying that as long as the tangke cries and calls for a while every day, men will be flustered outside and have to return home. As a result, my aunt's voice was suffering, and the men, women and children in the village were quite worried for a while. I even hid away from my aunt's house every night. Later, the fourth aunt was tired of crying, and the fourth uncle didn't come back, and there wasn't an extra ration. The fourth aunt stopped talking and took it out on the children at home. Later, the fourth uncle came back with honor, bringing back a set of hard qigong and doing everything. It is said that he still got through the big and small sundays, and his children immediately forgot about hunger and became arrogant.

I first heard the words "preserved egg" and "cake" from the children of the fourth uncle's family. Because the fourth uncle has been to far, far away places, he is undoubtedly well informed, so it is natural for his children to eat cakes, although my friends and I are sometimes a little disdainful. I still remember that when his children talked about preserved eggs, it was on a winter morning, under the low ridge of his house. At that time, the sun was a little rosy, and it felt warm without any temperature. When we kicked a small stone and started to show off the best food we had ever eaten with hunger, Fourth Uncle's eldest son mentioned preserved eggs, and his high spirits made our souls open their wings of imagination. At that time, there was a serious puzzle in my heart: eggs made of leather should be hard, so how can they be delicious? However, at that time, I didn't have the nerve to ask, for I was afraid that my fourth uncle's well-informed son would joke. However, I do remember that morning, and I can't forget the rosy sunshine in winter morning.

At that time, my father was a teacher in a middle school, and the three main laborers in the family were women, so the work score was always very low. According to my mother, my family's basic grain was always taken away by dozens of pounds, so it was common to go hungry. Once, the food shortage at home was so severe that my father went to the side street to buy a handful of rotten sweet potatoes and cooked them for us without scraping the skin. It is said that several children in our family eat very well.

among the worse foods, I have also eaten rice cooked with blanched rice. There is plenty of rain in the south, and it often rains during the harvest season. Sometimes, a large piece of rice is cut down by young and strong laborers who are in full swing, and it begins to rain, so the rice loses its transparent luster in the muddy water, and sometimes even sprouts. The rice cooked by retting rice tastes terrible. I don't know exactly how bad it is. I only know that adults always denounce retting rice and regard it as the root of all evil. One year, probably because the captain made a mistake in decision-making, he planted too many glutinous grains, and these glutinous grains were unfortunately soaked into glutinous rice by rain. Now the villagers have suffered. That year, my stomach never seemed refreshing, and I thought the whole world was so sticky and light.

Of course, poor and middle peasants also have their own delicacies. Because rice is always in short supply, my mother always adds something like sweet potato to the rice. Peel the sweet potato, cut it into pieces, and put it with rice. When the rice is steamed, the sweet potato becomes golden. I like sweet potatoes very much, and I don't look down on them just because they are coarse grains. Sweet potato is also very good and crisp when eaten raw. The red fleshy sweet potato is especially sweet, and we call it pumpkin stubborn. We thieves who are used to stealing sweet potatoes can recognize pumpkin stubborn at a glance from the shape of the seedlings. Once, another partner and I were chased all over the beach by adults at home because we stole pumpkins from others. Sweet potatoes are also good, that is, they can boil sugar. Chop the sweet potato, cook it with rice, mix it with malt, then filter out a large pot full of juice with bean bag cloth, and keep cooking. When the juice is boiled, the sticky syrup will come out. When cooking sugar, most of them are in front of the New Year. We children are running around the big pot of cooking sugar, just to lick the spatula that is as sweet as hell.

sweet potato candy is a good thing. After cooking, put it in a clay bowl and put it on the top of the cupboard. Sometimes when I am greedy, I will secretly stir up some with chopsticks and put it in my mouth to taste it carefully. When New Year's Eve approaches, my mother will soak the bowl filled with sweet potato sugar in warm water to make the syrup more soft, then fry a lot of soaked rice, stick the soaked rice with the syrup, pat it into squares with the back of a knife, and carefully cut it into pieces, which is the best rice candy. What if you knead it into a ball? That's the sugar cake. You can take it in your hand and have fun in the mountains and waters while eating it. There is also stress in making soaked rice. It seems that on a sunny day, the rice is half cooked and exposed to the sun on a large bamboo dustpan until it is dried. Although the dried rice is very hard, it is crisp after frying.

another thing that makes your mouth water when you think about it is pumpkin boiled dumplings. It's probably the beginning of September. Mung beans are ripe, pumpkins have been stored in the house for some days, and slender glutinous rice is impatient to wait in the jar. It's time for tonic this season. The glutinous rice flour is used to knead the glutinous rice balls, which are cooked together with the chopped pumpkin pieces, mung beans and oily noodles. You can see the golden pumpkin pieces and white glutinous rice balls dancing in boiling water, and a beautiful taste that cannot be described in words rises. At this time, my mother always fills everyone with a big bowl, which is not as restrictive as usual. Boiling pumpkin dumplings are sweet and salty, waxy and refreshing, warm and warm, which is really an unforgettable childhood meal.

when the new wheat is ripe, every family should steam steamed bread once. Southerners can't make pasta, and steaming steamed bread once in a while is like a big festival. It should be around the Dragon Boat Festival that the smell of new noodles wafts in the village, which will also make us excited for a while. One year during the Dragon Boat Festival, I remember my sisters and I went fishing in the river, which was quite rewarding, so there was a delicious dish on the table at home that day. At that time, the commune held "communication" once or twice a year, which was actually to organize a large gathering, one of which was on the day when the new wheat was born. During the "communication", farmers could buy some daily necessities that were not easy to buy at ordinary times. One year during the exchange, I invited a master who can fry fried dough sticks from somewhere. His fried dough sticks can bring the old people back to life-a bit exaggerated, right? But I still remember the madness when people buy fried dough sticks, saying that it is not too much for people to step on people. Everyone went crazy and jumped on the iron fence with the smell of fried dough sticks. The sight made me unable to describe it.

The most extravagant thing to eat is probably the Chinese New Year, but I really have no appetite during the Chinese New Year, so I don't want to mention it. Shortly before the Chinese New Year, the big fat pig at home was sold to the supply and marketing cooperative, and the parents left the pig water and big oil to their children and the elderly as usual. A big pot full of pig intestines, lung heads, pig liver and so on, steaming, I think that is the symbol of the so-called good life. No matter what others think, when I think back to this scene, I feel that all the illusions of life can be fully explained in this image. No matter how hungry you have been, how many tears you have shed, how many times you have been beaten for stealing food, as long as this image is still there, as long as there is a steaming big iron pot, you should not be disappointed with life.

Maybe because of the shortage of food, theft happens from time to time. I stole sweet potatoes and peanuts with my friends myself. The sweet potato that hasn't grown up is pinched in your hand, and when you rub mud on your broken pants, it crunches and tastes sweeter than anything else. Peanuts can be eaten raw or cooked with fire. Often, a group of children go to the mountains to collect firewood, and another group of children go to the beach to steal peanuts from the brigade across the river, then make a fire, simmer the peanuts steaming, and then peel them off and eat them. Some peanuts are still tender, and after being simmered by fire, they are just a bag of sweet water. If you are not careful when peeling, the very hot water will be squeezed out, which will make your face hurt.

if it's not a big deal for children to steal snacks, it's a big disaster for adults to steal. I still remember when I was very young, people in the village caught a thief who stole yam. They tied the thief's hands and hung him from the beam, and some bricks fell under his feet. The trick is always full of tricks. The thief gave a terrible cry when the captain whipped him. Listen to adults, during that time, dead yam vines were often found in yam fields. After checking, it turned out that someone had stolen yam, but buried the seedlings, so that nothing unusual could be seen in the first few days, but when the weather cleared up, the buried yam vines would wither until they finally died. So people in the village lie in ambush in the fields night after night, and finally they caught the person who stole yam, but it was a person from a village not far away. It is said that they are still distant relatives with someone in our village. My friends and I went to the place where the thief was hanged. I thought the thief was not hateful at all, but he was very pitiful, but the adults said he was bad, so I accepted it with a grain of salt. But I still don't like hitting people, just like I never like to see my aunts burning incense, kowtowing to Buddha and chanting scriptures. I have a natural rejection of violence in real life. I hate hanging a former landlord and my classmate's father from the big camphor tree to criticize. I hate my neighbors beating my playmates with flexible and sharp bamboo branches. I hate the teacher slapping my classmates with poor grades. I can't remember how long the thief who stole yam was hung up. I don't know what happened in the end. I dare not go to that room again.

sometimes, people in the village steal from each other. It is a common occurrence that whose pumpkin is missing and whose cowpea is picked. Women are very clear about their own things. There are several beans on the shelf, how long they grow, and how many flowers are there on the pumpkin vine, which is the male flower, which is the female flower, how many pumpkins there are, and what they look like. Remember to distinguish clearly. If the pumpkin that is about to ripen is stolen, the pain is like tearing your heart out. Painful women will cry and scold the village for an hour on the western ridge after work at dusk. The main content is to curse the people who steal pumpkins how to die a natural death, how to eat the pumpkins without shit, how to have a baby without an asshole, and so on. Whenever I meet this time, I look at the thin light in the evening and endure hail-like reviling in the singing of birds returning to their nests. I always secretly swear in my heart that I must leave this narrow and horrible place.

In order to get more food at home, all the children have to work, especially in the summer. When I was a child, I mainly picked up rice, that is, I picked up the missing ears of rice by working adults and handed them over to the squad, and recorded the work points according to the weight. Miller seems to have painted a picture, the name seems to be "gleaner", and that's what he said, but the people in the picture are some fat women who live or are very material, not children. What I do most is to see the rice fields. There was a cement flat on the ridge behind the village, which was the only cement flat at that time, and it was used to dry public food. Every sunny day, the old keeper in the village will pick out the grain from the ancestral temple and spread it on the concrete floor to dry. Because sparrows, chickens and pigs like to steal public grain, even people make some money from time to time, which requires a child to watch. Because I am more responsible and my academic performance has always been good, I am often entrusted with the important task of watching the rice field.

I call that old keeper Old Water Master. As soon as the sun came out, he picked the millet to the rice field. I leveled the piles of millet with a rake, and drew waves on the millet surface with the wooden handle of the rake, so that the millet had more sunny sides. Then, all day long, I have to stay under the eaves of a small house near the rice field, staring at the sunshine and showing off the golden color on the rice. Sometimes I doze off, sweat slips through the dark skin, and I dream that a muntjac is stuck in the mud field. Suddenly, I woke up with a voice of sobs, and it seemed as if a wolf would run out of the old water master's eyes-chickens and pigs had visited several times during his nap.

if it rains suddenly, the strong laborers in the village will come from the fields to help us collect food. With Qi Xin's concerted efforts, the particles will be returned to the warehouse soon. When the weather is fine, in the evening, I have to gather the spread grain into a pile of rice and put it in the grain basket, and the old water Lord will pick it into the ancestral temple. When the wooden spatula, millet and cement ground rub together, it makes a very unpleasant sharp cry, but to my comfort, the summer sunset has a loud lemon yellow. When it slowly falls, it reflects my shadow on a white wall below the rice field, just like a movie. My shadow is so clear, so soft, so long, as if I have performed like that for several lifetimes.