Lanxi, Zhejiang Province is known as the first morning tea in the south of the Yangtze River. According to the records of Lanxi City, there were more than 311 kinds of snacks in Lanxi at its peak. Morning tea culture rises because of the benefits of water transportation: boat runners, shop assistants and merchants must have a cup of morning tea and some snacks before they are busy.
Although there are no ever-flowing cargo ships or wharves along the river at that time, the morning tea street in Lanxi is still lively and full of fireworks ...
This devotion to food is not only reflected in many snacks in its streets and lanes, but also infiltrated into the blood of many local people.
Miao Jun took this closest link with food from birth and followed her all the way until she met the French food culture on the other side of Eurasia.
When I was a child, Miao Jun's dreams were all related to food. When she grew up, she wanted to be the director of the preserved plum factory, so that she could have endless preserved plums.
recalling the scene when she was a child, she didn't remember that she had ever been worried about eating at that time when the material was still relatively scarce.
Miao Jun: "Our family has never been worried about eating. My grandmother or mother will change the simplest ingredients into all kinds of delicious food. There is a kind of food in the family (eat more and know more). If you see more and eat more, you will feel it. "
Because my parents are both working in state-owned factories, I spent a lot of my childhood with my grandmother. Miao Jun's grandparents are two capable living families, both of whom are good cooks. I used to run a bakery that mainly focused on local specialties.
After Miao Jun was born, pieces of sweet and delicious mung bean cakes and egg cakes turned into bowls of steaming wonton and noodles, and grandma's noodle stall carried her deep memories as a child.
Miao Jun: "When I was four years old, I helped make wonton next to my grandmother, and I made it with one hand! Take wonton skin in your left hand and bamboo stick in your right. A little minced meat was left in the bamboo stick, and it was rolled, pinched and thrown in the pot with the left hand ...
The chopping board in the shop was used to make pasta during the day, and it became our bed at night. This experience was very impressive. "
After growing up, Miao Jun and his sister took part in the chores of taking care of the housework early. Being often alone at home, I was able to make a fire and cook by myself at the age of seven.
Miao Jun: "At first we cooked with kerosene stoves, and later we burned firewood.
This is actually the study of life skills, not knowledge, but it is very useful.
When my sister and I are in trouble or something, we will find a way by ourselves, instead of relying too much on others. For this reason, I personally feel that I am more independent. "
This independence and ability to deal with problems accumulated by little things in life became a good umbrella for her when she went abroad for more than 21 years.
In addition, food carries memories and inheritance for Miao Jun..
She can proudly recall that when the school cafeteria steamed rice, her lunch box was always the most eye-catching.
Miao Jun: "I have plenty of whole grain rice in my lunch box, and there will be all kinds of things: lotus seeds, black rice and some walnuts. Because my mother wants us to have a healthy body and feels that we must keep up with our diet, so we eat whole grains. "
Miao Jun and her sister are still very good at juggling. In their kitchen kingdom, they are doing all kinds of attempts, and there are some difficult cooking, such as washing watermelon seeds with quicklime, brine watermelon seeds, making moss, sugar-coated red fruits and so on.
Sometimes I watch and help my mother, sometimes I do it myself. My mother is pointing out, and sometimes I "churn out" some food by myself.
these actions with memories are surrounded by the smell of food, which also makes this memory smell like a mother.
After many years, when Miao Jun became a mother, she took the baton from her mother's hand and took her daughter on an adventure in the kitchen. This is not only an intimate time between mother and daughter, but also a family inheritance about her love for food.
In this way, Miao Jun spent a happy childhood and carefree adolescence in the ever-changing food. I thought that when she set sail, she suffered from emotional tension and failed in the college entrance examination.
However, this failure has become one of the most important experiences in her future life. She has a deeper understanding and understanding of emotions. At that time, she was exposed to meditation and qigong, and the practice of meditation and self-cultivation.
From the beginning when her feet hurt, to the gradual adaptation of her body, and then to the gradual feeling of peace, she felt the strength of her heart from meditation.
In the second year of college entrance examination, she successfully passed the French major. I left home for the first time and started my journey about French.
The road to language learning is long and painful. Miao Jun said that he does not belong to the kind of person with language talent.
As a stupid bird, she lived a simple life in college for four years, which was basically a simple campus life, burying her head in studying hard. However, there is nothing in her toolkit, and the experience of doing housework in her youth has well shaped some of her characteristics.
Miao Jun: "The strength of persistence may come from doing housework with parents since childhood. I think they are closely related. At that time, my parents' factory closed down and retired. They chose a small shop to operate, and they were exposed to firewood, tobacco, oil, rice, sauce, vinegar and tea.
for example, our family sells rice, which is the simplest way to sell rice. At that time, there were many pebbles and sand mixed with the rice purchased in the store. In order to improve the sales of rice, our family has done a step, that is, use a rice sieve to filter out the impurities of pebbles. It seems that a very simple action is simple, but in fact it is quite complicated and eye-catching.
When I came back from the summer vacation, I helped my parents sift rice in the shop to improve the purity of rice, so our rice is the best seller in that area. "
With such persistence, she successfully completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies, and at the same time undertook many tasks of French teaching. Later, by chance, Miao Jun joined Michelin Tire Company of France, one of the top 511 companies in the world, as a technical interpreter and translator.
After saving enough money for the first year of going abroad, she finally got a chance to go abroad after dealing with French for so many years, which also opened her fate with France for the next fifteen years.
It's just that it's not the legendary romance in Paris that greeted her, but the rigorous and subversive experience from Paris, the top translation school in Paris.
Miao Jun: "The first year can basically be said that self-confidence is completely destroyed. Personally, I think it is a complete blow, whether from the level of language or logical thinking.
In China, although we had postgraduate training, it was only training in writing short articles and master's thesis. In Paris, the study pressure and intensity are stronger than those in China for two years.
Besides eating, it's basically the same rhythm in front of the computer, in the library, in the classroom and on weekends. "
Miao Jun recalled that there were nearly ten courses a week, and each course had to hand in a seven-or eight-page report every week. There was almost no other activity except writing in the dark.
Under such high pressure of schoolwork, Miao Jun received the results of her first report, the first cliff-like blow: out of 21, she only got four points (ten pass)!
Of course, she was not the only one who received such a result, and many students cried on the spot in the classroom.
The cruelty of Gao Fan is known to the outside world: only seven or eight students were left when Miao Jun graduated.
From no critical thinking to French academic writing, from the bottom of four points to crawling slowly, I got ten points, then twelve points and fourteen points.
The leap-forward change in half a year won the praise of the teaching director of Gaofan at that time. She said that she had never seen a student make such great progress in such a short time!
Just as delicious ingredients need to be carefully cooked by slow fire, Miao Jun is also going through the same life stage. Although the days are difficult, she still has the mood of cooking, eating and living well.
In this blink of an eye, she not only graduated from the Graduate School of Advanced Studies, but also got the opportunity to study in the doctoral stage of translation studies.
during her PhD, she met another mentor in her life, André Salem, and under his guidance, her doctoral thesis got "excellent" results.
Behind this paper is her five years of life. Compared with the cooking in the graduate stage, the cooking of ingredients in the doctoral stage is more difficult. It is necessary to keep a small fire and wait for the moment when the essence is boiled with the greatest patience.
Miao Jun: "Undergraduate study is like a sponge. Whatever you give him can be absorbed and saturated. The postgraduate stage is like climbing a mountain, but you can see the top of the mountain. You just have to climb it, and you can climb it with tools. But for the doctoral stage, there are no mountains there, and you need to build a mountain. "
Actually, you just dig a hole and jump by yourself, and you have to climb up after jumping.
In the endless bibliography, Miao Jun must put forward her own questions and guesses in the previous research fields. In the process of continuous reading, at different stages of deduction, she faced countless doubts again and again: self-doubt, tutor's doubt, relatives and friends' doubt, and countless times when she wanted to give up.
However, with the great life energy behind the saying, "You should eat one mouthful of rice and do one thing at a time", Miao Jun supported it.
Together with the meditation he met after failing in the college entrance examination and Tai Chi he came into contact with when he came to France, it became the most reliable reassurance for Miao Jun to calm his emotions and continue his journey.
Miao Jun: "In Tai Chi, if you want to overcome the opponent or defeat him, once you have such an idea, you have actually lost. So Taiji teaches us to use a normal heart. "
In the days when she started studying for a PhD, she also thought about increasing the firepower to cook the paper faster, so that she could get married and get married, find a job, earn money and have her own business.
However, after experiencing twists and turns, through delicious food and Tai Chi, Miao Jun gradually realized the true meaning of * * * communication behind the great truth. Her heart gradually calmed down, and then she had the power of "stability" and "security". When she calmed down to sort out and express her views, she was at the peak of her firepower.
In five years, she cooked with slow fire, and finished her rich and nourishing thesis meal, which also won the highest honorary title that few people can get when defending.
At the same time, she has been thoroughly remoulded and generally possessed her own essence of life.
Miao Jun: "I gained a kind of self-confidence after my PhD. How did I gain this self-confidence?"
After reading a lot, you gain a broader sky and know where your knowledge blind spots are, but at the same time, it also gives you strength to know that you have the ability to learn.
(Reading a PhD allows you) You will look at things with a critical eye at any time, instead of clinging to a certain point and looking at problems one-sidedly. I think reading a blog has given me the ability to look at problems comprehensively, that is, to exercise my logical thinking ability. "
Miao Jun lived a completely different life during the gap period after his doctor's graduation. If she experienced the rigor and cruelty of French higher education during her doctoral studies, it was in Potel &; Chabot's internship experience in dessert department gave her the ultimate experience of French food, especially dessert, which is one of the essences of French culture.
With excellent letters of recommendation and recommendations from friends, she wrote the stories about her grandmother's experience in opening a pastry shop as a child and her childhood and adolescence when she was surrounded by food.
Coincidentally, Mr. Marc Rivière, a former world dessert champion in charge of recruiting people, had a similar experience with his grandmother. When the story meets the story, Miao Jun, who has no formal chef training, is accepted by an exception.