Almost at 20 1 1, "eating goods" became a hot word. In 20 12, we saw the first season of China on the tip of the tongue. Followed by the second season, and then this year's big movie "New Year on the Tip of the Tongue". About a quarter of the New Year on the Tip of the Tongue published by National Geographic is related to movies. In the film, the special dishes of Chinese New Year are collected in the book, and all the colors and tastes are quietly lying in the colorful pages, as well as the decomposition of materials and production techniques. In addition, Chen Xiaoqing, the artistic director, and Deng Jie, the director, have been exposed to New Year's food all over the world for many years, and they also have their own personal experiences.
But in the capacity of hundreds of thousands of words in a book, what we encounter will go far beyond movies and even beyond food. People in China always have too much to say about the New Year and food. These stories are even their own lives. In this endless New Year's Eve dinner, honeydew melons in Shandong, pineapple sauce in Taiwan Province, and salt in Chaoshan? Hundreds of Chinese New Year dishes, such as braised sea pepper from Tujia, golden fried rice from Anhui, lion's head from Huaiyang, and sausages made by pigs killed in Northeast China, appeared in turn. A Manchu old Beijing recalled that the Chinese New Year was getting worse and worse, because people now only know how to eat, but not how to worship. After all, the core of the New Year that brings China people together is family and ancestors. In the worship of old Beijing, the honey made of dessert is even a few feet high, just like an edible piece of furniture, which turns the whole room into sweet and greasy food for ancestors. Food seems to transcend life and death, and the children in the New Year are also wrapped in the warmth and sweetness of food-time and space.
Huang Lei (by the way, that Huang Lei) and his parents returned to their home in Beijing after the New Year's Eve dinner, only to find that it was snowing heavily after going out. In the stormy morning, driving on a lonely road, he suddenly realized that he was an independent adult, not a child who was always with his parents. When reviewing the New Year's Eve dinner, Wen Yao, a post-80s writer, realized for the first time that her mother had devoted most of her life to the kitchen and those warm cookers.
In addition to the story of temperature and taste, New Year on the Tip of the Tongue also has a rational analysis of Spring Festival food. After all, only the life reflected and mastered by your heart is your own life, as are food and festivals. Why did jiaozi become the staple food of Spring Festival in northern China? Why do traditional desserts such as eight-treasure rice and fermented zongzi leave us like cosmic ripples with red shift and expansion? Why does spicy almost beat the major traditional cuisines in the country to win? Why do people in China always have endless New Year's Eve dinners?
The answers to these questions bring some different dimensions and observation distances to New Year's Day and New Year's Eve. In addition to the eyes and ears of Zhoushan fish, Inner Mongolia mutton, Guangxi stuffed vegetables and Sichuan bacon, we will also see the sacred side of eating and drinking. Whether it is a hundred banquets in the suburbs of Beijing or a fire pit in Guizhou, there is a subtle connection with the tens of thousands of years of ancient fire pit banquets. Sharing food around heat and light, even eating around the clock for dozens of days, is the unremitting efforts of human beings to get rid of daily pressure, get rid of work and life and death meals, and enter endless carnival festivals. In this endless delay in eating and drinking, people are temporarily separated from their daily working hours, and the daily day has finally become a festival and a holiday.