"Old-school girl shopping route": taste the aftertaste of life

I don't know when Hong Aizhu's "Old-School Girl's Shopping Route" has been coming into my eyes. I see people recommending this book from time to time, and there is always a red figure on the bookstore's top shelf. No wonder Liz of "Keywords to Food " would say that this is a phenomenal work in the food and literary world in 2021.

After reading it, I can understand why so many people take the trouble to tell the goodness of this book. If I had to choose my favorite novel in 2021, this little book would definitely be one of them.

As always, my prose experience will be more comfortable and frameless, so everyone can read it at will.

【Except food and food】

Before reading this book, I knew that it was extremely related to eating. I am used to reading prose and novels before going to bed, and this book is naturally read by my pillow. Hong Aizhu's various kinds of food are really tempting, but looking at it before going to bed is extremely tormenting. Although it hurts the eyes, it hurts the stomach.

For example, she wrote about cutting noodles soup:

Put water in a deep pot, and the water boils. Other shops have more bones, and Damiaokou is even more simmered and soaked with a huge amount of pork. Three layers of meat are the main, with both mouth meat and liver even. The large pieces of meat are simmered in water, and when the meat is cooked, the soup is already thick. The entrance is fresh, oily, and fragrant. The closer to closing time, the more milky the soup becomes.

Another example is when she wrote a family heirloom braised pork:

In my home braised pork, the meat is first fried and crisped, and then water is added to de-brin it. The meat looks complete in shape, but it is actually completely stewed, and it melts with chopsticks. The gravy is thick and sticky, and the lips are glued. The red-brown gravy wraps the hot rice, and every grain of rice is moist and oily.

Every time I read this kind of text, it makes my mouth churn and my stomach rumbles.

And she not only writes about food, but also uses food as a medium to bend between scenes.

Let's talk about the scene first. Seeing Luzhou and Dadaocheng written by her, walking around these "old" places with her writing, worshipping Yonglian Temple, eating chopped noodles, everything is so delicious, I immediately felt the urge to visit the places in the book.

So, while reading and posting a note, I included Yongtai Food Store, Longyuetang, Longfengtang, Wei Laozi Herbal Tea, and all the Noodle Stalls on the to-be-visited list, hoping to follow this route one day.

Hong Kong and Thailand in her writings are equally fascinating. Although it's a little farther away, I'll stick to it with a note, maybe leave it to step on when the epidemic eases. Interestingly, at the end of the interview with VERSE , Hong Aizhu also added that many media will ignore the chapter of "Nanyang Journey", which is very regrettable. I think it can only be said that this book has too many highlights to be comprehensive.

Let's talk again. When I saw the old chicken seller in Yongle Market said, "Goodbye Ming Zai, bring it back and I'll chop it for you." Not to mention the fog in her eyes, my eyes were also blurred. Food carries more than just food.

And food can even help you see people, like eating noodles.

Today, people easily accumulate hundreds of thousands of friends on social media, and they are not careful to believe it. In fact, a sieve in the heart, that is, a misunderstanding. Among the hundreds of thousands of people who can casually eat bowls of noodles together, there are actually very few.

As Hong Aizhu said, only by eating noodles, seeing the difference between each other, and catching the possibility of the collapse of the fine rocks and sand, can we avoid future emotional disasters. Eating noodles is easy, but not easy.

【Three generations of women's diet path】

It is said that Hong Aizhu is good at expressing love through food, and what I love the most is the strong emotion she shares with her mother, grandmother, and three generations of women, brought out by food.

Since my grandfather runs an export business with nearly 100 employees and is a big family, my grandmother is not only responsible for meals, but also has to organize banquets and entertain guests from all over the world, and her mother is my grandmother's water feet . Therefore, both of them are well-known in the countryside and can cook. Knowing how to eat can be said to be the common gene of the three women.

The book said that as the first child of her grandchildren, her grandmother took her everywhere. The "shopping route" of the old-fashioned girl in the book is the memory of the longitude and latitude formed by her and her mother, superimposing the steps of her grandmother. Eating meringue peanuts and licking rice moss ice together, the sugary moments of grandparents and grandchildren are very sweet to read.

Her mother is her grandmother's water feet, and Hong Aizhu is her mother's water feet. She grew up playing in her mother's kitchen since she was a child. You love the passage where her mother took her to cook:

For example, when cooking soy milk, the spoon should lightly scrape the bottom corner of the pot to avoid burning the pot; when making scallion pancakes, let us spread lard, salt and chopped green onion on the dough with our little hands; for stewing tea eggs, use chopsticks to break the cooked egg shells , If you want the color marks to look good, pinch the tip of the chopsticks with your fingers, and hit the tip of the chopsticks against the eggshell. There is a little ingenuity in the soft force, and then you can knock out even cracks like ice on celadon, which is edible.

The banquet is also worth talking about. Hong Aizhu said that her mother seemed to have feelings for the banquet. In the era when women had to get married and have children, banquets were one of the few occasions where they could master the overall situation and stretch their talents. In a way, her mother's little way of self-approval. Therefore, the layout of the banquet cannot be sloppy:

Usually a few days before the banquet, she would be seen writing and drawing in the corner of the dining table late at night. Wrote the order of dishes and shopping list, and drew the pattern of the plate.

The book describes her mother's last family dinner before her departure. Because her mother's physical strength was weakened, she used the method of forming a team. Her mother said dishes, she bought them, and then discussed and created together. From teaching dishes as a child to joining forces for a banquet, it can be described as a matter of course.

But also because these relationships are so lively and the emotions are so profound, reading the passages about the passing of her mother and grandmother, I can't help but feel even more disappointed.

My grandmother has been gone for ten years, and my mother, who thought she would be with me for a long time, is turning around every second. In a trance, they let go, and I was the only one looking around on the long, century-old street.

But although the person is gone, the taste is still passed on. As a result, food has become a medium for the intersection of life and death.

After a long journey, I am afraid that there will be no one in front of you. It is a means of self-preservation to repeatedly practice a home-cooked dish and carry it with you. The deceased can't be recalled. If even the vegetables are lost, the sense of taste will no longer be able to moor.

【Necessary for old-school life】

Finally, let's talk old school. Although there are not many passages in the book that directly mention "oldness", the "oldness" can be smelled everywhere.

The old place, like Luzhou, is a city border area that ordinary people don’t usually visit when they come to Taipei. But in Hong Ae-joo-biri, it tastes so good.

In the evening, the noisy hawkers were removed like makeup. In the wolf dog time, the long street was empty, the gorgeous chisel marks of the five-street houses disappeared into the shadows, and the outlines were beautiful and noble.

The old ones still have objects. And these old things carry not only functions, but also use them to preserve them, so that people can see things and think about people.

Recall that the mother and daughter get along the most in the kitchen. My mother disappeared, and I still have a long way to go, but with the solid legacy of this batch of brass, stainless steel, wood and pottery, at least in the brand new kitchen, the memories will be warm and will be remembered over and over again from the days before.

Like what the book says:

The world sometimes sees things clearly, but does not know that life is unpredictable. It needs to be accompanied by old things, so that memories can lightly attach to them.

So there is a reason for thinking about the past, and it may be easier to break up.

And when it comes to man himself, the old school also applies. Hong Aizhu said in an interview with Liz that she doesn't really care about the outside world. Now, we are looking for something new. It seems that life is exciting and there are many options, but the heart is disordered. Old-school life, slow but steady, is very good.

Just like in the book, the only way to make tea is to wait. Too much planning is a bad thing.

The tea party does its own thing. Therefore, the most important thing for people is not to be too busy with it.

Suddenly, I realize that my life is really messy these days. During this period of time, I was in the southern border of Huguo Shenshan, and I dealt with machine problems and customer fire every day. When I got home, I had to write articles, get fans, pictures and texts in the remaining time. But there seems to be something missing.

I think it's just a little less leeway.

Maybe it's time to try to calm down, give yourself some time, and don't rush to make up to-do tasks when you have free time. Only then can we taste the aftertaste of life and observe the gaps between things.

[Postscript: Thinking and Writing]

Shu Guozhi said in the recommendation preface that Hong Aizhu is not only good at writing food, she is - writing well. I just enjoyed the process of reading this book. Her writing is quiet and distant, with a strong sense of the times, but it is not greasy, and you can return to it after tasting it.

A person can be good at designing (she designed the book cover herself), be good at cooking, and be able to write, only with admiration.

What's even more surprising is that after listening to the "Keywords of Food" interview, I learned that she did not write for too long. At first, it was in order to transform the mood of accompanying her mother to treat her illness, so she joined the writing class and started writing. According to her, it was hard even to write 700 words at first.

For more than a year since I posted this article, I have deeply felt that writing is extremely difficult, and that every piece of experience can only be produced after several struggles. As an engineer Lu Zhai, most of what I write is reading experience, and readers are mostly tolerant of my poor writing. However, if you want to push books better, it is still important to make people more comfortable and engaged in reading.

The recommended prefaces of this book are all well written, and the words of Shu Guozhi and Cai Zhuer all make people want to read this book, and they are worthy of being famous. I hope that someday my experience will have the same magic. As the year draws to a close, take this as my homework for next year.

Maybe try to live a good life with your heart first?

Maybe life has more space, and the text can be stretched!

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