Sneak into Jingyi to spy on Cai Zhuer

On April 5th, I saw Cai Zhuer sharing on Facebook that she will join hands with Li Ang sister to have a dialogue on April 7th at Jingyi University in Taichung. Cai Zhuer has lived in the UK, Shanghai and Hong Kong. She has her own unique style in food and writing. She is the first Chinese person who writes food prose in my heart. As a foodie, and I like to taste words, it is normal to be a brainless fan of Sister Pearl, right?

That day, I was engrossed in work, I went out on a dead end, rode a motorcycle to take a small road, crossed a steep mountain road and then went down to Taiwan Avenue. The wind was so strong that it would blow me into the sky. After rushing to the entrance of Jingyi University, I ran down the uphill road into the depths of the campus. The campus was also very windy. I ran frantically to the Franciscan Building looking like Mei Chaofeng. I first went to the bathroom to wipe my sweat and put on my wet mask before I dared to enter the Huisan Hall and sit down. The atmosphere was calm, and the protagonists walked from my side to the front. Row, thank goodness I wasn't late.

This day's talk was mainly hosted by students from the Department of Chinese at Jingyi University, and the topic was "National Chefs and Family Banquets: A Talk on Literature". Sister Li Ang played the role of the interviewer, and Sister Pearl shared how to write classic food essays as the interviewer. After the show was over, it was like being slapped on the head while I was ignorant, and I woke up.

Sister Pearl mentioned "Structures of Feeling" at the beginning of the conversation. She was talking about how to write prose on diet, but she actually threw out such a large schoolbag. In the subsequent conversation, Sister Pearl actually grasped this concept tightly. Share her writing experience. "Structures of Feeling" was first proposed by Raymond Williams. In my shallow understanding, it is the interaction and promotion between actual life experience and thinking, and finally becomes the meaning and value of human beings. Sister Pearl then explained that her diet writing is from the constant cooking of her own life, summarizing her experience, connecting with sociology and anthropology, and then expressing these experiences in words. I think what Sister Pearl means is that when we write a diet essay, it should not be a superficial recommendation of diet, but it must be in line with how the food came from, related history, and humanities. Only then will we write an attractive essay. It would be no different from a social essay on Facebook about what food I ate. Sister Pearl believes that the description words for food, such as good taste, sweetness, and Q bombs, have been used and hollowed out, and should not be used again. People who write should expand their sensory structure. Instead of writing about food with food, they should learn to use cross-border language to describe food.

In the middle of the lecture, Sister Pearl read out a passage she wrote about salted fish. This passage is included in the article "Ha Salted Fish" in "The Red Braised Chef", and it is also an article that I am very addicted to.

Listening to Tom Waits in the afternoon on a rainy day, I suddenly felt that he was like a salted fish, dusty and gravel with a peculiar smell, with dry and wrinkled skin and loose sand, but in those wrinkles and looseness, there was something plump and swollen, so full that it overflowed the surrounding atmosphere. You are approaching the boundaries of your senses. What strange foreign objects, stinky and fragrant, salty and bland, rot and fresh, joy and disgust, decay and prosperity, lewdness and innocence, all mixed together to help each other, the chaos is almost ugly, but it is ugly enough to make people's heart sway. .

It always takes a bit of vicissitudes to know how to eat salted fish. After polishing the tongue with experience, it is possible to see the beauty in the sand, the gold and the ugly, to break through the chaotic taste confusion, and to suck out the fresh and delicious charm.

I am also a person who understands the taste of salted fish, but I am unable to write such delicate words. I can only worship Sister Pearl by looking up at the mountains from the depths of the well. This text is also the subtle embodiment of "Structures of Feeling" mentioned by Sister Pearl.

Sister Pearl shared an IEFRR rule she wrote. I think this rule is not only applicable to writing about diet, but also applicable to writing in any genre.

I : Me, my own unique thoughts and feelings. I quite agree with this point. For an article to be good-looking, it must first have the author's own unique point of view, coupled with the projection of true feelings, so that readers can easily resonate emotionally.

E (Empiric): Empirical and empirical. When writing food articles, it is reflected in eating and doing. Sister Pearl mentioned in her speech that she will faithfully search for raw materials to present the charm of a dish, and even grow her own vegetables while living in Hong Kong in order to understand where the food comes from. Sister Pearl even needs to study different places of origin to eat bamboo shoots, and how different the tastes of different birth periods are, not to mention how much water is needed to cook a meal. When these wonderful experiences of hers are written in the article, how can it not be attractive?

F (Filter): filter, filter. Sister Pearl mentioned that after establishing the object of writing, you should check whether your opinions have been written by others, and discard the opinions written by others, unless you have a deeper exploration on the same point of view.

RR (Reading &. Research): Use the method of writing essays to write essays. After finding the object you want to write about, you need to do a lot of reading and research. I think that writers who have done RR will raise the writing object to a higher spiritual level, and then show the brilliance different from social writing through the hearty writing, and become a meaningful part.

If Cai Zhuer is well versed in writing food, Li Ang is an expert in writing about sex and resistance. What surprised me was that Sister Ang, who wrote so many "dark" works, was so sharp and hearty in reality that I even listened to Sister Ang's speech and thought that it would be nice if I could grow old like her. Sister Ang also shared how she refined her "Beef Noodles" from "a bowl of regrettable beef noodles" she experienced in Shi Mingde's prison. An author must be highly sensitive to the times in order to capture the fleeting material in life, and then make a story a classic through profound literary quality and unique perspective.

In the article "Ha Salted Fish", Sister Pearl wrote that "there are as many kinds of vicissitudes as there are salted fish in the world." The same is true for writing.

 Postscript: Most of the people who listened to the dialogue were young students, and only a few middle-aged and elderly people, including me, were outside the school. When Sister Ang mentioned Shi Mingde, she glanced at the audience and said with a smile that her classmates were too young to know who Shi Mingde was. Everyone Googled it, and when we heard it, some middle-aged and elderly people laughed. I took a peek at the classmates who were sitting next to me who didn't smile, and sure enough, my eyes were indifferent, and I could only sigh once again that I was really old.

After returning home, on a whim, I shared with Ximei Sister Pearl’s article about salted fish, and asked Ximei if she thought the food I wrote was garbage after reading it. Well, I think it is garbage myself.

I failed to present the wonderful dialogues one by one, the notes were very dull, and some key points were listed, just share a little bit with you who love literature!