Cai Cai came to Zhuji City at 6 a.m. to pick me up, wearing her father's big padded jacket and wrapping herself in a ball. In October, the Huiji Mountains suddenly cool down, and you can see the hot air coming out. I asked her to show me the citrons when she went back to her hometown. The father of the Cai family is a farmer.
The taste of the champ has always been a mystery to me. It was a high-priced nut that my family bought especially for the Chinese New Year when I was a child, and the olive-shaped brown shell was wrapped in a black fruit, which was difficult to peel, golden and hard, neither sweet nor salty. The little tongue doesn't understand, is that incense?The elders laughed and said that it was the nuts of adults. As I grew older, I had eaten enough of the ups and downs to understand this simpler and deeper taste. If the fat fragrance of cashew nuts and macadamia nuts is like that of fat Angel, then the fat fragrance of the cinnamon is oriental, thin, and not strong, but it has its own skeleton, like a landscape painting.
The sky was still drizzling, the navigation kept reminding us to make a U-turn, and we almost got lost in the city. Cai Cai said that he left Zhuji in elementary school, and grew up in the mountains when he was a childGrandpa would go out early and carry the burden to a distant town to sell champhina, and if she could get home that day, she would be able to eat the shortbread and maltose she had exchanged.
At the northern foot of Huiji Mountain, there are an astonishing number of ancient trees and fragrant trees. Cai Cai.
Cai Cai's hometown is in the Zhongjialing Natural Village in the center of Zhuji Xianghua National Forest Park, and has now been incorporated into Yuwang Village. Cai is a local surname, the ancient village is born according to the fragrant tree, is located at the northern foot of Huiji Mountain, 20 kilometers away from Shaoxing and Zhuji. When you talk about history with people in the area of Huiji Mountain, they will mention a lot of things in ancient times, and there is a series of endless legends: the Nine Heavens Fairy descended to earth, Xi Shi was smart and peeled her shell, Su Dongpo was greedy, and Wang Xizhi was drunk and ......Stop, I just want to know, where does the strange fragrance of the citron come from?This local nut was once popular on the table of the world's doctors, but how did it disappear in the times?Leaving the humid south, do the northerners know the citron?Also, it is said that the 1,000-year-old citron is still bearing fruit, is it a thousand years at a glance, or a 1,000-year tick-tock?Even if he is a local, Cai Cai has no less questions about Xianghua than I do. Why is there an ancient fragrant tree at the top of the mountain, but not at the foot of the mountain?The mountains are connected to each other, why is this ancient tree only in Zhuji?
More than I could have imagined, this is a real forest.
The way up the mountain, Cai Cai couldn't drive, so he could only hand it over to Uncle Cai. He showed me a forest protection certificate, and after the change from public ownership to contracting, there were special keepers for the ancient fragrant trees, and he was one of them. Dozens of ancient fragrant trees registered under his name are distributed on different hills, and the category is written with one word - pine.
Ancient trees grow in groups. The tree grows very slowly, with an average trunk diameter of 1. per year1 mm. Almost every tree in the ancient forest of Huiji Mountain is more than 100 years old, and the oldest is 1567 years.
Water vapor from the East China Sea poured in through the horn mouth of the Qiantang River and stayed on the northeastern slope of Huiji Mountain, where rain came as soon as it was said. Uncle Cai has three umbrellas in his armpits, he is very happy and walks with the wind, Oh, this is the stone ...... I used to hide from the rain when I was a childWell, it's a bat cave. 」
I finally saw this pine. The waxy linear leaves are small and long, and the trunk is no bigger than the mouth of the bowl, and this one is small, more than 200 years old, and he said, "Oh, this tree is 500 years old, that tree is 800 years old, and the old trees are all in front!"The slope became more and more sharp, and I had to hunch forward, and more old trees appeared. They are not scattered all over the place, but a family, towering and companionous.
It belongs to the order of Pinus and Cypress, Yew family, and originated from the relict plants of the Jurassic period, about 1700 million years. It retains its ancient form, temperament, and way of life, and grows, blossoms, and bears fruit slowly. The agricultural proverb says: Three peaches, four apricots, five pears, and nine years if you want to eat walnuts. The first sporadic production of Champ is about 15 years, and it takes 30 years for it to be truly productive.
In order to facilitate picking, farmers erect scaffolding between trees.
The way Champ understands time is completely different from that of humans.
According to the common Chinese definition, a tree is an ancient tree after 100 years old, and a person is 100 years old when it is a child, but for a fragrant tree, 100 years old is just a young child. In 2012, the Beijing Museum of Natural History used the growth cone to take the core of the tree, and made a living identification of the ancient tree of Xianghua in Huiji Mountain, the oldest tree was 1567 years, planted in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and it grew by an average of 1 every year1 mm. In the entire Champ National Forest Park, there are 7 Champhorn trees that are more than 100 years oldThere are more than 20,000 trees, and more than 2,700 trees are more than 1,000 years old.
When he was young, Uncle Cai was one of the few scholars in the mountains, and he was admitted to university for 3 years in a row, but each time he was a few points behind, and in the end, his family was really unable to support him. Despite this, he still taught himself to be admitted to the national second-class forestry technician. For more than 20 years, he has been studying the maintenance of ancient trees, and because of his skills, he is often invited to various surrounding villages to give lectures.
Uncle Cai carried three umbrellas under his arms and led us up the mountain to see the trees.
Well, the male and female trees of the citron tree grow completely different. At the entrance of Zhongjialing Village stands a straight upward, majestic and much-loved male tree, but the mother tree has very early parted thick branches, like an open giant umbrella. People in the world often lament that nature has created it, but it is a rare man-made cultivar. If there is a fragrant tree, there will be a wood tree and a stinky tree. Wild quirk is astringent, and thousands of years ago, ancestors may have stumbled upon this variety and selected it for grafting. In Uncle Cai's experience, every mother tree is man-made, and the pure wild mother tree has never been seen, and he has never understood where the first mother tree came from
What's even more bizarre is that even after the picking season, you can still see the miniature seeds like rice grains on the branches of the citron tree, which is its fruit next year. It takes three years from flowering to fruiting, and each year there are new flowers, so you can see the fruit on the same tree for two years at the same time, which is called "three generations in the same house" by the locals. The trouble is that the citron can only be picked one by one, and cannot be knocked with a wooden pole like pecans, so as to avoid affecting the harvest of the next year.
From flowering to fruiting, it takes 3 years. The harvest season has passed in autumn and winter, and the branches of the citron are bearing the next year's fruit.
The Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) inscribed this forest in 2013 as evidence of the earliest human interforest economy and grafting techniques. Worldwide recognition has brought the best opportunity, and CCTV has tailored a documentary. In the years when it was booming, the ** of high-quality citron was as high as 300 yuan, and it was not necessarily available. Local Zhejiang businessmen are popular to contract ancient trees to show their financial resources and taste, Oh, this is Ma Yun's tree. The deeper you go into the forest, the taller and bigger the trees become, and their posture varies. There are hollowed-out one-arms, and there are whole trees that have been struck down by lightning and grow horizontally on the ground. The yield of each ancient tree is uncertain, and it may only produce a few catties a year, or it may exceed 100 catties. Human beings have no way to inspire, urge, or plan, so they can only apply a little natural fertilizer and worship the mountains and forests on important festivals.
In those years, picking the champhina in September was a top priority, and the children who were migrant workers would return to the village to help. In order to pick on the slopes of the mountains, the farmers set up bamboo frames around the ancient trees, and used special centipede ladders to climb more than 20 meters of ancient trees, all relying on a rope around their waists. In the early years, it was high and fierce, and it was almost too much, but the ancient trees were ten trees and nine empty, and the moss was thick, and a few people fell down every year. Cai Cai begged his father to stop climbing the tree. The Cai family chose to wait for the fruit to ripen and fall naturally, and then pick it up in batches, although it will roll away a lot, but the people are safe.
The old trees are covered with slippery moss.
Walking down the mountain, patches of land were planned to be planted with citron, but in twenty or thirty years, they also began to bear fruit. The spotlight flashed by, and the ancient tree Cinnamomum still did not go out of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the smaller cost of the small tree Cinnamomum began to enter the market in large quantities, and the first plummeted. In recent years, more and more farmers in Zhongjialing have given up on the maintenance of the citron, which was once the pillar industry here, but now the income is not enough to support their livelihood. During the non-picking period, there are no tourists here, only a maid who picks water and grows vegetables, and there is silence.
As a hardworking and confident farmer, Uncle Cai can grow almost all the ingredients. It's just that the daughter came back with the guests and he went to town to buy some shrimp;A rooster wandering at the door died again because of me. Winter melons, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and rice are all grown by themselves, and grain and wine will naturally be available. When the wine is served, Uncle Cai will touch out a small handful of fragrant trees, and his smiling eyes will narrow into a slit.
The harvested ripe fruit undergoes the first round of fermentation until the aril turns black. Cai Cai.
The green fruits picked by the Cai family need to be stacked for a week, and the peel turns from green to purple-brown for the first fermentation. The aril of the citron must be removed by hand, the machine will not work, it will destroy the leather coat, and if the bacteria enter the inner shell, the fermented fruit will rot;After peeling the skin and piling on the land for 20 to 30 days, depending on the weather, the cement floor is not good, not breathable;2 3 days by hand turning, the red skin on the flesh of the citron fruit will be transformed into astringent, for the second fermentation. It is then washed by hand, dried by hand, and finally fried by hand. Handmade, handmade, handmade, a series of embarrassing handicrafts. The fresh fruit of the current year is harvested in September and is already available in November.
Champ is made very different from other nuts, fermented, sun-dried and washed, similar to coffee and cocoa. The concepts of small batch, single origin, and flavor wheel, which have been developed in the coffee and cocoa industry for decades, are all blank in the field of champani, which is still facing some more basic problems on the road to modernization. For example, how to avoid eating a stiff (astringent, not crispy enough, not aromatic enough) fruit?In order to pursue large batches of picking, the fruit is picked before it is ripe, which is often bought in the market. For example, how can I buy a locally produced ancient tree?Nowadays, it is common for aged and new varieties to be mixed, decades-old and ancient trees to be mixed, and foreign varieties and local varieties to be mixed. I'm not a believer in handicrafts, which are sometimes just empty nostalgia. The logic of industrial products is to control variables, expand scale, and improve efficiency, but the beauty of Champ is all about the differences brought about by hand, small batches, and micro origins.
The village factory still has an earthen stove for Uncle Cai to fry the champie.
Fortunately, the factory where the champhion was fried also left an earthen stove for Uncle Cai. The rumbling steel wok next door was spitting 100 kilograms of champhina, Uncle Cai carefully poured a bag of little treasures into the earthen pot, and Auntie began to make firewood, working together as she did thousands of years ago. Double frying, which means that it is divided into two halves. The first fire should be big, and the aunt will add firewood;In the middle, the cinnamon is quickly soaked in cold water, and the heat expands and contracts, so that the black skin on the kernel is easy to fall offThen go back to the pot and stir-fry over low heatAs the pot came out of the pot, Uncle Cai kept taking out a piece of citron from the pot and twisting it on the side of the stove to test the doneness. In his opinion, hand-frying has an incomparable taste of gas. For Champ trees with a fat content of 44%, it is extremely important to grasp the heat to convert the oil into aroma. Uncle Cai dared to use fire, I dared to fry for a few more seconds, they didn't dare, the fragrant trees out of the pot were golden all over and stayed on the edge of the slightly burnt.
The townspeople are also trying to make this ancient nut more popular, but it won't be easy. Some of the deep-processed products of Champie: essential oil** and Champ Nut's chocolate have been developed. There were also some people who did strange things, and there was a guy in the town who added leavening agent and some bad things when he fried the champie, just to make it easier to peel the champie, and was later arrested. Nowadays, people want to make the nut skin thinner, don't you wonder?Uncle Cai didn't understand, There are still people who have made a machine and struggled to make a sew on the citron to make it look like a pistachio, but it hasn't succeeded yet, don't you think it's strange?」
The citron has its own eyes, just pinch them open, why do you have to open them alone?Each nut has its own flavor and its own way of opening. Cai Cai pinched the two Shih Tzu eyes with two fingers, peeled off the shell, exposed half of the kernel, and then used the empty shell as a trough, rotated twice, and the black skin poured down, with the dexterity of Shanghainese eating crabs. Most people in the world think that the black skin of the citron tree is a foreign body, but in fact, the black part is very fragrant and can be eaten. 」
The fried fragrant nut just out of the pot is golden and slightly charred.
The production of Cinnamon is small, rare and niche, and the recognition is low. Too many farmers like Uncle Cai are unable to reach consumers in the city, so they can only sell to dealers at low prices, or passively stock up due to market fluctuations. In the years of depreciation, it is the youngest daughter Cai Cai who has supported the Cai family's fragrant tree. After graduating from the China Academy of Art, Cai Cai became a professional furniture designer. She told me that in her early years, she shared the family's champs with her friends, and they were all impressed by the flavor, but she lamented that such a good thing was so coarse and ugly packaging, and she was deeply ashamed at that time. Champ trees certainly deserve better. Now, she is trying to do a more evidence-based classification, traceability, packaging and pricing of the fruit, trying to find people in the city who understand the fruit and establish a new understanding. In such a chain that links the producer of origin and the urban consumer, the thousand-year-old citron tree is real, and the thousand-year-old citron fruit has not yet become a luxury.
The children who grew up in the mountains did not hesitate too much to go home to make citron, and buried them in their hearts and waited for a suitable time, and this seed grew from the previous generation. Uncle Cai is not like the age of retirement, but he also has to serve the old, Cai Cai knows that the fastest way to age is to have nothing to do, more people praise the delicious taste, is the pride of the uncle, In fact, to do this, is to hope that parents can age a little slower. 」
The shell of the citron has a pair of small dots that are slightly raised, known as Shih Tzu eyes, and you only need to press and hold two points to open the shell delicately.
A plant can transcend the human cycle, and a grain of citron can distinguish between gas and charcoal. In the classification of nuts, almonds, pecans, Brazilian cashews, macadamia nuts have swept the world's table, and human beings are becoming more and more similar in eating nutsI have known for a long time that thousands of miles away in Ethiopia, Africa, there is a small plot called Guji, where there is volcanic soil and high altitude, and small batches of coffee beans have the aroma of ginger blossom and lychee. But I just learned that 200 kilometers away from me, there is a magical nut on Zhuji Mountain, which is made in a way that is very similar to coffee beans
Cinnamon is hard. If it hadn't really lived for so many years, through wars, dynasties, revolutions, and the ever-changing tastes of human beings, how could it have survived the onslaught of regional integration and the constant discovery of new species?In the human breeding industry, the life of animals and plants as food is getting shorter and shorter, but the citron is evergreen for thousands of years, like eternity.
The immortal Champ tree.
Champ trees are more patient than humans. Next year's fruit has already been set, and more and more areas have begun to build economic forests. The small trees under the mountain are maturing, capital can be raised, technology can be iterated, and taste can be shaped. In 20 years' time, the world will have more Champ trees to witness.
What exactly does a thousand-year-old chantron taste like?Is the taste of the Song Dynasty stronger or lighter than that of the Tang Dynasty?Everyone has their own verdict about time.
Reference: Zhejiang Shaoxing Huiji Mountain Ancient Xianghua Group" Wang Bin, Min Qingwen editor-in-chief.
Naturalist Approaching Xianghua", Journal of Zhejiang A&F University.
Development Status of China's Roasted Nut Industry in 2023: Seed Nut Category Matures, Tree Nut Development Accelerates" Zhiyan Consulting.
Autumn and Winter Check-in Challenge