years, there is a taste
The taste of the New Year is no different from the taste of daily life, it is just a signal of the New Year, which magnifies the taste that we are accustomed to on weekdays by a hundred times and a thousand times. However, New Year's flavor is not only limited to taste and smell, it is not a specific taste, but a synaesthesia of eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind. On this point, as early as a century ago, a famous gossip tabloid "Beiyang Pictorial" had an incisive definition: "The flavor of the year not only refers to what the mouth touches, but also to those who have heard and witnessed it." Eat rice cakes, drink Tu Su, and taste the New Year; Smell the sound of firecrackers, the sound of empty bamboo, and the smell of the New Year; Seeing the little girl in red, Guan Gong's New Year's painting of reading, also the taste of the New Year; However, it is necessary to have both, and Fang Jue has a strong flavor of the year."
Rice cakes, Tusu wine, firecrackers, empty bamboo, the little girl in red and Guan Gong's New Year's painting of reading, a century ago, the New Year's flavor represents, although the world is different, but the aftertaste is still long, and it is still vaguely audible - the New Year is like this, the ancient soul that sleeps on weekdays, through the New Year's resurrection, will be ancient and ancient color and sound fragrance, looking for space to infiltrate into the present moment, and only at this time, those tastes from ancient times, are not so abrupt, so natural, It was as if the smell of the New Year had been lingering here for a long time, but in the past busy and noisy eleven months, it was occasionally forgotten, and it was only at this moment that I smelled the familiar smell of the New Year that had been brewed for generations of people for thousands of years.
Grind tofu. When it comes to the flavor of the New Year, it always reminds people of the smell of killing pigs and sheep, and at the New Year's banquet, all kinds of meat that are fried and fried are indispensable. But after tasting the taste of meat, the plain tofu is the most able to cleanse the stomach full of oil and water.
On the twenty-fifth day of the lunar month, every family grinds tofu", and tofu workshops can also be seen everywhere. "The grinding mill, the pot for selling the pulp, and the cloth pocket for hanging the pulp are all clean. The wooden lattice for the tofu is brushed to reveal the wood wires. Everything looks like it's new. The scene of Wang Zengqi's tofu workshop can still be seen in some small towns. A good tofu factory, when passing by in the early morning, you can always look up and smell the smell of hot beans, mixed with slightly fermented beans, which is as fresh and warm as after the rain in summer. Tofu is also quite easy to eat, and slicing shallots with fine salt is a refreshing dish that can be served on the table. Even if it is boiled in water, it is also in the eyes of famous experts. Just like Zhu Ziqing's boiled tofu in the winter of his childhood:
The water is rolling, like a lot of fish eyes, and small pieces of tofu are raised in it, tender and smooth, like a white fox coat worn backwards. The pot is on the 'foreign stove', and the stove is smoked black and black, and the white of the tofu is revealed. ”
Tofu is a gift for the poor people, but his origin was attached to Liu An, a royal nobleman of the Han Dynasty who was a legendary chicken dog, which is somewhat lamentable. In fact, this statement is just a sentence from the poem "Tofu" by Zhu Fuzi in the Southern Song Dynasty, "I knew the Huainan technique early, and Ansheng obtained the spring cloth", and there is no more conclusive evidence. The scene of the kitchen on the stone found in the tomb of the Eastern Han Dynasty in Dahuting Village, Mi County, Henan Province, was interpreted by archaeologists as a tofu workshop, saying that the main processes of soaking beans, grinding beans, filtering slurry, sizing slurry, and squeezing water are readily available, and only one link is owed. This seems to be a big step forward from the legend of the invention of tofu by Liu An, the king of Huainan, but it does not explain why tofu has never been recorded for hundreds of years from the Han to the Tang Dynasty. It wasn't until the beginning of the Song Dynasty of the Five Dynasties that he showed his face in "Qing Yilu". But no matter what the origin of tofu is, when it was born, it has now become the most daily diet of the public, a dish of tofu, can be paired with Baiwei, up to abalone cucumber wings, down to green vegetables and leeks, eclectic, all-encompassing.
Suddenly remembered that a few days ago, it was the winter dusk close to the Spring Festival, when I passed by the vegetable market, I saw the tofu put out of the tofu workshop, put it in the cold wind for a day, and it was frozen.
Lion dance. The lion dance has always had a funny feeling of wanting to laugh, such a big head, bright big eyes flickering, mouth also opened and closed, clearly a simple and cute appearance, but with a stubble body, jumping up and down, such as flexible, it is really a lion can not be seen.
On February 5, 2023, the "Lantern Festival" on the 15th day of the first month of the Year of the Rabbit in the Chinese lunar calendar, a lion dance was staged at Parkview Green Mall in Chaoyang District, Beijing. (*From China News Service).
In a sense, the origin of the lion dance in China is indeed a kind of entertainment, whether it is the "elephant man" in the court music and dance mentioned in the "Hanshu Le Zhi" or whether Cao Wei Mengkang said in the commentary "If you play fish, shrimp, and master (lion) also"; Or in "Luoyang Jialan", when the Buddha statue of Luoyang Changqiu Temple travels, there are "evil spirits, lions, and guide them in front", which is enough to prove that the lion dance is a performance that brings joyful effects in the music and dance procession. In the Tang Dynasty, the lion dance was even more popular, the "Yuefu Miscellaneous Records" included the lion dance in the Qiuzi department, and the "Taiping Music" in the Tang Dynasty was adapted from the "Wufang Lion Dance", which became a large-scale music and dance performed by hundreds of people. The "Five Lion Dance" recorded in the "General Dictionary" is even more joyful, the five lions are divided into five colors, red, yellow, white and black, and one hundred and forty people surround the lion to "sing and dance", which is grand and enthusiastic - the lion dance makes people laugh and is natural.
Zhen Yuanbian will love this song, and sit drunk and laugh to see if it is insufficient. Entertaining guests and supervising the army, the lion's beard grows in the eyes", Bai Juyi described in "Xiliang Ling" that the feudal officials were tired of the lion dance, but in this laughing and drunken music and dance banquet, he fell on an ordinary soldier who was seventy years old, and such a joyful lion dance did not make him laugh together, but cried with a low face. Because this seemingly joyful lion dance tells a history of frontier mourning, that "carved wood is the head and tail, and the gold-plated eyes and silver are attached to the teeth." Fenxun sweater swings his ears, such as the "masked Hu people and fake lions" from the quicksand", in fact, when Liangzhou was not yet submerged in Tubo, Anxi Du escorted the last few lions to pay tribute to the Tang court in Chang'an, when they were halfway, but heard the news of the fall of Liangzhou:
If you get new news, Anxi Road will never return. Crying to the lion, do you know that Liangzhou is trapped? The lion looked back to the west and roared with sorrow. ”
The tragedy of tears and tears in the fall of the homeland and the difficulty of returning home has been interpreted into a comedy that makes people laugh.
Today's ** lion dancers, no one will pursue the ancient story of the lion dance, time has the magic to dilute everything, only the cheerful laughter from history, like the mask of the lion dance, vividly decorated on every happy face full of New Year's flavor.
Set off firecrackers. Firecrackers are a kind of magical thing, as if naturally filled with a kind of childishness, firecrackers are children's favorite fun during the New Year, even if it is an adult, dodge and jump when lighting firecrackers, and live like a child.
Strange to say, the original intention of firecrackers was a very serious ceremony. Liang Zongkang of the Southern Dynasty "Jing Chu Years Chronicles" is probably the earliest record of firecrackers, on the first day of the first month, "the rooster crows, before the court firecrackers, burning grass, in order to ward off the mountain, evil ghosts". The so-called "mountain sage" is a kind of one-legged villain with a length of more than a foot in the deep mountains of the West, this kind of villain "catches shrimp and crabs." Sex is not afraid of people, see people to stay, twilight according to its fire, to scorch shrimp and crabs. Serving people is not there, but stealing salt from people to eat shrimp and crabs". Obviously, it was the mountain that took the initiative to infest humans, but if humans fought back, it would be "chilling and hot". Firecrackers are the only magic weapon that can drive it away.
Although the description of the evil ghost in the ancient books seems to have a real thing, and later generations are willing to add oil and vinegar, so that its image has changed from a one-legged villain to a monkey-faced human body, and then transformed into a popular belief in the Jiangnan area, but its essence is probably not a mischievous villain, but a cold-chilling plague.
Perhaps it was the observation of certain plagues that can be transmitted from wild animals to humans, so they came up with the idea of using the sound of burning firecrackers to drive away wild animals. After all, for the ancients, the winter season was the most difficult time, and the turn of winter and spring was the time when the plague was prone to epidemic. During the Qin and Han dynasties, the Da Da held in Layue, wearing Xuanyi and Zhu clothes, wearing bear skins, wearing a mask with **four eyes, and holding a **shield, Fang Xiang's clan was a ghost created by human beings to expel the plague ghosts, and used a more terrifying and hideous face than the plague ghosts to scare away the plague ghosts. The square appearance at the Da Da ceremony has the same intention as the firecrackers set off on New Year's Day, just a face and a sound. The so-called "Chinese New Year's Eve firecrackers, so the spring sun is shaken and evil is eliminated" in the "Moon Order Guangyi", which is exactly what it means.
"Yueling Guangyi" has been a work of the Ming people, but since the Tang and Song dynasties, caught in the Ming and Qing dynasties, firecrackers have long taken off the original intention of frightening the mountain, and have become a custom of the New Year.
The sound that shook the heavens and the earth set off the small figure that melted in the hustle and bustle of laughter and joy because of the arrival of the New Year, as if the sound of firecrackers had sounded, it was really a farewell to the old times and into the embrace of the New Year. (Original title: New Year's Flavor) (end).
Written by Lee Chaen.