My hometown is in the countryside of Gumin Prefecture. Nowadays, if you want to hold a few tables of banquets and invite relatives and friends to sit down, it is still customary to use the method of "bringing a message to someone" or "making a reservation on your mobile phone". A few days ago, I was delighted to receive a ** from a remote village, saying that he was going to marry his son and invited me to a banquet. Over the years, I have received a lot of such "words" and "**, because most of the "new three" people of our generation have entered the age of marriage and marriage of their children. I have a bad problem, unless it's really a friend who asks to help, even if the banquet is held in the county Haohua Hotel, most of them are only gifts and do not sit at the table. This time, despite the cold weather and the high mountains and long roads, I decided to go as scheduled, firstly to visit my old classmates, and secondly, to experience a unique country banquet.
The car slowly circled around the mountain beam, and I had no intention of admiring the beautiful scenery of the autumn dyed red leaves outside the car window, and my mind was full of pictures of the rural banquet in those days. In the early 70s of the last century, the "Cultural Revolution" had not yet been carried out to the end, and after I ended my "nine-year" cold window career, I held the lofty ideal of building a socialist Dazhai style countryside, and "returned to my hometown" to become a clerk in the production team. In the more than three years of rural life in the depths of the mountains, I have "tasted" the village's banquets again and again because I am a clerk. At that time, it was the era of agriculture in Dazhai, "taking class struggle as the key link" shouted loudly, although the banquet was regarded as "stereotyped and bad habits" and "the new trend of class struggle", but the folk customs inherited for thousands of years, the villagers who were as stubborn as the mountains still went their own way, no matter the red or white happy event, no matter whether the family was rich or poor, they had to set up a banquet. In that special era, "eating and feasting" was all branded with the class era, and became the epitome and interpretation of poverty and hunger.
The people in my hometown call the banquet "eating banquet" or "feasting". Regardless of the village or other villages, the people who eat the banquet must first give gifts, most of which are eight eggs, and the brothers and sisters who are close to each other will put on two packs of noodles. If you are sending money, only two yuan will be given, which means even number. There are also four yuan in the in-house guy, which means that they are really close. Uncles, uncles, fathers-in-law and other relatives who come to eat the banquet of the younger generations also have to carry a plate of twelve large flower buns, and take a pair of Huada pants or a pair of liberation sneakers is magnanimous, and the recipient has to put it on the big red cabinet in the main hall of the hall to appear. "Hanging red" is a large family or a family with a working person, initiated by the cadres of the team, the brothers and sisters in the family and the top relatives take the lead, neighbors and friends help each other, write their names on the "red", and put a rope in the yard of the master's house, the giver is very decent and beautiful, and the recipient is more beautiful, and is often praised as the seat. If the host can receive more than a dozen "reds", or even twenty or thirty "reds", it means that the popularity is good, and they are all elated. Later, it became popular to give commemorative frames and hangers for several years.
At that time, most people who need to hold a banquet in the lunar month or the first month of the month plan to kill the pig in the lunar month, and there is less oil and water in the stomach in the first month, so the banquet in the New Year is "one to take two things". In the countryside, there are no extra tables, chairs, benches, pots and spoons, and when holding a banquet, the host has to invite the "chief manager" and "guest" early, stir-fry two dishes for discussion, and then go door-to-door to borrow tableware as needed. People in their hometown have to prepare ten dishes for banquets, also known as "ten bowls". The name is "ten bowls", in fact, there are also dishes and bowls, "a plate, four bowls and four plates, and a small pot of dishes", but the dishes and bowls used are not big, that is, ordinary white porcelain coarse dish bowls, or in the whole village pieced together, such as unearthed cultural relics like lack of cracks. The "ten bowls" are mostly dried vegetable seats, and there are few chicken elbow seats. If it is a good family, feed a pig early, and after slaughtering, use half of the meat to "four buckles and four fried", leaving half of the water (internal organs) to make a plate and stew, and the other half of the meat and water will have to celebrate the New Year or sell it for a few yuan of living change. If the "ten bowls" of poor rural people can only be made into a vegetarian table with meat stars, that is, it is not two bowls of fried tofu with dried bamboo shoots, or two bowls of stewed tofu with dried articho, or two plates of dried cabbage vermicelli, or a plate of dried bracken meat slices, plus a large bowl of red and white radish to convene a meeting. Even more difficult families have to serve "four bowls and one foreign plate", both a plate of bracken vermicelli and four bowls of large stewed vegetables with different fillings only promised to the mother's family, and refused to agree to neighbors and distant relatives. If anyone feeds a big pig and holds a banquet, it is like an atomic bomb, and the four villages and eight neighbors will have to talk about it for at least a year and a half. The "ten bowls" of meat mats are actually half meat and half vegetarian. There are "ten bowls" of vegetarian mats, and one of them is a bowl of noodles and fatty pork slices. In different villages, the content of the "Ten Bowls" is slightly different, but the similarity is that no matter how difficult it is for people in their hometowns, they never lift potatoes and dog meat. The main dish is served three times, and the traditional homemade "rock sugar puff pastry dim sum" is the first must-serve main dish, followed by fried kang tea, and then all white noodle rolls. It is said to be a rock sugar puff pastry dim sum, but it is actually a bran noodle mixed with saccharin dim sum; It is said that it is a white-faced flower roll, but in fact, it is fake and shoddy, half white, half black, and it is said to be rolled with oil residue. The host's family often advises guests to say those few words: "The bun should be full, and the food is coaxing!" At that time, two catties of wheat were exchanged for one catty of rice on the black market, and there was a saying of "one rice and two sides", but they did not dare to change more, at most three or five catties, and made a meal when they came to relatives during the New Year's holiday, showing the magnanimity of southern rice. Most people in my hometown like to drink, and there is a saying that "no wine is not a feast". In that poor jingle era, daily necessities are planned by ticket, and the host who is ready to hold a banquet has to ask someone to go through the back door to buy tobacco and alcohol one year or two years in advance, and the cigarette is a box of eight cents of "double sheep" or "phoenix pot" cigarettes, and the wine is a bulk Longjiu or self-burning barley wine of one yuan per catty. During the banquet, the "deacons" took turns to fight, and they were promoted to five kui and eight to sit and shout happily, and they had the heroic spirit of not being defeated and not giving up.
The "Ten Bowls" country banquet is too powerful for the hungry peasant family, even if you have to walk fifty or sixty miles of mountain roads, you have to change into new clothes, take the children on your back and take a handkerchief to the banquet. Most of the banquets are placed in the courtyard, surrounded by grain tents, a coal stove is built in the center to boil water for heating, and the eight immortal tables and benches sit eight people at one table, leaving one seat. There are elders and the elderly who persuade them to sit on the kang, and they have special treatment for black felt charcoal pot tea. As soon as each dish was served on the table, without waiting for the chief manager to raise the chopsticks to give the order, eight pairs of chopsticks launched a general attack, when the food was rising, a gust of mountain wind blew, covering the meal with a layer of soil ash. After a round of seats, the wind swept away the clouds, and the battle ended in less than thirty or forty minutes. When you leave the table, you wipe your mouth with the palm of your hand, as if you want to hold the good memories of the seat in the palm of your hand forever.
As the saying goes, you can't finish eating and walking. Back then, the countrymen were reluctant to eat and walk around when they ate banquets. The main dishes of the banquet are dim sum and garhua rolls, and the fatty meat slices and tofu slices in the dishes are the objects of "dou". Just that bowl of noodles and fat slices per table, no more, no less, only a dozen or so slices, one piece per person for eight people, and the rest of the meat star slices, you look at me, I see that none of you will "eat more and occupy more", only "give up" to the old man with grandchildren. There are relatively more tofu slices, and the young daughter-in-law adds a few more chopsticks to herself. Adults are reluctant to eat alone, and they always have to take some home to surprise the children who are already looking forward to it, or let the elderly who are not leaving home have a good time. So there was such a scene, half a snack, a flower roll, two pieces of fatty meat, and a few slices of tofu wrapped in a handkerchief, and they were ecstatic and arrogant to bring back their own "spoils" home, and no one laughed at anyone. On the contrary, those who returned empty-handed were scolded by "starving ghosts who eat alone".
A country banquet like this is not worth talking about now, and it is even extremely cold. However, in that era, the members of the club "learned from Dazhai to repair terraced fields", "criticized forests and holes", "cut the tail of capitalism", and "celebrated revolutionary festivals" all year round.
Because I am the team clerk and have the power to record many "work points", I am often invited to the banquet by the members again and again, and the scenes are unforgettable. There is a kind-hearted filial son, who is reluctant to go to the banquet to change his appetite, and let his father, who is nearly 70 years old, go to eat. The old man came on crutches, and saw the "ten bowls" on the table, he had not seen such a delicacy for many years, and his face smiled like a mountain chrysanthemum, and with his trembling hands, he finally picked up a piece of fat and put it in his mouth, perhaps too excited, and did not come up in one breath, and choked to death. The old man puffed out his eyes, half of the meat was in his mouth, half of the meat was outside his mouth, and he didn't swallow a piece ......of fat until he died, and he didn't blink his eyes when he diedA middle-aged woman, her husband died, and she was struggling with her two teenage children. Once, when she was eating a banquet, she was carrying the "spoils of war" in her arms when she left, and she was playing "Little Jiujiu" in her heart: two meat slices, two tofu slices, and two flower rolls, enough for two children to eat half full. Just as she thought of the beauty of the beauty from her arms and held it in the palm of her hand to admire, she did not know that disaster fell from the sky, a mountain eagle of the hungry age, like a crazy robber, swooped down from the sky, unreasonably took away the "heart meat" in her hand, and flew into the sky like an arrow. The middle-aged woman sat on the side of the road and cried as if she were in despair: "God, why is my life so miserable!" As soon as he cried twice, the crying stopped abruptly, and the "flesh of the heart" that the eagle's talon grabbed disintegrated, and the piece of flesh fell from the sky and fell down the mountain stream like a leaf. The middle-aged woman wanted to "return to Zhao completely", grabbed the thatch in her hand, and went down the steep cliff, trying to find the piece of meat in a haystack like looking for a needle in the abyss valley. She went down, but never came up again......That night, the tears of the two children drenched the entire mountain village.
More than 40 years later, what should a country banquet look like today?
Didi", a car horn sent me into a small mountain village, a large village deep in the mountains with 100 households. Many years ago Minzhou "1114”5.In Level 2**, the villagers lost their homes, and in the post-disaster reconstruction, new houses were built, and the red brick houses built along the hillside were scattered, and the solar pots and TV receivers on the roofs shone in the morning sun, painting each house with sunshine.
My old classmates praised me as a guest, and they talked endlessly with a sense of joy, and there were endless stories to tell. While talking, the team of relatives entered the village, and eight newly-dressed cars had not stopped at the gate, and the two hundred and forty salutes rumbled through the sky, and the sound of crackling firecrackers boiled over the mountain village. The bridegroom and the bride were surrounded by several little girls, from the red car next, friends and classmates, aunts and sisters who came to greet relatives sent red envelopes to the girls who sent off the sedan car door, and the photographer flashed non-stop, and the little magpie on the treetops was even more chirping to praise this joyful arrival. The groom, the eldest son of my classmate, wears a straight suit, a red maple leaf tie, and shoes on the Spider King, and at a closer glance he is simply a clone of my classmate, and more handsome. I heard that the young man was very capable, worked outside for several years, learned to drive a forklift, so he returned to his hometown to start a business, bought a loader of hundreds of thousands of yuan, and worked as a local contractor, earning a lot of money, and later became a big construction boss.
Before the banquet opened, I went to set up a wedding gift first, and took out 200 yuan from my body, thinking that it would be a big gift in the countryside. Who knew that I was dumbfounded when I looked at the gift book, the smallest number in the gift book was 100 yuan, 200 yuan accounted for the majority, there were also 400 yuan, 600 yuan, and one actually gave a gift of 1000 yuan, maybe there were higher on the first few pages, and my mere 200 yuan became a "small point" and I didn't dare to look at it anymore.
The head of the table gave me the first round table, and I saw that the original square table of the eight immortals had become a round table of red and color, and eighteen tables were neatly arranged. The "Ten Bowls" of the past are no longer seen on the table, and they are all renewed. Puer New Tea, Jixiang Lanzhou Tobacco, Big Board Paws, Gold Foil Candy, Golden Emblem Four Stars, Puff Pastry Dim Sum, Green Onion Oil Cake, and Wheat Flour Flower Cake were the first to appear. The "deacons" are all capable, and the section chief is also the head of the township, handing out cigarettes and persuading wine to be able to speak, and holding a festive feast full of spring. Then six cold dishes surrounded by a big wedding plate shining on the stage, the groom's father under the instructions of the general manager, by the "deacon" in advance by the "guests" in advance to put on makeup, dressed as the old garden grandfather bowed down to the audience to toast the table, and then the groom and bride like movie stars, just like the spouses of the fairy, smiling and cheerfully toasting blessings. First of all, the big joy plate, it is said that it is the style of the Manchu and Han full banquets, the practice is more special, mainly the bean sprouts, spinach, carrots, etc. are blanched in boiling water, and they are boiled with clear oil and then used as the bottom of the plate for later use. On the top according to the upper and lower two rows in order to place the squeezed meat, skin jelly, stew, pork ribs, flower sausage, eggs, egg cakes, pork liver, etc., not only the form is beautiful, the color and flavor are good, the mouth can be tempting, and can fully display the chef's cooking skills. As the saying goes: "This feast is not big, just look at the plate to know!" Immediately after that, eight hot dishes rushed to report: stewed whole chicken, bad meat, ** whole elbow, yellow stewed mutton, hot and sour belly soup, cold bracken, fresh meat slices stir-fried, oil and rice sweet rice, all appeared, this is the real sense of "four buckles and four stir-fried". Finally, accompanied by the sound of the bold and bright "yellow coat", "wearing red", and "waiter" guessing the fist and drinking, the announcement of a bowl of family portrait and stewed dishes ended.
Our hometown is ...... on the field of hopeWe have struggled on this field for generations, and we have won her happiness and glory for ......Who is singing the song "On the Field of Hope", the song is floating on the hills, and the song expresses the hearts of the farmers in the mountain township. At that moment, my heart sent out an affectionate sigh: today's hometown is on the field of hope, and today's hometown will no longer sing yesterday's songs. My hometown has changed and become more and more affluent!