At the end of the year, my wife was very busy with work, and in the past few days to prepare for the New Year, I made various purchases according to her list, and I remembered the New Year when I was a child. The flavor of our generation has entered the museum. Now you don't understand, after all, the times have progressed.
Chinese New Year is a long time for children to eat good things, put on new clothes, and play. Especially in the days of poverty, the quality of life for children during the New Year is indeed obviously on the stage, and it is a festival for children. The busy mother often says, which one is going to celebrate the New Year? I really don't want to celebrate the New Year. Celebrate the New Year, adults celebrate the festival. I only understood when I took it myself.
When I was a child, I was short of material things, and the Chinese New Year was the time when food was the most abundant. In order to prepare the New Year's food, I remember that my mother has been preparing for the family since autumn.
In autumn, the glutinous rice should be steamed in advance until it is ripe, so that it is good to disperse, and then rub it into a grain by hand after having a certain hardness, and spread it out with a dustpan to bask in the sun many times, fully dry, and make it into yin rice. The peanuts and peas that are ready to be fried should also be dried thoroughly.
After the winter solstice, it is mainly salted meat and fish. At that time, the unit was divided into meat and fish every year, and the meat and fish were labeled with serial numbers according to the size of the match, and they were arranged in the square, and each family sent a representative to catch lots (mainly arranged for children to do this), and if you were lucky, you could catch the amount of shape and fragrance, which was fair and worth showing off, and could be remembered for a long time.
As soon as the New Year passes, there is a New Year's flavor, and my mother begins to prepare for the busy work until midnight after washing up dinner every day. Our task is to wait by the pot every day to help test the heat and taste the taste. There is no such thing as a diet to be controlled for dinner now.
On the 24th day of the lunar month, scrub and brush all kinds of tools, wash and marinate the meat, beef, soy products, kelp and lotus root ready to be marinated. Prepare for the opening of the brine pot.
On the 25th day of the lunar month, it is mainly to grind glutinous rice to make glutinous rice balls. Mozi didn't have it at home, so I had to go to the neighbor's house to make an appointment to line up to borrow, and then the cousin who ran the boat specially helped us buy a small mill, and I felt that I had a big belongings. You can grind it anytime you want to eat. I have the impression that I haven't used it except for the New Year. My mother is so strong in her life, she likes to buy belongings, and she tries not to borrow them. This affects us a lot.
On the 26th of the lunar month, steamed glutinous rice was steamed and glutinous rice was made. It's all hard work, there is no labor at home, mainly 2 younger sisters help hold down the wooden basin (only later occasionally use other people's stones to make the right nest), Dad, cousin and I take turns to fight, very envious of other people's families with more labor.
We all love to eat glutinous food, but we can't do it hard. The glutinous rice should be steamed and beaten to the point that the rice grains of the glutinous rice are completely invisible, and after beating, it should be put for a day to be completely hard before it can be cut and not easy to disperse, and it should be soaked in wax water (water after entering the wax moon) to preserve. I have always been personally involved in this matter, and I am most impressed.
On the 27th day of the lunar month, open the wok and fry the yin rice (fried rice), fried peas, fried peanuts (luxury) and so on. At that time, there was only about 15 square meters of room taking into account the bedroom, living room, dining room, bathroom and kitchen, there was no current gas stove, the stove was mainly a steel (cast iron) cover for burning split wood, and the coal stove was a high-end stove in the later period.
On the 28th of the lunar month, open the braised pot, and the fragrant braised pork, braised scalp, braised sausage, braised beef, braised lotus, braised kelp, and thousands of dried seeds of braised kelp are out of the pot in turn, and we are responsible for tasting the taste around the side.
On the 29th of the lunar month, open the oil pot. Dumplings, lotus leaves, flesh and fruit, lotus root clips, etc. Mom is so busy every day that we can't stay up and can't sleep, and we can't get our hands.
On the 30th day of the lunar month, the dust (do cleaning) paste couplets, prepare the authentic ten bowls, and set up the tableware before the New Year's dinner to call the deceased ancestors to eat first (say something about today's New Year, each ancestor comes to eat the New Year's dinner and the like), and then it is our feast. Wash and brush to welcome the new year. After my mother settled us, she prepared breakfast - chicken soup on the morning of the next new year.
The wife who was born in the countryside said that before the Chinese New Year was more troublesome in the countryside, in addition to these, she also had to make tofu, tapo bean skin, tack lotus leaves, boil sesame sugar, cut hemp leaves, make golden fruit cakes and other non-staple snacks. It will take many days of hard work. Our town does not have a big pot and stove in the countryside, and we have not done this, and the sugar food for the New Year is to buy some at the grocery store.
On the first day of the first lunar month, we put on new clothes, and my mother arranged for our three brothers and sisters to visit relatives and elders with gifts on behalf of our family, and then went up the mountain to worship our ancestors. When you meet acquaintances, you will say Happy New Year! Along the way, I'll pay attention to each couplet.
The year is half a year old, the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month of each year, ** attaches great importance to it, each unit must participate in the serious rehearsal and come up with the program, all kinds of face-showing folk tricks must be taken out to show the competition, the carnival begins to rehearse from the fourteenth day of the first month, and the fifteenth day of the first month will last for most of the day, and the real empty alley is the carnival of the whole town. It is not at all inferior to all the carnival festivals in Europe and the United States on all kinds of **. In terms of traditional culture, there is no need to worship foreign flattery.
The most sad thing is that we are easy to get carried away during the New Year, and adults are too busy to urge us. Every time I look embarrassed, my mother jokes that "fluttering during the day and boiling oil at night", "running in all directions during the day and mending the crotch at night".
When you were not obedient and were educated by the teacher and told the parents, the parents would definitely thank the teacher, because to be educated by the teacher is to be valued by the teacher, which is a very happy thing for busy parents. The most common thing parents say to teachers is "help me beat me if I don't obey", and usually after being taught by the teacher, it will be another beating.
How can it be as expensive as a child now? In just over 20 years, people have evolved like this? My mother often said: "Jiao'er is not filial, and Jiao'er is on the stove". If you make a mistake, you will never take into account any of our inner shadows, and there will not be so many kind words.
Looking back now, it still makes sense to have a filial son under the stick in the past. In the process of growing up, I may be pine and hapi every three or four times, just like steelmaking, and when I grow up, I will be beaten and bumped, and the difficulties I will encounter in the future will be similar when I was a child, and it doesn't matter, and I am not easy to be depressed.
The calendar is turned page by page, and the days go by year by year. The material aspect is indeed much better than before, and it should have lost a lot along the way, and it is not easy for the soul to keep up with the rhythm.
Now the various purchases for the Chinese New Year are much easier than before, and I feel a lot less taste. There is less exchange of giving and receiving, and less expectation. There will be no pie in the sky. Every harvest is a reward for paying, and living every day is king.
*: Tianmen Literature and Art. Author: Hu Weiyong.