August 15th of the lunar calendar is the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is a traditional festival in China. This year's Mid-Autumn Festival is the fifth Mid-Autumn Festival my wife and I have spent in Dalian since we settled in June 2007. This Mid-Autumn Festival, my wife and I went to my youngest son's house to spend the holidays with them. On August 14, my son and daughter-in-law called one after another and said that tomorrow is the Mid-Autumn Festival. Let's go to his place for the Mid-Autumn Festival. He also said that he wanted to invite everyone to watch his granddaughter Zhu Zhu's piano performance, which would be more lively. We agreed to the arrangement of our son and daughter-in-law. I said to my wife, "The children have their own ideas about this arrangement. Daughter-in-law is an only child, and in-laws now live in our son's house. If three sons come to spend the holidays with us, the old couple's in-laws will feel lonely. We should understand the feelings of children. " My wife agrees with me. She said: "I also have this consideration when I get a call from my child. It doesn't matter where the Mid-Autumn Festival is, as long as everyone is happy. "
After breakfast in Mid-Autumn Festival, my wife and I took the "Tesco" bus to our son's house. As soon as she entered the house, her granddaughter Zhu Zhu greeted her quickly and stopped practicing the piano. Then she took out all the toys and played with her grandparents. The son and daughter-in-law were busy cooking and cooked a table of dishes. In-laws chat with us while watching TV. At noon, everyone got together, drinking, laughing and eating seafood, and the atmosphere was pleasant and harmonious. After dinner, Zhu Zhu put on her kindergarten costume and played the piano for us. Before the performance, you should announce the curtain call, tell the name of the performer and the tracks you played, as well as the model. She played seven songs at a time, and after each song, we warmly applauded the children. Although they are some simple tunes, they are already very valuable to five-year-old children who have just learned piano for less than a year. Adults and children are very happy.
After Zhu Zhu's piano performance, we went downstairs together and took photos in the community square, gardens, bridges and streams. After taking the photos, my son uploaded the photos to the internet and then uploaded them to my computer through the "cloud disk" so that my wife and I could enjoy the photos that night. After dinner at our son's house, we went home. Because my wife and I usually go out to exercise after dinner, which has become a habit. So, after I came back from my son's house, I rested for a while, drank saliva and went downstairs. My wife went to do aerobics, but I still went to the retirement home for naval veterans for a brisk walk.
At this time, the moon has risen to the southeast of the sky. Tonight, the sky is high and the clouds are light, and the moon stars are rare, just like the poem in Zhang's "Moonlight on the Spring River" in the Tang Dynasty: "There is no dust over the river, and there is a lonely moon in the sky." The moon is big and round tonight. This reminds me of a recent report in Dalian Peninsula Morning Post that people are talking about "the fifteenth moon and the sixteenth circle", but it's not entirely true. According to statistics, in the 26 years since 1987, there have been 14 "15th and 16th month circles". During the Tenth Five-Year Plan period, there were 15 laps of the moon and 12 laps. This year, it was 15 laps during the Tenth Five-Year Plan period. I walked on the boulevard under the buttonwood tree, and the moonlight shone on my body, face and ground through the branches and leaves of the buttonwood tree. This is a bit like Wei's Moonlight in the Pine Woods. Go to the clearing and see the bright moon, as white as jade, like a silver plate. Moonlight is like frost on the earth, and the figure in the moonlight is very clear, just like the figure in a sunny day. I stared at the moon and thought a lot, which took me back to that distant childhood.
When I was a child, I was deeply impressed by the Mid-Autumn Festival. Now that the Mid-Autumn Festival is over, it is common for adults and children to eat moon cakes. On the shelves in the supermarket, beautifully packaged moon cakes of various grades are dazzling. On the Mid-Autumn Festival this year, my wife and I bought "Wuren" moon cakes just processed by a food factory in Dalian, and in Wal-Mart supermarket, we bought moon cakes filled with strawberries and cantaloupes in plastic boxes. The son and daughter-in-law also roast duck yolk moon cakes in their own oven. The quality of these moon cakes can be said to be good, but now my wife and I are old, but we dare not eat more of these good moon cakes. The main reason is that moon cakes are rich in sugar and oil, which has an impact on the health of the elderly. So my wife and I can only eat less and taste it.
When I was young, New China was just founded, the country was in a difficult period, and the people lived in poverty. We were no exception. Therefore, you may not see moon cakes every Mid-Autumn Festival. Sometimes during the Mid-Autumn Festival, only one catty of moon cakes can be bought at home, with eight moon cakes weighing one catty. In the past, the scale was based on "hexadecimal" and each moon cake was two ounces. We call it two ounces. The moon cakes are folded, rolled into a roll with a piece of green grass paper, labeled with a small piece of red paper, and tied with a paper rope. That moon cake is of poor quality, with white skin and almost no oil. The stuffing of moon cakes is not like the present moon cakes, which contain walnuts, peanuts, rock sugar, moss roses, raisins and so on. At that time, moon cakes only had a little sugar, and some were a little green roses. Old people call it green red silk. I remember the moss in my mouth was a little weak. This is the moon cake. Because of the large population in the family, no one can draw a piece. In addition, the moon rises at night and can only be eaten when it is enshrined in the yard. Mother had to cut the moon cakes for our sisters.
Why did you dedicate yourself to the moon at that time? The old people haven't talked about it, and we don't know. Only when I was a child, I heard the old man say a nursery rhyme: Moon Mi (that is, the moon, Yicheng dialect in Shanxi, the same below), Ya Ya, (Grandpa) takes care of the doll, and the doll has a scab on its face. Wash (dirty) horses as soon as they arrive (tomorrow morning). The old people pointed to the dark part of the moon and said it was a mountain and a rabbit. So, at that time, we thought there were mountains on the moon and there were gods like grandpa in the mountains. When I grew up, I heard legends such as the Goddess Chang'e flying to the moon and WU GANG cutting laurel trees.
Sometimes when the years are bad and there is no money to buy moon cakes at home, my mother makes them herself. She steamed Regan Noodles on a steamer, mixed some sugar in it, and sometimes put some fried and ground sesame seeds, which became the stuffing of moon cakes. Pull a piece of dough, roll it into the size of a steamed bun skin, wrap it with stuffing, press it in a wooden moon cake mold, and tap it gently on the chopping board to make a moon cake. At that time, there was no oven, and my mother baked it on both sides like pancakes. Because the stuffing in the moon cake is steamed, just scald the skin. Although the quality of homemade moon cakes is low, they are more than those bought. At that time, in an era when white flour was rarely seen, eating homemade moon cakes was also a very extravagant thing.
When I was a child, I spent the Mid-Autumn Festival, and I was deeply impressed by the "stone cake". In Yicheng County, our hometown in Jinnan, Shanxi, there is also the custom of making stone cakes in the Mid-Autumn Festival. Hometown people call pebble cakes "Ge Basket Sets", and here we only take their sounds. As for the words "Ge Lanji", no one can say clearly. Now people generally call it pebble cake because it is more popular and easier to understand and remember. To make cobblestone cake, there must be pebbles first. People go to the beach to pick up round pebbles the size of finger eggs. After picking it up, wash the stone, dry it, and wipe it with a tarpaulin with a little oil, so that when making a cake, the stone will not stick to the cake easily. Secondly, it is to make cakes. Dough is needed to make pebble cakes, just like sesame cakes. Make the dough into a sesame cake-sized preparation, sprinkle sugar or fennel on it and roll it into a sesame cake-sized preparation. The last step is to make pancakes. You can't bake "stone cakes" with a hammer, because the edge of the hammer is shallow, and a large flat-bottomed iron basin with a deep edge is generally used. Build an earthen stove in the yard, put an iron basin full of stones on the stove, and burn firewood such as branches under the iron basin. Firewood can only be used, such as electricity or liquefied gas now, which may not be effective. Of course, firewood is more powerful, more uniform and more economical.
Put the iron basin on the earthen stove and it will take about an hour to burn. The bottom of the iron basin is all red, and the stones in the iron basin are hot. At this time, half the hot stones in the iron basin were scooped out with an iron spoon and placed in a small iron pot with ears next to the stove. Then, spread out the remaining stones in the iron basin with a shovel and put the cake on the stones in the iron basin. Five or six cakes can be put in the big iron basin. After putting away the cake, pour half of the stone just scooped out into the iron basin and cover the cake tightly to avoid exposing the cake. After about seven or eight minutes, you can take out the cake covered with stones. Similarly, turn the cake over and bury it with stones. After three to five minutes, the cake will be cooked. Because this cake is completely baked from stone, which is completely different from the cake baked by hammer. "Stone cake" looks golden on both sides from the outside, tastes crisp and sweet, and has a unique taste. Ordinary baked wheat cake can't be compared with it.
At that time, the living standard in the countryside was low, and there was little white flour at home. Only a small amount of white flour cakes were made to make stone cakes, most of which were black flour. In rural areas, you grind your own flour with a stone mill, usually three times. The surface polished in this way is moderate in black and white, which is not a waste. But in difficult times, people always want to eat more, so when grinding flour, they grind it four times and five times, polishing all the skins of wheat and grinding the bran that should be left for animals to eat into black flour. So this black powder is often used to make pebble cakes. It is this kind of stone cake made of black flour. At that time, we also thought it was much better than corn bread. Of course, families with good economic conditions in rural areas will make more white flour cakes. Moreover, some still burn some oil in the noodles. The stone cake made in this way has a crisp taste and is very suitable for the elderly who have a bad mouth.
At that time, although the living standard in the countryside was low, most people still had to make some stone cakes before the Mid-Autumn Festival. When you walk through the streets of the village, you will always hear the sound of digging stones in the yard. It must be making a stone cake. At that time, my mother made stone cakes. In addition to making more black cakes for her family, she also made a small amount of white cakes for her relatives. At the same time, we should make a pile of white flour cakes and put them on a small table in the yard with moon cakes at night to sacrifice to the moon. There are seven or eight pebble cakes in that pile, the one at the bottom is the largest, with a diameter of seven or eight inches, and then one is smaller than the other, piled up like a pagoda. At the top, you should also make a small noodle rabbit, and insert the noodle rabbit at the top of this pile of cakes with chopsticks. After giving it to the moon, we all want to eat the rabbit on the top.
Our hometown Yicheng County also has the custom of visiting relatives and friends after the Mid-Autumn Festival. Relatives who left at that time had no money to buy gifts, so they used pebble cakes as gifts. When you go to relatives' homes, you usually bring stone cakes, some with seven and some with ten. Because of the shortage of white flour, most of the white flour stone cakes taken by relatives are reluctant to eat, but are given to other relatives. Speaking of which, there is another episode. There is a daughter-in-law named Suirei in our village. She has three sisters and Suirei is the second child. Her sisters and sisters are all married to a nearby village. After the Mid-Autumn Festival this year, Suirei went to visit her sister with her own small round cakes. Her sister won't eat this pebble cake. A few days later, she went to see her third sister with the pebble cake brought by Suirei. Third sister doesn't want to eat. Two days later, she took pebbles to see her second sister Suirei. After her sister left, Suirei looked at the pebble cake that was still circled by herself, and knew that the pebble cake was made by herself. She thought, I'll take this cake to my sister, and my sister will bring it back to me. This pebble cake, after traveling around for six or seven days, turned a big circle and returned to its original owner. Who would do this if the family was not difficult? I really feel a little unspeakable in my heart. This is indeed a portrayal of people's poor life at that time, and it is also a helpless move.
In our family, after the Mid-Autumn Festival, my mother strung a string of pagoda-shaped stone cakes dedicated to the moon with a rope and hung them on the beams of the cave. In order to be afraid of the harm of mice, I am also afraid that greedy children will eat them in advance. In winter, those pebbles are too dry to bite, and then it is basically difficult to see white flour again. Mother will take down one or two in a few days, and use a knife or hammer to break the dried pebble cakes into pieces the size of peanuts. Each child will put two in his pocket as snacks. Just like children eat rice crust, tiger skin beans and chocolate now. Therefore, pebble cake left a deep and indelible impression in my young mind. I joined the army and left my hometown for more than 20 years. I have never eaten pebble cakes made by my mother. One year, my lover went to visit relatives in the army. After Mid-Autumn Festival, she brought me some pebbles. Comrades were surprised to see it. I don't know how the pit on the cake was made. Some said that they were pressed one by one with their fingers. They all feel good after eating.
Returning to houma city after being transferred from the army. At that time, I lived in a bungalow with a small yard. In the yard, we set up an earthen stove, went back to my hometown in Yicheng and picked up some pebbles from the beach. My wife made pebbles herself. That pebble cake is cooked and eaten now, and it tastes really unusual. Although the cobblestone cake made by ourselves is more delicious than the one bought, it is time-consuming and laborious to make, so it can't be made often, and it can satisfy the hunger once in a while. Later, my wife found that people in Yicheng were selling pebble cakes in the streets of houma city, and they are still selling them. They made a big oil drum stove, the charcoal fire below was very strong, and the pebble cake was of good quality. My wife is trading stocks in the business department of Houma Securities. Sometimes when she doesn't go home at noon, she buys two to satisfy her hunger. Go home in the afternoon and sometimes bring me two pebbles.
I haven't seen pebble cakes since I came to Dalian. In the first half of last year, I went back to Shanxi to go through the salary card formalities, and by the way, I went back to my hometown in Yicheng. On my way back to the county seat, I found a cobbler by the roadside. The fruit pie is ok, but thinner. Of course, the first consideration in doing business is profit. However, the cakes are only 50 cents each, the price is reasonable, and they are sweet, salty and original. I immediately bought a cake with the money from 20 yuan. The cake seller heard that I was from Yicheng and wanted to take their pebble cakes to Dalian, Liaoning Province, and specially gave more. I'm going to take some cobblestone cakes that I brought back to my in-laws for him to taste. After the in-laws ate it, they were full of praise and even said, "Delicious, delicious." He also said that Shanxi's pasta deserved its reputation. He has seen pebble cakes in Shanxi on TV, but he has never seen them with his own eyes. Now that he has eaten it, he thinks it is much more delicious than baked wheat cake.
Why do Shanxi people have a soft spot for pebble cakes? I think it's the same as the moon cake in Mid-Autumn Festival. Pebble cake may be the prayer of the older generation for family reunion and the expectation of peace, reunion and happiness. Childhood is an era of material scarcity. People's living standards are very low, and it is often difficult to fill their stomachs, let alone expect anything delicious. Therefore, the Mid-Autumn Festival is only impressed by moon cakes and pebble cakes, which are related to "eating". But with the passage of time, the growth of age and the improvement of living standards, we have a further and deeper understanding of the Mid-Autumn Festival. In those years after I left my hometown as a soldier, I basically didn't spend the Mid-Autumn Festival with my family. Therefore, in my memory, the Mid-Autumn Festival is no longer just "eating", but has countless thoughts.
"The foot of my bed is shining with such bright light. Is it frosty already? Looking up, I found that it was moonlight and sank again, and I suddenly remembered home. " This is the poet Li Bai's eternal swan song, straightforward and easy to understand, and so sentimental. This reminds me of the small farmhouse in my hometown when I was a child, and also reminds me of the mountainous countryside when I joined the army. I remember that I was stationed at the foot of the Great Wall in Zunhua County, Hebei Province, near the border, spending the Mid-Autumn Festival, watching the bright moon and missing my loved ones. It's really a bit: "There is only Guanshan tonight, thousands of miles away, and the light is the same." (Song Xieyi's "Jiangchengzi"). I miss my wife, son, parents and relatives thousands of miles away. I am even more homesick when I read the homesickness poem written by Lu Lun, a native of Zhou Pu, Shanxi Province in the Tang Dynasty: "The autumn scenery of Sanxiang Temple is exhausted, and the heart of three thousand miles goes, and I feel homesick with the moon". To this end, I also wrote many poems about the Mid-Autumn Festival at that time. Every Mid-Autumn Festival night, look at the mirror-like moon. Although the time is different and the place is different, the moon is still high in the sky every year, and there is not much difference, but time is quietly passing and people are changing. Looking back on the long history of our parents, we are getting old and feel that time flies and life is short. Li Bai's poem said, "Today people don't see Gu Yue, but this month they took photos of the ancients. If the ancients are running water today, they will look at the bright moon. " Speaking of which, it's a little sad.
Today, my wife and I live in Dalian with our youngest son, but there are relatives in my hometown. And my eldest son, a family of four, is still thousands of miles away in Taiyuan, Shanxi. Therefore, I still miss and worry about the Mid-Autumn Festival. Fortunately, there is an internet now, so we can have a video conversation with our children and grandchildren and their relatives in their hometown to talk about our lovesickness. People often say: "August 15 is full, and every household is full." It was also in the ancient farming era that the whole family got together, digging on the land around the front door, doing it at sunrise, resting at sunset and getting together on the Mid-Autumn Festival night. That's good. Today's society is more and more developed, transportation and communication are changing with each passing day, and the earth is gradually getting smaller. It is impossible for a family to live and work in the same province, the same city or even the same country, often separated from Wan Li.
At present, the state stipulates that the "Golden Week" is a holiday, and the Mid-Autumn Festival is just around the National Day. If the "two festivals" are similar, people can take advantage of the long vacation to get together for the holidays, but after all, more people leave and fewer people get together. But when I think about it, it doesn't matter when and where the Mid-Autumn Festival is, as long as it is safe and happy, how many people get together. As Su Shi said, "People have joys and sorrows, and the moon has ups and downs. This is an old question. I hope that people will last for a long time and have a good scenery. "
? 20 12 Mid-Autumn Festival
? "In Dalian"