At that time, I said to myself: "Everyone has a cold winter or two in their life." At the height of my life, I found a job: too little money to mention, and the road was a mess. On a sunny, unwarm afternoon, I buttoned all the buttons of my down jacket and crossed the unmelted bridge in the fourth ring to catch the bus.
I don’t remember eating, but when I got on the pedal, I staggered. The car started and then stopped. I looked out the window slowly, saw a "Zhou Ji Rice Noodles" sign, and got out of the car.
It was the ground floor of a residential building facing the street, a few steps up, and as soon as I entered the door, the heating was on my face, and my eyes were full of lush green leafy plants. After ordering a "signature rice noodle", I even drank the soup, and the heat flowed through my body bit by bit, like a hand gently brushing my whole body. Not awesome, not to hold me in my arms, but enough to give me the strength to take a long ride.
Even if I still have nothing: my lover has left me, my career is in a low state, I am intertwined with love and hate with the world, I don’t know if it owes me or I bear it. The future is a closed mouth, I long for it to spit out blessings, but I am afraid to hear curses. But to have a bowl of hot soup powder to eat is happiness.
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To live, all you need is sunshine, air, water and food. No matter what happens, you can talk about it when you are full. Only when you are full can you have the strength to fight against your fate. As long as you don’t starve to death, winter will definitely end.
Food is always the best medicine, no matter what needs healing. Many years ago, I saw a movie called "Chocolates," in which young Pedro fell in love with a family’s youngest daughter, Tita. But in Mexico, as in some parts of China, the younger daughter had to stay at home to serve her parents for hundreds of years before she could consider marriage. In order to be with her – if not in the same bed, at least face to face at the dinner table – Pedro married her sister.
The front hall was a grand wedding banquet, and Dita was in the back kitchen, crying silently while handling the delicious food. The tears dripped on the food, and the miracle burst like sparks: the pastry was slightly salty with tears, making everyone remember the lost first love, the person who missed it, some things that they couldn’t remember but couldn’t let go, some people wept softly, some people let out a lot of grief; the rose-petaled quail was the temptation of desire, thoughts, and spicy, which attracted every glutton’s heart and belly to turn over the river together, and couldn’t help but undress and throw down the phoenix; the chili turkey made everyone laugh, and everyone in the world danced with brothers… And the most amazing thing was why the chocolate drink she served was so unique? Because there was both despair and hope in it – love.
The lover and sister had both eaten it and understood her feelings. Firewood, rice, oil and salt are everyone’s daily life, and love is the most important ingredient in delicious food. Delicious, not only a piece of cake and a bowl of soup, but also the words that the person who cooked the meal could not say.
Food is the most appropriate comfort. In Hong Kong dramas, whether it is a matter of life and death, a cancer report, or a summons from the Public Integrity Commission, the comfort of family members is always: "I will give you the next meal to eat?" Or: "I boiled sugar water today, it was very sweet."
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In "Onei Agent Zero Hair", Liu Jialing plays a gentle and virtuous wife. No matter how outlandish and absurd Zhou Xingchi is, she is ridiculed and misunderstood by others, and she is even unsure of the beauty of a strange woman. She always responds to changes and asks him: "Are you hungry? I will cook a bowl of noodles for you to eat, okay?" There is a woman’s humility in it: I am a person who has nothing, I am not your confidant, I do not understand your grand ambitions. But I am willing to take care of your body and everything in my way. I haven’t looked for this movie on purpose, but I often see it in the early morning or dawn of various movie channels. Thousands of years of heroic ambition, inventor ingenuity, conspiracy and tricks in the rivers and lakes, and in the end, it is no match for a warm sentence: "I will cook a bowl of noodles for you to eat, okay?"
The Chinese don’t know how warm the soup is. It seems to be Gu Long, who likes to put his big hero in the vegetable market, suffer the vicissitudes of life, see the world, and finally hide in the street, becoming a hawker selling sweet wine dumplings; the big hero, covered in knife wounds, stumbles to find his beloved woman, and has nothing to say, just eat a bowl of raw hot kidney.
In "The Legend of Lu Xiaofeng", he wrote about an unexpected woman named "Beef Soup", who lived up to her name and made the best beef soup in the world. When she first appeared, Beef Soup smiled sweeter than flowers, but she was ruthless; in the next story, she had changed. She was a confidante with love and was willing to do everything for him.
What happened? Let’s explain it with beef soup: the soup she cooked was thicker than rice soup, and the meat was stewed together with the three wonderful parts of the cow, which is the most wonderful kind of cow. What made her make this bowl of soup so meticulously? Who ate the wonders in the soup? Who did she heal the wounds in her heart, and she was willing to make soup for him forever?
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Maybe she was just tired. Instead of testing the taste of strange men every day, it was better to please this one around her. If she got a man’s stomach, she would get a man’s heart. If possible, a man is willing to indulge himself in food and drown.
If you don’t have a kind wife, it’s good to have a gentle small restaurant, and sometimes strangers can make thoughtful food. In a distant country, there is a "Late Night Canteen" that opens in the middle of the night: "The day is over, and when everyone hurries home, my day has just begun…" The boss is a taciturn middle-aged man, and a scar squarely crosses his left eye, like he has been cut in two. There is only a pork miso soup on his menu, but as long as you can say it, there is any food in the refrigerator, he will try his best to make it for you. He knows that if you love a dish, it is often because you have loved someone related to it. The person who suddenly changed his taste suddenly had a bottomless hole in his heart that needed to be appeased.
The dishes were simple: fried sausages, chow mein with soy sauce, braised eggs, half-cooked fish roe… all ordinary restaurant food. But when he said: "That sausage is delicious because Xiaolong gave it to me." We couldn’t help but be moved. Is there one of the simplest home-cooked dishes you can’t forget? Like the stir-fried cauliflower with tomatoes he taught you, or the fish head soup he took you to eat. Now, in the dead of night, who will take you to a small restaurant?
Among the guests who came and went, there were underworld members, unsuccessful actors, office workers, strippers… For some people, the late-night cafeteria was their last stop before going home, while for others, they had no home, only here to feel the warmth and excitement of people.
Fortunately, there is always hot soup to warm your hands, and a few words from the boss can warm your heart. They can always find the taste of memories here, lovers, friends, and even separated family members. Although the long night is long, the long life is always longer than it. Go home, there is a wife who cooks at home.
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But if it is the wife who is suffering, who will cook for her? This is an interesting and unsolvable question.
In P.D. James’ "Murder in the Church," the baron is killed, and his mother appears unperturbed, calmly responding to the police and the reporters who come to inquire about the gossip. Standing like a rock, she has a peculiar hunger in her body, and she constantly thinks of all kinds of food, just as she, who had a bad day many years ago, longed for watermelon on winter nights. She quietly thinks that the taste of pain is like pregnancy.
No one heard her silent cries, nor did anyone come to comfort her body or soul.
Ms. Fisher, the American writer, was much better off. As a young woman, she studied in France with her equally young husband and lived on the top floor of a house "where there was a little kitchen and a little dark parlor. The round window in the parlor was the size of a Thanksgiving pie… It was impossible to bathe in that apartment, so I had to go to the public bathroom every two weeks. Every time I felt uncomfortable."
It was so cold that she tried to write, but her hands and head were frozen stiff. Her husband was not inconsiderate, and would buy some vegetables and meat non-staples on the way home. "But it’s not a pleasant thing to wear a leather jacket and gloves to cook in the kitchen. The steam from cooking disappears as soon as it touches the cold roof."
At last, she burst into tears. It was the first time her husband had seen her cry. He asked no questions, but took her to the warmest hotel in the city, to the darkest dining room. He served her, dark roast boar, and soup; peas, lentils, potatoes, chestnuts, a mixture of paste. I was full and drunk, and my whole body was warm. It turned out that there was no medicine to heal like this.
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After divorcing her first husband, her second marriage was similarly short-lived. After three years of marriage, her husband became seriously ill, normal life ended, and they were helpless in the face of the disease, so they entered a state of nothing to do. "We are like living ghosts, eating and drinking, watching and feeling more than before." The disease took away one leg, then another, then two arms. His hair was gray and his big eyes were full of pain. She was a convicted woman, torn apart by ghosts, watching her loved one slowly die. What else could be done? Eat, die, and be a full ghost.
In the familiar restaurant, the familiar waiters were overwhelmed by their illness, shocked to tears, unable to say anything, and finally had to offer a bottle of champagne, wrapped in red plaid.
She said: The wine didn’t change at all, it was warm after the entrance, like a miracle. He picked up the fork, and so did she. Those pastas were as light as dust. Every meal could be the last, so it was worth savoring.
When her husband finally died, she was so traumatized by death that she would sometimes dash out the door and dash down the road until she was out of breath. She was exhausted and exhausted, but some of her senses were still alive. To ward off the shadow of death, she ate and drank greedily, which had nothing to do with physical hunger, but the food itself was enough to nourish her. She designed the menu herself, prepared sumptuous dishes for her loved ones, and focused on the food to make her forget her worries. Sometimes, alone, she would go to the best restaurant, order some good wine and food, and treat herself like a guest of honor.
She used her personal experience to say: How to appease the person who has been robbed by fate? It is better to take him (her) to have a good meal.
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Food can also cure homesickness. Wang Zengqi wrote "Down and Out" about a female classmate who was sick and they went to see her. Someone picked a large handful of jade hairpin flowers from Heituwa (Heituwa is the place where flowers are produced in Kunming, and the price is about the same as that of green vegetables). She put the flowers in a green pottery vase, smiled and said: "If there is another plate of white boiled fish, my illness will be very similar!" She is from Yangzhou. Yangzhou people, like Jia’s mansion, focus on "quenching hunger" when they recover from illness. After the illness, the diet is also very light. When they start to eat meat, they eat salt and pepper and white boiled fish.
In order to satisfy her elegance and relieve her homesickness, the classmates specially went to the small restaurant to discuss with the boss. The female classmate who finally ate it must have smiled sweetly.
In "A Dream of Red Mansions", Jia Baoyu, after passing the board, the whole family greeted him in front of the bed. Sister Bao specially sent the stick sore medicine, and Mrs. Wang asked him, "What do you want to eat? I’ll bring it to you when I come back." Baoyu smiled and said, "I don’t want to eat anything, but the little lotus leaf and little lotus pod soup I made that time was better." Mother Jia asked people to make it one after another.
Sure enough, there are three thousand pets in one body, and even a child’s coquetry can be immediately satisfied. With the love of so many people, what harm is there, can’t it be cured?
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This article was written by Xu Fang, edited by Wu Bin, and the source of the title image: Visual China, Sina Blog, Jiangyin Real Estate Forum, Lower Kitchen, Sentence Fan, Baidu Encyclopedia, Picture Editor: Su Wei
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