However, I once again opened Mr. Wang's book, rereading the aftertaste, and found from the dribs and drabs that this is a very interesting person in life and an out-and-out gourmet.
Mr. Lu Xun has not written a book about food, but you can find traces of food in many of his works. What emerges between the lines is Mr. Wang's unique taste. He is unambiguous about good food.
Taste of home
1881On September 25th, Lu Xun was born in Zhou Jia, Xintaimen, Dongchangfang, Shaoxing, Zhejiang. In his hometown Shaoxing, he spent his childhood and adolescence.
Lu Xun 1 1 years old went to study in San Tan Yin Yue and studied under Shou Jason Wu. However, the next year, my grandfather Zhou was thrown into prison for committing a crime. When the house leaked, it rained all night, and his father Zhou Boyi was seriously ill. After that, his family had to take refuge in the countryside.
In order to treat his father, Lu Xun, the dutiful son, went in and out between the pawnshop and the drugstore every day and looked on coldly. 1896, when his father Zhou Boyi died, the family became more difficult.
This is a life of sorrow and joy. Even if he leaves here, Shaoxing is still an unavoidable city. The food imprint here is deeply rooted in Lu Xun's creation.
There are roots of Polygonum multiflorum Thunb in From Herb Garden to San Tan Yin Yue, which can be eaten to become immortal. Rubus is sour and sweet, and its color and taste are far better than mulberry. Not only attracted Lu Xun when he was a child, but also opened his gourmet taste buds. Childish and interesting, making people smile.
In Flowers in the Morning, YanTaitai who said "OK, one more piece" was called "kindness" by Lu Xun. There are also water chestnut, water bamboo, cantaloupe and so on, all of which are very delicious.
Fishing shrimp in Jiangsu and Zhejiang villages, cooking the harvested spoils with ginger and adding soy sauce. It doesn't matter whether the social drama in Social Drama is wonderful or not. The children are thinking about arhat beans and cooking them secretly at night. Cook with salt and firewood from the hachi boat. It's delicious.
In "Hometown", young people under the moon leap into the earth, Yan and watermelon, as if they were in front of them. Moisten the soil and give Lu Xun his own dried mung beans, which are not expensive, but convenient and durable.
In the storm, people served dried plums, brown rice and fried beans. Dried prunes are Lu Xun's favorite. In his article, he praised the delicacy of dried vegetables by Zhao's mouth. He also proudly put forward a suggestion in the diary of Gai Hua Collection: If Shaoxing people take dried vegetables to explore the Arctic, I'm afraid they won't get scurvy, and they can go further.
"Blessing" mentioned that there is a dish in Fuxing Building called stewed shark's fin, which costs one yuan a plate. The oily tofu in Eating Out is very good, but the hot sauce is too weak.
People are most familiar with fennel beans. In Kong Yiji, impoverished Kong Yiji often went to the store to ask for a dish of fennel beans as an appetizer. This is an ordinary broad bean, and countless young readers drool at the textbook in class. Later, four ways of writing fennel were widely known.
A series of familiar delicacies evoked Lu Xun's infinite homesickness. Shaoxing's food culture is the local sentiment in his novels.
Xun Wei Jingcheng
After returning from Japan, in 19 12 years, at the invitation of Cai Yuanpei, Lu Xun took a post in the Ministry of Education and began a life of "drifting north". For the first seven years, I lived in Shaoxing Guild Hall in Nanban Street Hutong. Later, it was moved to Badaowan 1 1, Zhuanta Hutong 6 1 and Gongmenkou Xisantiao 2 1.
Although he works in the Ministry of Education, Lu Xun's life as a civil servant is very boring. Since 1920, he has taught in eight universities and middle schools, including Peking University, and has become a mentor admired by the vast number of revolutionary youth.
Lu Xun stayed in Beijing for nearly 15 years. Besides work, teaching, writing and making friends, his favorite thing is to find delicious food. In Lu Xun's diary, a large part is related to eating. There are 65 restaurants in Beijing mentioned in it, and he almost never chooses vegetarian restaurants when he goes out.
19 12 On May 7th, the third day in Beijing, Lu Xun mentioned "Guangheju" in his diary. This is a restaurant he often goes to, ranking first among the "eight big houses" in Beijing. Courtyard layout, many rooms, very suitable for Lu Xun and friends to go.
When he first arrived in Beijing, part of Lu Xun's salary had to be sent back to his hometown, as well as his usual living expenses, so he hardly ordered this time-honored expensive dish, which was just ordinary cooking. Among them, fried kidney flowers and Air Balls are Lu Xun's favorites. When someone comes home as a guest, Lu Xun will directly let Guangheju deliver the meal to the door, which is similar to the current "takeaway".
Then, other restaurants entered Lu Xun's field of vision. Tongheju manages Shandong cuisine, and Lu Xun likes fried shrimp balls and big steamed buns with sugar water here best. The diced chicken with sauce in Dongxinglou is worth tasting carefully. The chefs in Zhimeilou are skilled, and catching fried chicken slices, rotten fish slices and fried shredded pork is a test of skills.
In addition to "Eight Houses" and "Eighth Floor", Lu Xun will not miss the Small Civilian Pavilion. At lunch, he often takes Chen Shiceng and Qi Shoushan to Longhaixuan, a small restaurant. Their specialties are soft-fried liver tips and pot-fried belly slices, which are especially to Lu Xun's taste.
Another small noodle restaurant is "Hutchison", which is affordable and famous for its beef and mutton. When several people come here, Lu Xun always orders a bowl of clear soup and beef noodles.
If you go to Liulichang, Lu Xun will immediately go to Dashilan West Street, which is a Beijing-style snack street. The "Qingyun Pavilion" that appears repeatedly in the diary is a good place to have tea and meet friends in the street. In Yuhuchun Teahouse, you can spend a leisurely afternoon by ordering a spring roll and shrimp noodles. Houdefu is famous for cooking fish. Radish fish and sweet and sour tiles are a must.
Hometown food is just as hard to give up. Nanweizhai is a famous shop in Jiangsu, and sweet and sour yellow croaker and shrimp tendon are the best. Xinghua Village is a Yin Shan restaurant specializing in Shaoxing cuisine. Best at frying eel slices. Although it is far from home, Lu Xun still frequents it.
In Beijing, Lu Xun also received native products from relatives and friends in his hometown. He recorded them in his diary: dried fish, chicken, sauced duck and rotten goods. In particular, a kind of food called "bad duck eggs" is actually salted duck eggs marinated with distiller's grains. The yolk is bright, the wine is fragrant and the house is homesick.
Jiangnan people especially like eating crabs. Mr. Lu Xun once lamented: "People who eat hairy crabs for the first time are very admirable. They are not warriors. Who dares to eat? " He likes crabs. The big ones are boiled in water, and the small ones are made into small dishes. Lu Xun believes that eating crabs can not only enjoy the "fun" of friends gathering, but also experience the "exclusive fun" of eating alone.
In an article on September/KOOC-0/0/9/KOOC-0/5, Lu Xun wrote a hearty feeling of "all the people are happy" with the words "drinking too much and hitting the beach". In September 19 18, 13, he described a scene of eating alone.
In On the Collapse of Leifeng Pagoda, Lu Xun uncovered the back shell of the crab, ate the crab paste, exposed the conical film, carefully cut it off and took it out, and turned it into something like a arhat. In the eyes of this gourmet, the crab at this time has a head and a face, and its body is sitting, so he described it as a "crab monk", that is, the Fahai hiding inside.
Crabs are used for more than that. Lu Xun used this food as a metaphor in Miscellaneous Notes, saying that bullying is like a crab. He sharply attacked it, and his words were fierce and particularly vivid.
Shanghai cuisine
From 1927 to 1936, Lu Xun spent the last nine years in Shanghai. Here, he created a large number of essays and essays, translated and introduced many foreign progressive books. Because he was hired by the government as a special writer, plus royalties from his works, his monthly income reached 724 yuan, about 20 thousand yuan today, which obviously belongs to the middle class level.
However, his daily life is very grounded. Shanghai is the capital of food. On the night when Lu Xun arrived in Shanghai, he ate in a Sichuan restaurant called Tao Lechun. The famous dishes here are steamed fish with powder, big fish head and princess chicken.
As a writer, Lu Xun has many friends, so it is natural to eat. Of course, most of the guests are Lu Xun himself, with a high income. According to1July 3, 932, Lu Xun held a banquet in Zhiweiguan to entertain more than ten guests.
Zhiweiguan manages Hangzhou-style dishes, which is the place where Lu Xun went the most. The specialty is beggar chicken. 1933, 10 year123 October, recorded the origin and practice of Lu Xun's banquet for Japanese friends at Zhiweiguan, during which he recommended beggar chicken to the guests. This aroused the great interest of the guests present, and they began to publicize it after returning to Japan, making Zhiweiguan and Jiaohua Chicken famous in the local area.
There is a Liangyuan Zhimei Building in Shanghai, which specializes in Henan cuisine. 1On August 25th, 936, Lu Xun received four Hericium erinaceus from his friend Cao Jinghua. Roasted Hericium erinaceus is the most famous dish in Liangyuan, which Lu Xun likes to eat at ordinary times. Cao Jinghua often sends Hericium erinaceus to Mr. Lu Xun to please him.
Mr. Lu Xun once said in his letter: If you are a botanist or an agronomist, you may be able to study and cultivate Hericium erinaceus yourself.
1934 On February 9th, Lu Xun invited Xiao Jun and his wife and a group of friends to have dinner in Liangyuan. On the 30th of the same month, a Japanese friend visited Lu Xun's house. He simply invited the famous chef from Liangyuan to his home and cooked delicious food.
Later, Xiao Hong recalled: going to Lu Xun's house for dinner, "the food is very rich, fish and meat are packed in big bowls, ranging from four or five bowls to seven or eight bowls." This is the way of hospitality for Lu Xun's family.
On September 1933, 1 1 day, the diary recorded that Lu Xun went to Cao Juren's house for dinner. At this dinner party, Lu Xun had a special liking for the "wheat bell" made by his host, which is a kind of Pujiang pasta.
In fact, as early as June 5438 and 10 of this year, Lu Xun wrote an article for Cao Juren's Sound of the Waves, which was later included in Southern accent and renamed as On Disasters and Refuge.
Kutokuhayashi is a vegetarian restaurant. Lu Xun, who loves meat, doesn't like the "meat" here. He takes bean products as raw materials and confuses the fake with the real. He defined vegetarian meat, chicken and fish as hypocrisy of vegetarians, but in fact he never forgot to eat meat. So even a vegetarian dish can't escape Lu Xun's text analysis.
The charm of snacks
19 12 On the Mid-Autumn Festival, Lu Xun mentioned in his diary that he bought three kinds of food in Daoxiang Village. Daoxiang Village is a famous pastry shop in Beijing. Lu Xun bought dozens of snacks here in two years, because he is a standard snack control.
Lu Xun wrote an article entitled Dim Sum. He thinks Shanghainese and snacks are inseparable. He also has his own understanding of the efficacy of snacks, which is considered as a health food. His family's snacks have never stopped. In order to avoid food shortage, Lu Xun always buys some snacks on the way back from going out.
In the diary of1965438+May 2, 2003, Lu Xun received mutton soup from a Japanese friend, which he liked to drink when studying in Japan, and he still remembers it after returning home. But after eating too much this afternoon, Lu Xun began to have a toothache. The next day, after seeing the dentist, he went to Daoxiang Village to buy cookies without hesitation. The pain of tooth deterioration caused by eating sugar is not equal to the obsession with sweetness.
1913 On May 10, Lu Xun went to see his dentist again. On his way home, he passed by Lin Ji Foreign Firm and couldn't help but buy cake bait. The charm of cake bait is more obvious in another diary. This time, when Lu Xun was walking, he accidentally stepped on a broken brick and hurt his knee. He still endured the pain of buying cake bait and went home to apply iodine to the wound.
Lu Xun often works late. Snacks can resist hunger and relieve tension and fatigue. Lu Xun likes to eat while writing. In addition to all kinds of cakes, there are dried fruits such as peanuts, walnuts and almonds, and candied fruit, candy and biscuits are often kept in drawers.
In Gai Hua's Diary, Lu Xun ate more than half of Tibetan persimmon cream candy at night and comforted himself while eating: "There are not many sores on the corners of his mouth, so it is better to eat something fresh now." Unexpectedly, when I ate more than half of it, the image of a snack control jumped out of the paper.
Mr. Lu Xun mentioned a kind of cake: Rose Sugar Lunjiao Cake, which is one of his favorites. Another favorite pastry is Shaqima.
On one occasion, my son Zhou Haiying went to play in the study, saw Shaqima and asked Lu Xun if he could eat. As a result, Lu Xun said: reasonable, there is only one piece left, so it is better not to eat it. It can be seen that his love for Shaqima is deep, just like a child who has not grown up.
This act of protecting food is not only aimed at his son Zhou Haiying, but also includes visitors to his home. Because snacks are not only eaten by themselves, but also used to entertain guests. Some male tourists eat too much and often eat all the snacks prepared by Lu Xun. It is annoying that he has to go out to buy them again.
Lu Xun tactfully invented a "peanut policy". He wrote in his diary: if peanuts are used instead of the original snacks, male guests will not eat much. Seeing that the other party didn't eat much, he began to urge again, sometimes persuading guests who didn't like peanuts to run away. Later, Lu Xun proudly said that this peanut policy has achieved good results and will continue to be implemented.
An adult who loves snacks should be very romantic inside.
Spicy taste and wine taste
19 18 In May, Lu Xun published the short story Diary of a Madman in New Youth, which Hu Shi called the "pioneering work" of China's modern novels. In order to express his gratitude, Lu Xun invited Hu Shi to Shaoxing Hall for dinner. The first course is braised pork with plum. Contrary to the traditional practice, this dish contains peppers.
Spicy food is to Hu Shi's taste, but what he doesn't understand is that it is obviously Jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisine, where people are fond of sweetness but not spicy. Why did Lu Xun put pepper?
In the face of doubt, Lu Xun replied: "I use this thing to solve my difficulties." Reading in the dead of night, chewing something in my mouth, very sleepy. Sir can have a try. " After hearing this, Hu Shi laughed.
In fact, Lu Xun, a native of Zhejiang Province, had already shown his love for peppers in his youth. When studying in Jiangnan Naval Academy, the school awarded a gold medal for his outstanding performance, but Lu Xun immediately sold it, bought some books and bought a bunch of red peppers in the vegetable market.
The author of "Not Spicy, Not Happy" has a sharp and pungent pen, and inadvertently laughs and curses, which gives birth to profound ideological content.
In Scream and Wandering, the word "wine" appeared 93 times. Except for "Lonely Man" who bought a bottle of soju in the street, Shaoxing rice wine was everywhere else. For example, in Luzhen, Kong Yiji, most people like to drink. At Xianheng Hotel tomorrow, people are eating and drinking happily. In the "western restaurant", Lu didn't eat much food, just kept drinking.
Lu Xun loves Shaoxing food more and Shaoxing rice wine more. I don't drink much, but I drink every meal, but I'm not addicted to alcohol, only half a bowl or a bowl. He made wine with roses, and all his friends said they had never seen them.
Every wine has a thousand cups of friends, and Yu Dafu is his drinking buddy. Because neither of them is very good at drinking, they get drunk every time. Yu Dafu wrote a poem for Lu Xun on 1933, including two sentences: "I went to the restaurant with a dim eye and hesitated to shout for two hours."
Wine can inspire people's fighting spirit and cheer them up. Lu Xun, whose bones are the hardest, relies on wine to relieve boredom, not to talk about things through wine.
He said in "Weeds": "Pour out a cup of slightly sweet bitter wine every day, neither too little nor too much, and give it to the world to make the drinker cry, sing, wake up and get drunk."
In that chaotic era, millions of people were numb as puppets. Silence is as thick as wine, savoring a taste, fragrant or desolate, mixed with life.
Mr. Lu Xun, who loves his country and people, awakened the sleeping world with a pungent pen. Criticize current events and don't forget the food. Food is both a kind of satisfaction and a kind of treatment.