The steamer at Grandpa's funeral

at Grandpa's funeral, I met an old man. Talking to him was almost my only comfort in those days.

he is a steaming cook. He looks old, but he is very vigorous, just like my grandfather.

how did I notice him? On the first day after Grandpa left, people specializing in red and white weddings came to the yard of the family. More than a dozen tables and canopies were set up, and the usually clean and bright courtyard instantly had the ceremonial sense of the funeral. When many people gathered around a big bucket for the first lunch, they immediately found that the rice was different.

first of all, the atmosphere is very special-someone opens the wooden lid and the hot air comes up. People who serve rice have to wait in line, shovel a bowl with a shovel and return to the table with the bowl, and the fragrance naturally spreads in the yard.

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everyone is full of praise, every word you say.

"the fragrance of the meal is steamed in a barrel. It's not boiled! "

"steaming this rice is fastidious, constantly adding water, which is different from ordinary cooking."

"that old master is quite famous. He can burn. "

"A bucket can hold 60 jin of rice!"

"60 jin?!" I exclaimed, in fact, I have no idea about jin. Look at the "big guy" with a capacity of 2 pounds and 3 pounds. It should be 40 jin.

I picked a mouthful of rice in my mouth, which smelled of wood and air. Wood incense seeped into every molecule of rice and swallowed a mouthful of rice, just like swallowing the air in the sun. It's delicious.

after dinner, people sit around wooden buckets, listening to the old man tell the secret of steaming rice.

the old man was eloquent and smiling, smoking a cigarette and opening the rice at the bottom of the bucket-we saw a bamboo sieve holding the rice like a steamer.

"Oh! It turns out that there is no bottom down there! " Everyone exclaimed.

the old man said that he had specially found this steamer so that the steamed rice would not stick to the pan and be breathable. He pounded the rice skillfully with a spatula, just as naturally as a farmer loosens the soil.

the wooden barrel steamed rice on the first night was soon dried up.

the second day of the funeral, the ceremony continued. The three cooks in the yard were preparing methodically, and a steady stream of guests came into the house. They were accompanied by a load of funerals and a loud drumbeat of mournful music.

there are constant cries in the hall. Whenever a mourning guest comes, the female family members of the family will cry in unison, which is a ceremony called "crying spirit". But young people like me can't cry out loud, and for some reason, it's hard for me to learn this old custom. Feeling heavy and breathless, I went out of the yard and chatted with the old man who steamed rice.

the old man's surname is Sun and his name is Sun Guanglu. He is from Sun Jiawei in the area of Shahe in Lishui. I was startled to ask about his age. I was 78 years old, 10 years younger than my grandfather. But also nearly 80 years old, he even steamed dozens of jin of rice alone, a lot of strength.

he says he has been in this business for more than ten years. At the age of 13 or 14, I watched people do it (steamed rice), but it was not until I retired at the age of 60 that I picked up the skills of the past, and became more and more sophisticated, and became famous in the county seat.

for decades, he went to work as an accountant. When he was a child, he attended a private school and graduated from junior high school. He was very proud to be educated.

when is the skill of steaming rice in wooden buckets most needed? In addition to the red and white weddings in the countryside, there are also services in the church.

he cooks for the church almost every weekend. When there are 600 people at most, he steams 180 jin of rice on the 24th and 25th of Christmas every year. A barrel up to 60 jin, from the early morning, a barrel of steam in turn, to 11:30 noon, dinner on time. It takes two and a half hours to steam a bucket of rice, he says.

-"behave" is our dialect, which means to follow the procedure and obey the rules.

Old people certainly have their own rules. He said that there should be a plan and principle for everything. If you master the principle and do it, you will do it well.

outside my grandfather's yard is a piece of farmland, and the cauldron is burning. He points to the burning firewood, the steaming bucket and the boiling water in the iron pot and says to me, "this is a combination of gold, wood, water, fire, earth and light."

then he pointed to the sky and the earth and said, "Light is sunshine, and Qi is air." The five elements plus phosgene are the wisdom and natural laws of the ancients. The same principle applies to satellite flight. "

I have learned a little how to make coffee, and I know very well that coffee roasting is a chemical reaction of various substances and conditions. The old man has the same attitude towards rice. Pay attention to the ratio of rice to water, pay attention to the growth cycle of rice, pay attention to heat-full of learning.

he first talked about this special method of steaming:

"Why do you burn it with wood?" Despite the fact that the wood doesn't look good, there is smoke, but the smell of rice is in it. Steamed rice is well-ventilated; the rice now cooked, ah, is blocked by a pot of suffocation, and that kind of rice is not delicious. "

"all cooking pans now use aluminum pots. There is manganese in the aluminum pot, which is not good for the human body if you eat it for a long time. This kind of bucket is steamed by steam, ventilated, and no impurities are left in the rice, which is good for the human body. "

"steamed rice won't go sour when it gets cold-- because there's no dirt! There are no impurities in it, when the food is cold, the water vapor naturally condenses, and the rice is well-grained and delicious! So it won't be wasted! "

"this rice is also very fastidious. Today we use yellow rice, not japonica rice. Yellow rice is swollen and uses a lot of water. In fact, japonica rice is the best and nutritious. After all, japonica rice has grown for 160 days, while yellow rice has been harvested before it has grown for 140 days. Just like the chicken we eat, it's not until the meat is full. It's the kind of fattening.The food is unnatural and untasty. This is fastidious. "

-"yellow rice" should be what we know as "indica rice", I guess.

with this kind of rice steaming, Lao Sun has to soak for 15 minutes in advance. He has experimented with a few jin of rice with a few taels of steamed water.

the process of steaming rice:

boil the water first. When you see the steam coming up in the iron pot, put the raw rice into it, put it in the position of 1 stroke in the bucket, and spread it out. Let the rice swell with the water of steam. At this time, because the bottom rice is closest to water vapor, there is no need to add water to the bucket.

when a layer of rice is almost steamed, Lao Sun will add rice and water to it. Different portions of rice are ready at different times. For example, when steaming the first layer of rice, the second layer of rice to be steamed is soaked in water, and the time should be co-ordinated.

when Lao Sun has added rice, he will keep adding firewood to the iron pot. He said that in addition to wood and bamboo, straw is also a good fuel. Because rice grains grow in rice, straw is also a part of rice. Burning rice with straw is a natural method used by the ancients.

when a bucket of rice is almost steamed, one of the more laborious things to do is to let the rice breathe.

Lao Sun opened the lid of the bucket, filled all the half-cooked rice above 1x5 and put it in a large iron basin. Dig the bottom rice with a shovel and poke them in different positions with chopsticks to give them air. Then he put the rice back into the bucket and keep tampering with it to let the hot air circulate-which is probably the secret of why the rice feels empty.

of course this is very dangerous. the temperature of the steam is so high that Lao Sun has been scalded. Steaming rice and burning firewood outdoors at 33 degrees is a test in itself.

I watched him burn firewood in the field. I choked on the smoke, but he was still very calm.

after witnessing the whole process, I have no doubt that he only makes steamed rice.

the cook in the yard needs to cook different ingredients, fry and cook, and play in turn, while the 78-year-old Sun only faces one thing: Rice, and only one trick: steaming.

this is what makes me feel the most special.

steaming a bucket of rice takes a lot of labor. Although his final result is the same, to cook a meal for hundreds of people a day, you need to stay from the wee hours of the morning to the night, skillful and patient.

while looking at the firewood in the earthen stove, he and I talked about something else with great interest.

Lao Sun said that he had been an accountant for more than 20 years, ran a restaurant and worked as a farmer, but what he wanted most was a teacher.

he likes reading and is fond of literature and art. He once read a whole book of Outlaws of the Marsh to the blind in the village, and he can still recite many poems fluently. He said

"the reeds on the wall are top-heavy and shallow, and the asparagus on the ground are sharp-mouthed, thick-skinned and hollow." What he despises most is the person who has nothing in his stomach.

Lao Sun said that with culture and knowledge, he will master the principle and be able to do better than ordinary people. Including he taught himself how to calculate accounts and how to steam rice well, all because he fumbled out the rules. And the law comes from one thing: practice.

he also advised me that writing is also about practice. People who write things can write well only after they have experienced them. It's the same with practicing calligraphy. It must be practiced every day.

he taught me that the branches of heaven and earth correspond to a natural phenomenon every hour, such as when a mouse comes out of a hole, when an old cow gets up for farming when it is ugly, and when a tiger goes down the mountain-this is a rule summed up by the ancients.

Twelve hours a day, after a year, people don't go through all the hours until they are 60 years old.

in Lao Sun's view, everything is "symmetrical"-as far as I understand it, it is dialectical.

for example, he said that the bitterness and sweetness of life are symmetrical; heaven and earth are symmetrical; and good and bad are symmetrical.

A dynasty has loyal courtiers and treacherous courtiers. In one's life, there are both prosperity and decline.

Religion teaches people to do good, and excessive power is evil. If an accountant can't do a good job, he is actually a thief.

. No matter what kind of example he gives, he will say it as "symmetry". In the end, "symmetry" will boil down to a kind of fate.

for example, the blind man who had heard him read the Water margin made a lot of money by fortune-telling, only to be killed by his own nephew. Lao Sun said that he knew some evil ways, and this was the fate of making ill-gotten gains. The symmetry between good and bad is reflected in the final result.

for him, the most symmetrical word is the word "human", and it is also the most difficult to write.

during the three days of our conversation, the mournful music and wailing at Grandpa's funeral have always been the background of our conversation.

the scene was a little strange, talking about life with another old man at the ceremony of one old man's death.

the skill of steaming rice, I think, is a way for Lao Sun to express his affection elsewhere. Focusing on steaming rice gives him a sense of achievement and forgets the destiny of life for a while. While I sat on the small bench, writing down what he said with a pen and listening attentively to his story, I was also making up for my regret that I did not record my grandfather's life and diverting the pain of losing him.

it was on such a sad occasion that we found a lot of resonance.

Lao Sun says he has gone through too many funerals-every time he cooks such a steamed meal, it may mean going through a parting. The word "mourning" is sad, after all, it is different from "joy". It is hard for him to be sad on such an occasion.

he read three poems with me, describing the regrets of life and the grief of death. And I can also feel his fear of death from his deep memory.

on the last day of the funeral, my family and I saw him off.At my funeral, he gave me a small book when he came back.

that's the kind of little address book commonly used in the 1990s, which records some of his favorite poems, as well as the poems he wrote.

there is a song he wrote on October 7, 2013-that is, 75 years old. I was very sad to see it. Copy it down:

the whole family's fields are covered with grass

soybeans

No one wants to do the work

there is a bright road

the sesame seeds grown in the field of japonica rice turn yellow

the sesame seeds grown in the field

grow less than 5 jin of sesame seeds

the sesame seeds grown in the field

grow less than 5 jin of sesame seeds

the sesame seeds grown in the field

Running in the mountain crematorium

it's all too late.

I read about his anxiety in the poem. His regrets, his fears.

I also thanked him for bringing a small notebook to pour out my sorrow to the strange me.

for a county like ours with a population of 400000, it is not easy to steam fame with the skill of steaming rice alone. After all, many people are close to the land, are naturally picky about rice and have strict requirements for food.

and the 78-year-old he cooks so well that everyone feels delicious and wants to eat another bowl, which I think is the greatest achievement.

how many people like him can relearn a skill at the age of 60 and focus on doing it well?

when he left, Lao Sun packed up his iron pot and bucket and put them on the tricycle.

I returned the notebook to him, and we left contact information for each other.

he said he was glad to see that I was studious.

I am also very glad to know this old man who steamed rice at Grandpa's funeral.

although sadness permeates my heart, being a listener makes me feel down-to-earth and relieved.