Text\Mo Yan

1. The shame of eating

The meaning of eating people's short mouths is very clear, just this meaning is not meaningful, I mean that the shame of eating a carrot is difficult to clean even with an old ginseng.

After I slipped into the capital Beijing like a fool, I nodded my head and bowed my head to show friendliness when I saw an animal, but the ferocity of the animals in Beijing is famous on earth, and even a wild dog covered in dirt is much more vigorous than a dog from other provinces. The rampant barking unabashedly reveals the superiority of the Beijing dog, the dog is still like this, let alone the human? That year, in a dirty and dilapidated cold noodle restaurant that seemed to be run by a purebred old Beijinger, flies were flying, the proprietress was sticky, and a dog with eyes was lying on the edge of the so-called counter, looking at me very unkindly, as if I was not here to eat, but to rob. I threw a piece of meat to it in fear, although I didn't speak, but my heart was saying: "Dog, respected dog, don't look at me with such hatred, I know that Beijing is your Beijing, and the capital is also your capital, and I know that you hate it very much when outsiders come to Beijing to make trouble, but this is also the organization that allows us to come." I would like to show my respect and apologies by giving you a piece of meat to eat, and I hope you will be more forgiving, for I am only staying here temporarily, and I will return at any time. The dog barked in exasperation, as if I had thrown not a piece of meat but a bomb in front of it. The proprietress said angrily, "What are you doing? Do? It's hard to hold on when you're full, isn't it? Ya quite stupid× look at your behavior...... "I feel full of wrongs, and of course I have a lot of thoughts in my heart." I think, why are these Beijingers so horizontal? Beijing, the first good place, the birthplace of our country's official dialect, how can people be so vicious? Although the people of Beijing have suffered from the scourge of the Eight-Nation Alliance, why are they as unreasonable as the Eight-Nation Alliance? When I feed their dogs meat, I'm being friendly. At this time, a typical Beijing man came out of the back room, and the language that was very closely related to the crotch of his pants was like popping beans, and he said that the dog was bought from France, and it was a pure famous breed, worth at least 100,000 yuan. Such a dog can't be fed casually, such a dog eats formula feed, vitamins, protein, are counted, a little more is not good, a little less is not good, you give it meat indiscriminately, disrupt its endocrine, what should you be guilty of?! I guess it's still a dog? The feudal emperors were not so particular. I felt like my stomach was about to burst. I looked at the dog and thought to myself, "You are worthy of being imported from France?" The wild dogs in our village who play in the haystacks are thirty times more handsome than him. So I dared to say, "Don't scare the strangers, we haven't seen anything else, we've seen dogs." Your dog is nothing but a dirt dog, and he has a piece of leprosy on his body, so he is a leper dog! "Oh, my mother-in-law, as soon as I said this, it was like burning the tiger's ass with a red-hot stove hook, only to see the man with a fierce look and forced forward, and the woman slapped her plump ass and shouted: "Big head, big head, bleed this kid!" ”

I was very afraid, according to the general procedure for slaughtering livestock, after bloodletting, it should be boiled water and the hairy feathers should be slaughtered, then the head and feet should be removed, the belly should be disemboweled, and the goods should be taken out and unloaded, and then they will be hung up and sold with a knife. Maybe it's tomorrow morning, maybe it's tomorrow noon, and there's a part of my body on the plate of the sauced meat, in the deep-fried meatballs, and on the skewers of the meat. Thinking of this, my spine was cold for a while, where did I still have the heart to eat cold noodles, I hurriedly stood up, leaned against the wall, apologized repeatedly, and ran away with a smoke. When I returned to the dormitory, the more I thought about it, the more I felt a sense of guilt, so two lines of dog-like tears flowed out of my eyes. Blame whom? Blame yourself. Who told you to eat what cold noodles? Wouldn't it be nice to hide in the house and make a pack of instant noodles? In order not to upset the Beijing service lady who sells instant noodles, you can buy fifty bags at a time and save up the sins at once. Just as I was thinking about it, a friend came in and said, "What are you crying?" Moscow does not believe in tears, and Beijing does not believe in tears. Beijing is a water-scarce city, and although there are few tears, it is also changed by tap water, so if you cry casually, it is a sign of low consciousness. As soon as I think about it, we outsiders come to Beijing, we must be careful in everything, if we want to cry, we can go back to Shandong to cry, we can cry in Beijing, and we can cry if you want to cry if you don't drink Beijing's tap water.

My friend invited me to dinner and ate a plate of shredded carrots, a plate of vermicelli, and a plate of meat that was hard to chew like rubber. After eating, my heart was moved, and I thought to myself, if I eat a bowl of people, I want to repay a pot, and a little bit of kindness should be repaid by springs.

A few days later, a group of friends got together, and I offended this friend who had invited me to dinner once for something. He gritted his teeth and said, "Has your conscience allowed the dog to eat?" A few days ago, I went to the Shangri-La Hotel to buy veal sauce from California, went to the Great Wall Hotel to buy carrots from Spain, and went to the Friendship Store to buy Baltic caviar for foreigners with foreign exchange coupons, as well as high-end cream. Those veals haven't been digested yet, have they? I felt cold all over my body, and I couldn't regret it. I can't wait to tape my uncompetitive mouth. Didn't you live the same way when you ate coal? What are you going to eat those shredded carrots and vermicelli for? It won't cost much for you to buy a sack of carrots and eat yourself as a rabbit, but if you eat something from others, you have to listen to them, and you have to bear the insults that they inflict on you. My biggest problem is that I have no memory, like a dog, I don't remember to eat. At that time, I was so angry that I gritted my teeth and hated, but I forgot about it after a few days. Another friend invited me to dinner, and put a briquette stove on it, and put a pot on the stove, and put a dozen dried shrimps, a bunch of cabbage, and some meat in the pot. After eating and eating, my fierce appearance was revealed again, and the friend said: "Look at Mo Yan, as soon as I eat on the table, I will fight again!" ”

One sentence completely cooled my heart, because the shame of eating other people's things came to my heart one by one. Why am I so cheap? Why am I so unproductive? You really want to eat, can't you just go to a restaurant by yourself? You can eat as much as you want! Eat as viciously as you want. You eat all the meat and lick the plate, and no one laughs at you. You often forget who you are, you forget that you are a hillbilly, and those people look down on you fundamentally and don't see you as a person at all. People sometimes ask you to play, that's boring, that's the swan to the water duck to show closeness, if the water duck actually wants to get into trouble because of this, then the water duck is miserable. After figuring out the truth, I vowed that I would rather starve to death than eat other people's things again, just like Zhu Ziqing would rather starve to death than eat American flour. I also swore that when I had to eat with others, I would pay the bill first, and I would pay the bill, so that even if I ate a little more, people wouldn't laugh at me, right?

I went to eat roast duck again, and I settled the bill halfway through the meal. After the nobles had filled their noble stomachs with great grace, there was still much left on the table, and then the peasant's inferiority was again flared up in my heart. What a pity, these green onions, these sauces, these white pancakes, these crispy duck slices, are all good things, and it is not only a pity to waste them, but also to be punished by God. So I ate it. At this time, someone said: "Look at Mo Yan, you have to eat his money back." "I felt hot in my face, as if I had received a loud slap in the face. They also said, "How can you say that he eats so much?" Why can he eat so much? If Chinese were as able to eat as he was, China would have been eaten by him into a miserable old society. ”

It was only then that I sadly realized that the things in the world had actually been arranged a long time ago. If you deserve to be insulted, you can't escape by putting a crown on you.

When I went home to visit my relatives during the Spring Festival the year before last, I told my mother about the grievances I had suffered in Beijing over the years. The mother said, "I don't believe it, if a person lives for a breath and goes to a banquet again, he drinks two big bowls of porridge before leaving, and then eats two big steamed buns, and goes to the banquet, can he still make that starving ghost appearance?" ”

After returning to Beijing, I followed my mother's teachings and went to a banquet, and I was really not in a hurry. Eat gentlely and frugally, like a cook in the British royal family. I waited for everyone's praise, but one person said, "Look at Mo Yan's fake appearance, as if he can eat Jia Baoyu with only his front teeth." ”

The crowd laughed and their appetites increased. Someone said: "People, it's better to be true, Lin Daiyu also has to sit on the toilet." ”

"Mother, there's no way to live......"

The mother said, "Son, accept your fate." What you have to bear. ”

I asked, "Mother, why do I suffer so much shame just for eating?" ”

The mother said, "Son, what are you?" In 1960, my mother stole the horse feed of the production team to eat, and was caught and hung up and beaten. At the time, I thought, put it down and hit it headlong to death. But when I put it down, I didn't crawl home. Your aunt went to the West Village to beg for food, and when she went to the leprosy's house, she saw half a bowl of leftover noodles on the square table in the hall. Is the leftover noodles eaten by lepers dirty or not? What do you have to do with this grievance? My mother clearly sees that you are getting fatter and fatter day by day, and if you don't enjoy it, how can you get fat? Son, you are blessed, don't be in the midst of bliss and don't know blessed! ”

I pondered my mother's words carefully, and gradually calmed down. Yes, the so-called self-esteem and face are all things after you have eaten enough, and for a person who is dying of hunger, a bowl of leftover noodles eaten by a leper is the most precious thing in the world. Of course, there are also Mr. Zhu Ziqing who would rather starve to death than eat American relief food, but he is a great man, and a pig and dog like me must not embarrass himself with bullshit such bullshit as self-esteem and reputation.

The second eats viciously

At a time when my brain needs nutrition the most, it is also when most Chinese are half starving. I used to tell my friends that if I wasn't hungry, I would definitely be smarter than I am now, and not necessarily. Because I can't eat enough when I am born, my earliest memories are related to food. At that time, there were more than a dozen people in my family, and every time I had a meal, I would cry a lot. My uncle's daughter, who was four months older than me, was four or five years old at the time, and my grandmother gave me and this sister a slice of moldy dried sweet potatoes for each meal, and I always thought my grandmother was biased and gave the bigger one to my sister. So he snatched the piece from his sister's hand and threw his own piece over. After snatching it, I found that it was big, so I grabbed it back. In this way, my sister cried after three robs and two robberies. The aunt's face was elongated. Of course, I burst into tears from the moment I got to the table. The mother sighed helplessly. Grandma is naturally on my sister's side, and I am not counted. What the aunt said was even more ugly. My mother complained to my aunt and grandmother that I had a big belly, saying that I shouldn't have given birth to such a big-bellied son.

After eating the dried sweet potato, there are only wild vegetable dumplings. Those black, piercing things, you can't eat them, but you have to eat them. So he cried while eating, and swallowed with tears. What kind of nutrition did we grow up on? I do not know. At that time, I thought that when I would be able to eat a full meal of dried sweet potatoes, I would be satisfied.

The spring of 1960 was probably also a dark spring in human history. Everything that could be eaten was eaten, grass roots, bark, grass on the eaves. People die in the village almost every day. They all starved to death. At first, the dead were still buried, and the relatives had to cry and cry to the land temple at the head of the village to "report to the temple", and cancel the deceased's household registration to the land grandfather, but then no one buried the dead, and no one cried to "report to the temple". But there were still some people who dragged the dead bodies of the village to the outside of the village, and many mad dogs with red eyes who ate the dead waited there, and as soon as the dead bodies were put down, the dogs pounced on them and swallowed the dead. In the past, I didn't understand the words in the play that the poor were used in fur coffins, but now I understand what a fur coffin is. Later, some people wrote about cannibalism at that time, but I think it can only be a very partial phenomenon. It is said that Ma Si from our village once cut meat from the leg of his dead wife and burned it, but there is no confirmation because he himself died soon after. Grain, grain, where has the grain gone? Who eats the grain? The people in the village were honest and incompetent, and they didn't dare to go out to starve to death, so they all died at home. Later, I heard that the white soil in the south depression was edible, so I went to dig it and eat it. I couldn't pull it off after eating, and some people suffocated to death, so I stopped eating soil. At that time, I was already in school, and in the winter, a cart of coal was brought from the school, and it was shiny, and it was good coal. A classmate who had tuberculosis told us that the coal was very fragrant, and the more we chewed it, the more fragrant it became. So we all went to eat it, and sure enough, the more we chewed, the more fragrant it became. As soon as class started, the teacher was writing on the blackboard, and we ate coals underneath, and there was a gurgling sound. The teacher asked us what we were eating, and we all said we would eat coal. The teacher said how can you eat coal? We opened our black mouths and said, "Teacher, coal is delicious, coal is the most delicious thing in the world, it is very fragrant, teacher, eat a piece and taste it." The teacher is a woman, surnamed Yu, who is also very hungry, her face is sallow, and she seems to have grown a beard, and she is hungry to become a man. She said suspiciously, how can you eat coal? How can you eat coal? A boy flatteringly handed a piece of shiny coal to the teacher and said that the teacher should taste it, and if it didn't taste good, you could spit it out. Teacher Yu tentatively took a small bite, chewing and frowning, as if he was tasting the taste, and then took a big gulp. She was pleasantly surprised, "Ah, it's really delicious!" "It's a bit magical, and I don't think it's real right now, but it's definitely true. When I visited my home last year, I met Uncle Wang, who was a porter in the school, and when I talked about eating coal, Uncle Wang said, this is absolutely true, how can it be fake? Your is like a briquette, and you put it on the stove. When he was extremely hungry, the state sent relief food, bean cakes, half a catty per person. My grandmother gave me a piece the size of an apricot kernel, put it in my mouth, chewed it, and it was so sweet that I was reluctant to swallow it, as if it had melted in my mouth. My grandfather in the west of my house ate the two catties of bean cakes he gave to his family on the way home, and when he got home, he began to be thirsty, and then he drank cold water, and the bean cakes opened in his stomach, and his stomach burst and died. More than ten years later, my mother said that people at that time had a stomach as thin as paper and no fat at all. Adults are edema, and we usually have a big belly like a jug, with a transparent belly and a blue intestine ready to move inside. They can all be eaten specially, and children of five or six years old can drink eight bowls of wild vegetable porridge at a time, and that bowl is a large porcelain bowl, which is similar to the one used by the revolutionary martyr Ms. Zhao Yiman.

Later, life gradually improved, and basically achieved half a year's ration of bran vegetables. My uncle, who works at the supply and marketing cooperative, went through the back door and bought a sack of cottonseed cakes and put them in the jar. When I get up at night to pee, I can't forget to touch a piece, put it in the quilt, and eat it with my head covered, which is very fragrant.

The cattle in the village are starving to death, and they are boiling in large cauldrons in the production team's breeding room. Groups of wild children sniffed the smell and ran around the pot. There was an older kid named Transport who led us in singing:

Scolding Liu Biao, you have such a big head,

Your father is fifteen and your mother is sixteen,

I haven't had enough to eat in my life,

Chirped and gnawed on some cow and sheep bones.

The captain with the big stick blasted us away, and in a blink of an eye we sniffed again. In the captain's mind, we're probably more annoying than the flies.

While the captain went to the hut, we pounced on it like hungry wolves. My second brother snatched a horseshoe and took it home like a baby. Light a fire, burn the hair off the hooves, then chop it open and put it in a pot to cook. When it is cooked, drink the soup. The taste of that soup was so wonderful that I will never forget it decades later.

During the Cultural Revolution, I still couldn't get enough to eat, so I went to the corn fields to look for bacterial tumors growing on the straw. Break it off, take it home and cook it, sprinkle it with a little salt, mix it with garlic puree and eat it, it is extremely delicious, and it is the first delicacy in the world in my heart.

Later, I heard that the meat of the toad tasted even more delicious than the mutton, and my mother was too dirty for us to catch it.

Life is getting better and better, and dried sweet potatoes can finally be eaten. At this time, it was already the late stage of the "Cultural Revolution". One year, at the end of the year, my family divided more than 290 yuan, which was an astonishing amount at the time. I remember Aunt Six breaking her daughter's head because she had lost a dime in the market. After sharing so much money, the slaughterhouse in the village sold cheap meat, and my father made up his mind to cut five catties, maybe a little more, to treat us. I cut the meat into large pieces and boiled it, one bowl per person, and I ate a large bowl of fat in one go, and before I felt that it was enough, my mother sighed and gave me what was in her bowl. After eating, my mouth is still hungry, but my stomach can't stand it. Strands of meat oil poured up with unchewed slices of meat, and the throat felt like it had been cut with a knife, which was what it was like to eat meat.

My cravings are famous in the village, and as long as there is something delicious at home, no matter where it is hidden, I will always find a way to steal some food. Sometimes I can't control myself while eating, so I simply put my heart sideways, regardless of the consequences, eat it all, and go out to be beaten and scolded. My grandfather and grandmother stayed at my aunt's house and asked me to bring them food. I always took advantage of the opportunity to deliver food and opened the lunch box to steal some food, for which my mother suffered a lot of wrongs. I still feel guilty about it. Why am I so greedy? I'm afraid it's not entirely because of hunger, it's about my qualities. A greedy child is often a person with weak wills and poor self-control, and I am the one.

In the mid-70s of the 20th century, when I went to work at a water conservancy construction site, the production team steamed steamed steamed buns with water conservancy grain, half a catty of noodles, I could eat four at a time, and some people could eat six.

In 1976, I joined the army and said goodbye to hunger. From the recruit company to the new unit, the first meal, a basket of snow-white small steamed buns was served, and I ate eight in one go. I felt like there was still a gap in my stomach, but I was too embarrassed to eat it. The head of the cooking squad said to the secretary general: "It's bad, here is the pot-bellied man." The secretary said, "It doesn't matter, you can't eat for a month." "Sure enough, a month later, it's still the same steamed bun, and I can only eat two at a time. And now, one is enough.

Although I haven't been hungry all these years and I have oil and water in my stomach, I always can't wait for a banquet, for fear that I won't be able to eat enough, and I don't care what others think of me. I also regretted it after eating. Why can't I just eat slowly? Why can't I eat less? It also makes people think that I am of noble birth and eat elegantly, because in a civilized society, eating too much is a sign of unculture. I felt that my self-esteem had been hurt a lot, so I decided to be more elegant the next time I ate, but next time those people with status attacked me for eating too much and eating fast, like a wolf. My self-esteem hurt even more. When I eat again, I firmly remember, eat less, eat slowly, don't go to others to eat, don't make your mouth sound when eating, don't be evil in your eyes, get the chopsticks to the top, and only clip a vegetable stalk or a bean sprout when you pick up vegetables, like a bird, like a butterfly, but people still attack me for eating too much and eating fast, and I am angry. Because I tried to eat gently, I observed that the ladies and ladies who attacked me ate like hippos, and only began to be elegant when they were full. So anger burned in my breast, and the next time I ate those feasts that cost nothing, a plate of sea cucumbers came up, and I took the plate, and put half of it into my own bowl, and devoured it, and they said that I was a vicious eater, and in a fit of rage, I threw the half of the plate into my own bowl and took it down as if it were a challenge. This time, they smiled kindly and said, "Mo Yan is so cute."

I think back to the experience of eating for more than 30 years, and I feel that I am no different from a pig or a dog, humming all the time, turning in circles, looking for something to eat, to fill this bottomless pit. I wasted too much wisdom in order to eat, and now that the problem of eating is solved, my brain is gradually losing my mind.

June 1992

Three, I can't forget to eat

A few years ago, I wrote two small articles about eating, one titled "Eating Looks Vicious" and the other titled "The Shame of Eating". Originally, it was to cope with the draft essay graffiti, but after I didn't want to publish it, I was praised by a few Jiangnan geniuses in front of me, which made me dizzy and couldn't distinguish between the real and the fake. I also know that such a piece of is not worth writing about, and I also want to write something elegant, and I also want to make my articles a little aristocratic or progressive, but how can a crow call out the voice of a phoenix? How can a vulture get out of the crane dance? Then, please forgive me, please laugh and read with my comrades, and let's eat.

The word "eat" is taken apart, that is, "mouth" and "begging", and this word is really wonderful. I originally thought that "eating" was a simplification of "deed", but after checking "Cihai", I realized that "deed" is an allomorph of "eating". The mouth is begging, the mouth is begging, the word "eat", the meaning of gluttony, the meaning of hunger, and the meaning of cheapness. The person who wants to make "eating" must be a poor and hungry person, if Lin Daiyu or Liu Wencai were allowed to make this word, it would not be like this. Because their stomachs are so distended all day and night, it should be food begging their mouths: "Miss, lord, please eat us." It can be seen that language and writing are indeed hierarchical, not just abstract symbols. I suddenly remembered that when someone wrote a congratulatory message to a certain newspaper on the anniversary of its founding, he actually called this newspaper "You? Shake", it turns out that the newspaper is also divided into male and female, which is really wonderful.

To get back to the point: When the "Cultural Revolution" had just ended, I listened to the leaders convey a central document in my unit, and the content of the document was a speech by a central leader, and the main content of the speech was the issue of eating for the Chinese people. The chief said that everyone has a mouth, and opening the mouth is a hole, and a billion people open their mouths together, think about how big a hole it is, probably bigger than Tiananmen Square, you say terrible is not terrible! Our leaders took advantage of the topic and said: If these mouths are cherry bites, and a tea cup of rice soup can be filled with them, the problem is not very serious, but these mouths are mostly Lu Zhishen and Zhu Bajie, and the three major bowls of rice soup are only half-full, so our leaders said: For a long time to come, for the vast majority of Chinese, whether they are full or hungry will become a problem.

Still not a problem?

Will it be a problem in the future?

What is written above, even if it is a "hat", enter the text, or write my "eating" history. Talking about me frequently, it's annoying, and if you're tired, you can't do it, you eat white flour cakes, I eat yam eggs. Yam eggs are really a kind of beautiful food that is appreciated by both the elegant and the vulgar, the emperor loves to eat and the people love to eat, it is delicious to burn and cook, it is delicious to fry and boil, yam eggs, your name is beautiful! Oh, yam eggs, how many lies have taken your name from you, if you're the potato. The words are divided into two ends, leaving this potato aside for the time being, let's just say that I: up to now, I have lived to be forty-two years old, in other words, I have eaten forty-two years. Although I am good at writing articles with a pen, if I want to list all the things that have been stuffed into my stomach in the past forty-two years, then I will take rat pills to pull them down, so I can only choose the most important ones and remember them.

Confucius said that "color eating sex is also", which should be for adults. For children, "sex" is not yet a problem (Westerners are precocious by Freud is a different matter). For people like me, "sex" is not an important issue until the age of twenty, because I have been hungry for as long as I can remember. It is very likely that this will incur the bitter scolding of some heroes and put a big hat on me for "discrediting socialism." But the truth is that hunger is neither honorable nor beautiful, so why fake. But does it mean to show off "suffering"? Yes, yes, yes, I learned from you.

I was born in 1955, the first golden age of the People's Republic of China. According to the old people, they were still able to eat their bellies at that time. But the good times did not last long, and soon the great leap forward, and as soon as the leap forward, they began to starve. One of the earliest things I remember was going to the public cafeteria with my mother. Carrying pots and cans, people from several villages crowded together to line up to receive some gruel with less rice and more vegetables, and few dry food. I remember a boy in my neighborhood dropping a jar of gruel on the ground, and the jar of broken porridge flowed. The boy's mother cried as she hit the boy. The boy shouted: Mother, stop fighting, drink porridge! He endured the beating and lay on the ground, stuck out his tongue, licked the porridge on the ground and ate it. He said, Mother, drink quickly, drink a little to earn a little. His mother, listening to him, knelt on the ground, followed the example of her son, licked the porridge and ate it. Everyone present praised the boy for his cleverness, and they all foresaw that his future was limitless. Sure enough, the boy back then is now the richest man in our village. He got rich by raising insects. Raising scorpions, monkeys, and bean worms are raised, and they are sold at high prices to large hotels and public guest houses. He saw that the rich and powerful had sharper mouths and more and more tastes, and they rejected big fish and meat, and liked to eat strange and strange things, like cute birds. Sight is money. He said the next step was to train the nobles to eat bollworms.

After the fall of the public canteen, the darkest days came. At that time, not only did there be no food to eat, but there was no pot for cooking. Many people use crockpots to cook wild vegetables. My family is fine, during the steelmaking period, I picked up a Japanese soldier's broken steel helmet from the scrap metal pile and wore it to play, and threw it into the wall when I had enough. Grandmother used a steel helmet as a pot. The crockpot is not fire-resistant and will be fried in a few days; It's all in the dust, and it's a mess. My steel helmet is cast in stainless steel, the heat transfer is fast, it is extremely hard, not afraid of bumps, not afraid of fire, it is really a good baby. Grandmother used it to cook wild vegetables, boil grass roots, boil tree bark, boil helmet after helmet, and fed our brothers and sisters like piglets, and survived terrible years of famine.

It is not true that many articles write about three difficult years in the dark and without fun. At least there is some joy for the children. For hungry people, all joy is associated with food. At that time, children were foraging spirits, and we, like the legendary Shennong, tasted all kinds of herbs and insects, contributing to the expansion of human recipes. At that time, the children all had a big belly, their calves were as thin as sticks, and their heads were surprisingly big. I'm one of them. We flock in groups and forage for food in and out of the village. Outside our village is a depression as far as the eye can see. There are countless watery seeds in the depressions, and there are patches of wild grass. It is both our food store and our paradise. We dug grass roots and wild vegetables there, ate while digging, and sang while eating, partly like cows and sheep, partly like singers. We were the cattle and sheep singers of that era. I will never forget the shiny oil grasshopper in the meadow, which is red when fried and sprinkled with a few grains of salt, and it tastes so delicious and nutritious. There were so many grasshoppers in those years, and it was a godsend. The adults and children in the village all carry gourd heads and catch grasshoppers in the grass. I am a champion of grasshopper catching, and I can catch a gourd in the morning. I have a trick: before I start catching grasshoppers, I dye my hands green with the juice of the grass, and that's it. The oil grasshopper has been caught, and it jumps as soon as you stretch out your hand. I guess they're probably able to smell human hands, and when they apply grass juice, they mask the smell. They bounce so well that they can jump a few feet away. But my hands dyed green with grass juice reach out, and they don't jump. In order to get my grandmother's reward, I didn't even tell my grandfather my trick. At that time, my grandmother started to engage in material stimulation, and the more I caught, the more food I ate. Although grasshoppers are a good thing, they can't be eaten as food. Now I think about grasshoppers and I'm still a little sick.

I've eaten grasshoppers, and it's summer soon. Summer is the season when food is most abundant and is a good time for us. In the 60s, there was a lot of rain, and most of the crops were waterlogged. The depression was full of water, and it became an ocean. There are many kinds of fish as if they fell from the sky, and some of them have never even been seen by a centenarian. I caught a strange fish. It has an emerald green body and bright red wings and tails, and it is extremely beautiful. If this fish is kept in the current fish tank, it must be of the highest quality, but it tastes fishy and smelly, and it is difficult to swallow. Although there were many fish in the depression, there were more hungry people than fish, and there were no more advanced fishing tools at that time, so it was not easy to catch a few fish later. We can't catch fish, and we can't starve. We fished duckweed from the surface of the water, and the algae vegetables at the bottom of the water, and boiled them into fresh soup to drink. So the old man said that no one would die of hunger at the water's edge. Autumn is the harvest season. There are not many fish and shrimp, and there are crabs running rampant. The autumn breeze is cool, the bean leaves are yellow, and the crab feet are itchy. Flocks of crabs descend the river, and Grandpa says they're going out into the sea to lay eggs, and I think they're more like they're going to some important meeting. The crab is clumsy, but it moves like a shadow in the water, and it is unpredictable, and it is not easy to catch it. If you want to catch crabs, you have to go at night. Wearing a robe, wearing a hat, carrying a horse lantern, quietly moving forward, the most taboo to shout. I once followed Uncle Six to catch crabs once, which was mysterious and novel, and it was endlessly interesting. During the day, the sixth uncle was optimistic about the terrain, and used sorghum straw to tie a fence in the ditch, leaving a gap, and putting a pocket net on the mouth. The night air was heavy, the drizzle was hazy, the body was shrunk in the big coat, and the sound was listened to, and by the dim light, the brigade of crabs climbed up along the fence...... It's an experience you'll never forget. The crab is delicious, but reluctant to eat it. Tie them in a string and let them spit out clumps of foam and crackle. Collect them and sell them to the commune cadres for three cents, in exchange for money to buy some moldy sorghum rice, cottonseed cakes, etc., grind them into flour, mix them with wild vegetables, and make a big deal. To live a hard life, we must not covet the pleasure of the mouth, but consciously set up obstacles and create pain for the mouth.

In autumn, the grass seeds ripen. The best grass seeds to eat are the seeds of water. This thing is very similar to millet, ground with the shell, made into a nest and steamed, and eaten until the mouth clicks, which is very exciting.

There are many delicious insects in autumn, in addition to all kinds of grasshoppers, there are also crickets. The crickets in late autumn are black and red, and their stomachs are full of seeds, and when they are fried and eaten, they have a strange aroma. Catching crickets is more difficult than catching grasshoppers, and this insect not only jumps well, but also burrows into the ground. There is also a kind of worm, now I know that their name is Scarab, which is the larva of the grub, as big as an apricot kernel, the whole body is black and bright, phototaxis, and pounces on the lamp at night, the common name is "blind collision". The worms are so swarm that they rest on branches or grass, and they are clustered like ripe grapes. At night, we go to the "blind bump" in the dark, and we can stroke a pocket at night. When the worm is cooked, the taste is very different from that of crickets and grasshoppers. There are also bean worms, which sting after the Mid-Autumn Festival. After this thing is stung, the stomach is full of white fat, and there is not a single grain of feces, all of which is high protein.

It's miserable in winter. In spring, summer and autumn, we can still make some grass, wood, insects and fish to eat, and in winter, the grass and trees wither, freezing three feet, there are insects in the ground that cannot be dug out, and there are fish in the water that cannot be caught. But human wisdom is infinite, especially when it comes to eating. Everyone soon found that there was a layer of dry knotted moss on the ground of the depression that had been flooded, which was peeled off one by one like a cake, soaked in water, and then put it in a pot to dry, crispy like a pot. After eating up the moss, he peeled the bark of the tree. Peel the bark of the tree, chop it up with an axe, smash it, soak it in a jar, stir it desperately with a stick, stir it into a paste, boil it and drink it. The process of eating the first half of the bark is similar to the process of making paper in Bisheng, but what we make is not paper. From the perspective of eating, elm bark is the best grade, willow bark is second, and locust bark is even more second. Soon, the trees outside the village were stripped naked, and they looked very pitiful, shivering in the cold wind. At this critical juncture, the government did not know where to allocate relief food. The so-called relief grain is not grain at all, but something like moldy radish leaves, squeezed into pieces. Now feed the pigs something like that, and the pigs won't eat it. But at the time, it was a real treasure. When distributing, everyone is red-eyed, staring at the scale rod, one star and one point, the scale is high and low, and they are very careful. This kind of thing is not common, and it is always given out once when people are so hungry that they are about to stop breathing, which shows that the country is also quite difficult. When the bell rings to distribute relief food, even the person lying in the coffin will pop out. This is, of course, an exaggeration. At that time, there were too many people dying, and there were still coffins there. died, and was dragged out and let the dog eat and pull down. It was the golden age of dogs, and they went crazy when they ate the dead, and they pounced on the living when they saw them. Someone may say, "Why don't you go and eat the dogs?" Dog meat is nutritious and delicious. You're asking, we've thought of it a long time ago, but our legs are swollen like jugs, and we can't breathe when we take two steps, and we're no match for dogs at all. Rather than beating the dog, it's better to feed the dog. If there is a gun, there is still the strength to pull the trigger. But in that case, if the people have guns in their hands, what kind of bad things can't be done? The commune secretary and the police officers had guns in their hands, but they had food to eat, so they didn't have to fight dogs. They thought that the dogs that ate the dead were too dirty, and they carried guns to hunt hares, geese, and ducks.

It was probably the Spring Festival in 1961, and the government gave us half a catty of bean cakes for each of us to celebrate the New Year. The scene of receiving the bean cake was a scene of joy. Some people carry bean cakes in their pockets and stuff them in their mouths as they walk home. My neighbor, Uncle Sun, ate all the bean cakes distributed to his family before he got home. As soon as he got home, he was surrounded by his wife and children, scolding, crying, and longing to open his belly and pull out the bean cake. It can be seen that love is greatly discounted in the hungry crowd. Uncle Sun was lying on the ground, his face was like dust, his eyes were full of tears, and he didn't say a word, letting his wife and children tear and kick him. Uncle Sun died that night. He ate too much bean cake, was thirsty, drank enough bucket of water, and died of swelling. At that time, the walls of our stomachs were as thin as paper, and they burst with a slight swelling. Uncle Sun died, and his wife and children did not shed a single tear. How many years later, Grandma Sun still hated the root of her teeth, scolding the old man for eating alone, not even having a little human taste, and it was not a pity to die. This time, the soybean cake was closed in the New Year, and 17 people in our village were killed, and the lesson was very profound. Later, when I fed the cattle in the breeding room of the production team and stole the feed soybean cakes, I was always very restrained and stopped in moderation, for fear of making the mistake of Uncle Sun.

During those years, my mother often told our brother about one of her dreams. She dreamed that she had seen her grandfather outside his grave. My grandfather said he wasn't dead, he just lived in the grave. His mother asked him what he was eating, and he said, "Eat cotton wool in cotton clothes and quilts." Eat it in, pull it out; Wash it and eat it again; Pull it out and wash it again...... My mother asked us suspiciously: Maybe cotton wool can really be eaten?

After the early 60s, the years after that were still bitter, but they were much better in comparison. During the "Cultural Revolution", the village often engaged in the Bittersweet Remembrance Movement, and everyone always remembered the bitterness until 1960 in a daze. As soon as they recalled 1960, the cadres jumped up and shouted slogans, one was to defeat Su Xiu, and the other was to defeat Liu Deng, and the cadres said that the famine of 1960 was caused by Liu Deng colluding with the neck of the Chinese in Su Xiuka. We know this is nonsense, but no one pretends to understand.

Until the mid-70s, I still couldn't let go of my belly to eat, but it was much better than in 1960. I have eaten a lot since I was a child, and my mouth is like a bottomless pit, which is simply a catastrophe for our family. Not only do I have a lot of food, but the quality is not good. Every time I opened the meal, I hurriedly finished my share, and I stared at other people's rice bowls and cried. My mother gave me her share of the savings, and I still cried. While crying, he openly snatched my uncle's daughter's share of food. At that time, we had not yet separated from each other, and there were as many as 13 of them. In such a big family, my mother is the eldest daughter-in-law, and she has been enduring humiliation and burden, and her life is already very difficult, and my scoundrel has made my mother even more difficult. It is a bastard to take my cousin's food and eat it. My aunt's face was ugly, and her words were like poison, and every word was directed at my mother. My mother had no choice but to scold me and apologize to my aunt. It was the worst act of my life, and I still can't forgive myself. When I grew up, I told my cousin about it, and she smiled indifferently and said she didn't remember.

My mother often criticized me for not having ambition. On many occasions, I have made up my mind to be ambitious, but as soon as I see food, I forget everything completely. There is no morality, no conscience, no shame, and it is really not as good as a dog. There was a seller of cooked pork on the street, and I reached out to grab it, but the meat seller almost cut off my finger with a knife. The village cadre was holding a melon, and I went up to touch it, but the cadre kicked it down and smashed the melon on my head, making my head full of melon juice. In those years, my mouth made myself annoying, not even a bunch of stinky shit. When I was full, I wanted to change my ways, but when I saw something delicious, I immediately returned to the same state. When I grew up, I saw the hateful appearance of crocodiles swallowing and crying on TV, and I immediately thought of myself, I was similar to crocodiles, and I ate while crying. This is true at home, and it is also true when going out. I went to steal the horse feed from the production team to eat, but the custodian caught me and pressed my head into the jar of the material, and almost choked to death. I went to steal people's turnips, was caught, and in front of hundreds of migrant workers, pleaded guilty to Chairman Mao's portrait. I went to the peanut field of the production team to steal the freshly planted peanuts to eat, and I was poisoned and almost killed - the peanuts were soaked in highly toxic pesticides. As for stealing melons and touching dates, it is even more common. Sometimes caught, sometimes not. If you are caught, you will be beaten, and if you can't catch it, it will be like fighting a big victory. Once I went to steal watermelons in the village, and was discovered by the melon watcher, the stunned young man picked up the earthen cannon and hugged the fire, and there was a loud bang, which shocked the earth, knocked down a piece of corn, and scared me to the bottom of the corn. I wanted to run, but I couldn't move my legs, and I was captured alive on the spot and escorted to the school with an earthen cannon, which became a sensational news for the school. The disgusting experience related to eating is really hard to write into a book. In the past few years, in a place far away from home, I occasionally dared to look like a dog, but as soon as I returned to my hometown, I immediately resembled a beaten dog, clamping his tail tightly, for fear that a cocked tail would arouse the disgust of the villagers and shake out the ugly things when I was a child.

Some people insist that I have no feelings for the army, which is unacceptable to me. Most of the feelings on the lips are false, and only those hidden in the heart are of quality. It was only after I became a soldier that I really filled my stomach and had some human dignity, and I didn't dare to have no feelings for the army because of this. Before leaving, several demobilized soldiers from the village came to teach me the valuable experience they had accumulated in the army. They said: If you eat noodles, the first bowl is half a bowl, and even the blow and stir it will cool quickly and eat it quickly. After eating this half bowl, go and serve a sharp bowl and eat slowly. If the first bowl is full, by the time you're done eating, you'll only have soup left in the pot. If you come across rice, you must not chew it, as long as you chew it, the southern soldiers will laugh. When I arrived at the troops, I realized that the demobilized soldiers were pure nonsense. The life of the recruit company is a little worse, and when they are assigned to a new unit, it is simply heaven. In our unit, there are only a dozen people, but we plant more than 50 acres of land, planting two crops every year, one season of wheat and one season of corn. The wheat is ground into fine flour (we only eat fine flour) and the corn is used to feed the pigs. Just think about life in our unit. The father of his comrade-in-arms came to the team for a few days and sighed, saying: What is communism? That's it. When I went down from the recruit company to the new unit, I ate eight steamed buns for the first meal, and I felt embarrassed, and I was even more afraid that I would make a bad impression on the leaders and affect my progress. In this way, the cooking squad leader was also frightened, and he ran to report the situation to the administrator, saying that the administrator was not good! The administrator said that something big was wrong, could it be that the devil had entered the village again? The cooking squad leader said that the devil did not enter the village, but a few recruits came, all of them were rice buckets, the one who ate the least, and ate eight steamed buns in one meal. The administrator said that I was afraid that they would not be able to eat, and that the soldiers who could eat would be able to do it, and that those who could not eat would not be able to do it, and that we had a great amount of food. Tomorrow you will kill the pigs for me, and give these boys oily intestines. The next day, a big fat pig was slaughtered, cut into fist-sized pieces, and boiled in half a pot. The steamed buns are freshly steamed and white like alabaster, and the pork is stewed so thin that it melts in your mouth. What is happiness? What is gratitude? What does it mean to be ecstatic? That's it. After this meal, several of us recruits walked a little staggering, and we were drunk from pork. Personally, I feel like I'm pregnant with a litter of piglets. This meal is truly enjoyable. For the first time in 20 years, it is not unjust to die here. But the after-effects were very great, and I walked around the court all night, and streams of meat oil climbed up my throat like a small snake, and my throat and eyes seemed to be cut by a knife. The next day, it was still braised pork with big white steamed buns, and we began to answer shyly, picking lean meat to eat, and eating it was a little polite. The administrator scolded: I thought there were a few heroes from Liangshan, but it turned out to be some loose soft eggs.

After a few decades, when I became a so-called "writer", at some banquets, I ate grasshoppers, crickets, bean insects and other insects, and ate wild grasses and wild vegetables that I had eaten in the past. The richest man in the village is actually a professional insect farmer. I think it's no wonder that philosophers say that the two poles are connected, and it turns out that both the hungry and the full have to eat grass, wood, insects, and fish, just as the North Pole and the South Pole are both ice and snow.

8 July 1997