Chapter 45: Taste
(45)
Most of the people who come to Wendouzhai to popcorn and sell knock candy are also from Xiangxi.
In an open space in the middle of the stockade, the master set up the guys and set them on fire,...... The children gradually gathered around.
When people go to popcorn, they bring a bowl of glutinous rice or a bowl of corn, a bundle of firewood, a pocket, and some corner tickets. After handing in the dime ticket, the master poured glutinous rice or corn into the tin can, added one or two grains of dyed saccharin, and then kept rotating the tin can on the fire, and after it was roasted and burned, it was put into the pocket,...... Everyone hurriedly dispersed. When the master violently opened the tin can, the popcorn "popped" and squirted out, all in his pocket.
There were also some popping up, and a group of onlookers gathered around them to grab them all over the ground, and stuffed them into their mouths when they grabbed them.
It was also a sweet joy in childhood.
In my impression, the master who did this was all black all over, like a charcoal man. But the popped rice is green, very beautiful, and delicious.
The popcorn master always comes once before the end of the year. In fact, there is only that time of the year when the village is willing to spend a little money on popcorn as a New Year's goods.
On weekdays, there are some people who sell knocking candy often come to the village, carrying two baskets of boiled sugar, knocking with two pieces of iron in their hands, and selling everywhere in the village.
When someone wants to buy it, the candy seller puts down his burden. After collecting the horn ticket, a piece of iron is placed on the sugar cube, and another piece of iron is struck with a "clanging bell", and a small piece of sugar is separated from the sugar cube.
A corner ticket can buy a small point. The sugar was sweet, sticky to the teeth, and had a thick aroma.
That year, a candy seller came to Wendou Village twice, and Guizhi, the widow at the head of the village, quietly got along with him. Guizhi is also a little handsome, but he is only twenty-six or seventeen years old, and her husband can't dodge in a logging. She dragged a five or six-year-old boy to get by. His father-in-law has been persuading him to remarry his honest and stammering brother-in-law, but Gui Zhi is reluctant.
On a dark and windy night, the candy seller didn't even want a sugar basket, and two people, a man and a woman, disappeared into the night from Houlong Pass. When the old man found the child crying alone in the room, he realized that something was wrong, and hurriedly ran to the village to call the people of the clan to discuss.
Gui Zhi left a child and ran away like this, and the people in the clan thought that the candy seller was too hateful, and they all wanted to teach him a lesson with their fists, but everyone chased them out of the village with torches, and guarded the intersections for half a night, and they didn't find those two people.
Later, I heard that the seller of knocking candy had a sugar boiling workshop in Qimeng. But when the people in the village found it, they found that the workshop had been given to someone else. It is said that the two men had already run back to Hunan.
Hunan is too far away, and I don't know the specific address, not to mention that even if I find Guizhi, I may not be willing to come back. You can't tie her back, can you? Thinking of this, everyone has no choice but to give up.
However, since then, the candy sellers have rarely come to Wendouzhai again.
Many years later, the child grew up, and the people of Wendouzhai gradually forgot about it.
Guizhi never came back.
But I still remember the popcorn and the sticky knock candy. I had the chance to buy a packet of popcorn and a chunk of knock candy at the bazaar, but I couldn't taste like my childhood again.