Bitter and willing
In my impression, bitterness is like a refinement of life. When I was a child, I loved smelling the smell of medicine in the drawer of Hu Qingyutang. It felt as refreshing and refreshing as when I was passing by a café. The boiled Chinese medicine is the most annoying to drink. In the same way, the salt is too bitter, the meat is roasted and bitter, and the sugar is bitter. All the greed that is too late will make us taste bitter.
Therefore, bitterness is always dismissed as a taste that must be dealt with. Sometimes people use boiling water to remove the bitterness of vegetables, but the effect is not obvious. Parents always persuade that bitter gourd has good nutrition, clears the fire and detoxifies, but few children are willing to eat it obediently, whether it is stir-fried or cooked in soup, the bitterness of bitter gourd, like a poisonous snake, is tightly wrapped around the tongue, frowning and forcing I swallowed it myself, my throat trembled and my stomach was nauseous.
Another bitter memory is lotus seeds. Open the small lotus room and peel off the tender lotus clothes. Inside are sweet and juicy white seeds with the fragrance of lotus. This is my favorite delicacy in midsummer. One year, he took a European sofa guest to the West Lake. He bought a lotus plant on the street. He didn’t know how to peel it, chewed it round, twisted his eyebrows and said, “Bitter! Astringent! Sweet!” The onlookers laughed. When the lotus seeds grow up and dry, the white flesh becomes waxy, and the green shoots in the middle become very bitter. To burn lotus seed porridge, you have to use processed hollow lotus seeds. The removed “Lotus Heart” will appear in Chinese medicine shops again, making medicinal materials that can be used to clear fire blindly. Chinese medicine says that bitterness enters the heart, and people who are impatient and irritable eat more bitter lotus heart, and they will be physically and mentally clean.
In fact, all kinds of tea are mostly bitter. For example, the hometown specialty Kudingcha, the biggest tea tree king, is said to be three hundred years old. I don’t know how many essences of heaven and earth have been concentrated. Using its leaves to make tea and make tea is miserable. The first time I drank it, it was hard to swallow. I was gargle, and my cheeks were tentatively gushing out saliva. Under the saliva, the bitterness gradually turned into a touch of sweetness.
In the hot south, the slightly bitter herbal tea jelly is a common heat-relieving beverage in summer. For example, Zhangzhou Burning Grass and Shunde Guiling Paste look the same black, but the materials are different. According to the traditional preparation method, the former is made from plant ash and dried grass, kneaded and boiled to make juice, and added with starches to cool and solidify; while the latter is a jelly made of tortoise shell board and soil fulva. The only thing they have in common is bitterness, so they are often cut into pieces and mixed with fruit, canned food, honey, and nut kernels to make sweetened snacks.
It is strange to say that after the bitterness is diluted, there is a refreshing fragrance that is very reminiscent of Yuexia Yaotai. Friends from Guangdong joked that in ancient times, turtle shell was a holy object for wizards to divination to reach the sky, so tortoise shell was also regarded as a tonic for prolonging life. In this way, the age of yarrow divination is even longer, so it’s no wonder that it is called to burn “fairy” grass.
Gou Jian, who hangs a pig bitter gall on the beam and becomes a hostage, licks it every day to stay alert, and he achieves revenge hegemony ten years later. In the past five years, I’ve been like Goujian who is guilty of repentance, sitting alone in the shabby room and writing books lonely. On the day of the publication of the new book, the whole family toasted and celebrated, and I, who rarely drank alcohol, made an exception and drank a swig. When the bitter foam is full of the tip of your tongue, don’t have any pleasure in your heart. The sense of accomplishment in conquering bitterness may also prompt us to become addicted to bitterness, and it also prompts us to continue expedition.
