"The country is easy to change, but the nature is difficult to change", as an adult, I still prefer sugarcane. Nowadays, I can't afford to buy domestically produced and borrowed fruits, but I have a deep affection for sugarcane that has been dregs of the soil, and occasionally I have the urge to bite sugarcane on the street. Knowing that this is an obstacle to the view, but often "the old lady chats about juvenile madness", one on the left and one on the right, all the way to bite away.
Text/Qian Guodan
Published in the Literary Newspaper on June 28, 2024
I have six uncles, the sixth of whom is four and a half years older than me. The reason why I got close to my sixth uncle was because of sugar cane.
We have crusty cane here that is used to squeeze sugar, and crispy cane is eaten as fruit. When I was a child, there were some cane sellers in my hometown, all of whom were twelve or thirteen years old, carrying a heavy bundle of sugarcane. They held a sugar cane with the roots cut off in one hand and a half-moon shaped knife in the other, and shouted and sold with a long and short sound, causing the greedy children to follow them. At this time, if I could get a penny, I hurried up to them, pointed to the sugar cane and asked, "How long is a penny?" The cane seller put the knife on the sugar cane, signaling the length. I pushed his knife half an inch in, and the other party moved the knife out a few more points, and after a few rounds of pushing and moving, the business was closed. The boy used both hands, and made a round of knife marks on the cane skin, and then gave me one end, and I grabbed it, and with all my might, I broke off the sugar cane that belonged to me. There is still a bit of knowledge in this "breaking", and if the force is used correctly, you can break a small piece of cane meat, but if you use it wrong, you will be broken by the other party.
If you have that piece of sugarcane, you can't eat it alone. I asked the cane seller to split the cane into several pieces and go home to share it with my younger siblings. Sometimes for the sake of a penny of sugarcane, I'd rather have the erection of the roots. A few days ago, I talked about this with a friend from Yuyao, and she said that she bought sugarcane festivals when she was a child, and she paid 7 a penny; It can be seen that there were many people who could not afford to eat sugarcane back then.
When I was seven or eight years old, I lived at my grandmother's house for a while. My grandmother had a disabled leg and foot, so the task of buying groceries fell to my sixth uncle. The sixth uncle was already very capable at that time, picking vegetables, bargaining, and very shrewd; And his legs are long, and he runs like a scud. There was a large vegetable garden outside the back door of my grandmother's house, and the owner's father had no money to buy a cemetery after his death, so he parked the coffin in the corner of the garden. Every time I passed by that gloomy place, the sixth uncle would scream "The ghost is coming" and run away, leaving me so frightened that I lost my soul and stumbled. A few years later, I easily won the 800m championship in the all-regional middle school games, and I am afraid that it has something to do with the intimidation of my sixth uncle.
Despite this, I still love to be Uncle Six's follower, and the reason is that I have sugar cane to eat. The sixth uncle never bought me sugarcane, and his sugarcane was won by "gambling". As soon as the sixth uncle appeared on the street, a cane seller chased him and asked: "Split sugar cane?" A penny for a knife! Or two cents to chop you three times? The sixth uncle always likes to ignore it. After he had finished buying vegetables around the vegetable market, he put the vegetable basket on the ground and casually accepted the request of a young man selling cane.
The sugar cane to be split is carefully selected by the cane seller, as long as a bamboo pole, bent like a bow, and the roots are sharpened and deliberately crooked to one side. I watched the other cane chopping boys put it up, and before the knife could come down, or if it hurt only a little bit of the size of a fingernail, the sugar cane fell to the ground like an epileptic seizure. The penny of the cane splitting boy was lost in vain.
But the sixth uncle is completely different. I saw him stand up the sugarcane, take the half-moon-shaped knife to "flatten", hold his breath for a while, suddenly lift the knife, according to the rules left and right void twice, the third knife really slashed at the sugarcane. The rule for splitting sugar cane is that you will be given as long as you cut the flesh of the sugar cane. I saw the sixth uncle's hand up and down, a long sneer, with the slide of the knife, the sixth uncle's body also squatted down, a sugarcane was often chopped by him to the end, then the whole sugarcane belonged to my sixth uncle. When I got sugarcane, my sixth uncle didn't like to eat it, so I opened my bow left and right and ate it as I wanted.
At this time, the cane sellers would surround the sixth uncle in a flock, expecting him to come twice. The sixth uncle was happy, and spent eight cents and a dime, all the way through. He rarely missed, so I couldn't hold the "spear and short stick" in my arms. I asked the sixth uncle: They are all dead, why do they still want you to split? The sixth uncle raised his head high and said: Stunts, they are rare in my stunts, understand?
I admire my sixth uncle so much. Following the sixth uncle, I enjoyed the envy of people while enjoying the sugar cane, sometimes my tongue was pinched, and sometimes I ate blood blisters in my mouth, but I didn't give up easily.
"The country is easy to change, but the nature is difficult to change", as an adult, I still prefer sugarcane. Nowadays, I can't afford to buy domestically produced and borrowed fruits, but I have a deep affection for sugarcane that has been dregs of the soil, and occasionally I have the urge to bite sugarcane on the street. Knowing that this is an obstacle to the view, but often "the old lady chats about juvenile madness", one on the left and one on the right, all the way to bite away.
Sugar cane is cheap, but it is also a blessing to be able to eat it for the rest of your life, because it must first have a few desperate teeth, secondly, you must be free of diabetes, and thirdly, you must have a competent good throat: the abundant sugar juice must enter the esophagus and reach the stomach responsibly, and cannot go astray into the trachea and lungs to cause trouble.
Manuscript Editor: He Jing New Media Editor: Zhang Yingying
Pictured: Photo.com
id : iwenxuebao
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