China News Service, Beijing, August 6th (Reporter Ying Ni) The People's Literature Publishing House recently held a new book launch event with the theme of "The Taste Buds of Time" at the Honglou Public Library, launching author Ge Liang's latest novel "Swallow Food" remember".
With a length of more than 400,000 words, "The Story of Swallows" writes the modern and modern history of China with great brushwork.
The novel follows the development of Lingnan food culture, and takes the legendary life experience of Rong Yisheng and Chen Wuju as clues and the survival of their careers. With the ups and downs of food, with meticulous writing, it vividly depicts China's nearly 100-year-old society. The majestic picture scroll of changes, world conditions and human conditions can be called a meticulous system that presents the historical and cultural map of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau.
As critic Li Jingze, vice-chairman of the Chinese Writers Association commented, "In "The Story of Yan Shi," the passage of time, the renewal of the world, and the hustle and bustle of people, like a dream Hualu, like a river map, in this grand world, the taste on the tongue, the ear in the ear The voice is the easiest to dissipate, the hardest to retain, the most rooted, and the most livable.”
"The principles of the Chinese people are all eaten here."
Six years ago, Ge Liang's "Northern Kitten" said: "The truth of the Chinese people is all in this." This laid the forerunner of "Yan Shi Ji".
The title of the novel is "Yan Shi Ji", which means the daily lunch and dinner of the ancients.
The Zhou Dynasty established the "three meals system", which means the beginning of the ritual system, thus confirming the Chinese people's daily custom of "food is the sky".
"Swallow's Food" was developed from the customs of eating tea in Guangdong and Hong Kong. It not only shows the profound and profound food culture of China since ancient times, but also deeply explores how to eat when the times change and the family and country are in trouble. Soothe people's hearts and condense the spirit of the Chinese people.
Writer Ge Liang (first from right), critic Yang Qingxiang (second from right), and host Bai Yansong (second from left) at the new book launch site for People's Literature Publishing House
In the book, Rong Yisheng, the most famous "big press" master in Tongqin Tower, is famous for his good lotus seed paste. Every time he makes a pot of lotus seed paste, he must taste the first bite.
But after doing it all his life, what he misses the most is the mooncake with lotus seed paste and jujube mud that he ate for the first time in Taishidi when he was a child.
"The glutinous lotus seed paste and jujube paste are not very sweet, but they are intertwined with the tongue and penetrate deep into the taste buds." The craftsmanship of Ye Fengchi, a famous chef in Moon Tower.
When he was finally able to recreate this taste and become unforgettable in other people's hearts, everything in Guangfu has become an unforgettable past.
The world is slim, but the taste lasts forever.
Just like Xiang Taishi's ups and downs in his life, when he was getting old, facing the Mid-autumn Moon, his heart was still a pot of wine and a meal with his brother many years ago.
Zang Yongqing, president of the People's Literature Publishing House, believes that "Ge Liang's fine description of food is rare in contemporary novels. This is a beautiful book."
Bai Yansong appreciates Ge Liang's novels, which are taken from food and drink, and it turns into a chapter, "Chinese people connect food and life together, and the taste of food is the taste of life."
Three meals a day, all kinds of flavors in a bowl - we were born in different eras and rush to different life contents, but the same taste and the same warmth are put on the table.
A Lingnan Dream Hualu Based on Chinese Spirit
Since the writer Ge Liang had the creative intention of "The Story of Swallow Food", the editor and the writer walked together all the way. During the six years, I have witnessed Ge Liang's visit to Guangdong, Hong Kong and other regions, and also witnessed the work of more than ten years. The creative process from 10,000 characters to more than 400,000 characters.
The food and drink in the whole book describes the Chinese world affairs and people in the modern century. All living beings are included in the book: the climate and seasons of Lingnan, vegetables and fruits, the long coastline and the mountains and villages, the clouds, rain and fog in the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars. From the south to the north, literati and writers, merchants and pawns, flag banners on the eaves, signs of tea houses, temples, pavilions and pavilions, as well as wars and exiles. , called "Lingnan Dream Hualu".
"Yan Shi Ji" wrote the life cycle of five generations.
Among them, the most cherished thing is that the hundreds of ordinary people who circulated in Ge Liang's writings have kept their eyes on a happy life.
This is also the reason why Li Jingze compared "Tokyo Dream Hualu" and "Across the River during Qingming Festival", and also the detail and solidity of "Swallow Food".
Critic and professor of Harvard University Wang Dewei sighed: "The Story of Swallow's Food focuses on the food customs of Lingnan, and writes about the vicissitudes of the Greater Bay Area. There are multiple anecdotes involved, which can be seen in the textual research and imagination of the writers. It's amazing." Yan Jingming, a critic and vice-chairman of the Chinese Writers Association, also praised "The Story of Swallows" for its description and grasp of the details of life, believing that "The Story of Swallows is an important harvest of Chinese literature in recent years. History is sometimes inadvertent, sometimes flashing, and fictional characters shuttle in the documentary life, which makes people feel warm and simple and thrilling when reading.”
Not only fireworks in the world, but also national justice in the book.
Yang Qingxiang, a professor and critic of Renmin University of China, said: "The anti-Japanese war in "Yan Shi Ji" is a historical process involving the participation of the whole people. People like the famous chef Ye Fengchi, who used a very traditional and ancient way, in a folk even It is a personal way to participate in the history of saving the nation and survival. This is a particularly wonderful writing. They have joined the grand historical narrative alone, which is rarely seen in previous literary narratives. I think this is a particularly important point.”
Still water deep flow details the century of modern China
"Swallow's Food" selects the food of Guangdong and Hong Kong as the foothold of the story and characters, and naturally connects Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Fujian, and Shanghai in a four-to-two manner, which not only breaks through the spatial barriers of Lingnan, but also inherits the food , rhetoric and innovation easily evoke the history of Lingnan in the past century.
Ge Liang started from the rise and fall of Tongqin Tower, and traced it back to the restaurants and restaurants in Guangzhou through Hong Kong teahouse movies, and then recorded the vegetarian feasts in temples and nunneries in the Republic of China in the food books and old newspapers in Guangdong, and in the late Qing Dynasty. Family banquet origins.
There are hundreds of people before and after, and almost everyone has profound historical traces before and after his death.
In the end, Tongqin Building now landed in Hong Kong, and it was guided by the transformation of Shanbo Wuju's "defection" division into Shanghai's local cuisine, which led to Hong Kong's 100-year-old sympathy with Guangdong, Fujian, and Shanghai.
As Yang Qingxiang commented: "Ge Liang's narrative is to place Hong Kong in the modern transformation of the whole of China. All its historical changes and cultural transformations are closely related to our traditional culture and our modern political, historical and cultural transformation. It constructs a very effective narrative about the history of Hong Kong, which is also a particularly important contribution of Ge Liang in "The Story of Swallows."
However, Ge Liang did not confine "Swallow's Food" to "local novels". It focuses on the Greater Bay Area, essentially from south to north, radiating the entire modern China for a hundred years.
Pan Kaixiong, deputy director of the Fiction Committee of the Chinese Writers Association, believes that the era and historical background described in "Yan Shi Ji" are shadowy, "The article hardly mentions historical facts such as the Whampoa Military Academy and the Anti-Japanese War, but in a casual sentence of the characters in the novel, It will be clicked suddenly. Then there is a dialogue: 'What is the opposite? Shenzhen Special Economic Zone.' This sentence marks the arrival of a big era." (End)