The Ups and Downs of the Commoners 2 Page #18

This book is the second volume of the novel "The Ups and Downs of the Commoners". It will tell you about caused by the disastrous consequences of the "Great Leap Forward" and the People's Commune Movement in China in the middle of the last century to the livelihood of the Commoners, as well as the difficult path of study of the protagonist of this book, Fang Zhengben.

• Novel

								

Fang Zhengben likes to eat his mother's steamed pumpkin with rice flours, which is made with golden pumpkin mixed with glutinous rice flours, which is sweet and delicious. So, when he got his share of the dish, he ate it first. What he didn't expect was that this steamed pumpkin with rice flours was very different from what his mother did. This was originally made with a little yellow corn flour in the yellow pumpkin, and the pumpkin was not as sweet as their home. At this time, two chefs who distributed the dishes came to side of their table, one of them shouted the name of the dish "sweet potato braised duck", and the other scooped two scoops of the dishes they brought and poured them into the empty enamel basin on the table. The students quickly divided the dish. It took a lot of effort for the Masters to buy three ducks from a duck farm in a nearby commune, plus about 80 kilograms of sweet potatoes and cook it. Although they are cooked into a paste and do not look good, and you can't find duck meat, the sweet potato does taste very fragrant. This should probably be regarded as an invention of the "Great Leap Forward", and it is also a famous dish in the canteen of Xinghua Middle School.
Not long after this round, two more chefs who distributed the dishes came behind. This time they divided that was numb spicy bean curd. However, because this dish is for students, of course, it cannot be really numb and spicy.
Fang Zhengben was sighing: "Huh! Today is really is 'launch satellite', with so many dishes!" He saw two Masters coming over with the big basin. The Master with the scoop shouted: "Braised lion's head!" "He scoop a spoonful of dishes from the big basin. Fang Zhengben stood aside and asked him to pour the dishes into their enamel basin. The Master then added half a scoop. Everyone looks at this "braised lion head", which is some like of ball the size of a ping-pong ball. However, hearing the name of this dish is very novel, and everyone is eager to know what this "lion's head" is, so they can't wait to divide them into the bowls of each classmate. No more, no less, just one piece per person. Fang Zhengben quickly picked up the ball with chopsticks, brought it to his mouth, gently bit it, and said, "Oh! I said what it was, it turned out to be okara!"  At this time, several students also shouted at the same time: "Ah, It is okara!" This is made by the chefs kneading the okaras left over from tofu, coating them with a layer of flour, frying them in hot oil, and then braising them, hence the name "braised lion's head". The masters really made the most of their material and gave them a just right name.
The students were still savoring the imaginative name of the dish, and heard the reminder from the teacher on duty in front: "Students don't be busy leaving,, the chef in the kitchen said that they still have dishes to be sent! It is said that there is also a 'phoenix tail soup' in the back!" "Wow! What a sumptuous treat!" The students exclaimed from their hearts. The poetic and picturesque meaning of the word "phoenix tail" has long made students eager to see what this "phoenix tail soup" looks like. Finally, it was time for the chefs to distribute the "phoenix tail soup". A chef scooped two scoops of soup into their basin, on which a few green vegetable leaves floated. Zheng Guoqiong picked up the basin, poured a little soup into everyone's bowl, tasted it himself, pouted and said: "I thought it was something delicious, it turned out to be lettuce leaf soup!" Fang Zhengben couldn't believe it, but also tasted it, and said disappointedly: "Sure enough, it's lettuce leaf soup!" Despite this, the students were very satisfied with the "launch satellite" of the cafeteria.
The teachers and chefs of the cafeteria felt that not only should they have a variety of dishes and complete colors when "launching satellites", but they also dared to think and innovate at ordinary times, so they made a bold attempt when preparing breakfast the next day. They took out some of the yellow squash piled up in a storage room in the cafeteria, scraped off the skin, cut them into cubes about 3 centimeters long with a knife, and mixed them with salt and chili bean sauce without cooking, and a new famous dish "cold mix yellow squash" was made.
In the morning, they distributed this new dish to the tables early. When the students came to the canteen, they saw that the color of this dish was particularly bright, and the golden yellow and with red, which seemed to arouse people's appetite. Wang Dingjun first brought a piece of pumpkin to his mouth and took a bite at it. "Ah, it's risky!" The pumpkin was so hard that it almost knocked out two of his teeth. He immediately threw it on the table. Fang Zhengben refused to give up without trying it himself, and as a result, to bite a small piece but it took a lot of effort. Seeing this, the other students did not dare to eat this "cold mixed yellow pumpkin" anymore, so they had to pour them back into the basin of containing the dishes and silently eat their half bowl of steamed sweet potatoes. Perhaps the students understood the hard work of the masters the day before, so they did not complain much.
After New Year's Day, the school took another home leave. On the way home and back to school, Fang Zhengben saw that the road under construction connecting Xinghua Town and Taiqing Town had taken initial shape, and relevant supporting construction was now underway.
A week later, Xinghua Middle School received a notice from the district government asking all teachers and students to participate in a day's voluntary labor on the newly built highway. Director Li of the teaching office mobilized at the meeting and said: "Students, everyone knows that the road connecting our Xinghua Town to Taiqing Town has been repaired. Previously, on the Tiao'deng River, people had been crossing the river by stepping on stone piers, but now a long stone arch bridge has been built. The problem now is that the bridge still needs to be filled with a lot of earth and stone. In order to open this highway to traffic as soon as possible and allow our local agricultural products to be easily transported to other places to support national construction, the district party committee and district government informed us that tomorrow all teachers and students will go to Tiao'deng River to participate in a day of voluntary labor. This is a glorious and arduous task entrusted to us by the district party committee and the district government. Don't we often say that we want to contribute to the building of Socialism? This is a good opportunity for everyone to contribute to the building of Socialism. Participating in this voluntary labor is of great significance: on the one hand, we have contributed to the early completion and opening of the highway, and at the same time, we have obtained a labor exercise. Please make practical arrangements for each homeroom teacher, and students must be prepared within today and go to the construction site early tomorrow morning. We must complete this task without compromise, quality and quantity assurance.”

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