Chapter 58 Village Gathering
During the Dragon Boat Festival, Yangzhengtang Academy will give all students, whether short-term or long-term, a two-day holiday.
This makes it convenient for the teacher and students to go home to pay respects to their ancestors or participate in festival activities.
Although the holiday was short, the academy did not assign any homework for the past two days.
It was a rare moment of rest.
Having gotten used to the "ten-day holiday" of only one day off every ten days, Guo Baiwen felt that the Dragon Boat Festival holiday these two days wasn't so short after all.
I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing.
The Dragon Boat Festival is also part of the "Three Festivals and Two Birthdays" in the academy's customs, although short-term students are not required to send gifts to the teacher like long-term students.
But apart from those who were truly in dire straits, the rest of the people would also offer something, mostly homemade zongzi or steamed buns, to show their respect and gratitude to the Master.
Grandma Guo prepared pork, zongzi (sticky rice dumplings), and her own sweets early in the morning, along with the inkstone that Guo Baiwen had bought earlier. She rushed to deliver them to Master Guo the day before the academy's holiday.
Master Guo never expected that he would receive an inkstone on this day.
So after thinking about it, he reciprocated with a fan and a dish of mugwort cakes made by his wife.
It's a way of celebrating the holiday together.
Guo Fuzi had mixed feelings about this student. Guo Baiwen often gave him the impression that he knew a lot, but his understanding was also very superficial.
He had initially thought that this student was learning very quickly and had even considered taking a liking to his talent. He planned to visit the student's family and have a serious talk with his elders after the six months of instruction were completed.
If the family is not in financial difficulty, you could try sending him to a Buddhist school to continue his studies.
However, as he taught for a longer period of time, he gradually developed different views.
Guo Baiwen is quite talented and can grasp things quickly. Even though he started learning at a relatively late age, with some effort, he might be able to try his luck in the examination hall someday.
However, during this period of trying to teach him to write poetry, Master Guo felt the difficulty of teaching him.
Logically speaking, I had already laid a foundation with "Thousand Family Poems" and "Primer of Prosody", and I did not make any mistakes when practicing antithesis and rhyme.
But when it comes to writing poetry, he always falls short of that.
If the poems produced were merely crafted with a contrived style, that would be one thing, but instead, each poem is written like a doggerel.
The plain and easy-to-understand vernacular is good for children to make up rhymes on the street, or for vendors to read aloud when they go from street to street.
But unfortunately, none of these should be the kind of things that should be written on the exam paper.
Even the lowest-ranking candidates, those who passed the preliminary examinations, had to take a test on composing poems.
So Master Guo hesitated a bit. He planned to wait and see. If Guo Baiwen could correct his mistakes in his studies, he would find another opportunity to talk to his family.
Guo Baiwen was completely unaware of Guo Fuzi's many thoughts.
He was thinking that tomorrow, the Dragon Boat Festival, would be the perfect time for the dessert shop and Guo Xiaohua to take a break.
When I visited the farmers in that area during the last ten-day holiday, they told me that during the Dragon Boat Festival, several large villages in the nearby mountains, not far from the county seat, were also preparing to hold large-scale events related to the festival.
Since he was going to stay home anyway, he decided to take Grandma Guo and Xiao Hua with him to join in the fun.
When I got home in the evening, the family shop was already closing up shop.
In preparation for the Dragon Boat Festival, Grandma Guo made some meat dumplings in addition to the ash-water dumplings.
Ash water rice dumplings are made by soaking glutinous rice in water filtered with rice straw ash. The triangular dumplings are dipped in white sugar or honey and are very refreshing and cooling.
This way of eating is more suitable for the hot and humid weather here.
Grandma made many buns, and besides those for her own consumption, she also displayed a lot of them in the front shop for sale.
As for the meat dumplings, they were simply for family consumption. They contained diced cured pork, Sichuan peppercorns, and salt. Grandma Guo also added some mugwort and chopped calamus.
It is said that if you eat this kind of zongzi during the Dragon Boat Festival, you will not get sick so easily.
Tonight's dinner looks delicious. It includes "Five Reds" made with red amaranth, red-yolk duck eggs, red chili peppers, cured meat, and cherries, as well as calamus wine made by soaking calamus in rice wine.
These are all customs of the Dragon Boat Festival. Eating these foods is believed to ward off evil and disaster for the rest of the year.
The plate of mugwort cakes that Guo Baiwen brought back was also heated up and served on the table; they were filled with peanut filling.
It's so oily that it oozes oil when you bite into it, which shows that a lot of sesame oil was used when making the filling.
In addition, there were golden-brown fried small fish and a dish of peanuts and edamame that had been boiled in salt water and then soaked in soy sauce and vinegar.
Looking at all the dishes on the table, Guo Xiaohua couldn't help but clap her hands with joy: "After a busy day, we should eat something good like this to have the energy!"
It's so great to have moved to the county town!
The family's daily income is not small, and every now and then they can eat the leftovers from the shop's sweets and pastries.
Putting everything else aside, she recently looked in the mirror and felt that her face had become quite rounder.
Fortunately, I brush my teeth diligently every day, so my teeth are in good condition.
The aroma of mugwort and calamus is slightly spicy, and whether it's used to make rice cakes or zongzi, they taste delicious.
This was the first time Guo Baiwen had ever eaten a zongzi with this flavor, and he found the taste to be incredibly addictive.
Peanuts and edamame soaked in soy sauce and vinegar are tangy and refreshing, perfect for whetting your appetite before eating other dishes.
The red-yolk duck eggs and cured pork are glistening with oil, and whether eaten with ash-water rice dumplings or on their own, they are incredibly satisfying.
The small fried fish were brought by Yang Qiaomai from home. She said her older sister had fried too much of it and she brought some to give to the shop owner so they could try it together.
I don't know what kind of oil Sister Yang used to fry it, but it was so crispy that you could chew it up even with the bones. It was almost as good as the ones you buy in stores.
Grandma was worried that there were too many oily dishes on the table, so she brought out two small dishes of pickled vegetables. The sweet and sour taste helped to cut through the richness, and before we knew it, we had eaten quite a lot.
The family ate to their hearts' content, sat around the table, and rested for quite a while before patting their bellies and then standing up to clear the dishes.
With the weather getting hot and Xiuning County surrounded by mountains, the Dragon Boat Festival is the time when all kinds of snakes, insects, rodents and ants are most rampant.
After Guo Baiwen finished washing the dishes and came out of the kitchen, he found his grandmother scattering realgar powder from a paper packet onto the ground in the yard.
Seeing him and Xiaohua come over, they each received two burlap sacks.
It contains mugwort, calamus, mint, lemongrass, and realgar powder, which can repel snakes and insects.
"After you take them home, remember to hang one on the window and the other on the door of the room." Grandma Guo was worried that they wouldn't know how to hang them, so she gave them a few extra instructions.
Guo Xiaohua nodded, then couldn't help but tap the small red bump on her arm. "Grandma, do you still have any moxa sticks at home? I've been getting bitten by mosquitoes a lot these past few days."
Grandma Guo had forgotten about this, since she's never been a mosquito magnet.
So, under Guo Xiaohua's expectant gaze, he could only slowly shake his head and say, "We've used up almost all the mugwort sticks at home last year. But we still have some mugwort and calamus that we're going to hang on the door tomorrow. Grandma will give you some later, so you can hang them at the head or foot of your bed to make do for now."
Tomorrow, she will go to the pharmacy next door to buy some moxa sticks and sachets to keep on hand.
Summer brings many mosquitoes, and it's not yet time to hang mosquito nets. Burning mugwort sticks and incense cakes during the day can reduce mosquito bites when you sleep at night.
"Okay." Having mugwort and calamus hanging there is better than having nothing at all.
Guo Xiaohua didn't pick and choose. After taking the things, everyone went to wash up and go to bed.
The next day, under Grandma Guo's guidance, Guo Baiwen hung the five auspicious herbs prepared at home—calamus, mugwort, garlic, banyan branches, and dragon boat flowers—on the front of the house and the door frame of the main room in the backyard.
Each person held a calamus leaf in their hand and swept it around every corner of the room.
Only after all that was done did we start eating breakfast.
Compared to the lavish breakfast last night, this morning's breakfast was much simpler.
Grandma used the leftover "five reds" from yesterday to make a big pot of noodles. Worried that the flavor wouldn't be strong enough, she added a lot of chili powder and chili sauce. She slurped down a bowl of noodles with half a salted duck egg, and before she knew it, she was sweating.
After wiping their faces and following Grandma Guo's instructions, each of them drank a small cup of calamus wine before carefully closing all the doors and windows of their home.
We left the city and took a car to the village gathering place we had heard about before.
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