At the end of the autumn term, she passed with flying colors, ranking tenth in her class and earning Mr. Wang’s approval. She even handed him a package when she left school.
Inside were lotus roots she’d saved up over several days, weighing about twenty to thirty jin. Each section was still coated in mud, allowing them to be preserved for so ti. Consider it a New Year gift for the couple as she wouldn’t have gotten far without their help, probably floundering around like a headless chicken!
While others went ho during vacation, she had to take out the vegetables and fruits she’d saved up for quite so ti and sell them. To fetch a higher price, she hadn’t set up her stall much since October, knowing full well that prices were higher during the New Year period.
With ten days to half a month before the New Year, she went to the Cooperative Society near her ho to sell vegetables every morning and to the hospital to sell fruits. At the end of the day, she could make twenty to thirty silver coins.
With this money, she occasionally bought cheap pig bones, pig blood, offal, internal organs, pig lard, and the like from the at union.
It’s not that she couldn’t afford five yuan per jin of at. Still, in an era where one silver coin could buy two jin of pork, she wanted to buy more of the three to four jin of corner materials.
Since corner materials were cheap, there wasn’t any left if she went late, so she had to line up before dawn whenever she set up her stall. Sotis she could buy pig blood, sotis pig bones—what she got always varied—and they wouldn’t let her buy much; it was only about two jin each ti.
Having been in this era for a few years, she felt she had almost forgotten what at tasted like. She lived on a vegetarian diet most of the ti, and even getting a hint of grease was rare.
This year, their family sold tofu, maybe living a little better than most, but it wasn’t an excuse for lavish eating and drinking. So buying these corner materials was just to satisfy the cravings.
Henan had just survived a famine, and its essence was deeply affected. They couldn’t even grow enough grain, let alone have spare money to feed pigs. Even the land for growing vegetables was begrudgingly turned over to grain crops. Imagine the scarcity of resources like at, eggs, vegetables, and fruits—why else would she be able to sell for such a high price?
Buying at naturally involved eggs. She saved a few while in school and bought so before the year-end, gathering about ten jin, which took three to four months, illustrating how difficult it was to buy so eggs.
Eggs were one silver coin for three jin, available only five jin per day, sold to you only two or three at a ti. The fact that she saved up to ten jin shows how much ti she spent on this.
In her view, at and egg reserves were essential. As for grain, they had so at ho; even coarse grains and mixed grains were fine as long as they could fill the stomach.
On the 28th day of December, Ye Huan returned ho to find the household bustling with tofu-making. Seeing her return, no one could afford to greet her.
"Huanhuan is back? Co inside and warm up a bit. We’ll steam tofu buns for you at noon. This year, our family made a lot of glass noodles, and your grandpa even bought pig lard. The oil residue mixed with our tofu cabbage glass noodles makes stead buns taste fantastic!"
The local custom was to start the dough on the twenty-eighth, steam stead buns on the twenty-ninth, and make dumplings on New Year’s Eve. It wasn’t until after the year 2000 that people would stay up all night.
Back then, there weren’t nearly as many entertainnt options.
Because it was New Year, the household only had sweet potatoes, potatoes, cabbage, radishes, glass noodles, and tofu. The well-off could afford fried tofu, radish atballs, white dough peanut brittle, or persimmon cakes, brown sugar sweet and salty snacks mixed with sweet potatoes and cornal, and steam so red bean paste buns, buns, stead buns, creating the culinary mories of the seventies, eighties, and nineties generations.
Of course, every place has its own customs. People in Xinyang would fry rice cakes, those in Zhengzhou fry lotus fritters, and those in Kaifeng had an even better taste, but only the flavor of ho is unique.
Seeing everyone so busy, Ye Huan put down her big package and went to the kitchen to wash her hands as she saw her elderly Grandma kneading dough there.
The dough was mixed grain flour, containing bean flour, sweet potatoes, corn, and sorghum flour, with so white flour added as the final touch to make the dough stick better.
"Grandma, you rest, I’ll do it."
Ye Yu took charge of the cooking platform, while Grandpa helped Daddy with the cooking platform in the backyard. The little ones gathered in the kitchen, occasionally getting scolded by Grandma, forbidden from going out because they would cause mischief everywhere once outside.
This is the essence of life in the human world—so down-to-earth and filled with the taste of ho. Without the sounds of adults scolding children, it couldn’t truly be called ho.
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