The photos wouldn't be ready until the next market day. Grandpa paid, took the receipt, and handed it to Grandma to keep safe. The three of them, grandparent and grandchild, supported each other as they left the photo studio, crossed the road, and walked toward the market along a "street" paved with bluestone slabs of uniform length and size.
In 1977, Gongdao Village, where Mo Xiaoman lived, was still called the Public Justice Team. It belonged to the Huashan Commune, and the commune's headquarters was this very market town. This market wasn't just some randomly designated plot of land; it was said that in the old society, this place was called Huashan Town and had formed as a market centuries ago. The area boasted many high-quality local specialties, the official roads were well-maintained, the people were honest and kind, and bandits were rare. On market days, it wasn't just the locals who came; merchants from as far as a hundred *li* away would also rush in to do business. It had once been a very prosperous place.
The provincial highway outside the market town also passed through Gongdao Village, where Mo Xiaoman's home was. Although it had been rebuilt and upgraded by the state, it still followed the route of the ancient official road. This showed that long ago, this place hadn't been very isolated.
Stepping off the highway, you'd find yourself on that bluestone street, which was really the start of the market proper. In ancient times, people coming to the market arrived in ox carts or with carrying poles. They would unload their goods right by the official road, and the stalls, large and small and piled high with merchandise, would stretch all the way to the road's edge!
Even Grandpa had seen such scenes in his childhood. He described the grand spectacle to Xiao Man and Grandma, talking on and on.
According to Grandpa, the market town had changed drastically. After crossing the road and walking twenty or thirty meters along the deserted bluestone street, they still hadn't encountered a single vendor. The residences on both sides were old houses. The ones facing the street all had a large, square window cut into their walls. These windows weren't fitted with glass or ordinary push-out sashes, but with interlocking wooden planks. Opening or closing them was quite a chore. This was another old sight of the ancient street. Clearly, in the old days, all the residences on both sides had been open for business. Later, with the establishment of collective ownership and eating from the communal pot, followed by the production teams distributing based on labor, people were desperate to earn work points for food rations. No one did private business anymore—it wasn't allowed. So, the wooden-planked windows on both sides of the street remained shut year-round. The ancient street's prosperity was gone, which, it had to be said, was a pity.
Continuing forward along the flat, clean bluestone road and around a bend, they saw an open area. Houses still lined both sides, but the middle had been recently cleared as a public market space. Half of that open area was covered by a tall rain shelter with large, square, brick-pillared columns and a black-tiled roof. The shelter was divided into two sections. One was for selling all sorts of snacks and cooked foods: fresh-pressed rice noodles, "rice worms," sweet dumplings, sweet fermented rice, fried sesame balls, fried dough balls, "smiling mouth" dates, bean cakes, malt sugar, roasted peanuts, roasted sunflower seeds, and so on. The other section was left empty, presumably on purpose, to provide a place for market-goers to take shelter from the rain in case the weather turned.
In all the open-air space surrounding the rain shelter, people could freely set up stalls to sell their goods. These included vegetables and beans grown in their private plots, fruit from trees in their own yards, wild fruits and vegetables gathered from the mountains, or homemade items like woven bamboo mats, bamboo-husk hats, and bamboo baskets. According to Grandpa, just two years ago, people weren't allowed to sell these things freely. But starting this year, for some unknown reason, the market had slowly become livelier, and all sorts of things could be sold openly.
In her previous life, the only time the young Mo Xiaoman had come to the Huashan Commune market was when Liu Fengying wanted to take a "family photo." While they were wandering through the market's rain shelter, the six children could only stare at the fried dough balls, bean cakes, and sweet dumplings with fermented rice. They watched as the female stall owners ladled out bowl after bowl of fresh-pressed rice noodles, topping them with a scoop of glistening, bright-red sauce made from minced Wuhua pork, chopped chili, tomato, and brine... They all drooled, their eyes fixed and unblinking. But in the end, Liu Fengying only bought fragrant fried dough balls and bean cakes for the younger siblings. Mo Xiaoman could only feast her eyes, getting nothing to eat. She had to go home hungry, suppressing her cravings.
But coming to the market with Grandpa and Grandma this time was completely different. They made Mo Xiaoman the absolute center of their attention. Grandpa kept asking Xiao Man if she was hungry, if she wanted to eat a bowl of rice noodles with Grandma first, or have a bowl of sweet dumplings instead. Although Grandma couldn't see, her hearing was incredibly sharp. The moment a stall owner selling malt sugar, bean cakes, or fried dough balls called out, "Want one, little girl?"
Grandma would immediately reply with a smile, "Yes, yes! Please wrap one up for my granddaughter!"
And her "wrap one up" would often, with Grandpa's intervention, turn into "wrap two up." Xiao Man knew Grandpa wanted Grandma to be able to taste it too.
After a trip up and down the length of the rain shelter, Grandpa's bamboo basket already held five or six palm-leaf-wrapped packages containing bean cakes, fried dough balls, malt sugar, "smiling mouth" dates, and fried dough twists...
They had eaten a thin porridge made from corn grits at the secretary's house that morning. It was filling, but it had all been digested by now. Grandpa said that you couldn't say you'd really been to the market without having a bowl of rice noodles. There was more than one stall selling them under the rain shelter, so Grandma let Xiao Man and Grandpa take their time choosing. Amid the many calls from vendors, Xiao Man was won over by an auntie with a gentle voice and a very friendly face. The three of them sat down at her stall, and each had a bowl of the cool, refreshing, and savory fresh-pressed rice noodles.
Fresh-pressed rice noodles were a long-standing local specialty of Huashan Street. In later generations, their fame would grow even greater, with some people even opening shops selling them in the provincial city and Beijing. However, by that time, with the availability of refrigerators and freezers, people used ice water instead of mountain spring water, and the noodles ultimately lacked a bit of that local flavor.
The process of making fresh-pressed rice noodles seemed quite complicated. First, the rice paste was ground at home and carried to the stall in buckets. On the spot, a fire would be set up under a large iron wok. The rice paste was poured into the wok, stirred, and cooked until it coagulated into a solid mass. This cooked paste was then scooped into a special wooden cylinder. The cylinder was mounted over a wooden basin filled with ice-cold mountain spring water that had been fetched early in the morning. Once everything was ready, a large wooden plunger was forcefully pressed into the cylinder of cooked rice paste. The bottom of the cylinder was perforated, and streams of rice noodles were immediately and continuously pressed out, coiling in the basin in the blink of an eye. Soaking in the clear, ice-cold spring water, they looked translucent and glistening—a very beautiful sight.
To eat them, a handful of the pressed noodles was scooped into a large bowl, followed by a ladle of pork bone broth. Then, it was topped with a braising sauce made from Wuhua pork, chopped chilies, tomatoes, minced garlic, shredded ginger, salt, and soy sauce. A sprinkle of chopped green onions was added, and the aroma was so incredible you'd eat every last drop, soup and all!
If you got tired of the pressed rice noodles, you could have a variation. By controlling the pressure when pressing the rice paste, you could make "pressed rice worms," which were just as delicious.
A bowl of fresh-pressed rice noodles cost one *mao*, and so did a bowl of sweet dumplings with fermented rice. After finishing the noodles, Grandpa asked if she wanted a bowl of sweet dumplings too. Mo Xiaoman looked at the white dumplings bobbing up and down in a pot of brown sugar water not far away. Her mouth really wanted some, but she patted her belly—'Nope, can't do it.' In those days, vendors were very generous. The large bowl of fresh-pressed rice noodles was filled to the brim, and her stomach was stretched so tight it couldn't possibly fit anything else!