Lesson 17 Rain in Kunming

Lesson 17  Rain in Kunming

Wang Zengqi

  Ning Kun asked me to draw a picture for him, something with the characteristics of Kunming. After thinking about it for some time, I drew one: in the upper right corner, I drew a piece of thick green cactus hanging upside down with a golden flower at the end; in the lower left corner, I drew some greenhead mushrooms and boletus. It is inscribed with these lines.

      Kunming people often hang a piece of cactus at the door to ward off evil spirits, cactus hanging upside down, can still survive and bloom. Here we can see the tenacity of life of the cactus, and also see the humid air in the rainy season in Kunming. In the rainy season, there are green-headed mushrooms and cow liver mushrooms, which are very tasty and rich.

   I miss the rain in Kunming.

   I didn't know there was a so-called rainy season before. The "rainy season" was a concrete feeling only after I arrived in Kunming.

  I don't remember how long the rainy season is in Kunming, from a few months to a few months, it seems to be quite long. But it doesn't make people bored. It is not a continuous rain, and it is not boring. I think Kunming rainy season pressure is not low, people are very comfortable." ,

   The rainy season in Kunming is bright, rich and moving. The grass is deep in the spring of the city, and long in the summer of Meng. The rainy season in Kunming is intensely green. The grass and trees are saturated with water in their branches and leaves, displaying an excessive, almost exaggerated exuberance.

  My painting is a realistic one. I did see with my own eyes a cactus hanging upside down and still in bloom. In the old days, Kunming people used to ward off evil spirits above their homes with something like this: a small mirror with gossip painted around it and a piece of cactus underneath, - a hole pinned in the cactus, threaded with twine and hung on a nail. Kunming cactus more, and very fat. Some people planted a circle of cactus around their vegetable garden instead of a fence. --The cactus is planted so that pigs and sheep will not dare to enter the garden to eat the vegetables. The cactus has thorns, and pigs and sheep are afraid of sticking.

  There are many mushrooms in Kunming. In the rainy season, when you visit the vegetable market, you can see all kinds of mushrooms at any time. The most abundant and the cheapest are porcini mushrooms. When the porcini mushrooms come down, every restaurant sells fried porcini mushrooms, and even the cafeteria of Southwest United University can have a bowl on the table. The porcini mushrooms are as smooth, tender, fresh and fragrant as beef liver, which is very delicious. Stir-fried porcini mushroom must be put more garlic, otherwise it is easy to make people faint. Greenhead mushroom is slightly more expensive than porcini mushroom. This kind of mushroom is still light green when fried, and the style is higher than porcini mushroom. The king of mushrooms is Chanterelle, which has a fresh and rich flavor that can't be beat. Chanterelle is an expensive mountain treasure, but it is not really that expensive. The price of a plate of braised fir is comparable to a bowl of cassoulet, because it is not rare in Yunnan. There is a joke that someone took a train from Kunming to Chenggong, and when he saw a fir on the ground in the car, he jumped down and picked up the fir, and was able to climb onto the train in two steps. This joke is intended to show how slow the train from Kunming to Chenggong is, but it also shows that fir can be found everywhere. There is a kind of mushroom, which is not good to eat, called dry mushroom. At first glance, it is doubtful that it can be eaten. The color is dark brown and green, a bit like a pile of half-dried cow dung or a trampled hornet's nest. There are also many grass stems and pine hairs inside, a mess! But with a little effort, the grass stems and pine hairs are selected and torn into shreds of crab leg meat, and fried with green chili peppers, the mouth will make your eyes open: this stuff is so delicious? There is another kind of mushroom, which is not good to look at but not to eat, called Chanterelle. They are of average size, as big as a silver dollar, round and light yellow in color, just like chicken oil. This kind of mushroom can only be used to match the color of the dish, not much taste.

   The fruit of the rainy season is the plum. The plum sellers are Miao girls, wearing a small flowered hat and shoes embroidered with flowers, sitting on the corner of the stepping stones of others, yelling from time to time: "Selling plums -" in a dainty voice. Their voices make the rainy season air of Kunming softer. The plums in Kunming are very big, as big as a ping-pong ball, black and red, and are called "charcoal plums". It's a good name, it's like a ball of red-hot coals! It's not sour at all! I've eaten plums from Dongting Mountain in Suzhou and Jinggang Mountain, but they don't seem to be as good as Kunming's charcoal plums.

   The flower of the rainy season is the Maeng Gui flower. The flower is the white orchid, which is called the "handle orchid" in Beijing (this name is really unpleasant). Yunnan calls this flower "Myanmar laurel", probably because it was originally imported from Burma, and the fragrance of the flower is a bit like osmanthus, but it really has nothing to do with osmanthus. --But then again, other places call it white orchid, the orchid, it is not close to the orchid, but also because it is very fragrant, fragrant like orchids. The orchids I saw in my hometown were mostly one person high, while the laurel in Kunming is a big tree! I lived in No. 2 Ruo Yuan Lane, and there was a large laurel tree in the courtyard, with dense foliage, which reflected the greenery in all the rooms around. When the laurel was in full bloom, the landlady (a widow in her fifties) and one of her adopted daughters built a ladder and went up to pick them, picking some every day to sell at the flower market. She was probably afraid that the tenants would pick her flowers indiscriminately, so she sent some to each family from time to time. Sometimes she brought a seven-inch plate full of laurel flowers! The laurel with the raindrops made my heart soft, not with nostalgia, not with homesickness." ,.

  Rain, sometimes, can cause a little nostalgia. Li Shangyin's "Sending the North by Night Rain" was written for many wanderers who have been away for a long time. I went to the Lotus Pond one day with Dexie from the new campus of the University of the United States in the morning when there was little rain. After seeing the pond full of water and the stone statue of Chen Yuanyuan dressed as a bhikshuni (legend has it that Chen Yuanyuan went to Yunnan with Wu Sangui and became a monk and died in the Lotus Pond in her twilight years), it started to rain again. There is a small street by the lotus pond, there is a small hotel, we went in, asked for a plate of pork, half a kilo of wine (in the green glazed clay porcelain cup), sat down. It was raining hard. There were a few chickens in the hotel, all with their heads back under their wings and one foot on the ground, standing motionless under the eaves. In the hotel courtyard there is a large stand of mullein flowers. There are a lot of mullein flowers in Kunming. Some small rivers are lined with them. But such a large mullein is not often seen. A mullein, climbing on the shelf, covered the courtyard tightly. The dense, thin green leaves, countless half-opened white flowers and full-blown flower bones, all soaked by the rain. We couldn't leave, so we just sat there until late afternoon. Forty years later, I still can't forget the taste of that day and wrote a poem.

     "Outside the lotus pond few pedestrians, wild store moss marks an inch deep." ,

     "A cup of muddy wine is past noon, and the rain is drenched in wood and flowers." , , "I miss the rain in Kunming.

I miss the rain in Kunming.

May 19, 1984