Lishui burrito is a special food of local festivals. The raw material is flour with water and a little salt, which is constantly stirred into a thick, thin and elastic paste with both hands, and then placed on an iron pan (Lishui people call it a "cooking dish"). When cooking, the operator grasps a mass of batter by hand and grasps it rhythmically several times, which can prevent the batter from falling and enhance the toughness of the batter. The operator turns the batter on the iron pan, that is, turns it into a round pancake, which is turned in time by the "deputy" in charge of charcoal fire, and the baked burrito is taken out of the iron pan. Baked burritos, commonly known as "burrito skin", are as thin as paper, as round as the moon and about 20 cm in diameter.
Burrito stuffing is a common food for ordinary people, such as green beans, bean sprouts, dried tofu, soaked skin, shredded pork, fried egg skin and so on. Add fried noodles or fried dough sticks. The stuffing dishes must be fried with fire, leaving no soup. When you eat, you can put all kinds of dishes as stuffing. Those who like garlic can put some garlic paste on the wrapping paper of the burrito, and those who like hot sauce can put it on it and roll it into a tube, which is the "burrito" to eat.
Lishui burrito is tough but not greasy, suitable for all ages and tastes good. In particular, fried dried noodles or fried dough sticks are added to the stuffing, which tastes fragrant and crisp and has a unique flavor. It is really a popular food.
Recalling the Dragon Boat Festival when I was a child, I still love to bake "pine burritos" at home. It's a burrito skin, made of small dough coated with pine pollen and then ground into round pancakes. Its color is yellow, and it tastes particularly fragrant. At that time, many farmers branded this kind of burrito skin by themselves, and now it has become a rarity.
According to the legend of the old man, burritos were originally "silk cakes". Like zongzi, it was originally wrapped in silk and thrown into the river for fish and shrimp to avoid hurting Qu Yuan's health. There is no record of this, so there is no way to verify it.
Lishui burritos, which used to be only available on the Dragon Boat Festival, have now become a perennial food for Lishui people to adjust their tastes in all seasons. At the same time, burritos have also flowed to the surrounding areas and become one of the staple foods that the public generally likes to eat. A few years ago, the author took burritos as the staple food and received several Taiwan Province compatriots who went back to Li to visit relatives and friends. Everyone says they haven't eaten burritos in their hometown for years. While eating and chatting, they all said that Lishui burritos had a unique flavor, and that other places (including Taiwan Province Province) included jiaozi during the Dragon Boat Festival. Why does Lishui bake burritos and eat burritos during the Dragon Boat Festival? Another Taiwan compatriot joked that if there is a rich man with a good eye for food, he can carefully package Lishui burritos, open chain stores in various places and expand media publicity, and then he can compete with McDonald's and Hamburg. Although this is a joke at the dinner table, it is not impossible with the passage of time, because Lishui burrito is indeed a holiday food with special customs and unique flavor, and diet is a "soft culture" with the rise of the Chinese nation.
Besides eating burritos, Lishui Dragon Boat Festival also has the custom of "giving soup". The so-called "soup" is a gift. Every Dragon Boat Festival, married daughters give gifts to their parents. In addition to the gift package, the gift also includes a knife of pork, a catty of Mingfu (cuttlefish) and a catty of tofu skin. After receiving "soup", parents should return gifts to their daughters, such as plums, cattail fans (grass fans or paper fans) and towels. There is a folk proverb in Lishui: "Life is not wasted, twice a year." It means that the married daughter will give gifts to her parents twice a year, once during the Spring Festival and once during the Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth day of May.
In addition, around the Dragon Boat Festival, Lishui children not only have to "paint their faces" with realgar wine under the instructions of adults, but also spray realgar wine on the corner of their homes. They prefer to go to the countryside to pick grass stems and play "fighting grass".
Fighting grass, also known as "fighting a hundred herbs", is a folk game that has been going on since ancient times. According to textual research, in the Chronicle of Jingchu written by Liang Zonggu in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, there is a description of "On May 5th, four people joined hands to perform a hundred herbs, and there was a grass fight". In the Tang Dynasty, fighting grass was very popular. For example, Liu Yang's "Romance of Sui and Tang Dynasties" records that "Princess Anle fought a hundred herbs in five days"; Han E's Li Nian records "Dragon Boat Festival, building a house to hide medicine and fighting a hundred herbs"; Sima Tu's Poems on Snuff says: "How happy it would be to mow grass and cut eyebrows on snuff in the Ming Dynasty"; Bai Juyi's poem "Watching Children's Play" says: "Make dust and mow grass, and have fun every day." It can be seen that the drama of "fighting grass" has become popular in the imperial court and among the people. In the Song Dynasty, mowing games became more common among the people. Fan Chengda's "Miscellaneous Poems in Spring Pastoral" said: "Spring branches fall, children and grandchildren compete for grass"; Liu Yong's poem "Mulan is slow and clear" intones: "Ying Ying mows grass and treads grass, and Ye Yan gives it to him." It can be seen that the popular "grass-cutting game" of the Dragon Boat Festival has been advanced to Tomb-Sweeping Day in March. In the Qing dynasty, fighting grass was still popular. For example, in the sixty-second episode of A Dream of Red Mansions, there is a scene depicting five people, namely Xiangling and Fangguan, mowing grass in the Grand View Garden.
However, the "fighting grass" written in A Dream of Red Mansions is an elegant fighting grass for wealthy families to show off their talents, while the "fighting grass" popular in Lishui during the Dragon Boat Festival is a "vulgar fighting grass" with grass as a toy. There are three main ways to play: one is "bye-bye", the other is "pulling the beef tendon" and the third is "signing".
"Bye bye" is a kind of grass called "Acorus calamus seed" as game. Acorus calamus seeds, also known as "broken grass", can be seen everywhere in Shan Ye, Lishui. They are about one foot high, with umbrella-shaped leaves and small flower buds in the middle. The stems are triangular in shape, with scaly roots and fragrant calamus, so they are called "Acorus calamus seeds". When playing, first find a meadow with calamus seeds, then remove the leaves and rhizomes on it. Sit on the ground in pairs, each holding a head, and recite children's songs while snapping: two people sit on the ground, pinching grass/snapping, I don't know/you are snapping, two ends are even/I am snapping, two ends are even/not broken/luck is not good/taking grass stems/changing territory. After watching it, two people will tear each other apart. If they break into an H-shape with a little connection on both sides, it is "baby"; If there is only an N-shaped trace in the middle, it is "life". If there is no trace of contact, it is called bad luck and improper calculation. The two clapped their hands as a sign of punishment and then broke up again.
"Bullshit" is also called "ordinary teenager". The game is to use the petiole of poplar leaves or other elastic grass stems as toys, and two people hook the grass stems and pull them hard. Those who are pulled out are losers, "teenagers" or "losers", and the winners are "generals". Looking back when I was a child, the author and my friends loved to play "pull the beef tendon". They often went to poplar trees to find old leaves with thick stems and picked them off, leaving the stems to pull each other and fight. In order to increase the toughness of leaves and stems, it is often necessary to make them, such as mixing tung oil to slow down the roasting on the fire, soaking them in green oil lamps after repeated kneading, and even sticking a few ramie filaments on the grass stems, which will win the first trial, but after a long exposure, they will be reprimanded by everyone, especially the children's companions who have several "generals" in their pockets and do not play easily. Once torn off by "fake goods"
"Picking" is also called "picking grass stalks". Participants went to the field to collect many hard and tough grass stems and cut them into "sticks" about 10 cm short. Some of them were sharpened at both ends and dyed red or other colors. This stick is not only a tool for picking up grass stalks, but also can be counted as ten. To play this game, two or more people can draw lots to set the order by "rock, scissors, cloth" or writing "one, two, three, four" on a small piece of paper. When playing, the playmate signs a number of pieces according to the prior regulations, and then gives them to the first person who "picks up". The man tightened the draft with one hand, loosened it and let the grass stalks scatter on the desktop or flat ground, and then picked it up with his hand. For those overlapping drafts, use sharpened and dyed ones to pick them up. When picking, be careful not to touch other drafts. If you touch it, you can't take it off again.
With the changes of the times, the custom of celebrating the holidays at the age of 20 is also changing. For example, Lishui's Dragon Boat Festival custom "Aipu" is still inherited, while "women make cocoons and tigers" (wallets, sachets, etc. ) has long since disappeared. It is also rare to paint children's faces with realgar, spray realgar to ward off evil spirits, and drink realgar at the end of the day. The custom of "cooking soup" by daughters for their parents has continued, but their gifts keep pace with the times and become fashionable with the continuous improvement of living standards, such as health care products or high-end clothing. The game of "weeding" with grass as a toy has long been replaced by colorful modern toys and disappeared in urban and rural areas. Lishui burrito with unique flavor has changed from a festive feast on the Dragon Boat Festival to a delicious food for people to adjust their tastes. It has spread from Lishui to surrounding areas, from family to restaurant, and has become a good product for holiday dinners and banquets.