Blue(jianshenban)
April 4, 2025
When the city fades away at midnight, the glass door of the lobby of Atour Hotel closes gently, isolating the neon lights and traffic. The warm yellow lights of Xiangzhao Restaurant light up one after another, and the whispers of casseroles and pottery jars spread over the carved screen, kneading the temperature of the twenty-four solar terms into the deep rice fragrance. The fireworks at this moment are the frost flowers condensed on the lapel of the wanderer meeting the spring sun, and the moss quietly growing in the steel forest.
The millet porridge in the white porcelain bowl rolls with the moonlight of the northern Shaanxi Plateau, and the three layers of rice oil glow with a satin luster under the candlelight, as if the mist rising when the mother opened the pottery jar. The preserved egg and lean meat porridge in the blue and white porcelain bowl, the soft preserved egg turns into amber clouds floating, and the salty fragrance of the braised meat and the spicy and warm ginger are intertwined, which is more soothing to the stomach than the craftsmanship of the old lady at the alley in my childhood. When the crisp sound of bamboo tongs tapping the porcelain bowl broke the silence, the moment the steamer was opened, the fragrance of lotus leaves wrapped in glutinous rice and chicken hit the nose, quietly overlapping with the fireworks of the breakfast shop on the corner.
Those figures wearing Atour aprons always appear at the right time - the arc of the wrist turning when refilling soy milk overlaps with the posture of the mother scooping porridge in memory; the hum of the wooden tray and the porcelain bowl touching when adding dishes is just the most dense moonlight beside the pillow of the wanderer. At the pick-up counter at three o'clock in the morning, the staff reheated the cold eight-treasure porridge. The warmth of the casserole bottom touching the wood grain made the platform in a foreign land feel the intimacy of the breakfast shop at the corner of the alley.
Wang Zengqi once said, "Food in all directions is nothing but a bowl of fireworks in the world." But at this moment, I feel that the fireworks have already turned into a flowing epic: it is the satin luster of the golden millet in Mizhi, Shaanxi, in the casserole, the sweet wound of the freshly baked sweet potatoes at the Luxi New Year Market, and the faint fragrance of osmanthus falling during the Hanfu parade in Youchengxu, Maoming. When the city falls into a deep sleep, the casserole in the back kitchen of Atour is still simmering slowly, so that every late night in a foreign land grows the shape of a home.
The fireworks are never simply rising hot air, but the eternal residence of civilization on the stove. It makes the cold concrete grow warm, and makes the wandering soul find a fulcrum. In the modern society where machinery runs, we always maintain awe of the morning light and starlight. As "One Day Zen" said, good days will eventually come out of fireworks, and those rising mists hide our softest armor against nothingness.
Original TextTranslation provided by Google