Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1708 Banquet

The Yi people's fire pit actually has a formal name called "Gongzhuang", and dancing around the bonfire is called "Gongzhuang dance", which actually originated from the image of eating around the Gongzhuang.

The upper part of the Guozhuang, where distinguished guests sit, is called "Xiaerguo" by the Yi people; the host sits on the right side of the Guozhuang, which is called "Nimu" in Yi language; and the rest of the women who help sit at the lower part, which is called "Xiajiguo".

The Yi ethnic group has a proverb that "wine is for the elderly, meat is for the young" and "plow the land from bottom to top, serve wine from top to bottom", which are the rules of banquets.

And the most exaggerated thing is that just like the Han people serve tea when entering the door, in Liangshan wine is a greeting gift to guests. As long as the guests enter the house, the host must first offer wine to the guests and then start cooking.

Whether it was the structure of the large chieftain's building in the grain station, the various ritual implements on the old red sun wall, or the main room with a fire pit that still retained most of the Yi style, they all amazed Matsui Zou and Jin Chunyi.

What surprised the two even more was the villagers who were watching TV in the conference room.

This is a completely different ethnic group from the Chinese they are familiar with. If you don’t visit them in person, you might even feel like you are in two different countries.

But seeing Zhou Zhi and Wu Renzhong mingling among them, it didn't seem out of place at all. This feeling was very strange.

Another strange thing is that this seemingly primitive "tribe" has the most advanced satellite network connecting it to the outside world, an "old chief" who is good at using audio equipment, and a group of educated children who wear half ethnic costumes and half "modern" costumes, and can sing loudly in both Chinese and Yi language.

The soup came out quickly. Sheep bones, sheep heads and sheep corpions were boiled in water over high heat to make mutton soup. The clean sheep innards were fried with lard, and spices were added and stewed. Then sheep blood and tofu were added, and the cooked cold-cut mutton was placed on a plate. This can be eaten cold or hot. Let's start the meal.

By the time Zhou Zhi found Matsui Zo and Jin Chunyi, their faces were already red from drinking. It was unknown how these two foreigners could communicate with a group of old Yi people without a language barrier. They could drink so much even with roasted peanuts.

  When drinking with the Yi uncles, even I can only pretend to be drunk, let alone you two? !

But Zhou Zhi soon found out the reason. What they were drinking was the same kind of wine brewed with the traditional craftsmanship of the old Yi people for drinking during festivals, which the Yi people call "Zhiyi" "water-soaked wine".

This wine is made from corn, buckwheat and koji.

The method is also completely different from the wine brewing in the Han area. First, the grains are put into the pot and fried until the water in the grains evaporates. Then the grains are cooled and ground into fine powder and coarse powder respectively. Then the ground powder is added to the buckwheat husks, and the powder and buckwheat husks are fully mixed with a small amount of clean water, and then put into the steamer and steamed in the pot.

These steps are not used by the Han people in brewing wine, but they are actually quite scientific. Frying, maturation, grinding, and adding buckwheat husks are all effective measures to speed up the decomposition of starch by bacteria. These techniques are also used in modern technology, but they are used in the process of brewing alcohol using molasses.

Then put the cooled grains in the winnowing basket into the koji used for fermentation and mix it thoroughly with your hands.

Then comes another special process, which is to put red-hot charcoal on the mixed powder, and take 3 to 5 dried red peppers and put them on top to burn out the pungent pepper smell, while chanting prayers for the brewed wine to be pure and delicious. After that, the powder is put into the pocket and wrapped with cloth. It then enters the stage of full heating and fermentation.

This step cannot be explained scientifically, but in order to observe whether the fermentation has reached maturity, the Yi people put a knife on the cloth bag and use the heat conductivity of metal to sense the temperature inside the bag.

After fermentation, the raw materials will be poured into a special wooden barrel and sealed. After a seven-day "de-wine period", the barrel will be opened and divided into four parts with bamboo strips, and then soaked in water for 20 to 30 minutes twice. This process is the origin of the name of this wine "soaked wine".

Finally, you just need to prepare a bamboo pole with one end sharpened and the other end cut into a cylinder, insert one end of the bamboo pole into the small hole on the bottom of the barrel, and the soaked wine will naturally flow out of the barrel.

After taking the soaked wine out of the barrel, scoop a small bowl of the wine and pour it back into the barrel to show respect for nature. After the ceremony is completed, the soaked wine can be drunk.

This wine is golden in color and tastes quite good. It is divided into three parts like perfume. The first part is sweet at first, some burnt wheat flavor can be detected in the middle, and then there is a sweet aftertaste at the bottom of the tongue. It is very distinctive.

Zhou Zhi probably knew why the two foreigners liked this kind of wine. Compared with their sake and shochu, the alcohol content of this wine was very close and the taste was more complex. Except for the fact that the color of the wine was a bit turbid, it was completely in line with the tastes of Japanese and Koreans.

The Yi people like to drink this kind of wine from a jar, and then sip it through a long straw decorated with silk ribbons and painted in various colors. This way of drinking is called "Gan Gan Wine".

However, there is no necessary requirement for foreign guests, as long as they are well provided for.

This wine also has excellent health-preserving and medicinal effects, and is also one of the props used by Lao Bimo in cooking.

Lao Chi Ri would often add something to the tea that Zhou Zhi drank every day. It was all chopped plants. The taste was not bad, but Zhou Zhi didn't know what it was.

Those plants were not the same kind, because Zhou Zhi could sense that their smells were different.

Occasionally in the morning or evening, Lao Chi Ri would bring over a glass of wine and say, "Drink this before you eat." Or, "Drink this before you go to bed."

I don’t know if it has anything to do with these things, but these days I feel like I’m gradually relaxing and my mood is getting better. My sleep, which had been poor for many years, also seems to have improved a lot.

It is impossible for only a few people to eat two sheep. There are many people participating in the banquet. Basically, all the "hosts" of each household who were watching TV in the conference room became guests.

In addition to mutton soup, the staple food is boiled potatoes in plain water, eaten with burnt green peppers and chopped ginger.

Matsui Zou and Jin Jun'ichi were completely let loose. The Yi people, like other ethnic minorities, love to sing when they are happy after drinking, and their singing is very pleasant to the ears. The two men could not understand what they were saying at all, but they still hummed and danced and loudly agreed with the songs.

Brother Dayong was not very interested in water-soaked wine, and he started competing with several old Yi compatriots in drinking strong corn wine. Zhou Zhi tried to stop them several times but failed.

Zhou Zhi even suspected that this kid was too restrained by Sister Xiao Juan'er. Besides, he had to behave properly now because of his status as a big shot. It had been a long time since he had been so unrestrained as he is now, drinking and eating meat with big bowls of wine. Today's feast was similar to the lively scene he had seen outside the canteen of Jiachuan Water Plant. He really felt like he was getting somewhere.