Chapter 164: The Bride's Family Dinner

The bride had extremely long hair that cascaded down almost to her ankles. According to Tongmei’s daughter, the young women of their ethnic group were not allowed to cut their hair before marriage, and they had to devote a great deal of effort to caring for it. It was only on the third day after the wedding, when returning to visit her parents’ home, that the bride would cut her hair to waist length and place the sheared locks together with the satchel she had used in her girlhood, leaving them behind at her maternal home.

This was a custom Chen Xin had never heard of before, nor did she know the reason behind it. Even Tongmei’s daughter was unclear about its origins. Furthermore, she mentioned that many girls nowadays no longer followed this old tradition, because once they went away to attend school, they were required to keep their hair short. Those studying locally in the village villages might be spared if they pleaded their case, but those who followed their parents to schools outside were not granted such leniency. If they wished to stay, they had to obey the school rules and crop their hair short. Consequently, many young girls nowadays could no longer grow their hair that long.

Tongmei’s daughter was one of them. She studied in the town and returned home only once a month. Washing and bathing at school were inconvenient, and if her hair were too long, she simply would not have the time to manage it. Therefore, her hair was cropped short, and judging by the look of it, there was no way she would be able to grow it out in the next few years.

At this point, Tongmei’s daughter looked at the bride’s long hair with an expression of deep regret and fervent longing.

After changing into her wedding attire, the bride began to comb her hair. The bridal hairstyle was extremely intricate, requiring numerous hair accessories to be pinned into it, and was finally crowned with a somewhat uniquely shaped hat inlaid with silver ornaments and bone fragments.

"The bone fragments were hunted by her husband himself, crafted by polishing the leg bones of the strongest prey. And do you see her necklace? It’s made from the teeth of that very same beast. The most formidable grooms in our village can hunt down large bears, followed by wolves, snakes, and wild boars."

However, wildlife protection regulations nowadays stipulated that hunting could not be done casually, so wolves and bears were virtually nonexistent anymore. The most formidable game now consisted of wild boars, snakes, and the like.

The bone fragments on this bride's head were from a wild boar, and the necklace resting on her chest had also been polished from wild boar tusks. Chen Xin noted all these details in her mind, then turned on her camera to record the entire process of the bride's hair being combed.

She did not capture the bride's face directly, choosing instead to focus on the hands styling the hair from behind and the gradual formation of the hairdo, finishing with a profile shot. This left the bride's full face unseen, yet allowed viewers of the footage to feel the bride's shy and nervous excitement.

By the evening of the second day, in the plaza in front of the lower drum tower, everyone began preparing for the evening banquet. Two bonfires were set up on the left and right, alongside four sheep and six small fragrant pigs that had already been slaughtered and hung on wooden racks to drain the blood. In the center, two large stoves had been built on the spot using bricks and stones. The iron cauldrons resting on these stoves were specially made for such banquests, twice the size of the iron pots used in ordinary households.

The spatulas for stir-frying were brand new iron shovels, and basins upon basins of meat and vegetables were neatly stacked on the open ground beside the stoves. Down by the river, three earthen stoves had been built with large stones, steel bars laid horizontally across wooden frames, and three iron pots suspended to cook the hanging-pot rice.

Most of the villagers here liked to cook their rice with taro or potatoes mixed in. Legend had it that in the past, they did not know how to cultivate paddy rice, so their staple foods consisted of tubers and starchy plant roots. It was only after the founding of the People's Republic that they began eating rice. Even then, pure rice was rarely eaten alone; instead, it was cooked together with their former staple foods, and they discovered that the resulting flavor was even better.

In addition to the hanging-pot rice, there was also bamboo tube rice. However, the bamboo tube rice here always had pork cheek meat braised into it. The pork cheek meat was stir-fried beforehand with pickled cowpeas and diced potatoes, then mixed with rice, stuffed into bamboo tubes, and roasted. The resulting rice carried the fresh fragrance of the bamboo, combined with the rich grease of the pork cheek meat and the soft, sticky texture of the potatoes. Sprinkled with just a pinch of salt, the flavor was simply indescribable.

It was Chen Xin’s first time seeing sour soup fish prepared by directly pouring sour soup from a bucket. That sour soup was white sour soup, which had a completely different fermentation process from red sour soup, yielding a much more unique flavor.

The bamboo shoots being cooked were fresh from the mountain, and the fish were raised right in their own paddy fields—absolute green food.

Contact with the outside world was still not very frequent here, so most of the ingredients were self-produced and locally consumed. In particular, the rice wine specially brewed by the bride’s family for this banquet was the true essence of the entire celebration.

The bride’s father was the most famous brewer in the village, and people from the county town would specifically make the trip just to seek out his wine. The rice wine for this occasion had been brewed by the bride’s father starting three months ago. The initial brewing process itself was not very long, taking only about half a month including fermentation, but the strained liquor underwent a secondary fermentation in earthenware jars, and the clear liquid obtained thereafter was the rice wine they were drinking today.

"The rice wine we brew at home basically only goes through a single fermentation, so the liquor is slightly cloudy. The wine dregs left after straining are used to cook sweet rice dumplings or eggs—they're delicious. The rice wine at my house will be ready tomorrow, and I’ll cook sweet rice dumplings for you then." Tongmei’s daughter mentioned that she had to go back to classes next week. Because they had a busy farming season break here, their semester started half a month later, and she felt quite content to be able to taste her family's freshly made rice wine before leaving.

To be honest, the food served at the banquet wasn't exceptionally unusual in terms of variety; it possessed a deeply primitive flavor, yet the ingredients were still the familiar ones, albeit with a profile leaning more toward sour and spicy. Chen Xin's favorite was not the sour soup fish, but the sour soup noodles.

This kind of sour soup noodle was specially made for the elderly and children. Chen Xin had eaten a bowl of hanging-pot rice and dared not eat any more, feeling that the rice was a bit too hard. Just then, Tongmei’s daughter brought over a bowl of noodles to share with her, and Chen Xin ended up eating another half-bowl.

There was no meat to speak of in the sour soup noodles—simply a plain bowl of clear-broth noodles with a tiny bit of sour chili and shredded bamboo shoots. Served alongside yellowish noodles that had a wonderful chewy texture, once she finished eating and drank down the soup, her whole body felt glowing and warm.

Tongmei’s daughter explained that medicinal herbs had been added to this sour soup to strengthen the body and promote health. Young people rarely ate it; it was mostly prepared for the elderly and children. However, if Chen Xin liked it, she would take her to eat at her aunt's house tomorrow noon.

"My aunt makes the best sour soup noodles; no one in the entire village can rival her cooking. In particular, she knows how to make sour soup shredded pheasant noodles. The shredded pheasant is air-dried wild pheasant meat, which has a completely different taste from farm-raised chicken—you'll know as soon as you eat it. Moreover, my aunt also makes sour fungus, slippery and spicy with a slight initial tartness on the palate. After chewing it a few more times, you'll taste a very special flavor. I'll tell you what it is after you eat it tomorrow."

Hearing Tongmei’s daughter's words, Chen Xin's appetite was thoroughly whetted, and she wished she could fast-forward straight to the next day.

This banquet would last the entire night. The bride’s maternal sisters and close friends would sing wedding-sending songs for her throughout the night.

The content of these wedding-sending songs was actually extremely simple; sometimes they didn't even have actual lyrical meaning, merely consisting of varying melodies and the melodious enunciation of single syllables combined into a song. One could even hear all kinds of sounds originating from nature, with men and women divided into multiple vocal parts harmonizing with one another—it was practically a large-scale human vocal symphony.