Oh Soul, come back! Why should you go far away?
All your household has come to do you honor, all kinds of good noodles are ready:
Round rice noodle (圆粉), flat rice noodle (扁粉), wide rice noodle(宽河粉), mixed all with wheat noodle(面条),
sour, spicy, sweet, hot and cold: there are noodles of all flavors.
Snails cooked with hot pepper and other natural spices,
Spicy and sour blended in the soup of Liuzhou Snails Rice Noodle(柳州螺蛳粉);
minced pork stir fried with ginger slice, garlic and pepper flakes, becoming the soup of Nanning Old Friend Rice Noodle(南宁老友粉);
Fresh filtered dry rice noodle poured with marinade(卤汁), roast pork and beans, here is comes the Guilin Marinade Rice Noodle(桂林卤菜粉) ;
Wide rice noodle, sweet and sour sauce, pork, pickled cucumber and so on, combine to form the Binyang’s Acid Rice Noodle(宾阳酸粉);
Guiling jelly(龟苓膏) and golden sponge cake(黄金糕),
Silk like soybean milk, sweet and fresh, filled the paper cups,
mung bean soup, strained of impurities, clear drink, cool and refreshing;
Here are laid out the patterned ladles, and here is sparkling wine!
I choose to imitate the the piece “The Summons of the Soul” from Chu Ci by Qu Yuan because Qu Yuan is a very famous ancient poet and I have learnt some of his pieces when I was in high school in China. Also, the piece start with an exclamatory sentence and a question, which interests me.
The summon “Oh Soul, come back” is what makes the piece so special. In the old times, people believe that when the should leaves, it is necessary to hold a soul gathering ceremony and call for the return of the soul. The purpose of Qu Yuan to write this piece is to “summon” the soul of the King Chu Huai(楚怀王), the old king who died years ago, to come back. In the piece, Qu Yuan listed various delicious food, which explains the importance of food in ancient China and how delicious food is enough to “call the soul back”.
In my writing, I summon the souls of people who leave home to study or work to come back. I listed the various kinds of noodles in my hometown Guangxi, because those are definitely what can “call my soul back” to my home town. At the beginning, I list different shapes of noodles, corresponding to “Rice, broomcorn, early wheat, mixed all with yellow millet” in Qu Yuan’s piece. Then I list many flavors of noodles and their major ingredients in response to the main dishes Qu Yuan wrote in his piece. And finally, I talk about some Chinese style desserts and drinks like he did. Through imitating Qu Yuan’s piece, I notice that in both ancient China and Modern China, desserts and drinks are also indispensable in a meal. For dessert, Qu Yuan mentioned “ried honey-cakes of rice flour and malt sugar sweetmeats” and I bring up “Guiling jelly(龟苓膏) and golden sponge cake(黄金糕)”. For drink, Qu Yuan described the wine in detail as it is the most common drink when people are going to express their feeling, but I talk about soybean milk and mung bean soup as they are what we usually have with noodles. Moreover, I find that noodle is the core of Guangxi cuisine. There are many kinds of noodle in Guangxi, and almost every city in Guangxi has its signature noodle. For example, Nanning has Nanning Old Friend Rice Noodle(南宁老友粉), Binyang has Binyang’s Acid Rice Noodle(宾阳酸粉).
Both the piece I read and the piece I wrote explain how food can gather people together and demonstrate Chinese people’s love of food. Qu Yuan use food to summon the soul of the King Chu Huai to come back, and I use noodles to appeal people to go home. Food has the power to make people home and food is something that people miss the most when they are away from home; food is an embodiment of hometown. Also, Chinese people love to eat, so people are willing to put so much effort and use their creativity to make various kinds of food, like the multiple dishes Qu Yuan mentioned and the various flavors of noodles I wrote.
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