Book Synopsis
Book Tags
Donation Rankings
Comment
0 Comments
You May Also Like
墨書 Inktalez
At Third Middle School, I truly experienced the essence of the Cafeteria. Dongkou Third High School has over a thousand students, and aside from a few who live in Gaosha Town, most board at the school. As a result, the Student Cafeteria has become the largest single-story building on campus.
From the inside, the Cafeteria resembles a large factory workshop, with few columns and supported solely by four brick walls and a dense array of beams. On the left side of the cafeteria are two steaming rice pools and a cement-built hot water pool. A small door connects the Steaming Rice Pool to the hot water pool, leading outside to the cafeteria's power source—a vintage coal boiler that can steam rice for all students and provide hot water. In winter, it can supply half an hour of hot water for the bathing area.
On the right side of the cafeteria, over a hundred square tables are neatly arranged, with five to six tables assigned to each class. Including repeat students, there are twenty classes in total, with each table accommodating eight students. The front and right sides of the cafeteria each have a double door; the front door is for students entering, while the right door connects to the Cooking Room and Washing Pool. We can only view the Cooking Room from a distance, as entry is prohibited. The Washing Pool consists of two long troughs made simply from cement and gravel, with two rows of pipes above each trough, each row featuring twenty faucets. The scene during rice washing is quite spectacular.
According to the school's admission notice, like most students, I brought over twenty pounds of rice to school. After completing my registration and entering my dormitory, I realized I was missing two essential items for dining in the cafeteria—a Rice Jar and utensils. Fortunately, Gaosha Town is one of the largest towns in the county with relatively abundant supplies. My requirements were modest; I was familiar with Gaosha's streets and alleys. I quickly stepped out of school and jogged a few hundred meters to buy a jar capable of storing about thirty pounds of rice along with a lid. I also purchased a large clay bowl and asked the shopkeeper for a pair of bamboo chopsticks. Within half an hour, I had everything sorted out.
Although there is a Cafeteria, it is not large enough to accommodate over a thousand students all at once. The school administration is well-versed in managing this situation by having students queue by grade and class for meals. Whenever the meal bell rings, students who have lined up early in the corridor outside their classrooms proceed in order—first are the third-year students who are favored by both principals and teachers, followed by second-year students. As for us first graders, we naturally fall at the end of the line. Our Class Three happens to be positioned in between five first-grade classes; even at our fastest pace, it takes over ten minutes after the bell rings before we can move forward. By the time we enter the cafeteria, most students have already left with their bowls in hand. In the steaming rice boxes, only a few bowls remain scattered about, which saves us time searching.
There are instances when bowls are snatched up by other students before we get our turn; fortunately, I've never encountered such situations myself. However, that clay bowl did not accompany me until graduation; after serving me for just over a year, it succumbed to daily exposure to high-temperature steam.
Once I got my bowl of rice, there was one crucial step left: eight students would gather around a square table to elect one student to distribute food from a large clay bowl placed on the table. This role of food distributor is highly coveted among everyone; although no one would openly take more for themselves, those growing bodies that expend significant energy developed a new method of cheating—giving slightly more to their close friends and redistributing once outside.
To avoid favoritism, everyone took turns being the food distributor; however, if someone was late or absent for some reason, competition would inevitably arise. One particularly memorable incident occurred during our first-grade second semester when our designated distributor could not come due to family matters. The first two students who arrived eagerly reached out their hands; unfortunately, that poor old clay bowl cracked into two pieces under their combined force, spilling its contents all over the table and leaving everyone with a dinner devoid of vegetables. Even more amusing was that one of those involved was supposed to be as gentle as water—a girl—fighting over nothing but a bowl of Tofu Dregs!
Yet at that time, Tofu Dregs ranked second among our dishes; first place went to meat served twice weekly—if we were lucky enough to get five slices per person, it was considered an act of generosity from the school. The other common dishes were always pumpkin, Winter Melon, green beans, Cabbage, etc., all boiled in salted water with hardly any oil visible. If it weren't for our rural backgrounds and having grown accustomed to insufficient meals since childhood, very few could manage to swallow these dishes down.
In 2007, during our thirty-year reunion for graduating classmates from that year—around one or two hundred attendees regardless of wealth—we gathered at Third Middle School's newly built Student Cafeteria for a banquet titled "Recalling Hardships." Among the main dishes served was Tofu Dregs—a dish deeply etched in our memories—most classmates enjoyed it thoroughly.
Comment 0 Comment Count