Prose: Time is like tea.

They say time is like a song, and I say time is like tea. Only by tasting it all your life can you appreciate the taste.

The lost years, such as the pictures of old movies, are both clear and vague. Some people and things seem to be yesterday.

In my childhood memory, my mother is an old hand who manages the family diligently.

Every summer, when the weather is fine, my mother takes up her backpack and snakeskin bag early in the morning and goes to the mountains seven or eight miles away to cut old tea. Mother soaked the picked tea leaves in boiling water in a cauldron for a few minutes, then fished them out with a spatula, shook them on a dustpan or dustpan cover, and dried them in the sun until the tea leaves became crisp, so they could be picked by hand and sold to supply and marketing cooperatives.

When my mother chooses tea for sale, I will follow suit. At that time, I was too young to pick tea. Mother's tea sets are all made of four corners of old sheets. Two big bags are stacked one on top of the other and then tied with hemp rope. It's seven or eight miles, and it's very difficult to walk. Fifty or sixty kilograms of tea often makes my mother breathless.

Mother said that four Jin of green tea only dried one Jin. This cart of dry tea leaves needs several carts of wet tea to dry.

At that time, there were many people who picked tea like their mothers. Every time I go to sell tea, there is a long queue, which is very lively.

I cried loudly for the simple reason that I wanted to join in the fun and ask my mother to buy more sweets. My childhood, under the care of my mother, was always carefree and full of fun.

At that time, I had no idea about the hardships and difficulties of life. When groups of people were sorting out thick and old tea sticks on the basket of the playground, I secretly took a lot and stuffed it into my mother's tea bag while others were not looking.

It doesn't matter whether I insert it or not. What's important is that when it was my mother's turn to weigh, the man with a three-sheep beard opened his mother's tea, and his white face suddenly turned black into pig liver color, and he said with a flat mouth, Look at you, I can't see if you plug it in? By your behavior, you are still a teacher. ...

My father was a teacher, and the whole country knew my mother. Mother looked at a good bag of tea, but it was filled with poor tea branches, and her neck was red with anxiety. She apologized to the man with a three-yang beard and said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I must have eaten chicken shit. Eating chicken shit is a vernacular, which means not being sensible.

There is really nothing to do. Later, my mother poured tea on the drying basket and chose it for a long time. It was not until the sun was at its peak that the man with Sanyang beard reluctantly accepted her mother's tea and ordered a second-class tea. This is the first time my mother has eaten yabakui since she sold tea. On the way back, my mother said, do you want to be greedy and cheap? Want to weigh someone else's? Good first-class tea has been turned into second-class tea by you.

I didn't know until a few years later that there were three grades of tea purchased by supply and marketing cooperatives, namely, three cents a catty of first-class tea, two cents a catty of second-class tea, and the worst was three kinds of tea with a dime a catty.

Yes, life is like tea, with grades, and it is bitter first and then sweet.

Life is just a cup of tea. If it is strong, then continue to water; Very weak. Take your time. Life is thinking in tea tasting and feeling in tea tasting. Although some stories have become memories, some people will eventually become passers-by

My parents know nothing about tea, but my father likes making tea. Father's tea has only a strong bitter taste, sour in astringency and sweet in bitterness.

As far as I can remember, after my father retired, when picking spring tea every year, my mother always picked some fine tea carefully. My father made a fire in the stove. After the pot was hot and dry, he caught a lot of green tea and put it in the iron pot. He stir-fried again and again with his bare hands. The tea leaves kept shaking between his fingers to dissipate heat, then pressed with the falling palm, rubbed and polished back and forth in the pot until it was roasted into a green flat shape. He also called himself a dragon. As a result, the dull years have a bitter taste, accompanied by parents from spring to summer, and then from summer to winter.

Before I go out to work, my mother always grabs some tea leaves and puts them in a big mineral water bottle for me to take with me. Bitter tea nurtures my growth and pushes the wheel of life forward step by step.

The bitterness on the way forward has long been clear in my memory, and it has become natural and difficult to give up.

On rainy days, I sit in front of the window and brew a cup of old tea picked by my mother, watching the tea slowly stir, float and sink in the cup. Listening to the sound of rain beating banana outside the window, dripping, this life is enough.

About the author:

Zhu Zhongxin, a native of Shadian, Tongshan, now lives in Wuhan. Member of China Miniature Fiction Society, China Poetry Society, Dongguan Writers Association, Dongshi Poetry Society and Tongshan Writers Association. He has published more than 0/00 essays and novels/kloc in newspapers and magazines such as Henan Science and Technology News, Reader's News, National Defense Times, Yalu River, Young Writers, Literary Teenagers, Canhua, Hubei Literature, China Literature and Lovers. The work "Working Part-time" won the second prize in the third "Hundred Flowers Cup" National Literature Competition.

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