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墨書 Inktalez
At Garden Middle School, I enjoyed a taste of privilege, dining at the Teacher's Cafeteria with my father. However, this was not the principal's privilege; several teachers' children, like us boarding students from Class 48, also frequented this cafeteria.
Though called the Teacher's Cafeteria, it was actually located in the same place as the Student Cafeteria. The only difference was that two pots were used for cooking—one large pot for the busy Student Cafeteria and a medium pot for the less crowded Teacher's Cafeteria.
With hundreds of people to feed, rice was not cooked directly in pots. The school had several large steamers made from four long wooden boards joined together, with wooden beams on the bottom and a bamboo mat on top to allow steam to circulate. After each meal, we would wash five or six taels of our own rice in a bowl and place it in a designated steamer for the next meal. The bowls varied widely to prevent mix-ups during meals, as the school did not standardize them but assigned different steamers by class. Many students marked their bowls with colorful paint or created notches to help identify them. Even so, mix-ups occasionally occurred, but after some searching, items usually found their way back to their rightful owners. In my two years at middle school, I only encountered one instance where someone went hungry due to a mix-up, and surprisingly, it was the worker responsible for steaming rice.
The dishes in the Teacher's Cafeteria did not have a specific menu but followed a regular pattern: we had meat dishes three times a week. This was quite different from home, where we ate whatever vegetables were available from our garden and rarely had meat except on special occasions. Because of this routine, I eagerly anticipated every meat day.
In fact, since most side dishes were self-sufficient, eating small dishes in the Teacher's Cafeteria was free; only when we had meat did the finance office calculate how much each portion cost based on purchase amounts and servings. The few students dining with me had their fees covered by their fathers. I remember there was a chart in the cafeteria that clearly displayed how much everyone owed; whether principal or ordinary teacher, anyone who ate meat had to pay.
Dining at the Teacher's Cafeteria revealed significant differences in my father's eating habits compared to home. At home, due to some stomach issues, he rarely ate sour or spicy foods while I particularly enjoyed pickled vegetables with my meals. However, at school, there was often a dish of Sour Radish stir-fried with Loach. My father would typically combine two servings and pick out all but a few pieces of Loach for me while he ate only the Sour Radish.
Loach was certainly tastier than Sour Radish. Over time, I began to think that Loach was delicious too; I never considered that my father was letting me enjoy the better food nor did I feel any extra respect or love for him because of it. Even when I read Mr. Zhu Ziqing's famous essay "The Back Shadow" in high school, I still didn't deeply appreciate such parental care until many years later when I became a father myself. By then, material conditions were abundant; my son and I could enjoy whatever we liked without needing to save food for each other.
Eating at the Teacher's Cafeteria also led me to develop some habits different from those at home. After cooking dishes, the chef would always add two ladles of water into the pot; once it boiled, he would add salt and green onions before pouring this broth into a basin for everyone to use. This not only cleaned the pot but also added variety to our otherwise monotonous meals.
At home, however, my mother always discarded the water used for washing pots and insisted that drinking pot-washing broth was not a good habit. My grandmother often soaked her rice in tea due to her age; whenever my mother saw us doing this, she would warn us against it and forbade my siblings and me from using broth or tea to soak our rice.
Initially, I ignored this broth at the Teacher's Cafeteria until I saw some young teachers enjoying it heartily; eventually, I couldn't resist trying it myself and gradually grew fond of it. A few years later, my family also began adding broth after main dishes regularly. Especially during summer vacations when we had "Double Grab" days, we would always stir-fry pickled vegetables and leave a quarter of it in the pan to make sour soup by adding water afterward. After finishing our meals and sipping half a bowl of sour soup, it felt like all fatigue and summer heat vanished completely.
The food in the Student Cafeteria was certainly inferior to that in the Teacher's Cafeteria; many students even struggled to eat properly because of it, leading them to develop a habit of bringing food from home. Typical families could only prepare some pickled vegetables that could be stored long-term and eaten cold; these were packed into glass jars and taken out bit by bit as side dishes—much better than plain cafeteria food.
Some families with poorer conditions relied entirely on bringing food from home and used the school's steamers to cook rice quietly on the side with minimal vegetables to save on several yuan of meal fees during that period.
Families with better conditions might occasionally include some meat like shredded pork or intestines among their brought dishes or simply use more cooking oil when stir-frying.
Long Yunshi, who always ranked first in our grade and towered over me at that time, frequently brought vegetables from home each week. Sometimes when I grew tired of cafeteria food and wanted a change of taste, we would swap meals happily.
The Teacher's Cafeteria employed both chefs and workers who were just in their twenties; they had taken over their parents' roles and were living off "national grain." Due to their rural backgrounds and lack of education, they couldn't become teachers and ended up working in the cafeteria instead.
Being someone who loved good food, I quickly befriended them and got to taste some things early while occasionally helping out with minor tasks—one of which brought me great joy: drawing water from the well.
In front of the cafeteria stood a deep well because of its elevated location; water lay about ten feet below its mouth. Each time we needed water, we had to lower a bucket using a rope close enough to grab onto before yanking it up sharply so that it flipped over and filled up before slowly pulling it back up.
This task required skill as well as strength; being small built meant I struggled initially since I'd never seen such wells before at home. For several days I fumbled around without filling even a few bowls of water but eventually managed to fill one after several attempts—only then realizing I lacked strength to pull it up without help from stronger classmates like Luo Yongzhong.
Despite these challenges, I found joy in this work.
Months later, they installed a thick wooden pole beside the well with a hole drilled through its center where they attached a lever; one end secured an iron chain holding a wooden bucket while the other end was tied down with a heavy stone. From then on, once you learned how to fill up water efficiently, lifting it became much easier.
One time, a teacher living near the mountains caught a wild goat and skinned it right by the well using plenty of water—all brought up by me without feeling tired at all.
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