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it’s mid-autumn festival again, and most of the gifts given by relatives and friends are mooncakes. gift boxes may be complex or simple, cantonese or suzhou style, fresh meat or vegan, handmade or organic. here is a hong kong old brand, and there is a new online celebrity store...

i refused all the requests, and explained with an apologetic smile every year: "my family used to run a mooncake factory. i grew up surrounded by mooncakes, and i am most afraid of eating mooncakes!" when others asked me again, i was very secretive. it's not that there are any food processing secrets that cannot be exposed, but it's just hard to explain in a few words.

but i couldn't resist asking again. the mooncake skin always contains stuffing, which can't be hidden. every year, there is always a friend who gives me mooncakes, but i hold his hand and give him a story about the mooncake factory. this year, i will tell you about it again.

1. from “workshop” to “factory”

our family's food processing factory, before it could be called a "factory", also had a "workshop" stage. i was still young at that time, and i only remember the sound of mooncake molds of all sizes slapping on the chopping board one after another, crackling, like firecrackers. at that time, my father was still a young man, and the family business was just starting, so he had to work with sleeves and aprons. i always feel that when he played mahjong later, when he got a good card, he would slam the "fa cai" card on the table, which was the momentum he practiced when he slapped the mooncakes. but the former is profitable.

later, as the production increased, an assembly line was built, and the workshop became a small factory, moving from henan to hunan. at the same time, several henan workers were taken away with them. every year after the spring festival, these workers would return to the factory and bring a few more fellow villagers with them. they could get referral fees by counting the number of people. we are anhui people who opened a food processing factory in hunan where people speak henan dialect. my family speaks with an anhui accent, the factory speaks with a henan accent, and even the teachers in the township primary school speak changsha dialect in class. i grew up switching between these three dialects.

the factory mainly processes egg yolk pies, shaqi ma and mooncakes. june to september is the peak season for mooncake production. during the busiest period, we even have to work in shifts day and night, and the production line is almost non-stop. this season also happened to be my summer vacation. when i was in elementary school, i was not diligent in my studies. i especially loved to run around in the workshop and was so idle that people disliked me.

it was the first decade of the millennium, and the automated machinery for mooncakes was already very mature. the crust was automatically mixed by a machine, and the filling was a ready-made fruit-flavored winter melon puree, which was bright in color and sweet in smell. the "mooncake wrapping" machine had a slot on the left and a slot on the right, one for the dough and one for the filling. the machine automatically squeezed out long strips of the filling, and then passed through the blade, and suddenly became small cubes of uniform size. then the molds were pressed one by one, and the mooncakes came out from the conveyor belt.

2. assembly lines, ovens, and blistered fingers

for a while, i particularly liked to stay by the assembly line, listening to the humming of the machines and the rhythmic beating of the molds. i felt that everything was so orderly and stable. sometimes, when i was lost in thought while looking at the conveyor belt, i felt a sense of weightlessness and flying, as if i were a mooncake wandering in the milky way. later, when i took a physics class, i realized that this was "relative motion."

in shen fu's "six records of a floating life", mosquitoes were smoked to make blue clouds and white cranes, while i counted mooncakes to travel through the milky way. in today's popular terms, it was probably a "flow". in order to find the mechanism that produced this wonderful experience, i ran to the production line every day to try to replicate it. later, i finally found that the key variable was to have a blurred focus and slightly cross-eyed look. i finally gave up this hobby before my cross-eyed look was about to freeze, and my interest has shifted to baking mooncakes.

the oven in the factory is a vertical oven, which looks like an elevator, but it has a single door that can be pulled by hand. it is very heavy and dark inside. the male worker who manages the oven once threatened me that he would lock me up if i made trouble again, so even if i was rampaging around, i would avoid the oven.

the mooncakes are brushed with egg yolk (this is the key to a good-looking color), and placed in rows on a baking tray, which is then inserted into the baking rack, which is finally pushed into the oven. i like the mooncakes that are a little burnt, with a very crispy outer skin, but i don't like the fillings in the middle, which are sweet and sticky. so, when i eat mooncakes, i only eat the mooncake skin. fortunately, my family has a factory, which can temporarily support my "hobby".

one time, i even used a spare mold to make myself a mooncake with pure crust, and swapped it with regular mooncakes on the baking tray. unfortunately, after this pure crust mooncake was put on the baking tray, put into the grill, and turned around in the oven for a few times, it was completely unfamiliar to me. watching the mooncakes go into the packaging machine and come out neatly dressed, i just felt that i had let a stranger get away with it.

in the assembly line processing of mooncakes, the packaging is probably the most labor-intensive part.each mooncake has a square plastic tray. these trays are pressed together to save space during transportation and need to be separated manually. hold the tray between your thumb and index finger, and use the friction between your index finger and the plastic to remove the tray. the secret is that your fingers should not be too dry or too wet, so you have to lick your fingers first and rub them together before you start, just like counting money.

no matter how hot the weather was, i would not go to the workshop anymore. i stayed in my room watching cartoons like an ordinary primary school student, but i did not stop working. i licked my fingers while peeling the mooncake trays. i was ambitious and fought for the same piecework price as the temporary workers in the packaging room. i was at the forefront of equal pay for equal work and felt like i was counting money. until blisters formed on my thumb and index finger, and the gold plastic foil of the trays was pierced into my fingerprints, my temporary job career was over. in the last few days of summer vacation, i will use my injured fingers to finish the untouched page of "happy summer vacation".

3. there is also stuffing in the mooncake skin

it was another summer vacation, and the factory moved to a new park. the rent in the new park was much lower. rather than an industrial park, it was more like an agricultural park. when entering the village, there was a big sign similar to "vegetable production base". there were indeed more farmlands than factories in the village.

our home was probably one of the first batch of factories to move in. on the left was a sofa cover factory, on the right was a spicy noodle factory run by a fellow villager, opposite was a magnolia nursery, and behind were vegetable fields. in our hometown’s vegetable fields, winter melons grew on the ground, but here the winter melons were hung on the racks in vertical strips, as neatly arranged as the mooncakes on the grill at home.

in the first few days after we moved in, two things happened. one was that the owner of the magnolia across the street came to our door and sued the young men and women in our factory for sneaking into his magnolia forest at night. the other thing was that my father held the first staff meeting in the cafeteria. the new factory had a new look and asked everyone to give their opinions. young ah jun raised his hand and mentioned food, rest days and labor laws. from then on, the factory never held a staff meeting again.

the workshop of the new factory is bigger, and various cartons are stacked in piles, which is a ready-made maze. i played hide-and-seek here all day with the child of the winter melon-growing family behind me, whom i had just met. once, i climbed to the top of the box and jumped around. then, in the corner of the warehouse, near the window, i saw a hollowed-out corner, like a piece of tetris missing. i looked inside and saw a quilt of medium size embedded underneath, with two pillows tilted on top. i discovered a secret and decided to keep it secret. as the mid-autumn festival approached, i was secretly worried when i saw the cartons in the corner getting shorter and shorter. this year, production was extremely busy with orders coming in continuously. the cartons were getting lower and higher, higher and lower, and the adults had no time to investigate what was happening in the corner.

trucks come in and out once a day, carrying plastic-wrapped mooncakes that are still hot in the afternoon, unloading them at gaoqiao wholesale market, and then transferring them to large trucks with out-of-town license plates. then they drive to mawangdui vegetable wholesale market to buy vegetables, always sacks of cabbage and potatoes. i am also surprised that there are vegetable farmers around the factory, but we have to buy vegetables at the wholesale market.

the closer it gets to the mid-autumn festival, the more returns there are. packers not only have to pack, but also unpack, which is like my homework that i have to erase and rewrite after i finish it. the inner trays can be recycled, but those mooncakes that have already smelled a bit of oil are no longer neatly arranged. regardless of flavor and size, they are piled up in the corner like a small hill. they are thrown into the blender in small batches, mixed with flour and egg liquid, and the colorful fillings are cut open and squeezed out. gradually, the colors are no longer visible, and it becomes a plain dough. i used to eat mooncake skin instead of mooncake filling, but today i found that there is also filling in the mooncake skin. from now on, i will never eat mooncakes again.

4. armed fight at the village entrance with the pig farm

after the mid-autumn festival, the production line finally stopped, and the entire factory was uncomfortably quiet. the mooncakes that were returned could not be employed again, so they had to be sold cheaply to farmers as pig feed. one farmer offered a higher price, but my father went back on his word and broke the deal. the original buyer was unhappy and called people to cause trouble. in the end, two farms and a mooncake factory had a small-scale fight at the entrance of the village on a summer night.

by then, i had already started school. i vaguely knew that things were not going well. i felt scared, but i didn’t want to know who would win or lose. moreover, i was not happy in the new school. i was the only foreigner in the class. i probably had a fever, but the adults didn’t care about me. i hid in the female workers’ dormitory. xiao min found me. she touched my forehead, helped me take a bath, and changed me into clean clothes. that night, i slept in her bed. there was no pillow on her bed. i hugged her arms, buried my face in her shoulders, and kept talking in tears: my "standard mandarin" was laughed at, and someone beat me...

xiao min touched my head again and again, telling me not to be afraid. there was a warm and greasy fragrance on her bed, like mooncakes just out of the oven, mixed with the smell of butter, fruit, flour and soap. i gradually fell asleep.

the cartons in the corner of the warehouse were finally cleared. the sun slanted down on the corners, and the cement floor seemed to be dust-free. i almost thought i was dreaming. until the girl who grew winter melons quietly took me around to the back of the factory. outside the window was a drainage ditch with three sides of light. there were a lot of plastic objects in the ditch. one day it rained heavily, and the things in the ditch were brought to her field.

the cement canal with three inverted trapezoidal sides is nearly half a meter wide. it was originally used for farmland. you can go through the fields and lanes along the canal, and it seems to have no end. the administrative village where the park is located is surrounded by the liuyang river on three sides. no matter which side you go up the river bank or which direction you go, you will end up outside the village. i rode my bicycle up the river bank and rode out of the village to start junior high school.

every summer vacation is still the peak season for mooncake production. i no longer indulge in the rhythm of the assembly line and the secrets in the warehouse, nor do i hide in the dormitory of female workers when i am sad. my mandarin gradually takes on a "plastic flavor". i began to have the pressure of schoolwork, gossiping girlfriends and more than one secret crush. only on teacher's day before mid-autumn festival, i would give mooncakes to teachers.

every morning when i rode my bike out, the factories were farther away from me. when i rode my bike down the riverbank, there were more factories. the farmland was gradually covered with factories, and the green was replaced by gray cotton tiles. the magnolia nursery in front of my house had long disappeared, but i had no memory of it.the canals were gradually blocked by the factory buildings, and their function changed from irrigation to sewage disposal. compared with the waste on the winter melon fields in the past, the waste on the fields today is really a case of "small waste showing big waste".

5. leaving the mooncake factory

when i was in high school, the factory's production line was transferred to a relative. my father changed his career and returned to his hometown in anhui, while i stayed alone in hunan to study. occasionally, i would go to my relatives' house on weekends. their factory was also in the original park, but it belonged to another village group. things and people have really changed. now only the machines on the production line are the most familiar to me, and even most of the workers are local.

at noon, when i was getting lunch in the kitchen, i suddenly heard the henan dialect. it was ah jun and xiao min. xiao min got two portions of lunch and sat face to face with ah jun. she looked at me and asked me with a smile, "you're back!" just like when i was a kid. but i couldn't do it like when i was a kid, and buried my face in xiao min's arms. my relatives told me that ah jun and xiao min had finally gotten married.

the women's restroom at my relative's factory has three squat toilets lined up side by side, with no partition in the middle. i chose the one at the back, and while i was sweating profusely from constipation, i wished that no one else would come in. but it was xiao min who came in. she squatted in the middle, and our legs were so close that they were touching. i was thinking about our past private friendship, and i really hoped that i would be a "sensible girl", but in the end, we were getting along in such a private way. xiao min slid open her phone and played a short video of a child's laughter. the few seconds of the video were replayed back and forth several times. finally, she handed me the phone and said it was her child, who was over one year old and had just been weaned at the beginning of the year. now he was being taken care of by his mother-in-law in his hometown.

a few years later, i went to another province to attend university. i learned about the demolition of the industrial park from my junior high school classmates. my relative's factory moved to another city. now the son is in charge of the family. when i went to visit my relative, the factory had adjusted its production line and no longer made mooncakes.

ah jun was still there, and we just nodded to each other. relatives whispered that xiao min had left and "ran away" with a xiangxi man from the factory.

my family used to have a mooncake factory, but it is gone, and even the site where it was located no longer exists. my memories are unfounded and difficult to verify. it seems that by refusing to eat mooncakes, i am recalling and telling everything about the mooncake factory.i am also analyzing and processing my memories like processed food.

my ingredient list is extending infinitely: those moments of weightlessness, the glittering mooncake inner tray, the colorful fruit fillings with the skin chewed off, the disappearing pure-skin mooncakes, the secrets in the magnolia forest and the corners of the warehouse, xiao min’s mobile phone video, the smoky and hot smell of margarine, fruit essence, flour and eggs... and the expanded factory area, the disappeared farmland and villages, the silted up canals and the dry liuyang river.as for me, i was riding my bike along the riverbank, going farther and farther away.

in 2019, i returned to the demolished park and climbed up to the old site of the mooncake factory. photo by: zt