Pictures forwarded from a friend, good eats from my hometown.
I edited and processed them a bit, changing the original Hakka language post into a Guilin dialect version... Haha, haha.
Wu Ren -- Myrcina: We also call this Myrcina. I once thought it was called "escape military rations," but anyway, it's something like that sound. When eating, you should remove the lid on top, otherwise it won't digest well, haha, you know the consequences... This thing is available for sale on the streets when the season arrives, so you don't necessarily have to climb a mountain to eat it...
Wild strawberries: Sour and sweet. We don't eat much of this because small animals like it too, and generally, the places where they grow have thorns! But they are very delicious...
This one seems to grow closer to the ground. Allegedly, most of them have been eaten by snakes...
Chestnuts: There were a few trees on my way to school when I was little. Every time I passed by, I would pretend to be calm, and when the adults weren't paying attention, I would throw a few stones at the tree, and chestnuts would fall down~~~ Haha... But don't walk under the tree during strong winds, as being hit by falling chestnuts is not good. These spiky balls hurt a lot if you get pricked; it's not just pain, but swelling!
During Qingming tomb-sweeping, we could pick these, which are very sweet.
Tea ear: In our local dialect, we call this "tea hang." The white ones are even better. They are easy to pick in early spring. There used to be tea trees behind the bamboo grove at my house! Picking these feels like finding treasure!
Mulberries: These are also sweet. We had two mulberry trees in front of our house. As a child, I used to pick these on the back mountain. If you find a mulberry tree, you must keep it a secret because there are many children who like to raise silkworms for fun; otherwise, all the leaves will be taken! Our back mountain was a great place for treasure hunting! Later, when my younger brother was old enough, he also liked raising silkworms. He was more aggressive and dug up the mulberry tree to plant it in front of our door! On the day of my sister's wedding last year, the two mulberry trees in front of our house bore fruit, and I picked a lot to eat! However, I've never seen black ones, probably because I ate them all before they turned black!
(Hakka: Yuan Ye. Some people call it Du Ye. There is a smaller kind. Before I started junior high school, every winter I would go to the bottom of the tree to pick them, and often on the way home from school, I would be picking them, not returning home in time. Picking them while walking and eating them along the way really brings back a lot of childhood memories.)
It turns out this can be eaten too. When we were kids, we often saw many of these fallen under the tree, but we never ate them, always thinking they were food for squirrels... It looks a bit like beechnuts! I used to follow others to pick beechnuts, which are also covered in spiky balls like chestnuts! They are very delicious. There's another smaller kind called rice beechnut... Roasting them makes a great snack to pass the time!
This one I don't know what it's called in our area, translated it should be "bird pear"... Apparently, it's loved by birds...
I've eaten this one, in our area we call it chicken claws. There was a huge one in the primary school campus, and many fell down. They were also sold on the street. The fatter ones were very sweet when chewed...
Hakka: Tangping Ye
Scientific name: Goji berry
This thing, in our area, is called "jar lid" (a feature of Guilin dialect is liking to repeat words). Before eating, you need to remove the thorns and open the lid, digging out the hairy seeds inside. You must dig them out completely, or eating the hair can be very uncomfortable! Although it's sweet, it's too complicated to eat, so I'm not particularly fond of it, but my mom loves picking them for me to eat!
This one, Rhamnus, we have a lot at home. My dad planted a whole garden of them, supposedly as big as a ping-pong ball... But the ones my dad planted, I've never eaten. On the way to the market when I was little, there were several extremely large ones. Under one of the Rhamnus trees was a grassy resting spot. My sister was very good at climbing trees and would climb up to pick some. Most of them weren't red because too many people had picked them, and since they weren't privately owned, no one managed them...
Haha, this... Is the legendary famous something...
The name sounds a bit strange; in our local dialect, we call it "sheep milk"
It's quite tasty, but there aren't many of these on flat land; you have to climb a mountain to pick them!
This one I haven't eaten, but it looks like bird food...
I've eaten this one; we call it "sour mimi," which is the legendary three-leaf clover... Here in Shanghai, they are very common in the streets and alleys. Even their red leaves are used as ornamental plants...
Hakka: Mountain Persimmons
I've eaten these, lots and lots and lots... When picked, they need to be buried in rice bran for a while before eating...
The following few I've forgotten their names, and there are a few more I couldn't find pictures of. I remember picking another one called fat pearls on the way home from school. They turn black when ripe, and we would often climb the mountains with our friends to pick them, even fighting over them...
This thing, Shen Ning said they call it "gu niao" in Northeast China...
Hakka: Ai Ban
How many kinds have you eaten?
I haven't eaten the latter few... The last one looks very similar to Shanghai's green rice cakes...
Actually, when I was a kid, there were a lot of snacks... It's just that now I can't go back and take pictures of each one. Wild grapes left a deep impression; they were black clusters but still very sour. A few years ago, my aunt picked some to make wine, the legendary mountain grape wine, haha...
Turns out we didn't lack snacks when we were kids...
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