Wild fruits are how farmers in Banqiaotou Township, Jixi, understand the line "a lifelong obsession with the ultimate beauty, dreaming of no place but Huizhou."

Bianzha, as the people of Banqiao call it; its formal name in books is "Elaeagnus pungens" (thorny olive). Do you still remember, as a child, herding cattle and searching everywhere with your friends for this delicious treat? It was sweet and tart, and after eating it, we would take the seeds home, soak them in salt water, and then fry them to eat.

Wild strawberry: we people of Banqiao Township call it "Dimeng," and the pronunciation of "meng" is similar to "berry," but in Huizhou "meng" (dream) has a special flavor of its own. Did you know that Tang Xianzu once wrote a poem line, "a lifelong obsession with the ultimate beauty, dreaming of no place but Huizhou"? What I mean is, if you have never had a good dream, then come to Huizhou, come to Jixi, come to the countryside of Banqiaotou Township.

Dimeng is very sweet, but when eating it you have to be careful: pull it open and check whether there are insects. In the rainy season, Dimeng easily gets worms.

Mulberry meng is the mulberry fruit. People in Huizhou like to call the fruits on trees in spring "meng," hehe. Nowadays many people use it to make infused liquor. I do not know how effective it is, but since people have been drinking it for so many years, it should not cause medicinal-liquor poisoning; otherwise no one would have kept drinking it long ago.

When I was little and went into the mulberry groves to eat mulberry meng, children are all greedy, and in one afternoon you could eat your fill, with the result that your whole mouth turned black. After going home, the adults would tell us that you must not eat too many of these mulberry meng, because eating too many will cause "wusha" (a dark measles-like condition). How scary. But I have also never seen any friend get wusha from eating mulberry meng.

After talking about so many meng, the one now is the finest of them all: Daitou meng. Because the stem of this meng looks exactly like a hat, it got this name. Actually, it is also a kind of raspberry, only its ripening period differs from that of the medicinal raspberry.

If you are a friend from elsewhere, and you come to Banqiaotou Township in this season, you will definitely get to eat these delicacies; if you are someone who grew up here, you will definitely find the taste of childhood.

Meng, how many generations of Huizhou people's childhoods has it carried?

Meng is still there waiting for you to pick it.