Luo Yusheng (1914-2002), stage name Xiaocaiwu, she herself does not know her exact place of birth, only that she was born in Jiangnan, and was adopted by the jianghu artist Luo Caiwu when she was 6 months old. At an early age, she drifted with her adoptive parents in Shanghai Great World, Nanjing Confucius Temple, and Hankou Grand Stage, and at the age of 4, she began to perform juggling with her adoptive father, and Luo Caiwu changed her tricks to transform Luo Yusheng out, and she sang a piece of Erhuang to the audience. At the age of 17, Luo Yusheng officially sang the Jingyun big drum, and then worshiped Han Yonglu as a teacher to learn the Liu (Baoquan) school of big drums, and later adopted the shaobai (Fengming) school and the bai (Yunpeng) school, forming the Luo school style, leading the way for more than half a century. In 1985, the crew of the TV series "Four Generations Together" and composer Lei Zhenbang and his daughter Lei Lei and student Wen Zhongjia invited Luo Yusheng to record the opening song "Reorganizing the Rivers and Mountains for Future Life", and once the TV series was broadcast, Luo Yusheng's name also spread throughout the north and south of the river.
Luo Yusheng is recognized as a master of art, which is well known to everyone, but Luo Lao is also a gourmet, and there are not so many people who know. Luo Yusheng loves Tianjin snacks. When she was young, she liked salty and spicy tastes. In the 1930s and 1940s, she performed in the tea garden every night, and after the performance, the backstage manager always prepared a set of pancake dumplings for her. Full of blowing and singing, you can't eat too much before singing, let alone eat salty and spicy, so every day Luo Yusheng relies on this extra meal after singing the supper.
▲ Luo Yusheng in the 40s
Luo Yusheng often went to the two "Wan Shun Cheng" in Nanshi and Persuasion Field to eat Gaba vegetables, Eight Treasure Lotus Seed Porridge and Osmanthus Red Bean Porridge. Wan Shuncheng (Jingjin Snack Bar) is an unprecedented snack bar in Tianjin, founded by the three brothers Duan Yuji, Duan Yulin and Duan Yuxiang from Duliu Town, Jinghai. In the early years of the Republic of China, the three brothers went to Tianjin to make a living, picking up burdens to sell small jujube rice and eight treasure lotus seed porridge. Later, the "Wan Shun Cheng Restaurant" was opened on Dongxing Street in Nanshi City, adding Gaba dishes and vegetarian buns. Tianjin's Gaba vegetables are divided into two kinds of meat and vegetarian, Wan Shuncheng is meat brine, fat lean meat slices, yellow flower fungus hook. After the opening of the persuasion field, the Duan family brothers opened the Wanshun ingredient number at the intersection of Mei Dafu Road and Dou Consul General Road (now the intersection of Changchun Road, Liaoning Road), and added fried cakes, ring dumplings, wontons, chicken noodle soup, rice dumplings, cut cakes, donkey rolls, rice root, fried braised seeds and other snacks. Business hours from 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., no rest throughout the day, eat as you go. After the public-private partnership in the 1950s, Wan Shuncheng merged into one, adding mochi baked cakes, shortbread, curry dumplings, bread, honey twist flowers, and lama cakes. In the mid-1960s, it was renamed As a Jingjin Snack Bar. The signature snack here is osmanthus bean porridge - using high-quality red beans, steamed and flattened, and then boiled in a large iron pot, adding osmanthus flowers, white sugar and other accessories in turn in the process of boiling, sweet and thick. It's hard to survive that effect at home.
Luo Yusheng loves to eat Western food. In the 1960s and 1970s, the part of Tianjin people with superior living conditions often went to Qishilin. Although during this period, due to the lack of materials, the Cheese forest was becoming increasingly depressed, but there were still fixed seats for the few remaining old patrons, they came, what to eat and drink, most of the old waiters knew what to do, and did not need them to order their own food. Luo Yusheng was one of these old patrons. She often arrives in Cheeseland at 6 p.m. on time, and the waiter doesn't ask, a jar of braised beef, two slices of bread, and almost never changes the recipe.
▲ Jar of braised beef from Cheeselin
In the 1980s, the best hotel in Tianjin was the Cadre Club, to paraphrase a common saying that spread across the streets — there was no one, it only entertained enough cadres of a certain level, not for ordinary people. Luo Yusheng lived in The Racecourse Road at that time, and often walked to the cadre club with his granddaughter to eat on weekends, and the dishes he had to order every time were sea cucumber with sesame sauce, plucked apples, and sour and spicy soup.
The Cadre Club has a celebrity chef named Rong Yihai. Master Rong's special dish, there is a steamed hundred ziyuan fish, under the turtle cover put ten kinds, each of the ten small balls, such as shrimp balls, dried scallop balls, carrot balls, winter melon pills, etc.; there is also a steamed plate dragon sauce white eel, that era there was no plastic paper, he used woolen paper to seal the pot steaming, add brandy wine, Wang Guangying loves to eat; Pu Zuo loves to eat pineapple grunt meat made by Master Rong.
▲ South Building of Tianjin Cadre Club
Master Rong has many tricks to cook, for example, the dried sautéed beef shreds can not be cut too finely; the taste of the fish flavor is sweet and sour, spicy, the aroma is shiitake mushrooms, and the hemp is pepper. He is good at making fish, and the five willow fish, Cantonese steamed fish, and sauce fish are the most distinctive. Elder Luo was very familiar with Master Rong, came to the cadre club to eat, and sometimes went to the kitchen to say hello and chat with Master Rong. Luo Laoneng often chatted with tianjin's most famous chef, indicating that Luo Lao could eat and know how to eat.
Luo Lao is very fond of eating the cream mousse of the cadre club, and this pastry is from the hands of Hou Fu, the pastry chef of the cadre club. Premier Zhou Enlai accompanied foreign dignitaries to Tianjin, where he specially wanted to eat the cream mousse made by Master Hou at the banquet, and also went to the kitchen to visit Master Hou. Later, two chefs from the Great Hall of the People in Beijing came to learn to make pastry with Master Hou. In the 1980s, the recipe of the Great People's Hall included cream mousse. Master Hou could not write, barely could write his own name, and was later promoted to deputy manager at the deputy department level.
Luo Lao has a big drum with a Beijing rhyme called "Literati and Wine", which compiles various wines into a singing lyric: "Only when there is wine can you have a stream of consciousness, and you can travel in the heavens on earth... Moutai wine is also soft and mellow, and Wuliangye is the most relieving. Apricot blossom village Fenjiu Qingxiu, Luzhou special qu fragrant throat. There is also that Shaoxing yellow, Yuanyuan red, rice flower carving full of fragrant mouth, wei meisi, rose dew, osmanthus aging drunken fang xiu... It is even more gratifying that the world is more splendid, and China connects five continents. Scotland, whiskey and ice cubes, Napoleon, brandy mixed with snowballs, champagne sydney, gin, for peace, friendship and cultural exchanges... "It is estimated that Luo Lao usually loves to drink, otherwise how could he sing such a paragraph? (Text: He Yuxin, special thanks to Mr. Sakura Hongye, who used to work at the Cadre Club, for providing materials)