▲ Zhang Ailing
When Zhang Ailing was a child, his father Zhang Zhiyi, through his cousin Zhang Zhitan, who was then the director of the Beiyang government's Ministry of Communications, sought a position as an English secretary at the Jinpu Railway Bureau. With his wife Huang Suqiong, Zhang Ailing, Zhang Zijing's sisters and brothers, he settled in Tianjin. The family lived in Tianjin for three years. After Zhang Zhitan left his post, because Zhang Zhiyi lived a debauched life, he was idle, and his popularity in the unit was not good, and the background fell, so he could only resign and returned to Shanghai with his family.
Zhang Zhitan (1884-1936), also known as Yuanbo, was a native of Fengrun (present-day Tangshan), a former Qing dynasty. Zhang Zhitan was a warlord of the Anhui clan, and in the cabinet of Jin Yunpeng, the head of the four great Kongs of the Anhui clan, he successively served as the deputy director of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the secretary general of the State Council, the deputy chief of the army, the chief of internal affairs, and the chief of communications. After the defeat of the Anhui Dynasty, he stepped down and lived in a small three-story Western-style building on Singapore Road (now Dali Road) in the British Concession of Tianjin. After Zhang Zhitan's death, the house was sold to industrialist Wang Shengyi.
▲ Zhang Zhitan
Zhang Zhitan's father was named Zhang Peixu, and he was the younger brother of Zhang Peilun (Zhang Ailing's grandfather) in the late Qing Dynasty. Zhang Ailing wrote about her memories of this small western-style building in "Little Reunion": "The local close relatives are only these two cousins and uncles, and the other family is wide. It is only called 'new house' among the domestic workers. A newly built ocean room, with a creamy pink wall inside and out, all white lacquer furniture, and a ring of blue glass beads hanging from the lampshade in each room... Eleventh Master was the chief minister of the Beiyang government. Mother Han took the Jiuli sisters and brothers to go, always sitting alone in the large living room on the second floor, and Mother Han stood behind and leaned back on their chairs, waiting for an hour or two. ”
Zhang Zhitan was very rich, and bought a lot of land in the area of Chadian (now part of Hangu District) near Lutai in the Ninghe River, where the Japanese Zhongyuan Textile Company built the Zhongyuan Qiming Farm, and once purchased more than 70,000 mu of land from the Zhang family, which is almost equivalent to the area of more than a dozen villages and a township. The Japanese opened up rice paddies here and called it "Hoda". Later, it became Beijing's "enclave" in Tianjin, Qinghe Farm.
▲ Zhang Zhitan's former residence in Tianjin
Living in Tianjin, Zhang Zhitan's daily life is mainly three things, listening to plays, going to the restaurant, and writing calligraphy.
Zhang Zhitan loved Peking Opera, and when he was in Beijing, he often invited the four famous dans to his home, invited them to eat shark fin soup and listened to their cappella. In his later years, he liked Kunqu opera and had contacts with Kunqu artists Han Shichang and Bai Yunsheng. He also exerted his strength to praise the cross-talk master Zhang Shouchen. In 1920, at the age of 22, Zhang Shouchen was already a skilled and well-known man. I met Zhang Zhitan at a church meeting in Beijing. Zhang Zhitan likes to interact with famous people, and believes that Zhang Shouchen and Jiao Dehai teachers and students give people health and pleasure with lofty ambitions, correct style, and witty fun; they give the audience useful inspiration by telling jokes, telling allusions, and discussing people's feelings, which can be called vivid teaching materials for opening up people's wisdom. So the two broke through the identity and age and became friends.
Zhang Zhitan loves calligraphy, and the study on the first floor of the apartment is lined with large articles and pen, ink and paper, and he must practice calligraphy every day. Zhang Zhitan had a close relationship with the famous Tianjin calligrapher Hua Shikui, who often came to his apartment to practice calligraphy.
▲ Zhang Zhitan calligraphy
Zhang Zhitan wrote a plaque for DengyingLou, the largest restaurant in Tianjin at that time. Dengyinglou Restaurant opened in 1913, located in Tianjin Nanshi Jianwu Street Hualou, the founder is su Zhenzhi, the investors are the famous gentleman Kang Zhenfu and Wang Mou (nicknamed the Big Knife King) who started out as a drug dealer. At the beginning of the opening, the building was simple and the business was acceptable. In 1920, Su Zhenzhi was old and infirm, and dengying building encountered a fire, so he closed his business. Jiaodong Fushan people Wang Gui and Wang Mei took over the Climbing Yinglou. Fushan and Jinan Licheng are the birthplace of Lu cuisine. The chefs of Dengying Building are also all Fukuyama people. Four years later, the restaurant moved to a new site on Dongxing Avenue in Nanshi, and later set up two shops on Binjiang Road, separating the new Yuebin Building and developing into the largest restaurant in Tianjin at that time. Wang Mei served as the president of Tianjin Hospitality Chamber of Commerce.
The boss Wang Gui knew that Zhang Zhitan's calligraphy was good, and asked him to write the name of the shop. Zhang Zhitan proposed a quid pro quo - the main cook would teach his own cook to cook an authentic Lu dish. It can be seen that Zhang Zhitan really loves to eat. He has six Chinese chefs and one Western chef at home.
▲ Climb the Ying Tower today
When Zhang Zhitan arrives at Dengying Building, he must order a few famous dishes: boiled fish fillets, nine-turn large intestines, and braised mullet eggs.
The fish fillets are named after the seasonings and are improved from the sour poured fish in Zhang Xueliang's family banquet. Bad, it is a fragrant rotten brine brewed by fragrant rotten qu and Shaoxing old wine and osmanthus brine. Use it to cook fillets, the thick and tender fish meat will add a strong and mellow bad flavor, fresh with sweetness, smooth and delicious.
The practice of turning the large intestine is very exquisite, and the large intestine must be handled cleanly, without debris, and there can be no odor. The whole large intestine should be set in nine layers, blanched in water and then fried, poured into more than 20 kinds of spices, and made with a micro-heat. A dish can produce five flavors of sour, sweet, fragrant, spicy and salty, which is called the five flavors.
Lu cuisine is good at making soups and cooking seafood, so braised mullet egg soup can be called a fine Lu cuisine. This soup is made of mullet eggs produced in Rizhao, Shandong Province, and the broth is boiled for more than 20 hours by adding pork bones, old hens, pork knuckles and other ingredients, and the only old vinegar and pepper noodles are lit, the color is milky white and translucent, light and salty, smooth and refreshing.
Zhang Zhitan also taught the vinegar pepper fish he had eaten before to the chef of Dengying Lou. This dish is fresh and tender, and the vinegar pepper brings out the milky white soup, which is salty and sour, and later became one of the signature dishes of DengyingLou. Zhang Xueliang, who often comes to DengyingLou for dinner, also praised this dish. (Text: He Yuxin)
▲ Zhang Zhitan's handwriting