Before the reform and opening up, Yuyangguan Town was a county-administered town in Wufeng County, which was once subordinate to Yuguan People's Commune for a long time. The town said that it was not big, and a long street from east to west was divided into four sections to form the lower street, the main street, the paddy street, and the dyeing street, each section of different lengths, or 100 meters or hundreds of meters. The shortest river street is pasted on the back of the main street, and the west end of the street enters from the demolished horizontal street, east of the middle wharf, on the Laijia Alley, and connected with the main street and the lower street; it is not small, urban residents plus schools, department stores, hospitals, grain management offices, food stations, supply and marketing cooperatives and other unit workers, nearly 5,000 people enjoy the ticket supply of planned materials, which is comparable to the scale of the county town. Paddy Field Street is the commercial center of the town, next door to the door with shops, during the festival, bustling, crowded, lively scene is no less than today's Victory Road. Climbing up from Shuitian Street, a large-scale "State-owned Yuguan Hotel" is located at the head of Zhengjie Street. In those years, there were only two restaurants in the town, this state-run hotel and another collectively owned "cooperative hotel". The people in the town commonly call the state-run hotel "Welfare", and also call "Welfare" "High-class Restaurant", representing the top level of Tuhan cuisine in the Yuyang River Basin. There are eight square tables in the high-end restaurant, each table is surrounded by four benches; on the counter selling brands, a large number of pork buns are stacked like mountains, the bun skin is covered with oil, steaming, and it is eye-catching; there is a slip of vegetable board hanging on the wall, what pepper fried meat slices, garlic sprouts fried pork liver, sauerkraut stewed meat skin, all delicious dishes. One of the "slices of meat stewed tofu" combines the essence of the taste of the fishing ocean, which makes the car drivers who go south and north salivate. The shuttle bus from Wufeng County to Yidu County, passing by hefeng County and Laifeng County trucks in Yuyangguan Town, rushed this signature dish, and rushed to the road to order "welfare" to eat. Sliced meat stewed tofu is fried with lean and fatty slices of meat, homemade bean paste is roasted in red soup, tofu sliced, and fried to two sides yellow. Earthen bowl dish: fried tofu with a base, fried meat slices on the lid, green garlic seedlings wearing a hat. Triangle stove to stir the fire wire, simmer slow simmering, wow! The color and fragrance are strong, and the delicacies are delicious. Drivers with good conditions may either slowly taste or feast. "Meat slice stewed tofu" is well-known and well-known. Attentive diners find that in addition to the craftsmanship of the stir-fry chef, the main ingredient, tofu, is the key to deliciousness.
The "tofu" of meat slice stewed tofu is produced in a small workshop on the lower street - "Rice Dumpling Group". The "Cangcang Group" is located in the "Zou Tianhe Medicine Shop" diagonally opposite the door, and the house is three bays. The left room is the warehouse and accounting room, the shop is open in the house, the cabinet board is pasted with a business license, several "positive" words drawn in chalk, remembering the flow account of entering and leaving; the right room is built with a wood stove for boiling soybean milk, behind the stove is a shelf of pressed tofu; the door is in the middle, and two low stoves of steamed rice stick along the door. After the low stove, there is a square table on the floor of the stilt floor of the back room, and there are few customers at the table, and the table is often stacked with a pile of tofu yarn and baskets. The workshop specializes in tofu, steamed rice dumplings, and occasionally steamed hair cakes. People in the town use abbreviations, have unique habits, for example, the "Dragon King Temple" dedicated to the Dragon King, originally a place to pray for the Dragon King to protect the safety of the Yuyang River, people are called "Wang Ye Temple", so that people who are unclear, Zhang'er monks are confused, thinking that here is a certain prince and nobleman. The scale of steamed rice dumplings is much smaller than that of tofu, and people do not say "tofu group", and are accustomed to calling it "rice dumpling group". On the street and down the street, adults and children, smooth and customary.
"Group" is a unique economic organization in the 1950s, it is different from self-employment, and does not meet the standards of collective cooperative enterprises, as far as the "Group" is concerned, it is three small-footed women from the old society together, with simple craftsmanship, but also by the protection of grain planning supply, so that urban residents with shortages of materials have one more choice of ingredients.
There are four employees in the "Rice Dumpling Group", the steamed Xiang Mother-in-law and her man - Li Lao, who is miscellaneous, Zhou Mother-in-law and Grandma Zhong, who beats tofu. The four men usually do their own things and do their own work. The leader of the "Cangcang Group" is Xiang Mother-in-law, who in addition to keeping the grain supply certificate, does not have much daily management work, she also serves as the head of the residents' group, busy with social activities and political studies, mediating neighborhood conflicts, resolving family disputes, and also has no responsibility, for a long time, she has accumulated a little bureaucratic atmosphere. She was lean and straight, with a straight waist; a large white-washed yin Danshilin cardigan, clean and sharp; her hair was shiny and slippery, and she had a bun behind her head; a pair of small feet walking on the street, "oh, poof, poof"; she spoke crisply, and then troublesome things, and immediately calmed things; people who were decisive in their work and pulled their strings would avoid her when they saw her coming. Mr. Li is an honest person, in addition to carrying water and "humming" a few times, he did not have three sentences all day, and chores such as chopping wood and pushing and grinding were within his scope of responsibility. A good body, a good strength, spring, summer, autumn and winter, he is always the first person to get up on the street, the first to go down to the river to carry water. Picked up the water tank, he picked up the grinding and pushing, when Grandma Zhong came to work, the baggage of filter soy milk had been hung up, the flow of soybean milk was wired, Grandma Zhong shook the bag rack, and the tofu residue rolled into a round lump in the bag and rolled over. After filtering the residue, Grandma Zhong scooped the soy milk into the pot to cook, and the soy milk to be boiled scooped into the water tank was a matter for Grandma Zhou.
Zhou Kaili, the great name of Zhou Kaili, was originally a member of the Niehe clan of Yidu County, the lower reaches of the Yuyang River, who fled Japan in 1942 and came to Yuyangguan, with the craftsmanship and diligence of tofu in the town to take root. After the defeat of the Japanese devils, Yuyangguan Town gradually recovered its vitality, business became increasingly prosperous, less than a year later, the town's eight tea houses have resumed business, the streets are full of people, and the Yuyang River is full of people. Grandma Zhou and her man, Grandpa Huang, went down the street to sharecropping wooden houses and started a business of beating tofu and selling dried tofu. The tofu beaten by Grandma Zhou is smooth and tender, and the lips and teeth are fragrant, and it quickly wins the love of the neighbors. When the black tea garden opens, the tea masters are busy, the tea sisters are busy, and the boatmen who carry tea are even busier. Grandpa Huang picks a load of tofu, Zhou's mother-in-law carries a basket of dried tofu, strings the streets and alleys, the whole town shouts and sells; gets up early and greedy, one tea number to another tea number, one boat to another boat; save money, pepper as salt, tofu residue stir-fry, old baguette tailoring. After a few years of hard work and hardship, he saved up some family foundations, entrusted distant relatives to buy a few acres of paddy fields in the Tang family, wrote the land deeds, drew a good pledge, and only lacked the signature of the Middle Man. One night, the People's Liberation Army came in from Panjiawan, and the town's business group fired a few shots at the sky in the chestnut tree brain, making birds and beasts scatter. Since then, Yuyangguan has returned to the hands of the people, the Chinese people have run without a trace, and the land title is naturally invalidated. During the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the people of the whole country donated money and materials to support the volunteer army, and Grandma Zhou and Grandpa Huang secretly donated the current ocean that they were preparing to buy fields, and the moment the silver dollar was thrown into the donation box, they were so relieved that they were like hiding from a plague. Grandma Zhou was very fortunate, she said that she was liberated a few days later, bought a field, and when she drew ingredients, it was finished! In the public-private partnership, Grandpa Huang went to the district health center to work as a cook, and Grandma Zhou and Grandma Xiang and Grandma Zhong, three industrial and commercial workers, formed a "Cang Group".
The piping hot soy milk is steaming in the water tank, and the gusts of water vapor carry the fragrance of soybeans and swirl in the air. Grandma Zhou scooped a scoop of soy milk and flushed it, feeling that the temperature was appropriate, picked up the brine tank and slowly lit the brine into the soy milk. Halogen production, point brine is the core technology of playing tofu, many people only know the fur, do not know why, Zhou Mother-in-law into the chest, experienced, easy to operate, handy. Ten minutes later, the soy milk is precipitated to form tofu flowers, and then packed into boxes and covered, and at lunchtime, the white tofu becomes fried tofu and is put into a stew bowl of "welfare".
The Xiang family, the Zhou family, and the Zhong family are the old doors and old households in the lower street. Xiangjia's house is in the alley of "Wang Ye Temple", the front house is rented to a cooperative store, the middle house is a single pool, and the stilt house of the back house where The mother-in-law and Li Lao live. The old houses of the Zhou family and the Zhong family are next door to the upper and lower parts of the "rice dumpling group", wearing a tenon wooden shelf house, in addition to living by themselves, the remaining rooms are given to others, and some rent is charged to supplement the family. Before liberation, the three families lived in small businesses based on their craftsmanship. After liberation, they combined a small business collective, a stable salary plus rent income, food and clothing better than other residents, even during the three years of natural disasters, they did not worry about food and clothing.
Each family has its own misfortunes, but the pain points are different, and the three families are not worried about their livelihood, but they are worried about their heirs. Mother-in-law Xiang and Mother-in-law Zhou did not have children, and Mother-in-law Zhong's only son was blind. He confessed to his mother-in-law and went to the countryside with his daughter in his later years. Grandma Zhong and her blind son lived together until they reached the end of their lives. Zhou Mother-in-law in the early years of a son of the family, the son grew up to go out to study, and then stayed in the field to work, the traffic is inconvenient, only once in a few years, Zhou Mother-in-law felt that she could not count on the stepson, when she was young, she prepared her own affairs, bought proper shou wood and put on old clothes. Every summer, she pulls out old clothes from the bottom of the box and puts them on the back porch to dry. Counting four times and three times, shoes and socks and caps, mumbling in his mouth, his face full of happiness, and his contented look like a bride appreciating her wedding dress. In this way, it was dried year after year, and it was happily dried for decades.
In the 1970s, Mama Du took over from steaming rice and rice to her mother-in-law, steamed it for a few years, and then opened up and reformed. The government encouraged the individual economy, people were moved by the wind, and the agile Wang Desheng bought a rolling mill and opened a noodle shop; Hu Tailor, who lived in Niu Bifang's old house, sewed a batch of Panamanian fabrics and sold cloth while sewing clothes. In the past, there were only "Rice Dumpling Group" and a cooperative store, and the slightly silent lower street opened several shops in succession, and the commercial atmosphere gradually became stronger. Subsequently, xiantao people with a keen sense of smell flocked to the family and flocked to sell small commodities on Hanzheng Street in Paddy Field Street, Zheng Street and Lower Street, setting off a small upsurge of households opening shops and doing business for the whole people. Since then, the ancient town of Yuyangguan has entered the fast lane of development, with hundreds of industries thriving, Vientiane renewed, lively and extraordinary, and great changes in mountains and townships.
Craftsmen from Tianmen opened a new tofu shop on River Street and introduced chemical brine point tofu, known as water tofu. Water tofu is tender and white, the cost is quite low, and the gypsum tofu of the "rice dumpling group" is not competitive, and it is naturally closed. A few chefs who dared to be the first in the "State-owned Yuguan Hotel" resigned and went to the sea to build a "Tujia Restaurant" next to the Zhongling Long-distance Bus Station. The welfare hotel where they once worked was naturally not to be outdone, and also went to Zhongling to open a branch. The two restaurants are fiercely competitive and do not give in to each other, claiming that their own "meat slice stewed tofu" is the most authentic traditional taste. The well-informed old drivers have a haha in their mouths, and their hearts are like mirrors, without the tofu of the "Rice Dumpling Group", which "meat slice stewed tofu" is not a toothless and unforgettable fishing and foreign cuisine.