Yangzhou Slender West Lake, Diaoyutai spring color. Photography/City Shuttle
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Will Yangzhou, which is slow and leisurely, be "fast" in the future?
Yangzhou is slowly restarting.
According to the surging news, as of the morning of September 8, the last medium-risk community in Yangzhou city is undergoing a comprehensive nucleic acid test. If the results are all negative, the unsealing requirements will be met. This means that the ancient city, which is slow and has a tone, will soon return.
Sunrise over Slender West Lake. Yangzhou has been "suspended" for more than a month, and such a beautiful scenery is really a long time gone. Photography / Clear Creek
Yangzhou, a very special city. She is strategically located, between the two major water systems of the Yangtze River and the Huai River, the ancient Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal runs through the city, connecting the north and south of China; her natural environment is excellent, the four seasons are distinct, the climate is warm, and the tourism culture is more developed, a sentence "fireworks in Yangzhou in March", spanning thousands of years.
The ancient city of Yangzhou was born of the river and prospered because of luck. Photography / Clear Creek
She has a very long history. Yangzhou began in the Zhou Dynasty, during which it experienced the three peak periods of the Han Dynasty, the Sui, Tang, Song, and Ming and Qing Dynasties, which was almost synchronized with the prosperity and prosperity of ancient China, and condensed the cultural context of the general history from Han to Qing and ancient China.
However, Yangzhou, which was once radiant and had the three major advantages of transportation hub, prosperous business and prosperous business and cultural and educational development, is now extremely low-key under the shining light of a group of upstarts.
Yangzhou, Shuangdong Historical District. Photography/City Shuttle
An epidemic has suddenly made Yangzhou, which is usually unknown, suddenly become the focus. However, when you evaluate the city as "obscure", Yangzhou people are bound to be unhappy. They will say that Yangzhou is just slow, just more understanding of life, and you really don't understand.
Yangzhou, why are you so slow
People who have just come to Yangzhou usually have an intuitive feeling: time is stretched in the city.
Yangzhou garden, early autumn drizzle. Photography/City Shuttle
Early in the morning, walking through the quiet streets, the whole city seems to be still asleep, and the only thing that wakes up is the tea house with the sound of people. Order three buns, blanched dried silk, shrimp seed dumpling noodles, and then ask for a pot of tea, and the slow and leisurely Yangzhou day opened.
Huaihai Road in the early morning, there is no hustle and bustle of the morning peak. Photography/City Shuttle
Yangzhou is slow, not only eating morning tea slowly, going up slowly, but also doing slowly. If you're from a busy big city, you're bound to scratch your ears and scratch your cheeks.
Yangzhou people will say, can't be anxious. Look at this shrimp seed dumpling noodles. To boil the soup, first take the river shrimp seeds, one by one raw shrimp finely scrape off the shrimp eggs, wash off the ash residue before getting off the pot; "dumplings" are wontons, finely chopped meat fillings are delicious, add smooth noodles, fragrant.
Yangzhou morning tea wontons, soup to fresh. Photography / Liu Yanhui
You look at these three diced buns, chicken thigh meat, pork belly, fresh bamboo shoots, must be finely diced, sloppy; then look at this hot dried silk, a piece of dried beans first cut into 28 pieces, and then finely cut into silk, full of kung fu, tireless.
Large boiled dried shreds. Cut the dried tofu into thin strips, use bamboo shoot slices and ham as accessories, and add chicken broth to cook. Photo/Visual China
If the interest comes, it is indispensable to "Yangzhou Double Absolute". Emerald roasted wheat, the skin is as thin as paper, the filling is turquoise, steamed out of the white and green, it looks like emerald; the mille-feuille oil cake, full of 64 layers of skin, each layer of sugar and oil, a bite down, full of soft and tender sweetness.
Yangzhou morning tea, emerald roasted wheat. Photography / Zhang Zhuojun
The world knows the beauty of Cantonese morning tea, but little is known about the subtlety of Yangzhou morning tea. Here, people can take the seemingly simple daily diet to the extreme of knife work and cooking. You are generous and generous, and you are all accumulating ingenuity and ingenuity. With such a lot of effort, time naturally slows down.
Sit in the painting boat, taste the Food of Huaiyang, and start a slow day in Yangzhou. Photography / Zhang Zhuojun
Morning tea, just appetizing. The real protagonist of Yangpai's food is Huaiyang cuisine.
Huaiyang cuisine originated from the cultural imagination of The Salt Merchants of Jianghuai. It is light and elegant, full of literary popularity; it pays attention to the original taste, the knife technique is delicate, and everywhere is full of "food is not tired of fine, not tired of fine"; it is complex to fine, the taste shape is light and indifferent, with the most exquisite bookish craftsmanship, do the most elegant human fireworks.
Huaiyang fine point, the ancient law has been passed down to this day, and time has stood still in the fireworks of the world. Photo/Visual China
The signature of Huaiyang cuisine is none other than the lion's head. Take the ribs on the "fat three skinny seven" hard five flowers, first coarsely cut into silk, and then finely cut into cubes, during the period without chopping, "fine cut to make a cheek", the taste of food is full, but the mouth is not greasy.
Braised lion's head, the "fierce taste" in Huaiyang cuisine. Photo/Visual China
The finale of the Huaiyang Elegant Banquet may not be big fish and big meat, but Wensi tofu. This is the ultimate knife work in the world, and no one in the world can stand out: the tender tofu is cut into hair-like filaments with a delicate knife method comparable to embroidery, and then simmered with shiitake mushroom shreds, bamboo shoots, chicken breast shreds, and ham shreds, simmered in clear chicken soup, soft and tender, and melted in the mouth.
It is the ultimate of Huaiyang cuisine, with extremely exquisite techniques, to set off a simple and unpretentious taste; it is not realistic, the mood is not realistic, the mood is sacrificed, full of literati interest; it will be ordinary ingredients, with cooking precision and literati ingenuity, from the most complex to the simplest, into the highest realm: "nothing".
Wensi tofu, the ultimate knife work in the world. Photography / Zhang Zhuojun
Without the prosperity of merchants over the past thousand years and the accumulation of culture over the past thousand years, this dish would not have been conceived.
The temperament of a city and a piece of terroir is directly reflected in the diet. Yangzhou temperament, first of all, is "leisurely", behind her is for food, tireless to the extreme. This kind of kung fu and mentality has long exceeded the daily needs, but the leisurely Yangzhou people are still happy to do it.
Therefore, the time was lengthened in Yangzhou. This ultimate elegance has long transcended time and has been tempered in the inheritance of generations, becoming a unique character of the city.
"Leather bag water" means Yangzhou morning tea; "water foreskin" means Yangzhou bath. Photography/City Shuttle
So, Yangzhou is slow.
Yangzhou: I have seen a lot of prosperity
Yangzhou is slow, because it has seen more of the world. The thousand-year-old city of hundreds of generations, prosperous and read, after all, is also indifferent.
She is unique in Chinese history. Yangzhou has never been the capital of a unified dynasty, but because of its unique geographical location, it has run through ancient Chinese history as a shipping hub; her fate is also closely related to the rise and fall of the dynasty.
The city of Yangzhou surrounded by water. Photography / Zhang Zhuojun
Yangzhou, located in the south of the Jianghuai Plain, the north wing of the Yangtze River Delta, the Yangtze River in its south, the Huai River in its north. At this time, only one canal is needed to connect the two major water systems, and if a city is built here, it will flourish for a while while with a north-south merchant currency.
The fate of Yangzhou is closely related to the canal. Cartography/Sun Lu
The ancients had thought of this for a long time. During the Spring and Autumn Period, the area around Yangzhou was called Han (hán), and Wu Wangfu sent a "Hangou" to connect the Yangtze River and the Huai River, so that the Wu army went north along the waterway and joined the Central Plains to fight for hegemony. In the Western Han Dynasty, Liu Hao, the king of Wu, "that is, the mountain minted money and boiled the sea for salt", opened the "Salt River" on the basis of Hangou and opened the first prosperous period of Yangzhou.
Historically, Yangzhou has always been a distribution center for table salt. Photo/Visual China
After the Sui Dynasty unified the north and south, the Grand Canal was excavated one after another with Luoyang as the center, so Yangzhou was connected to the Yellow River system and opened a second period of prosperity. The tang dynasty was at its peak, and Yangzhou, as the center of north-south transit, also ushered in the peak of its prosperity, becoming the largest metropolis in southeast China at that time, "headed by the grandeur of the world", and the prosperity even exceeded that of the capital Chang'an.
Today's canals, busy and dead, only quiet. Photography/City Shuttle
At that time, in addition to shipping, Yangzhou's agriculture, commerce and handicraft industries were also quite developed, and it was also an important external port.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Di moved the capital to Beijing, laying a new pattern for the feudal dynasty for more than 600 years: the political center was in Beijing, and the economic center was in Jiangnan. This pattern makes shipping traffic extremely important; the two major centers are connected by the Yangtze River, the Yellow River and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. Yangzhou is located at the confluence of the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal.
Since then, Yangzhou has prospered again and ushered in a third prosperity.
The fate of ancient Yangzhou is also closely related to the rise and fall of the dynasty. Photography / Clear Creek
At that time, the grain and tax tributes produced in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River were first distributed from Yangzhou and transported north through Cao; the Huai salt produced along the coast of northern Jiangsu was also distributed in Yangzhou and sold to the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River. Yangzhou, so rich A side.
During this period, salt merchants began to "fight for wealth" and competed to build gardens, and Yangzhou gardens became famous all over the world. Li Dou's "Records of Yangzhou Paintings" of the Qing Dynasty records that "Hangzhou wins with lakes and mountains, Suzhou wins with cities, Yangzhou wins with garden pavilions, and the three are dingzhi and cannot be xuanxuan".
Yangzhou, He Garden, a model of Yangpai gardens. Photography / Zhang Zhuojun
There is financial resources, there is leisure, and there is a natural need for entertainment. Morning and evening tea, pedicure and haircut and bathing gave birth to the famous "Three Knives of Yangzhou": kitchen knives, pedicure knives, and barber knives. Today's Yangzhou's "morning leather bag water (morning tea) and evening water foreskin (bath)" is the prosperous custom inherited by the Ming and Qing dynasties, and non-rich places cannot have it.
Yang Opera, National Intangible Cultural Heritage. Photography/City Shuttle
Slender West Lake is the peak product of Yangzhou's prosperity. It was originally a wide river channel outside Yangzhou, and since the Ming and Qing dynasties, many salt merchants have invested in it and built a series of water gardens. According to the "Yangzhou Painting Record", there are twenty-four scenes of Slender West Lake, "two banks of flowers and willows are all by the water, all the way to the mountain", "more than ten garden pavilions are combined into one, and the momentum is consistent".
Wuting Bridge was built in the 22nd year of the Qianlong Dynasty. Photography / Li Qiong
So prosperous, so luxurious, if you don't slow down, how to appreciate this beautiful scenery?
Slow transport, inferior to railway steam
There is no eternal richness in the world, only unpredictable times. The fate of a city, in addition to its own struggle, but also to strive to grasp the process of history.
In modern Times, Yangzhou began to turn from prosperity to decline. Photography / Zhang Zhuojun
In the late Qing Dynasty, the Jianghuai salt industry continued to have drawbacks and corruption prevailed. In 1832, Tao Shu, the governor of Liangjiang, reformed the Lianghuai Salt Law, which, although rectifying the salt industry, also led to the bankruptcy of a large number of salt merchants. This is the symbol of Yangzhou's transformation from prosperity to decline on the eve of modern times.
With the interruption of water transportation and the abolition of salt administration, a large number of salt merchants withdrew from Yangzhou. Their mansion eventually became a tourist attraction. Photography/City Shuttle
The sea breeze in modern times has been so fierce that it has shaken the whole of China. In 1842, the British army occupied Zhenjiang and blocked the Yangtze River channel, causing a wave of refugees to break out in Yangzhou; in 1853, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement broke out, and Yangzhou was frequently hit by military disasters, resulting in the interruption of water transportation.
Nature did not take care of Yangzhou either. In 1855, the Yellow River was diverted, causing siltation in the eastern section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. As a last resort, grain and salt in the south were diverted to Shanghai and transported north by sea. Since then, Shanghai has replaced Yangzhou as China's new north-south freight distribution center.
Yangzhou, a wharf along the Yangtze River. Today, Yangtze River shipping is still extremely important to Yangzhou. Photo/Visual China
And that's not all. The most important inflection point in Yangzhou's rise and fall is the construction of the Jinpu Railway.
The Jinpu Railway was built in 1908, starting from Tianjin, passing through Hebei, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu, and ending at Nanjing Pukou. This is the second north-south traffic trunk line in China after the Beijing-Hankou Railway in modern times, and the industrial and mining industries along the way are concentrated, and the transportation is extremely busy.
In 1911, the newly built Pukou Station at the end of Jinpu Road was completed. Photo/Visual China
But Yangzhou missed the railway. According to Li Baohua, a local cultural and historical expert, the Jinpu Railway was originally planned to pass through Yangzhou, but the Yangzhou Salt Transport Yamen believed that the railway would affect water transportation and impact the interests of salt merchants, so it rejected the construction plan. In the end, the Jinpu Railway was diverted to Anhui and lost contact with Yangzhou.
The source of the eastern route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, the water conservancy hub of Jiangdu. The old Grand Canal has a new look in modern times. Photography / Yu Xing
In the vigorous and great changes of modern times, Yangzhou has taken a step slower. In the face of new industrial opportunities, Yangzhou has taken another step slower. Yangzhou, which is slow to sound, has lost its railway advantage after the interruption of water transportation and the abolition of salt administration, which is fatal to a commercial city.
Subsequently, Yangzhou gradually declined, from one of the most prosperous cities in the country to a local third-tier city, only the atmosphere of life and fireworks still exist.
Yangzhou morning market, full of human fireworks. Photography/City Shuttle
After all, the water transport is too slow, and it cannot resist the rapid access of the railway and the steam.
Time is slow, but the high-speed train is really fast
Yangzhou, after going through vicissitudes, will not change a "slow" word.
As a city that "can't get up quickly" in its bones, Yangzhou's old foundation is still there. Looking at the statistical yearbook, before the "Yangtai Separation" in 1995, Yangzhou's GDP ranked third in the province, reaching 60.5 billion, only in Suzhou and Wuxi, and even more than the 57.6 billion yuan in the provincial capital Nanjing. Therefore, Yangzhou is by no means "obscure".
The roads leading to Yangzhou have brought great convenience to the economic development of Yangzhou. The picture shows the Runyang Bridge. Photography / Clear Creek
What supports Yangzhou's economy is first of all tourism. According to the 2019 report of the Yangzhou Municipal Government, the total tourism revenue of Yangzhou reached 101.02 billion yuan in that year, accounting for nearly 20% of GDP; in the same year, Yangzhou was rated by UNESCO as the "World Capital of Gastronomy" and "East Asian Cultural Capital", which can be described as a highlight moment.
Yangzhou's traffic layout is also constantly being updated. At the end of 2020, Yangzhou opened a high-speed railway, realizing the seamless connection between central Jiangsu and the Yangtze River Delta, Nanjing Metropolitan Circle and other regions. Yangzhou, which was originally slow and leisurely, really had to be "fast" this time.
The penetration of high-speed rail has brought great transportation convenience to Yangzhou. Photography / Yu Xing
You may not know that Yangzhou still has a good industrial base. The industrial layout here is mainly based on automobile, agricultural chemical and machinery manufacturing, with a Sino-foreign joint venture automobile manufacturing base, although the scale is not as large as the "car city" Wuhan in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, but the development prospects are full.
Yangzhou Jianghuai automobile production line. Photography / Yu Xing
Earlier we said that there is no eternal prosperity in the world, only unpredictable times and opportunities. Yangzhou is striving to seize the new opportunities of the times and fight a turnaround battle. In 2020, Yangzhou's total GDP was 604.8 billion yuan, ranking seventh in the province and 35th among prefecture-level cities in the country, which is actually a good result. Now that Yangzhou has high-speed rail, the future can be expected.
The continuous improvement of the transportation system has gradually "fastened" Yangzhou. Photography / Li Xunsheng
Here is Yangzhou, one of the top ten livable cities in China, the ultimate in slow life.
Here is Yangzhou, "Huaizuo Mingdu, Zhuxi Jia", in the morning leather wrapped water, evening water foreskin.
This is Yangzhou, just waiting for the end of the epidemic, carefully prepare the Huaiyang famous points, and wait for you at the lights.
Downtown Yangzhou, Wenchang Pavilion under the lights. Photo/Visual China
This kind of slowness is a temperament, a kind of elegance and indifference that reads the prosperity. Yangzhou, after a thousand years of prosperity, incarnated into a poem:
Wash out the lead in a plain posture
The flowers fall to see the truth
It will not change after all the vicissitudes
Look at the red dust a few sentimental
I wish Yangzhou an early surrender of the virus. I wish Yangzhou a new glory at an early date.
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Wen 丨 water water
Picture Editing | Wu Xuewen
Covered | Zhang Zhuojun