Tiantong Road is lined with shops and was once a well-known food street in Shanghai. There are no Western restaurants, cafes, and no big restaurants, some are just ordinary snacks and snacks, street restaurants, but they are still fragrant. At that time, there was an 8 tram on Tiantong Road, and many office workers specially got off the bus to Eat a bowl of beef noodles in Tianfu and then went to work.
Text/Xi Zhen Painting/Li Shoubai
Restaurants on Tiantong Road
Shanghai style sketch Li Shoubai
In the past, Tiantong Road was lined with shops and was once a well-known food street. The food on the road almost encompasses the delicacies on the tip of the tongue in that era of material scarcity, comforting the stomachs of ordinary people living in the Shikumen Lane in this area. There are no Western restaurants, cafes, and no big restaurants, some are just ordinary snacks and snacks, street restaurants, but they are still fragrant.
At No. 832 Tiantong Road on the right side of my lane, there is WufuGuan, commonly known as "Wufuguan" in Shanghai. This shop was opened in 1930, and the so-called Five Blessings are from the "Hong Fan" chapter in the Book of Books: one is Shou, the second is Fu, the third is Kangning, the fourth is Good Virtue, and the fifth is the end of life. The collection of the five blessings is a good blessing. Therefore, people often pray for the "Five Blessings At the Gate", and the shopkeeper takes this as his name, and the picture is auspicious.
The owner of Wufuguan is a Wuxi native, who runs Su Xi noodles, he speaks Wuxi dialect and is very polite to people. The Wufuguan shop hall is not large, and on the first floor there are several tables and benches for guests to eat in the hall, which are simple and clean. The small dumplings, small wontons and pot stickers in the shop are typical Soviet-style dim sum, salty with a sweet taste, and are very popular with people around them.
At that time, there were many Wuxi people living on Tiantong Road, most of them driving hardware shops around the nearby Beijing Road, and the Su-style dim sum of Wufuguan comforted their nostalgia. Wufuguan's Yangchun noodles plus toppings are very prestigious, a bowl of noodles served, noodles are smooth, not rotten or paste in half an hour, not only Wuxi people love to eat, others also like, so the business is booming, every meal, the store is always crowded with people.
The most distinctive feature of Wufuguan is his family's vegetable soup noodles, small pot roasted, about two or three bowls of one roast, using chopsticks like coarse noodles, it is bone soup hanging fresh, thick soup hard noodles plus a handful of chicken feathers a few shredded meat, pour a little lard when the noodles, and then sprinkle a little pepper, the fragrance will drift away, our family loves to eat. I often take a steel pot to the entrance of the hall with a steel pot to buy two bowls of noodle soup, and the back door of the Wufu Hall is facing the window of my house, I can go in directly through the back door to buy, especially in the winter evening to buy supper, without having to go to the dark corridor that scares me. The guys at Gofukukan all knew me, and when they saw me, they smiled and said, "The little girl on the third floor has come to buy noodles again!" "The guys who serve noodles will often fish for a little more noodles and add some soup to me.
Next door to Gofukan is the "Old Sake Hotel". This old hotel reminds me of Mr. Lu Xun's Xianheng Hotel, a curved ruler-shaped counter, two tables at the door, and a few benches. When guests come, they scoop out the wine from the old wine, and the old wine after the lid is opened, and in addition to eating in the hall, you can also copy it. The counter also serves salted peanuts, fennel beans, Jingdong dishes, dried tofu, peanuts and rice and other snacks with wine, which are served on a small plate and are served with wine. After the guests enter the store and sit down, they can enjoy a pot of wine and a few small dishes for a long time. Therefore, it is the same as the Wufuguan next door, and it is full of doors every day.
Further west, there is a Tianfu Beef Noodle Restaurant in Lane 860, Tiantong Road, which has built a slope on the wall of the alley on the east side, placed a rectangular table bench, and placed a large copper cauldron near the intersection of Tiantong Road, with a middle interval, half boiled beef, half filled with water under the noodles, the noodles are small wide noodles made of black flour, very chewy, full of wheat flavor.
The shop moved into 855 and 857 Tiantong Road, opposite Shenyuli, which was originally a Lu FengJian meat factory and a small restaurant. Tenfu's beef is made from a beef soup with more fat and a slightly lower price, and then boiled in a clear soup with peeled pork trotters. The owner claims to sell hundreds of curry beef noodles on the beach, but none of them is better than Tianfu. At that time, there was an 8 tram on Tiantong Road, and many office workers specially got off the bus to Eat a bowl of beef noodles in Tianfu and then went to work. Tenfu's beef noodles, like The noodle soup at Gofukukan, can also be regarded as a must-see on Tiantong Road. However, our family rarely eats beef noodles, and I think it is more appetizing to eat the noodle soup from our own alley.
At No. 740-742 Tiantong Road, east of Wufuguan, there is a small restaurant called Jinlongguan, whose owner is named Zhang Jinlong and lives in the pavilion of No. 53 Baoqingfang, Lane 728, Tiantong Road, not far from the hotel. The Golden Dragon Pavilion was the only hotel in the Tiantong Road market from Henan Road to Zhejiang Road, and the Golden Dragon Pavilion was a two-bay façade with two floors. The ticket counter downstairs faces Tiantong Road, on the right side of the store is the kitchen and window, and on the left side is the hall of eating, with round tables and square stools. The upstairs area is larger than the downstairs, but the roof is low and there are windows north and south.
Jinlongguan operates Zhenjiang cuisine, which is very popular among nearby residents because of its low price and good quality, and its business is very prosperous. His housekeeper's dish was ancient meat, which was my favorite as a child. A large pot of red crystal clear flesh, like an irregular crystal flower, surrounded by slices of tender yellow pineapple, dark red and light yellow, tempting appetite, taste a bite, sour and sweet, good looking and delicious. There are also their snow vegetable fish fried bamboo shoot shreds, sauce pop-up loin flowers, pig's trotter soybean soup are famous, many people who come to the Golden Dragon Restaurant to eat these dishes are must order. Sometimes, my mother would let me take a steel pot to the Golden Dragon Pavilion to buy a pot of pork trotter soybean soup, and the pig's trotters and soybeans were stewed crispy and rotten, very flavorful.
Now that I think about it, the Golden Dragon Pavilion's housekeeper's cuisine has some eclectic taste. Ancient meat, also known as Gollum meat, is a characteristic traditional dish in Guangdong, belonging to Cantonese cuisine; sauce pop-up loin flower is the representative dish of Lu cuisine, snow cabbage fish fried winter shoots belong to Jiangnan cuisine, pig's trotter soybean soup belongs to Shanghai traditional home cooking.
The small restaurant does not specialize in one kind of cuisine, but to see which dishes are popular, they take them to make fine preparations, and gradually become their own specialties, which is also a way to survive. From the back door of the Golden Dragon Pavilion, you can see four woks in the kitchen, and when the four woks are stir-frying at the same time, the flames coming out of the frying pans are very spectacular.
Lane 746 of Tiantong Road to the west of the Golden Dragon Pavilion is a chicken and duck blood soup shop, because the owner is Ah HuZi, so everyone also calls it "Ah Hu Zi Chicken and Duck Blood Soup Shop". The chicken and duck intestines of this shop are cleaned by the store itself, and at the entrance of the small shop is a large basin of intestines soaked in water, and the guy sits on a small stool with scissors to cut the intestines, and the cut intestines are immediately soaked in water. When his chicken and duck blood soup is served on the table, he will sprinkle a handful of green onions and pour a few drops of chili oil, the soup is clear, purple, white, red and green, and the aroma is fragrant.
Next to the chicken and duck blood soup shop, there is a four large intestinal noodle powder stall, the large intestine is fat but not greasy, fresh and smooth, and the unique aroma of pig intestines is wafted. Although there is a public toilet next to it, it does not affect the appetite of diners at all. Think about it, the ordinary people of that year, talking about affordability, as long as things are delicious, they can't care about the environment. Nowadays, the eating environment is the first choice, the environment is not good, even lazy to enter.
About the author and the painter
Cherish
Xi Zhen, real name Zhu Xi Zhen. Shanghai writer.
He is the author of "Sea Scholar - A Life of Smoke and Rain", "The Style That Never Drifts Away", "Afternoon Tea in the Garden House", "Farewell love in the depths of the sycamore", "Approaching Grassroots Artists", "Looking for Shanghai in Shanghai" and other urban cultural theme monographs. The 2016 edition of Shanghai Road That Never Widens (all three volumes) has been reprinted many times so far, and its e-book has been introduced by the Stanford University Library and emory University Library in the United States.
In 2018, he co-authored and published the novel "House Facing the Mediterranean Sea" with a friend.
In 2020, he was named one of the top ten public cultural tourism figures in Jing'an District.
In 2021, he published the essay collection "Shanghai: Spiritual Walking" (upper and lower volumes), which writes about the past and present lives of the city from the perspective of a writer, and depicts a vivid picture of the city with words.
Li Shoubai
Heavy color painter, Master of Paper-cutting Art of Haipai.
He is the vice chairman of the Paper-cutting Art Committee of the Chinese Association for the Advancement of Chinese Nationalities, and the deputy director of the Paper-cutting Art Committee of the Chinese Culture Promotion Association.
He is a deputy to the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, vice chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Federation of Literature and Art, chairman of the Shanghai Folk Writers Association, member of the Shanghai Artists Association, shanghai master of arts and crafts, East China Normal University, visiting professor of the Shanghai Academy of Arts and Crafts, representative inheritor of the "intangible cultural heritage" Shanghai school of paper-cutting, founder and artistic director of Shanghai Shoubai Culture and Art Co., Ltd.
His works have been exhibited and exhibited in France, Germany, Austria, Cuba, Australia, Singapore, Japan, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places at home and abroad, and have participated in the Shanghai Art Fair for 17 consecutive years, and his works have won more than 10 gold awards, including the "Mountain Flower Award" of Chinese folk art and the "Cultural Heritage Day Award" of the Ministry of Culture of China. He has been awarded the titles of "Master of Paper-cutting Art" in China, "Literary and Art Worker of Virtue and Art Shuangxin", "Leading Talent of Shanghai", "Excellent Young and Middle-Aged Artist of Shanghai", "2020 Model Figure of China's Non-genetic Inheritance and Innovation", etc. His works have been collected by the China Paper-cut Museum, the Shanghai Art Museum Collection Committee, the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall, the Shanghai Grand Theatre Gallery, starbucks enterprise management co., Ltd., CITIC Pacific Plaza Co., Ltd. and other multinational institutions in the world.
Editor's Note:
This column originates from paragon, a supplement to Jing'an Bao, which was launched on February 8, 1994. On the WeChat platform, "Paramount" will be displayed to readers in a new form. Push it regularly every week, read Jing'an from another angle. Submissions can be sent to [email protected]
Author: Xi Zhen
Photo: Li Shoubai
Editor: Dani Shi
Editor: Faye Wong
Column Editor-in-Chief: Dani Shi
Photographic image source Figureworm Creative