The Shu people still taste and eat heavily. The pictures of feasts and drinks on the eastern Han Dynasty portrait bricks unearthed in many places in Sichuan, the popular "tree feasts" in Shu in the Jin Dynasty, and the prevailing boat feasts in the Five Dynasties of Shu all show the ultimate style of feasting and drinking in Shu.
Eastern Han Dynasty Feast Portrait Brick (now in the Sichuan Museum)
However, the grand scene of a feast or a feast is basically seen in official exchanges, literati travel, etc., and the poor people living at the bottom do not have the conditions to go through such a pastime.
In the old society, where the gap between the rich and the poor was extremely large, the poor people even had to clean up their own purses in the restaurant, not to mention eating meat and even setting up banquets, so there were some degraded alternative diets and forms of restaurants that could be called affordable, some of which were more meaningful to the times, and the diet forms were preserved and passed down.
On December 3, 2020, the Chengdu Municipal People's Government released the "Seventh Batch of Representative Items of Chengdu Intangible Cultural Heritage", which has a rarely heard of intangible cultural heritage - tooth and tooth rice.
Traditional production process shown during the filming of the declaration film (Picture according to Chenghua Cultural Center)
Tooth and tooth rice is the product of Chengdu's vigorous promotion of the "new life" movement in the late 1930s (and the current issue of "Xinchenghua" on September 9, 2019 notes that it originated in the third year of the Qing Dynasty, that is, in 1911), before the poor people in Chengdu wanted to "fight tooth sacrifices" and mostly bought "twelve phases". Li Jieren's "Backwaters and Gentle Waves" mentions the twelve phases and makes a footnote saying that during the Qing Dynasty, and even a few years after the Xinhai Revolution, there were such small restaurants outside the four cities of Chengdu.
With the improvement of people's requirements for food hygiene, the "twelve phases" gradually disappeared, and they were replaced by open-air restaurants selling tooth and tooth rice. After the rice shop uses an iron pot to simmer the rice until it is raised to a golden pot, it uses a kitchen knife to cut it into a crescent shape in the pot, and when selling rice, the rice is shoveled together with the pot and the middle of the bowl is brought to the diners, so that each piece of rice is braved with sharp corners, so it is called "tooth and tooth rice", also called "knife rice". Because one tooth is about two or two, over time, the adjective "tooth" becomes a quantifier.
Tooth and Tooth Rice (Photo: Chenghua District Cultural Center)
The "Chronicle of Sichuan Province" explains that it is the main way of sichuan cuisine, originated in Sichuan, is a local folk food custom, a hundred years ago in the Chengdu Goutou Lane centered on the area and the province of the city common existence, representing Sichuan from the middle of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century this historical period of social life.
The "Ballad of the Board Car" circulated in the old Chengdu sang the tooth and tooth rice, and the words were: "Seventy-two lines, the board car is king; the clothes are torn, and the neck is elongated." How much tooth and tooth rice have been eaten, how many boss ladies have been shouted. "The plate lathe worker was one of the representatives of the low-level working masses at that time, and there were porters, porters, car drivers, lifu, rickshaw drivers, etc. The work of such coolies is very consuming of physical functions, so in order to meet the basic requirements of the low-level people to eat a large amount and be hungry, the tooth and tooth rice is basically stewed very hard, at the same time, in order to facilitate the replenishment of a large amount of sweaty body lost salt, the dishes assigned by the store are also a variety of pickles, and some will also be accompanied by a plate of pork offal, a bowl of bean soup. The basic flavor type of Chengdu snacks originates from this.
Eight-tooth tooth rice restaurant kimchi
Zheng Guanglu's "The Forgotten History of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression - The Great War of Resistance in Sichuan" and Yuan Tingdong's "Chronicle of the Streets and Alleys of Chengdu" (Part 2) both mention tooth and tooth rice.
The former records that the Pine Pine Forest in the area of Wuhou Ancestral Hall is suitable for hiding and hiding, and the local farmers, after hearing the alarm sound, are busy cooking rice and stir-frying, and after the rice is cooked, they use a knife to cut it into tooth and tooth rice to wait for visitors; the latter mentions that there were famous food stalls in the Chengdu Fucheng God Temple in those years, one tooth had more than half a kilogram of rice, and one tooth rice with a plate of small dishes could be eaten, "This kind of 'tooth and tooth rice' and another kind of 'Mao'ertou' rice (1) for poor people to eat, which still existed in sichuan until the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China."
Scene of a small restaurant in Chengdu in 1941 Carl Mydans/Photo
However, with the development of society and economy, by the 1960s, this folk tradition basically did not exist, and with the persistence and efforts of the Yang family of Yaya Rice, this on the verge of being lost was revived. In 2005, No. 2 Xinfeng Road opened the "Tooth and Tooth Rice" restaurant, inheriting the "Tooth and Tooth Rice" and the folk skills and humanistic feelings behind it.
"Tooth and Tooth Rice" Productive Protection Demonstration Base
(1) The Chronicle of Sichuan Province and Folklore records: "In the old days, Chengdu rice shops were mostly braised pot rice, and the pot was placed in front of the shop as a sign, and the rice smelled fragrant and steaming; the Chongqing rice shop liked to steam rice with dumplings, and the rice into the bowl was hemispherical, commonly known as 'hat head'. ”
Hard years
A simple bowl of rice
It can also contain deep memories of the times
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