Inheritance is the best protection. A few days ago, the reporter learned from the Huiyang District Culture, Tourism and Sports Bureau that zhai ji tea fruit, Hakka salted chicken and other traditional food production techniques have successively applied for the fourth batch of district-level intangible cultural heritage representative projects in Huiyang District.
From selling along the street to opening stores, to creating exhibition halls to display Hakka tea and fruit culture, Zhai Ji Tea Fruit adheres to the concept of ingenuity and inheritance, and strives to make the festival tea fruit into a Huiyang food brand, so that the small tea fruit becomes an emotional medium within reach.
From inheritance improvement to brand building, to opening a factory to create a production and marketing supply chain, Dongjiang Hakka chef Zeng Shiying inherited the ancient method of "good chicken only needs a handful of salt", and through standardized production, the traditional dish of Huiyang Hakka salted chicken was revitalized.
Today, we approach the inheritors of these two traditional Hakka food making techniques, feel the humanistic feelings nourished by traditional food, and appreciate the unique charm of food culture.
Zhai Ji tea fruit and Hakka salted chicken declared the fourth batch of district-level intangible cultural heritage representative projects in Huiyang District.
Zhai Guozhi
The little tea fruit family is glorious
Bowl cake, mugwort, yellow cake, radish... Walking into the Zhai Ji Tea and Fruit Shop located in Tamsui Damwei Street in Huiyang, a variety of Hakka tea fruits are mouth-watering. Behind the store, there is a busy processing site, a pot of freshly baked tea fruits steaming hot, emitting a seductive aroma.
After 31 years of hard work in Tamsui, with a traditional craft, the family endured hardships and hard work, and made the small Hakka tea and fruit into a family business, and zhai Guozhi, 51, was full of pride. What makes him even more pleased is that his 27-year-old son Zhai Shouweizi inherited his father's business and actively excavated the cultural connotations while retaining the traditional production process of tea and fruit. Through the establishment of the Zhai Ji Tea and Fruit Culture Exhibition Hall and the declaration of the list of representative items of intangible cultural heritage in Huiyang District, the Hakka food culture and tea and fruit culture can be carried forward in the inheritance.
Hi.
entrepreneurship
Driving a motorcycle in the old town of Tamsui to sell
In Zhai Ji Tea fruit shop, from time to time, customers come in to buy tea and fruit, and occasionally there is a prompt for takeaway orders. Zhai Guozhi and his wife Huang Qionghua are busy, sometimes greeting guests, sometimes checking orders, and also taking time to check the production progress of various tea fruits in the back kitchen, and coordinating the quality control.
Such busyness, the couple has been accustomed to for more than 20 years. Zhai Guozhi is a native of Hengli, Huicheng District, who came to Tamsui in 1990 to work hard, and in the first 10 years, Zhai Guozhi studied haircuts, sold soup powder, drove motorcycles, and worked hard with his wife to take root in Tamsui.
During the rush, the careful Zhai Guozhi noticed a phenomenon. "Every morning around the market, there are people selling their own tea fruits such as hibiscus, hair cakes, radish dumplings, etc., and the business is quite good." Zhai Guozhi said that he grew up making various tea fruits with his grandmother and parents, and he did not expect that the tea fruits common in the countryside were so popular in the city. "Sometimes I hear some elderly people say' some people eat it, no one makes it,' which means that fewer and fewer people make tea and fruit."
This inspired Zhai Guozhi, who began to try to make some tea fruits to sell. In 2000, Zhai Guozhi rented a house in Tamsui Old Street and began making bowl cakes with his mother and wife. "Other people usually sell in the morning, I stagger the time, noon and afternoon." Zhai Guozhi said that at noon, he drove a motorcycle, hawked and sold in the old town of Tamsui, and in the afternoon he went to sell around the market.
Because of the good taste, Zhai Guozhi's bowl cake has been recognized by the neighbors, who call him "Tea Fruit Guy". While buying bowl cakes, old neighbors sometimes ask more "Is there anything else?" As a result, Zhai Guozhi gradually added varieties such as radish dumplings, mugwort, pumpkin cakes, and rice dumplings.
Over the past few years, Zhai Guozhi's tea and fruit business has become better and better. Some neighbors have happy events at home and will also find Zhai Guozhi to order a happy book; some farms and hotels even come to the door and sign long-term orders.
By making tea fruits, Zhai Guozhi gradually gained a foothold in Tamsui.
develop
Opened tea and fruit stores to expand production
After years of development, Zhai Ji tea fruit has gradually opened up the market, has its own stable source of customers, and every time it comes to traditional festivals, the business is even more hot. "Qingming made mugwort, the Dragon Boat Festival made zongzi, the October Dynasty made mochi, the winter solstice made moxa, there were many wedding feasts at the end of the year, and there were also many orders for Huang Xiyi." Zhai Guozhi said that the family was busy from morning to night, and even a pair of children who were in school came back to help after school.
"At first, dozens of bowls of cakes were washed every day, then hundreds, and then two or three thousand." Zhai Guozhi's son, Zhai Shouwei, said that he and his sister often "washed the dishes until they wanted to cry." But it is also the "intimate contact" with tea fruits every day, Zhai Shouwei gradually fell in love with tea fruits, so he followed his father to make and sell tea fruits.
With more and more orders, Zhai Guozhi always hears some guests "complaining": the workshop is located in the old street, the road is narrow and difficult to walk, and it is not easy to find without stores. Friends around him also suggested that he open a store, while expanding the workshop and increasing production.
"Opening a store is not only easy for customers to find, but also a kind of publicity for tea fruits." Zhai Guozhi said. After careful consideration, in 2014, Zhai Guozhi opened a store "Zhai Ji Tea Fruit" in Bawei Street near Tamsui Old Street. The storefront is fifty or sixty square meters, selling a variety of freshly made tea fruits, but also placed a few tables and chairs, convenient for customers to sit down and taste, followed by hundreds of square meters of production workshop, employing 8 workers, producing nearly ten kinds of tea fruits every day, each tea fruit from thousands to thousands.
With the store, business grew steadily and the family got busier. "I have to get up at 5:30 in the morning and prepare fresh tea fruits for the morning market, which many people like to eat for breakfast." Huang Qionghua is mainly responsible for the business of the storefront, and many things must be done by herself to be assured, "I can rest at 11 o'clock at night." ”
Aisy.
Inheritance
The exhibition hall is built to display the tea and fruit culture
Time to 2020, Zhai Ji tea fruit ushered in new changes in the inheritance. One of Zhai Guozhi's sons and daughters has grown up and started a family, they carefully manage the Zhai Ji tea fruit founded by their father, and inject fashion elements into the excavation of cultural connotations.
Tea fruit is a traditional Hakka snack, mainly made during the New Year's Festival, named after eating with tea. In recent years, Huiyang has vigorously promoted the quality transformation of the Tamsui Old Street area and made the old town glow with new charm. Last year, Zhai Guozhi specifically found a relative with art skills and painted several wall paintings about the former style of Tamsui Old Street in the Bawei Street store, and the old street tea and fruit shop has also become one of the elements. "I hope that every guest who comes to the store can better understand the Hakka tea and fruit culture."
In July this year, Zhai Shouwei opened a Zhai Ji Tea and Fruit Culture Exhibition Hall on Yongxing Road in Tamsui. The reporter saw that one by one tea fruits were neatly arranged in the display cabinet, and under the bright lights, tempting the taste buds of the guests. One wall of the store also specially displays the production process of Hakka tea fruits in the form of wall paintings, which is full of strong traditional cultural atmosphere.
Zhai Shouwei introduced that the exhibition hall has a total of more than 200 square meters, in addition to the first floor to display tea fruits and tea fruit culture, it is also planned to open a Hakka tea and fruit production process experience area on the 2nd floor, so that young people or parent-child families can deepen their understanding of Hakka tea and fruit culture in the actual experience.
In order to better inherit and protect the tea and fruit culture, this year, Zhai Guozhi father and son sorted out the Hakka tea and fruit production process and declared the fourth batch of district-level intangible cultural heritage representative projects in Huiyang District. At the same time, Zhai Shouwei also promoted tea and fruit culture through WeChat and live broadcasting. "I have two WeChat groups of 500 people, and through community group buying, I can sell thousands of tea fruits every day." Zhai Shouwei said, "We also try to promote Hakka tea fruits through douyin, little red book, and kuaishou live broadcast." ”
Relying on the production of tea fruits, Zhai Guozhi father and son established Huizhou Huidefu Food Co., Ltd., registered the trademark of "Huike Tea Township", and began to study and solve the problem of tea fruit packaging and preservation, hoping to build tea fruits into Huiyang gourmet brands, which are sold to the province and even all over the country through the network.
Zeng Shiying
Hakka salted chicken "flies" to the whole country
A plate of neatly stacked Hakka salted chicken is served on the table, clipped up, dipped in a dipping sauce composed of shallots, soy sauce and peanut oil, and tasted carefully, the skin is crisp, the meat is firm, the bones are salty, and the diners all praise.
Zeng Shiying has been engaged in the chef industry for more than 20 years, and has been studying and making Hakka salted chicken for many years, and he has been moving towards his dream step by step. In 2019, the Hakka salted chicken made by Zeng Shiying won the title of "Top Ten Famous Dishes of Dongjiang Cuisine" in the Cantonese Cuisine (Dongjiang Cuisine) Master Engineering Competition; in September 2020, it appeared in the second season of CCTV's 10 sets of "Exploration and Discovery" column "Food Is Not Boring". While gradually launching the Hakka salted chicken brand, Zeng Shiying is declaring district-level intangible cultural heritage projects, establishing a standardized production base, creating a production and marketing supply chain, and promoting Huiyang Hakka salted chicken to all parts of the country, making more contributions to the inheritance of this famous dish of Dongjiang.
The Hakka salted chicken made by Zeng Shiying won the title of "Top Ten Famous Dishes of Dongjiang Cuisine".
origin
Do a good job of Hakka salted chicken to start the brand
When the reporter met Zeng Shiying, he was busy making salted chicken with several workers, and the whole workshop was filled with a strong salty aroma. I saw him soak the chickens and drain them one by one, carefully smearing coarse sea salt inside and out... Finally, it is salted in a clay pot of a certain age.
This cold-marinated step waits 13 hours. "Life is like a Hakka salted chicken, it needs to be precipitated to be amazing." Taking advantage of this gap, Zeng Shiying told the story of his friendship with Hakka salty chicken.
Zeng Shiying, a 38-year-old native of Hengli Town, Huicheng District, began helping to learn cooking skills at the age of 14 or 5. Around 2000, he met his master Zhu Weiping at a hotel in Tamsui. Every time the master cooked, Zeng Shiying prepared the material head and pots and bowls early, and Zhu Weiping saw that he was diligent, flexible and studious, so he taught him the craft of making Hakka salted chicken.
In the following 10 years, the hard-working, hard-working Zeng Shiying grew step by step, all the way to the hotel's head chef, leading a team of more than 200 people during the peak period. "It's about 2013, and someone asked me, as a Hakka, what Hakka dishes do you have?" Zeng Shiying said that this question really brought him down. "After many years of cooking, it seems that everything can be done, but it seems that nothing is fine, and there is no signboard of its own."
To this end, Zeng Shiying chose Hakka salted chicken from many Hakka dishes as the signature dish for the focus. "'No chicken, no feast', the status of chickens on the Hakka table can be imagined." Zeng Shiying said that Hakka salted chicken is a traditional Dongjiang dish, and the Dongjiang area is also called salted chicken, which comes from the wisdom of the Hakka people to store food during migration, and there are also moving stories behind it.
Hakka salted chicken is also called grandma chicken. Legend has it that a grandmother loved her grandson, and when she killed chickens in the New Year, she specially left the chicken legs behind and buried them in the salt pile for preservation, and when her daughter took her grandson back to her mother's house after the festival, she took the chicken legs out to entertain her grandson. Unexpectedly, the salted chicken thighs taste delicious, and everything I ate was applauded, and a Hakka flavored delicacy was born.
With the original intention of launching the Hakka salted chicken brand and inheriting the traditional food culture, Zeng Shiying began to devote himself to the development of Hakka salted chicken.
Discover innovative salted chicken making techniques
The production process of Hakka salted chicken is not complicated, but it is not easy to make it delicious.
Choosing the breed of chicken alone, Zeng Shiying tried no less than 10 kinds, and finally selected a high-quality fruit farm hemp chicken. Chickens must be raised for 280 to 330 days, and raw chickens must weigh six to six and a half pounds, so that the chicken is compact, the bones are hard, and the meat can be salty and fragrant after marinating.
After choosing the chicken breed, choosing the sea salt, and doing it according to the process taught by the master, Zeng Shiying always felt that the salted chicken made was still a little less aftertaste. To this end, he returned to his hometown to consult the old people in the village. He learned from this that in the past, people made salted chicken, and after marinating, they were generally placed in a salt bucket or bamboo basket with a filter hole, so that the salted chicken was naturally fermented for about 12 hours, and then further processed.
This learning trip made him realize the importance of ancient pickling for flavor brewing. "Salted chicken cannot be put in the refrigerator, that is, it is necessary to ferment naturally, so that the salt and chicken are fully integrated." Zeng Shiying said that inspired by this, he found a batch of vintage pottery cylinders in the surrounding countryside and drilled several pores in the bottom of the cylinder to start a new round of attempts.
The clay pot has the role of breathable insulation, coarse salt and chicken are fully integrated in more than 10 hours, slowly fermented, and the water generated flows along the small hole at the bottom of the clay pot, separating dry and wet, ensuring the quality of chicken. "The attempt was very successful." Zeng Shiying said that the salted chicken made with this traditional method is salty and sweet and evocative.
Since then, Zeng Shiying has adhered to the traditional production process while constantly trying to improve and perfect. After exploration, he also added Chinese herbal medicines to the process of soaking to increase color and fragrance, antiseptic and fresh.
After years of summary, Zeng Shiying finally made a popular Hakka salted chicken through 9 processes of soaking, cooling, salting, salting, entering the tank, removing salt, air drying, steaming, packaging, and sterilization.
Carry forward
Build factories to create a production and marketing supply chain
Today, Zeng Shiying can sell more than 2,000 salted chickens every month, in addition to most of them are ordered by restaurants and hotels in surrounding cities, and some of them are sold to Inner Mongolia, Shandong, Henan, Fujian and other places through the Internet. "We have specifically studied the vacuum packaging process to ensure that the shelf life of Hakka salted chicken can reach 15 days."
Relying on the craftsmanship and excellent cooking skills of Hakka salted chicken, Zeng Shiying has won many awards in various competitions in recent years. In the 2019 I Love Dongjiang Cuisine - Cantonese Salt Kitchen God Championship Finals, he won the championship. The freshwater salted chicken he made participated in the 2019 Cantonese Cuisine (Dongjiang Cuisine) Master Engineering Competition and won the title of "Top Ten Famous Dishes of Dongjiang Cuisine". In September 2019, Zeng Shiying also appeared in the second season of CCTV's 10 sets of "Exploration and Discovery" column "Eating Not Boring". Today, Zeng Shiying is the vice president of Huizhou Chefs Association, and has also been hired as a visiting professor by Huizhou City Vocational College to teach and promote the production process of Dongjiang cuisine such as Hakka salted chicken to more people.
Honors and achievements belong to the past, and Zeng Shiying has even greater dreams. "I want to establish a production and marketing supply chain for Hakka salted chicken, make it into a signboard, become a Huizhou souvenir, and promote it to all parts of the country." Zeng Shiying said that he hopes to make more contributions to the inheritance of Dongjiang cuisine skills through his own efforts.
Today, the factory built by Zeng Shiying and his partners with an investment of 5 million yuan has begun and is expected to be put into use by the end of the year. In the 1,450-square-meter factory, Zeng Shiying designed a semi-automatic production line that can produce 2,000 standardized Hakka salted chickens per day. At the same time, the factory will also build a live broadcast base to bring goods through live broadcasting, so that Hakka salted chicken can go further, and set up a Cantonese cuisine master training center to drive more citizens who love cooking to carry forward Hakka cuisine.
Co-ordinator Huizhou Daily reporter Xiang Jinqun
Text/Photo Huizhou Daily reporter Xiang Jinqun Li Fangjuan