In the 1980s, Huang Jiayuan, who was in his 40s, rode a tricycle and wore a triangular hat and began a legendary journey to become the "King of Broad Beans", the first batch of "10,000 yuan households" in Hefei And even Anhui Province. To this day, the unique shouting sound of his selling broad beans in the City God Temple, "A dime, eat hot" has become a unique memory of the old Hefei people.
Far-reaching cries of "dime, eat hot"
Why did Huang Jiayuan sell fava beans back then?
What are the legends behind this?
And listen to Huang Jiayuan's daughter Huang Li come one by one.
Two dollars and four dimes to get the "first bucket of gold"
His father was born in 1931. Grandpa's family was originally a large family, and in the early days of liberation, he and several people jointly formed a handmade shoe-making workshop, and after the public-private partnership in the 1950s, a new shoe factory was formed with enterprises that moved to Hefei in Shanghai. My father had been working in a shoe factory for the first time, and by the late 1970s, the "restless" father had come out of the factory and set up a shoe stall next to the Anqing Road grain station near his home to repair his shoes.
Huang Jiayuan and nephew
The work of repairing shoes is not particularly busy, and the father who can't stay idle thinks about whether he can find some "part-time" work to do. One day he suddenly thought of selling broad beans. Because my father lived in Shanghai with his family when he was a teenager, he ate Shanghai's spiced broad beans and thought it tasted very good. So he asked his mother to go to the grain station and buy twenty pounds of broad beans, and the price per kilogram at that time was one dime and two cents. After returning, I added some ingredients according to my memory and cooked them in a pot, and the next day I repaired my shoes and sold broad beans. I didn't want to attract a lot of people to buy it, especially at that time, Anqing Road was a small one, and the students sold out at once after school. This also became the father's "first bucket of gold", and the total cost was only two yuan and four dimes.
The first time my father tasted the sweetness, he asked his mother to buy broad beans and come back for processing, and they could not receive them. It was just that at that time, the reform and opening up had just been reformed, and people's minds had not yet fully accepted the concept of doing business, so at the beginning, my father often used shoe repair as a "cover" to secretly sell broad beans. Only later, more and more people bought, often in short supply, and the father who dared to fight completely gave up the work of repairing shoes, single-mindedly sold broad beans, and was determined to make his business bigger and stronger.
Wong Ka Yuen's wife shows off a special hat
Memorable cry
With the passage of time, my father's broad beans sold better and better, especially after the completion of the Hefei City God Temple in the early 1980s, my father "moved" to the City God Temple, with a special façade, and the business became more and more prosperous.
In my memory, the house was full of fava beans, several rooms were full, and several of our sisters had to sleep on fava beans. In fact, the production of broad beans is very hard, self-bought need to soak in water, summer a day, winter even need three or four days, father at three o'clock in the morning to control the heat to cook broad beans, put spices, cook for five or six hours continuously, we help stick to the paper bags of broad beans every day. The hardest is the mother, who helps her father every day not to say, but also to start sifting, picking, and soaking broad beans a day in advance, so she also has a hidden disease.
Of course, such hard work has been exchanged for rich returns. Later, fava beans could sell hundreds of catties a day, and I remember the most sold for more than a thousand yuan a day, and my father was so tired that his arms were swollen and he couldn't lift them. And we really responded to the current sentence, "count the money to the hand cramps", because there were no large banknotes at that time, most of them were dime and two cents of loose change, and they had to be sorted out one by one when they came back at night.
In the 80s of last century, there was a popular TV series called "Jigong", and my father liked to watch it, especially liked the hat worn by Jigong, so he designed it himself and asked the tailor to make a white triangular hat similar to Jigong. And it is this special hat and the father's unique "one dime, eat hot" shout in order to attract customers, which has become the symbol of the father's Hefei "Broad Bean King". And our family has also become the earliest "ten thousand yuan household" in Hefei. It's just that at the beginning, my father was worried about other people gossiping, and usually eating fish and meat to improve the food was "secretly" at home, and there was no difference between our five sisters and other families.
Father is not a constant person, and very business acumen, after selling broad beans, he began to make fried dried seeds, fried skewers, eight treasure porridge and even began to make fast food in the City God Temple, these snacks have opened the precedent of Hefei, become the pioneer of many snacks in Hefei, so in October 1987 held in the first Hefei traditional flavor snack exhibition, also won the first prize of traditional flavor snack exhibition.
With the development of the times, prices became higher and higher, the broad beans sold by my father were changed from a dime to a dollar, and the tricycle became a small truck, but the business was not affected.
The far-reaching "King of Broad Beans"
In the eyes of us and some people who know his father, his father not only has the spirit of hard work and frugality, but also his integrity and kindness. For example, the oil for boiling fava beans, the father personally went to the oil mill to buy; and the father often gave more fava beans when doing business.
Therefore, the father's business is booming, and the personal charisma plays a big role. Sometimes my father was interviewed by a TV station or left for a short time, and my mother and I went to sell it in his place, and the result was that I couldn't sell it, and the customer had reached the point of "recognizing people and not recognizing things". A young man surnamed Sun in Wuhu contacted his father through the newspaper and became his father's apprentice, but he has not been separated and done alone since then, and now it seems that it should be due to his father's charm.
Because the father's broad beans have flavor and good ingredients, parents who take their children to the City God Temple are willing to spend a dime to buy a copy for their children. In this way, the father's popularity is getting higher and higher, not only Hefei citizens lined up to buy their father's broad beans, many outsiders also came to buy, and even foreigners. A foreigner tasted my father's broad beans, praised them, and offered to cooperate with my father to sell my father's fava beans abroad.
After my father's popularity was high, our five sisters all followed the "dipping light", in today's terms, that is, the return rate of going out is extremely high, and they all say that they are the daughters of "ten thousand yuan households". This was followed by advertising and requests for sponsorship. At that time, my father really represented a brand of MSG produced in Huainan, and we were often very proud to see my father on TV. For some public welfare undertakings and activities that came to ask for sponsorship, my father always responded to his needs and always wanted to give back to society.
Although he started halfway, his father has always had a love for broad beans, and although he has made some other snacks in the middle, he has never put down his broad beans. Even in the first two years of his death, he couldn't see clearly, and he also suffered from diabetes and kidney failure, but his father persevered. Until leaving us in 2003.
Huang Jiayuan traditional flavor snack won the first prize
Let the first entrepreneurs out of history
In addition to being the "King of Broad Beans", my father was also a versatile person who studied Peking Opera, Erhu and Huangmei Opera, and was invited to participate in the first Spring Festival Gala of Anhui Television. It was only after his father's death in 2003 that his characteristic broad beans and characteristic "dime, eat hot" shouts gradually became a kind of memory of the city. I used to run a private dish, and each table was given a plate of broad beans that I learned from my father, and the response was particularly good, and many people said that it was a familiar taste, a classic.
In the current Chenghuangmiao neighborhood, citizens and tourists and friends can enjoy a number of brand-new urban cultural sculptures, including the sculpture of his father "King of Broad Beans". We also have an idea to write out the story of my father, so that the earliest batch of entrepreneurs after the reform and opening up of Hefei can walk out of history and enter people's sight...