"Come with a boiled chicken, carry it to the streets for some wine, and nag about the family." This is a great pleasure of the old Baoding people, and the boiled chicken in their mouth comes from the "Yaolan Zhaima Family Old Chicken Shop", and its old taste has accompanied Baoding for generations. This old shop, located on the east side of Baoding's ancient lotus pond, has been passed down for 6 generations and has experienced more than 200 years of vicissitudes and ups and downs, and the customers are endless.
A hundred years of past, the old taste of the ancient city in memory
Just after the Spring Festival, the traffic on Yuhua Road is shuttled. On the east side of the ancient lotus pond, a small shop with a simple decoration is not conspicuous, but there is always a long queue at the entrance of its shop. The plaque at the main entrance has five large golden characters: Majia Old Chicken Shop. Entering the store, a seductive fragrance comes to the nose, and the people who come and go carry the mouth-watering "century-old chicken" in their hands.
Ma Yonglin, who is nearly 60 years old, is the sixth generation of the Majia Old Chicken Shop, and he told us about the hundred years of the Ma family's old chicken shop. Majia Old Chicken Shop has a history of more than 200 years, in 1796, the Ma surname Hui people in Guoziwa Village, Hejian County, Hebei Province, opened a home cooking workshop to make and sell cooked chickens in Baoding Mahao Zhenwumiao Hutong. During the Xianfeng period of the Qing Dynasty, the third generation of Ma Yaohui bought two shops on the south side of Fuya Avenue and created the "Yaolan Zhai Majia Old Chicken Shop", which is the predecessor of the current Majia Old Chicken Shop.
Soon after the opening of the Yaolan Zhai Majia Old Chicken Shop, some people opened four households on its left and right sides, Fuxing Zhai, Rongsheng Zhai, Wude Zhai and Guilin Zhai, and at the same time, some people opened two households in Chenghuangmiao Street. In the face of the competitive pressure of the seven or eight chicken shops around him, Ma Yaohui carefully studied the technology, adhering to the purpose of honest management and enthusiastic service to make the business more and more prosperous.
"My grandfather made rules at that time, one should pay attention to quality and credibility, and create famous brands; The second is to delve into technology and strive for excellence; Third, the service attitude should be good, and the small profit is high-selling. Ma Yonglin said that although several cooked chicken shops were competing to open in the surrounding area at that time, the old Ma family had a unique set of chicken selection, slaughtering, brine cooking techniques and recipes. Because of this, Yaolan Zhai Majia Old Chicken Shop business is getting better and better, in the late Qing Dynasty and early Minchu has been famous, once won the pursuit of the high-ranking officials and nobles at that time, foreign tourists to Baoding, if you can not buy the Majia Old Chicken Shop brine chicken, feel that it is a big regret.
It is said that at the end of the Qing Dynasty, Li Hongzhang, the governor of Baoshi, heard his subordinates talking about how delicious the boiled chicken in the Majia Old Chicken Shop was, so he sent someone to buy a few. In the early years of the Republic of China, the brothers Cao Kun, the governor of the province, were most fond of eating the brine chicken of the Yaolan ZhaiMa family old chicken shop during the Baoding period. Zhou Zuoren, an important essayist and translator since the May Fourth New Literary Movement, and the second brother of Mr. Lu Xun, was invited to baoding to give a lecture when he was a professor at Peking University. According to the "Diary of Zhou Zuoren" in the Collection of Lu Xun Museum on November 29, 1930, Mr. Zhou Zuoren came to Baoding to give a lecture and brought back to Beijing from Baoding "8 baskets of Huaimao pickles and 4 Majia chickens".
In the Lugou Bridge Incident in 1937, from the fall of Baoding to the rule of the Kuomintang reactionaries, the supply of live chickens was tight, and the wanton destruction of the Japanese and Kuomintang reactionaries caused the business of the Majia Old Chicken Shop to be depressed, unable to make ends meet, and in a state of dying and barely maintained. After the founding of New China, the Majia Old Chicken Shop was supported by the care and support of the party and the people's government. A new lease of life in public-private partnerships. On the basis of following the old french chicken, the fifth generation of Renma Xueqin, with modern technology and technology, seeks innovation and difference in production, and develops a number of new varieties such as tube chicken, boy oil chicken, boneless grilled chicken, sugar roast chicken, three fresh stuffed chicken, etc., with lotus leaves as packaging, and then put into the bag will not take the taste, string taste, both beautiful and generous, but also easy to carry, deeply loved by the public. Speaking of this, Ma Yonglin's thoughts drifted back to that era, and the scene of a long line lining up in front of the door at two or three o'clock in the morning, flocking to the door and competing to buy was vividly remembered.
Inheritance and persistence Carry forward Baoding's time-honored brand
Under the inheritance and persistence of six generations, Yaolan Zhai Majia Old Chicken Shop has been rated as a national high-quality product of the Ministry of Commerce, the silver medal of the first China Food Expo, a high-quality product of Hebei Province and one of the top ten tourist snacks in Baoding, and the reputation of Baoding Majia Old Chicken has been further improved at home and abroad.
In today's rapid development of social economy and online e-commerce, the sixth generation of Ma Yonglin has always adhered to the traditional production process and traditional sales model, just to bring the most traditional taste to consumers. "The process can not be less, and the raw materials must be improved." Ma Yonglin said that the Ma family old chicken shop passed down to his generation, still using the old method to make brine chicken, to go through 7 processes such as boiling chicken, cutting, pressing, brushing sauce, turning pot, and out of the pot. The raw chickens are selected, slaughtered and washed, one wing is attached to the mouth, so that the head and neck are bent back, the other wing nest is backwards, the legs are plucked from the crotch, and the claws are into the chamber, in the shape of a lute. Then put into the old soup for many years, add aged sauce, and accompany 18 kinds of precious herbs such as sand kernels, bean buns, shanna, cloves, cinnamon, and baizhi. As well as spices such as peppercorns and large ingredients. The cooked chicken made of colorful, aromatic, pure taste, beautiful shape, tender meat, crisp bones, soft and not rotten, repeatedly tasted fresh, long time to eat.
Shan Baoqing, whose father worked at the Ma family's old chicken shop, once recalled. In the 1950s, he was most impressed by the fact that in order to select good ingredients for the Ma family's old chickens, his father and his colleagues often took turns in the surrounding rural markets, riding sophomore bicycles, carrying chicken cages on both sides, and sometimes even going directly to the village to buy them, with large copies to catch live chickens. First of all, the appearance should be fresh, no matter how cheap the price, the treatment of the sick is not to be discussed. The rooster I bought also had an earthenware for testing the quality, that is, to pull down three handfuls of chicken feathers, on the neck, tail, and wings, the coat was bright and straight
Yang is a sign of health. The materials for brine boiled chicken are also very elaborate, taking sand kernels as an example, to use Yunnan's fine Yangchun sand, the market price is 880 yuan per kilogram, while ordinary grass sand kernels are only 80 yuan, and the price difference is 10 times. In addition to the exquisite use of ingredients, the secret of the mellow taste of boiled chicken is to cook chicken with old soup. The old soup is rich in nutrients, and the essence of chicken is contained in it. "To revitalize the vitality of the old brand, we must take the road of honest management and the pursuit of quality, and let the people eat really good things." In addition to the boiled chicken, in order to meet the needs of the market, the chicken shop has also specially developed vacuum-packed chickens that are easy to preserve, in addition, it also sells some beef, chicken offal, tripe and so on.
For more than 200 years, Yaolan Zhai Majia Old Chicken Shop has been weathered and frosted, standing firmly, and the paving surface has changed several times, but it has always been opened in the area of Yuhua Road, the most prosperous city in Baoding City, adjacent to the Governor's Office and the Ancient Lotus Pond. Ma Yonglin said affectionately: "Opening the noodles at the entrance of the ancient lotus pond is to promote the old taste of Baoding's old brand, so that every tourist who has eaten Majia's boiled chicken can't forget this long Baoding flavor!"