Before the opening of the port, Shanghai was indeed lackluster, but it was not without merit. At least the word "Shanghai" appeared as early as the Wei and Jin dynasties.
Tortoise Meng's "Song of Fishing Gear" said: The flow of Ganggu is listed in the sea and Shanghai. Note: The Wu people now call it a 簖.
The word "簖" is still used today: the people of Taizhou, next door to Shanghai, call the locally produced hairy crabs "簖crabs". It means crabs raised in bamboo fences. As the name suggests, "Shanghai" is a fence inserted in the sea to raise fish, shrimp and crabs.
Shanghai's taste genes are related to the ocean.
Around the 10th century B.C., the lands of Qingpu, Songjiang and Jiading in the west of Shanghai were gradually exposed to the sea under the accumulation of sediment at the mouth of the Yangtze River, but today's entire Shanghai territory was not completely formed until the Ming Dynasty more than 2,500 years later.
On the map, Shanghai is the richest farming area in the south of the Yangtze River in China, and in front of Shanghai is the endless East China Sea. For thousands of years, the people of Jiangnan have begged for a living from the sea and asked for land from the sea on this tidal flat.
This way of life constitutes the background color of Shanghai's diet: migratory fish, shrimp and crabs are the favorite of every Shanghainese.
▲刀鱼小馄饨（图 | 图虫·创意 @）
Whether it's a spoonful of scallion oil and a spoonful of wine, lightly steamed anchovies, or hairy crabs soaked in white water and dipped in ginger balsamic vinegar, or puffer fish burned until the gelatinous texture is soft and the soup sticks to the lips. They are the most face-saving dishes when meeting guests in Shanghai, and they are also a must for Shanghai gourmets to cook family dinners.
Even the down-and-out Shanghainese have to come to a bowl of braised rice cakes in June around the Dragon Boat Festival every year to satisfy their hunger; during the Qingming Festival, cook a bowl of saury wontons to treat themselves; no matter how bad it is, there is only a little bit of saury flavor of saury sauce noodles. The entrance of rice cakes, the fish soup in the stomach, wiping the mouth, and saying "Mi Dao Hao" are the common memories of many Shanghai children.
Essentially, migratory aquatic products such as saury, anchovy, crabs, and puffer fish have both the delicacy of freshwater and the sharp umami of seafood. They can enter the house in Shanghai, rooted in the highest place of Shanghainese people's food and Xi, and are inextricably linked to the geographical changes of Shanghai.
▲凸黄油拌饭（图 | 图虫·创意 @）
This youngest land in the Jiangnan region also has the most extroverted taste buds in the entire Jiangnan.
Shanghai is a complex city.
Because of the granary back, Shanghai people have the traditional slow, steadfast, and humble character of Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions; because they face the sea, Shanghai people have incomparable curiosity and strong desire to explore all new and unknown things; and because they occupy the port of the Yangtze River, the port city has a clear trace of the market gas and Jianghu gas owned by the wharf city.
A photographer said that Shanghai is the easiest city in the country to find high-rise buildings and alleys, and grocery shopping and fashionable girls in the same frame.
In fact, the integration of various cultures has long been hinted at.
In 1277 A.D., just the year after the defeat of the Southern Song Dynasty, Kublai Khan, the ancestor of the Yuan dynasty, issued an edict to separate Huating County, which was originally subordinate to Jiaxing Prefecture, and upgraded it to Songjiang Prefecture.
These two events are often regarded as the beginning of Shanghai's urban construction history. Obviously, compared with the surrounding cities of Suzhou, Wuxi, Jiaxing, Huzhou, and Hangzhou, which are full of the weak and elegant style of the Southern Song Dynasty, the construction of a city with completely different functions and temperaments is very likely to be intentional by the Mengyuan government.
But from a larger historical perspective, as a great monarch with an unprecedented territory, perhaps Kublai Khan had foreseen the great value of this land in the maritime age.
Today's Shanghai food is still very different from that of its neighbors: mutton and wine, for example. Jiangnan Xi is used to eating mutton and warm rice wine in winter. In many places in Shanghai, the opposite is true, eating sheep and drinking high-grade liquor in the hottest summer.
Many elderly people even go out early in the morning to go to a small shop specializing in morning wine, a plate of mutton, a plate of broad beans, two taels of white wine, this is the most important meal of the day, but also the most comfortable social time.
In Xiushan in Chongqing, Jingzhou in Hubei, Yueyang in Hunan, Ma'anshan in Anhui and other port cities along the Yangtze River, there is also a similar morning wine culture.
In addition, compared with the light and fresh Jiangnan cuisine, Shanghai's "thick oil red sauce" is more unique. Whether it's the braised pork ribs with crispy and smacked slag, the sweet fried shrimp, the red pork ribs rice cake, the braised bamboo shoots in red soup and bright oil, and the thick and thick grass circles...... Behind them are rich sauces, heavy sugars, and heavy oils.
There is not much left of the subtle and elegant temperament of the Jiangnan area.
Careful deconstruction of the "thick oil red sauce" of Shanghai's local cuisine may come more from the rich Huizhou cuisine and the pickled Ningshao cuisine, which are combined with the local sweetness of Suzhou and Xi, and the "mixed race" is born.
In addition, Shanghainese's pursuit of pasta is second to none in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Whether it is the scallion pancakes that are popular all over the beach, the famous Nanxiang xiaolongbao, or the fried and potstickers that are the favorite of Shanghai children, or the spicy pork noodles, pickled vegetables and shredded pork noodles, scallion oil noodles with Shanghainese style, or the indispensable baked bran on the table of Shanghainese Chinese New Year's Eve......
Each kind of noodle has a distinct Shanghai brand: fragrant, sweet, oily, and moist, which can not only be used as dry food for the proletariat, but also as a good match for literati and doctors to drink wine and tea.
On the surface, Shanghai's peculiar and outstandingly festive diet Xi the immigrants from Shandong, northern Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Guangdong and other places. But their ability to truly take root in the city and pass it on from generation to generation is deeply linked to its inclusive, outgoing urban character and mixed urban qualities.
The opening of the Sino-British "Treaty of Nanjing" was the earliest opportunity for Shanghai to take off. However, in fact, the "Nanjing Treaty" demarcated a total of five cities, including Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai.
Careful study shows that these five cities were very different at that time: Guangzhou and Fuzhou were provincial capitals, Xiamen and Ningbo were capital cities, and only Shanghai was still a small county town with little name at that time.
To a certain extent, it was the construction of trade, port opening, and concession that made Shanghai prosperous later.
Sadly, Shanghainese did not look up to foreigners at first: because they had always relied on Suzhou and Songjiang, the bookish atmosphere from the Wu-speaking district ran through the aesthetic correctness of the city. The sense of superiority of "cultivating and reading heirlooms" among the people has made people here have natural discrimination against Fanbang Waiyi.
At the beginning of the opening of the port, Shanghainese people looked down on European and American food people and did not live with them. Today's most prosperous Bund is still a barren beach that Shanghainese never go to. As for the other party's diet, Shanghainese people do not call it "Western food", but discriminately call it "fancai".
However, as more and more "reparations" from the great powers flowed into Shanghai and became the infrastructure of the concession, at the same time, the Taiping Rebellion and the Xiaodaohui Uprising forced the people of Shanghai to seek refuge in the concession, breaking the practice of separating Chinese and foreign people in the major concessions.
This is the first time that medical care, education, and lifestyle from the West have been fully displayed in front of ordinary Chinese.
Today, the old man and uncle you see on the streets of Shanghai may drink coffee and smoke a cigar after sending off their grandchildren and buying vegetables - the essence of this magical lifestyle is the great history of Shanghai leading China and learning from the West.
During the Guangxu period, the western restaurant "Yipinxiang" appeared on Fuzhou Road, followed by "Haitian Spring" and "Jiangnan Spring" and other Western restaurants also sprung up.
In the late Qing Dynasty novel "Dream of Prosperity on the Sea", the details of eating Western food in Shanghai are described in detail:
"That Xiangfan restaurant is the most famous on the four roads, up and down, with a total of more than 30 rooms. The four of them sat upstairs in room 32, and the waiter brought the menu to order. You'an ordered abalone and shredded chicken soup, fried plate fish, mushroom duck, and pork chops, Shaomu ordered shrimp soup, Hehua finch, ham eggs, and mustard chicken rice, Zijing ordered Yuan clam soup, pickled mandarin fish, iron chop chicken, and banana sandwich cakes, and Ji San ordered onion sauce beef soup, Philip steak, red simmered pheasant, shrimp flour dumplings, and also ordered a dim sum, which was sago pudding. The waiter asked what kind of wine was used, and Zijing said: "There are not many people who drink alcohol, and other wines are too harmful, so it is enough to open a bottle of champagne and a bottle of leather wine." ”
A strong combination of East and West style jumps into the menu.
According to the local history of Shanghai, in the 30s of the 20th century, there were more than 200 famous Western restaurants in Shanghai, which was the largest city in the country at that time. In particular, Xiafei Road and Fuzhou Road are the most concentrated, including Luowei Hotel, Deda Western Restaurant, Kailing Western Restaurant, Leixi Hotel, Fuxing Western Restaurant and Swan Pavilion Western Restaurant, etc.
Borscht and tonkatsu are typical meals that were born in that era. At that time, the Russian nobles were in exile in Shanghai, and according to the pronunciation of the Wu language, the Shanghainese translated Russia as "Luozon"; Based on the beetroot beef soup commonly eaten by the Russians, the Shanghainese invented "borscht".
If there is no beetroot, use cabbage instead; if the red color is not enough, add diced tomatoes and tomato sauce; if there is no condition to boil beef stock, use ground beef instead, and if it is not good, the red sausage can also be diced. In short, borscht is not for Russians to eat, but home-cooked and everywhere in restaurants, and it is a common memory of the times for Shanghainese.
There is a big difference between Shanghai-style tonkatsu and Japanese-style tonkatsu, the latter is charred on the outside and tender on the inside, and the meat is juicy, while the former is very thin with the back of a knife, fried until dry, charred and crispy, and the crumbs fall off when bitten down. The origin of this may have come from the Vienna fried platoon brought by the Germans.
In the same way that German schnitzel needs to be served with lingonberry jam, Shanghainese tonkatsu is served with a plate of dipping sauce. The authentic ones are made with spicy soy sauce. This seasoning, which is called "sauce sauce" by Cantonese and Hong Kong people, is based on the British "Worcestershire sauce". It is boiled into a thick juice by vegetables and spices, and then added with acetic acid seasoning, which is intertwined with sweet and sour, which is not only Western, but also in line with the tradition of thick oil red sauce of local vegetables.
After the liberation, the western restaurants in Shanghai Tang were closed, and the famous Luo Wei Hotel was renamed the Red House, and a few years later it was changed to the Red Flag Hotel, selling chicken feather vegetables and pork rib soup, but the menu left a mysterious "potato mixed with oil", which regular customers knew because its original name was potato salad.
Imprinted in the depths of Shanghai's genes, the side of the ocean has never been interrupted.
Source: Food Tips on the Tip of the Tongue
Editor: Wang Na
Editor in charge: Niu Dong