The premier snack in Chengdu, Sichuan is "Lai Tang Yuan". Among the more than 100 famous snacks in Chengdu, it receives the most customers and has the longest service time. It opens from 6 o'clock in the morning until 11 o'clock in the evening, serving nearly 10,000 tangyuan.
"Lai Tangyuan" is named after its entrepreneur Named Lai Yuanxing. Lai Yuanxing is a native of Dongfeng Township, Ziyang City, Sichuan Province, born in 1900. Since his childhood, his family was poor, his parents had died, and he was taken in by his aunt He Shi, who was in the next room. He Shi is a member of the Qingshuihe Township Wang clan in Ziyang, and the wife of Liu Xutang. Lai Yuanxing sent people to the fence and became a servant of the Liu family. In 1918, Lai Yuanxing had grown tall, young and handsome, and industrious and honest. He has a daughter, fang name Cuilian, Xiao Lai Yuanxing is one year old, looks very tall, fell in love with his cousin Lai Yuanxing, He Is also very satisfied. At the 19th day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar that year, the Nanjin Yi Guanyin Temple Fair, He Shi asked his daughter to burn incense and make a wish, accompanied by Lai Yuanxing. On the way home, when it rained heavily, Lai Yuanxing rushed into the cave with his cousin to hide from the rain. In that era of "men and women who are not intimate", they are unexpectedly encountered, and they add branches and leaves as an odd story. After Liu Tuanlian found out, he was furious and intended to execute Lai Yuanxing. After He Shi knelt down and pleaded with his husband bitterly, Liu Tuanlian dealt with it lightly, expelled Lai Yuanxing from the Liu family,000, and did not allow him to make a living in Ziyang.
Lai Yuanxing lived in the City God Temple on Chengdu East Avenue, and ate by pushing scooters, carrying water, chopping firewood, and mixing mixed meals for others. One day, an old lady from a wealthy family died in Pepper Street near the City God Temple, and asked Lai Yuanxing to change clothes for the deceased. At the end of the day, the owner gave him the changed clothes. After Lai Yuanxing returned to the City God Temple, he found that the deceased had an emerald green jade ring in his purse. He guessed that it must be a very valuable thing, so he returned the ring to his owner the next day. The master felt that he was honest and immediately gave him five silver dollars.
After several deliberations, Lai Yuanxing decided to use these five silver dollars to run the Tangyuan business. He bid farewell to the City God Temple, went to the East Gate City Wall to rent an old house, and bought a pair of burdens. One end picks a sand pot, and the other end picks tangyuan powder and sugar oil as the ingredient. Before dawn, he picked up his burden and walked around the city gate and the City God Temple, pulling up his voice and shouting, "Nai Tang Yuan, hot and big Tang Yuan!" "Nai" in the population of Ziyang in southern Sichuan means hot branding, but because of his surname Lai, people call him "Lai Tangyuan".
"Lai Tangyuan" has set up four business rules for itself: one is to regard profits as thinner; the second is to receive customers warmly; the third is to make the quality of tangyuan better than others; and the fourth is to make the capital turnover faster. He got up early and went dark, grinding the tangyuan powder very finely, boiling sugar oil and sesame seeds and frying them to the home, and the tangyuan he made was sweet and soft, delicious and delicious. After selling the morning tangyuan, he took the income to the market to buy back the raw materials, and sold the night tangyuan at night. One after another, he gained a foothold in Chengdu.
One night it rained, and "Lai Tangyuan" sold tangyuan under the eaves of East Avenue. From the wind and rain, a middle-aged man hurriedly came, one was to hide from the rain, and the other was to eat a bowl of rice balls to drive away the cold. When the man ate the rice balls, "Lai Tang Yuan" took the initiative to take his rain-soaked hat and bake it on the stove. In small talk, I know that each other is a fellow countryman in Ziyang. It turned out that the customer was Luo Yuanhui, then head of the real estate department of the Sichuan Provincial Construction Department. Chengdu Qingyang Palace Flower Fair is a good place for people in Chuanxiba to travel, walk in Green and exchange materials, where merchants gather and tourists are weaving. It is Luo Yuanhui who manages the flower fair and allocates the land for the stalls. He intended to bring together his fellow villagers "Lai Tangyuan", so from then on, "Lai Tangyuan" came to run.
Chengdu Qingyang Palace Flower Festival, the annual meeting period is from the ninth day of the first lunar month, to the valley rain festival, every season flower will Luo Yuanhui in the Qingyang Palace a "golden port" to "Lai Tangyuan" to set up a stall, sell thousands of bowls of Tangyuan every day, happy "Lai Tangyuan" every time to increase the number of people to help. After a few seasons of flowers, the savings of "Lai Tangyuan" are already considerable.
At that time, the real estate transaction in Chengdu had to be "passed" from Luo Yuanhui's hands, and he understood that buying a house was more profitable, so he suggested that "Lai Tangyuan" should not save money and buy a house more steadily. "Lai Tangyuan" readily agreed. Luo Yuanhui took care of him and bought several low-cost houses that the owners were eager to get rid of as housing in the back street of the big wall, and bought a small single shop to sell tangyuan in the downtown zongfu street, and officially hung up the eye-catching "Lai Tangyuan" horizontal plaque signboard and sat in the hall for business.
At this time, "Lai Tangyuan" missed the old feelings and eagerly wanted to pick up his young widowed and childless cousin Liu Cuilian, and the news spread to his hometown, and Liu Tuanlian and He's husband and wife personally escorted their daughter Cuilian to Chengdu and married their cousin "Lai Tangyuan". Then, "Lai Tangyuan" asked Liu Shuangquan, a younger brother of Cuilian who had studied privately for six years, to be his assistant in business.
"Lai Tangyuan" has a storefront, regular fixed-point operation, and the full assistance of his wife and cousin, the production skills of Tangyuan are refined, and the business is more and more prosperous, and it is open for fourteen hours a day. The tangyuan he made, snow white as jade, small and exquisite, glutinous and lubricating, delicious and sweet, boiled in the pot without muddy soup, scooped in the bowl does not bar the bowl, eat in the mouth without sticky teeth. Each serving of tangyuan is served with a small plate of sugar tahini, and the tangyuan is dipped in sesame seeds, the stronger the flavor. Every year at the Qingyang Palace Flower Fair, he opened a branch in the "Golden Port" there.
In this way, within ten years, under the care of Luo Yuanhui, he successively bought more than 250 street houses in Daqiang Back Street, Daqiang East Street, Houzimen, and Jiusi Lane, and bought an exquisite and beautiful single-family mansion in Dongchenggen Street. "Lai Tangyuan" rented out the street houses he bought to collect rent, and then used the rent and the profit income of Tangyuan to open a rice grain store. By 1940, he had opened two rice grain stores in the back street of Zhongshan Park (now the Cultural Palace) in Chengdu, and thirteen rice grain branches in Pengxian, Guanxian, Jintang, Shixian and other counties. Every year during the autumn harvest season, the branches purchase yellow valley and process it into rice on the spot, rice bran is supplied to local farmers to raise pigs, and rice is transported to Chengdu for the public. The business is getting bigger and bigger, and the "Lai Tangyuan" who is not confused is already a famous rich man in Chengdu.
"Lai Tangyuan" is rich and does not forget ben. He still continues to run the "Lai TangYuan" shop, serving in the store all day every week to spur himself not to forget the hard history of entrepreneurship.
"Lai Tangyuan" is rich and does not forget his hometown. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he joined forces with Luo Yuanhui and Liao Jianting, a Fellow Villager in Ziyang who was known as the "Tongtian Carpenter" in the construction industry in Chengdu, to establish the "Ziyang Hometown Association" in Chengdu, which was located in a single courtyard in Jiusi Lane. All the poor people who had wandered from Ziyang to Chengdu were given food and lodging by him, and the three of them were introduced to short-term work, so that the poor villagers would not suffer from the suffering of the City God Temple where he lived. In 1939, Ziyang organized the establishment of Chuyan Middle School, and he returned to his hometown and generously donated 150 quintals of Yellow Valley (about 26,000 catties of rice) and 1,000 yuan of Legal tender. For a while, the name shook the township, the reputation was full of Ziyang, and everyone praised it.