After watching "Flowers", many people can't help but try a "pork rib rice cake". The two ingredients that don't seem to match each other are combined to form a dish, just like the relationship between Miss Wang and Po in the play. This local snack, which was not particularly popular in Shanghai, has recently aroused the interest of audiences across the country.
"Flowers" was a hit, and the Shanghai food in the play attracted everyone's attention, and the restaurants on the Yellow River Road lined up again, and snacks such as "Bao Zong Rice" in Tokyo at night, "Youdunzi" in Mr. Fan's hand, and Linghong's endless "chicken feet" were also talked about by everyone. In Flowers, a dish can be the verdict of a character. Outside of the series, the concrete, urban, and everyday Shanghai lifestyle reflected by these delicacies is also replacing those urban symbols as the focus of recent discussions about the city of "Shanghai".
We chatted with Li Shu, the cultural and historical data consultant of "Flowers" and the designer of "Flowers Cookbook", about the story behind the food of "Flowers". She is from Shanghai, a post-80s generation and a long-term writer who has been focusing on food and history for a long time. In her essays, food is often used as an incision into understanding a place or a piece of history. During the preparation of "Flowers", she and the research team interviewed a large number of proprietresses who opened restaurants in Shanghai in the eighties and nineties, collected old recipes of those years, and also saw the small rivers and lakes in Shanghai through these people and dishes. For Li Shu, "food is a key to researching people". Following the thread of this tongue-in-cheek map, Li Shu chatted with us about "Flowers", about these people in Shanghai, and about people's daily lives in the city.
The following is Li Shu's account.
Text | Wang Yuan
Edit | Chu Ming
图 | （除特殊标注外）剧集《繁花》
1
After the broadcast of "Flowers", friends have been asking me about making rice recently, "Can this thing be used for rice?" and "What can be used for rice?" Because we have designed fifty or sixty kinds of side dishes for the rice in the play, such as yellow mud, snails, crab paste, sauce, wrapped melons, moss, peanuts, rice, Xiaoshan radish, fried edamame, white milk curd, ...... All of a sudden, I felt like I was the best at making rice among my friends.
interviewed Ma Yili before the broadcast, and she told me that she especially likes the setting of soaking rice, which is too representative of Shanghai. I'm still glad that she got me as Reiko. In fact, soaking rice is to blanch the leftover overnight rice with boiling water, put it on the stove to burn, and serve it with various side dishes. This is not only in Shanghai. But I think it is very representative of Shanghai's attitude and mental state, no matter how much fish and meat you eat outside, you will just eat a bowl of rice when you come back. Reiko was such a person for Ah Bao at the beginning, how can you go out and be rich and rich, I am here to be your bottom, and I will always be here.
"Flowers" in Tokyo's signature "Ikeba"
In 2017, Mr. Jin Yucheng called me and asked if I would be interested in participating in the movie "Flowers". I started chasing the book "Flowers" when it was still serialized on Lanetang.com, and I just thought it was fun, and I thought it was a very magical old man who posted a paragraph on the Internet every day. I feel that "Flowers" at this time has its own creative language style. It has passed through the Ming and Qing Dynasty notebook novels, and through the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School...... More vivid and captivating.
Later, Mr. Jin and I went to meet director Wong Kar-wai. My own instinct is that this book is very difficult to film and television, it itself has scattered clues, and it involves a lot of things. But I didn't have any doubts about going to the director at that time, and for me, of course, it was a good learning opportunity, so I thought basically, what kind of homework the director assigns, you can just complete it, and I believe that with his help, I can get more out of it.
Jin Yucheng and Li Shu (photo provided by the interviewee)
The first time I met the director was in a restaurant in a hotel apartment in Shanghai. I remember that the place was a bit dark and a little noisy, and the first time I saw Wong Kar-wai without sunglasses, I still didn't recognize it. After that meal, I didn't talk much about the project of "Flowers". I didn't expect that he had read the articles written on my official account and knew that I was interested in food, so he chatted with me about Mr. Tang Lusun, a foodie in the last century. The director is a very careful and kind person in his usual life, but he is actually a very old-fashioned person, such as lady first in everything, the girl must go first when entering the elevator, and at least send it downstairs if you give it away, very polite. Of course, that's another matter at work.
Then he began to leave me homework, and the two things that impressed me the most were to pick out 100 golden sentences from the book, and the other was to write 10 food stories. I was a little unimpressed at first, I think I was such an early reader of Mr. Jin, I have even read three versions of "Flowers", do I still need to read it like this? Later, I understood his reasoning, he wanted to use a method to let me find the feeling. As soon as I gave him his homework, he said to me, "Relax." I said I wasn't nervous, and he said that what I said was that your words should be relaxed, and you should be as relaxed as you usually write an official account. What he wants is for me to fully understand "Flowers" and make it completely my own, and then write it.
I came up with a solution, I had a readership, and I took you to read two chapters of "Flowers" every week. Readers will ask a lot of questions about the language in the book, and I will answer them, and in the process, I will also learn more about Mr. Jin's writing style. At the same time, I also went to complete the homework assigned to me by the director. After all this was done, I found that I was more familiar with "Flowers" - not with the story, but more with the temperament of the book. I didn't realize it at the time, but when I went back and looked at the many versions I had written in the past, I thought there had been a change. Because our film and television adaptation can't be completely faithful to the original work, otherwise why not just read the book. Later, the director also said that our work is to let everyone feel the breath of "Flowers" and let the audience feel what kind of thing it is. My own style of writing has changed a lot along the way. This process is like practicing internal skills for me, and it is also the biggest benefit of this project.
After the filming of the "Flowers" TV series started in 2020, I received a request to design a set of "Flowers Cookbook". The dishes on the Yellow River Road have been sampled several times during the previous research, but we still have no concept of the dishes in Tokyo at night, and the director told me that maybe you still have to do this.
He didn't mention the specific requirements, of course, it should look good when filmed, which is the minimum. My idea was to try to be as holistic. We divided it into spring, summer, autumn and winter, and set up some permanent dishes and seasonal dishes, because it was divided into two systems: Tokyo 1.0 and 2.0. We also have to consider what kind of person Reiko is and what kind of characteristics she has as a boss, and we want to make these dishes look like Reiko made them.
This character is very shrewd, and we also designed some dishes that look shrewd and can make more money. She was from Japan, and the cutlery we picked out for Night Tokyo was also Japanese-style, a little smaller than the ones on the market at the time. Night Tokyo 1.0 is a very ordinary local dish, such as "braised paddling", which is actually a fish tail, and the problem raised by the director is that you have to design two dishes, Zhizhenen and Night Tokyo will sell them, but one is cheap and one is expensive, and one is affordable and one has gimmicks. There is a young man from Suzhou in our team, and when he talks about the "herring bald lung" in his hometown, we think of the corresponding "braised paddling", which of course represents the different styles of the two restaurants. We even specially designed some dishes for Ye Tokyo, and some of them were specially used to "don't sprout" (secretly compete with the Yellow River Road), which were not used in the drama later, but we actually took various situations into account when we did them. Later, the director told me that you can really open a restaurant with these dishes.
"Braised paddling"
2
Regarding Shanghai in the eighties and nineties, the crew set up a special research team and did a lot of homework. I myself interviewed a lot of the proprietors at the time. There are those who open restaurants, there are also chess and card rooms, and dance halls. How many people do you have to hire to open a small shop, how do you recruit chefs, what kind of wine do you put on the bar when you enter the door, how do you dance in the ballroom, what dances are popular, how do you get into the dance hall...... At that time, for the sake of Husheng's line, the research team also interviewed the entire Nanchang building, and through this interview, those who lived together in the building were re-strung together, and everyone also held a party, just like the "Looking Back" of the Nanchang Building.
These proprietresses talk about their experiences in the '90s, which today sounds almost legendary. One of the proprietress said that when she opened the store, she would encounter hooligans who would harass her and come to collect protection money. Maybe this kind of thing will happen to many people who open stores, but everyone's way of dealing with it is different. Her shop is near a nightclub, so she came up with a way, at first it was to send stored value cards to the ladies of the nightclub, and then their boyfriends would come and wait for them to get off work, and the proprietress asked these boyfriends to come to her store and wait, waiting for the young lady to eat after work without money. Over time, these boys gathered in the store and acted as a protector, and the hooligans did not dare to come.
There has never been a shortage of legends in Shanghai, but if you read the historical materials, the legends of Du Yuesheng's group of people in the Republic of China are only in the literature. But these lady ladies are still there, and when they tell you these things face to face, you have that huge sense of unreality, but you can feel alive, and they are a very lively group of people.
There is a Wu Qing restaurant on Wujiang Road, with three floors, and a semi-basement downstairs, I often went to Wu Qing to eat when I was an intern at the TV station, and called a lion head of the Orient Express to send it over, and the proprietress saw it and was not angry. At that time, there were many aunts and mothers in the restaurant on Wujiang Road, all of whom were newly laid off textile workers. At that time, some of the people who were laid off went to set up roadside stalls, and some went to work as "empty ladies", that is, older "flight attendants". There are also a large number of people who choose to go abroad, and some may have been married or talked to friends in China, and resolutely decided to go abroad to work. We interviewed a man who was going on a plane to Japan the next day, and had a meal with his boyfriend the day before and said he was going to break up. Her boyfriend was very stunned and said, "Why did you talk about it at this time?" She said, because I don't want you to be unhappy the other day, although you will still be unhappy now, but you only have one day to be unhappy.
At that time, these women thought that as long as I did it with my own hands, I would always be able to do it. Although in the long river of history, many may fail in the end, but I think their lives are "hard work". If we encounter something today, we often come to the conclusion that "forget it, don't do it", and then lie flat. But at that time, they could always come up with all kinds of ways for their lives.
Some of the plots embodied in our play, such as the competition between the bosses, the cutting off of water, electricity, gas, and suppliers, are also prototypes behind them. Each small shop is its own small rivers and lakes, and the human love field. I remember one of the people we interviewed told us that if you open a restaurant, if he is your financier, you can't have feelings for him, and if you like him, you don't want to ask him for money. I felt as if I was listening to a novel by Kiyohari Matsumoto, as if she was talking about opening a store and about the relationship between men and women. After listening to her, I felt that Reiko and Po really had no hope.
Although this group of people is old, many of them have retired and changed careers, but they are still very strict with themselves, and they all have to go to fitness and love beauty. When I went to the interview, I always wore flat shoes, and one day a proprietress suddenly told me: "Little girls must wear high heels!" I said that wearing high heels makes my feet hurt, and she said no, wearing high heels is to remind yourself to always pay attention to your posture. There was also a proprietress who criticized me for "wearing a skirt that can't see the waist all day long", and she said that when wearing a skirt, you must wear a corset.
The children in our research team also asked this question, why are they all "boss ladies", and it is indeed that most of them are women. They said that women come out at the front desk, and they should be softer in dealing with people, and sometimes women come out to speak and say that they can't die, and there will be a little retreat in the future, right? It seems that Shanghai Tang has been like this for 100 years. Some of the men are pressed in the back, docking with the back kitchen, docking with the fire department, and some are going to work in other industries, such as I know there are nightclubs. These proprietresses are responsible for coming out to "show up".
These hostesses are very strong on the whole, of course you have to be strong, you have to deal with 100 problems a day, it is impossible not to be strong. On the other hand, they are also very affectionate, a bit of the feeling of children of the rivers and lakes. There was a boss lady's husband who later committed an accident, and she talked for a long time about how to get her husband out with great effort. I asked her if you divorced him after you fished him out? She said no, and finally she left, and she still didn't want to leave at that time. She said that at that time, she always felt that she could live her life if she could. You will find that they look so strong, but there are also many very traditional sides.
The lady who reminded me to wear a tunic dress, I saw a picture of her when she was younger, lying on the bar, and it was really beautiful and cool. She also later divorced. During the interview, she always emphasized that she was very chic, and told me that you want to do this and that, but at the same time, you will feel that she actually has a strong sense of loneliness. There are some things in their hearts, because they are very strong, and they refuse to speak out. There was also a proprietress interviewed at that time who has now passed away, and in the last stage of her life, she was in a hospice hospital, and she sent text messages to regular customers, saying that she was sick and that everyone might not be able to come to dinner, which was very decent. No one knew she was so sick. After you know the story behind them, you will still be quite embarrassed. Of course, I can't judge other people's lives, I can't judge, I can only say that if it were me, I wouldn't want to do that.
After the show aired, many people asked me if I wanted to open a restaurant, but in fact, I realized when I was doing an interview that I would never open a restaurant and be a hostess, and I don't have that ability myself.
Reiko, the proprietress played by Ma Yili in "Flowers".
3
Restaurants in Shanghai, each area has its own characteristics. In the vicinity of Nanjing Road, there is Zhapu Road Food Street first, and then there is Huanghe Road Food Street, all of which do more seafood. Because there were a large number of foreign businessmen in Shanghai at that time, concentrated in that area, Chinese must eat when talking about business, and seafood is better to sell at a price in business banquets.
When I was a child, the most impressive thing about Huanghe Road was two dishes, a "salt and pepper king snake" and a "lobster three to eat". At that time, I made a wish with my friends, don't forget to be rich and rich, and invite you to eat lobster boats every day in the future, that is all my imagination of the future luxury life. When I went to the Yellow River Road to interview, every family made salt and pepper king snakes at that time, and they all said that they had invented it themselves. Later, in the play, for the sake of visual effects, we made it "Flame King Snake".
A few days ago, I chatted with an old guest on the Yellow River Road, he said that I went to the Yellow River Road for a business banquet, the biggest reason is not expensive, to be honest, the Yellow River Road is quite cheap, in the Yellow River Road at noon and night supper three meals down to spend 10,000 yuan, this price you go to the Yangtze River Hotel can not eat. Mainly there are many restaurants on the Yellow River Road, and there are very few restaurants you can choose in Shanghai at that time. Although the Yellow River Road is very short, only more than 700 meters, there are many restaurants, and there are often new restaurants, and everyone will always come to eat new restaurants, and slowly everyone will do it in this place.
The houses on the other side of Jinxian Road are generally a small façade on the first floor, and the second floor is inhabited. Naturally, its area determines that it can only open small foreign trade clothing stores and boutiques, and it can only sit a few tables of guests when it opens a restaurant. Because many stores have their own houses, their per capita consumption does not need to be very high, so they make Shanghai local dishes, and home cooking is the most reasonable.
When we designed the recipes of Jinxian Road, we encountered a problem, this dish pays attention to thick oil and red sauce, it is difficult to shoot it to look good, such as a braised hoof, red and big, we have to think about how to put it in good shape. Later, I thought that when I made this dish at home, it was usually the Chinese New Year, and my father would spread a layer of bean sprouts on the bottom and use green to base it, and it would look good. You suddenly realize that Chinese food actually has a lot of colors and designs, but now everyone has forgotten a little bit about it.
Later, when we look at the old recipes of the 80s, you will find that the plating at that time is different from the current plating in terms of aesthetics. Our current presentation is influenced by both Japanese and European styles, and we like to leave the sides of the plate open and pick two times here and there with the sauce. But this kind of Chinese aesthetic in the early days pays attention to the place that should be full. For example, in the cold dish on the banquet, the master first uses various ingredients to spell out a crane, which is called "Songhe Longevity", which is just a cold dish, which is beautiful enough and shocking enough. But from the perspective of catering now, you will feel that it is very slow, it is not easy to serve, and slowly these skills are about to be lost.
"Songhe Longevity" cold dish (photo provided by the interviewee)
There are also some Shanghai snacks in the play, in fact, they are also mentioned in the book, and the director is very good at using these foods to express the characters. For example, pork rib rice cakes are originally two separate things, but together they are one dish. It is a common snack in Shanghai with a long history, as early as the 1920s, there were those rib and rice cake stalls that walked the streets. In the sensational "Murder of Husband in the Sauce Garden" during the Republic of China, the wife also told her husband on the night of the crime, let's borrow a little money from others and set up a stall of pork ribs and rice cakes, and it won't take long to get the capital back, but the husband didn't agree and still had to gamble, so she fell into despair and killed her husband.
I used to write historical stories, and when I wrote historical stories, I had to come into contact with documents and read old newspapers every day, and it seemed that I had a lot of letters and diaries. I will find a very interesting thing, who a person has met and what he has done today, these can be whitewashed, even if it is narrated by a person, there will be his subjectivity. But there is only one thing, what he ate that day, and no one will whitewash it. However, it is precisely the fact that he eats that shows his style, and I think this is a very amazing point.
So almost a decade ago, I started focusing on food. I think food is a key to researching people. A person who likes to eat ruby cream and a person who likes to eat Tianjin hemp flowers will probably not have the same personality (it must be emphasized that there is no difference between ruby cream and Tianjin hemp flowers).
I remember that a few years ago, a scholar wrote a book called "Lu Xun's Dinner". When we were children, the Lu Xun in the textbook was the Lu Xun who "crossed his eyebrows and pointed coldly at the thousand husbands", but if you look at that book, he ran a lot of restaurants back then, and went everywhere in restaurants all over Beijing, as a Shaoxing person, he was also very spicy. You will find that he is actually a very loving person, at least a very lively person, not the image we imagined when we were children. Including his relationship with Zhu An, he doesn't hate eating Shaoxing food, but he never tells Zhu An that he doesn't like to eat dishes with a lot of dried plum vegetables, so Zhu An can only guess that it is really sad that the husband and wife do their part. So studying food is actually a methodology, and you can see a lot of things that belong to real people behind the food.
I have used this key to solve a lot of mysteries, and there is a small example, when "The Legend of Ruyi" was broadcast, everyone was discussing the matter of "the queen's broken hair", why this happened. I went to look through "The Bottom of the Meal" at that time, and in the month before the quarrel, what the emperor ate for dinner, which dishes were given to the queen every day, which dishes were given to Concubine Ling, and which dishes were given to other concubines, the emperor's intentions could also be seen in this process. You will find that the emperor gave the queen about the same food every day during that time, compared to Concubine Rong and Concubine Ling, at least we can be sure that he didn't care much about this person at that time.
The same is true from the creator's point of view. It is difficult to explain the relationship between men and women, and it is difficult to talk about the most cheesy question, whether this man loves this woman or not, and it may not be able to finish a long speech. But if we let them have a meal together, whether this meal will go to the man's house or the woman's house, and who will open the mouth first, at what price, and how many dishes will be ordered...... When this meal is finished, it will be clear whether there is a possibility between them. Food is something that naturally reveals a lot of things because it's so everyday, and that's what I've always found interesting about food.
Miss Wang's favorite pork rib rice cake in "Flowers".
4
I myself am a person with a wide range of food tastes, and when I was in Shanghai, I loved to eat Shanghai food, especially raw fried food. After coming to Beijing, I also love to eat Beijing food. Also, I love soy juice. Some people always say that Beijing is a food desert, and I told them that there is a mastery in Beijing, that is, dried croquettes, and southerners can't learn it. I used to have a nickname, "Three Bowls Don't Work", and I had to eat three bowls for dinner, but now it's sad, and one bowl is over. The amount of food I eat has decreased, and you will feel that my youth has also passed.
When it comes to fried buns, Shanghainese people have to talk about it, they can't call it fried buns, they want to call fried steamed buns. The people who call the fried buns are all outsiders. Shanghai in the eyes of Shanghainese and Shanghai in the eyes of outsiders seem to be an eternal topic. For example, when people in Shanghai drink coffee, people in other places will also have a lot of interpretations. I myself would think that the Shanghainese themselves don't see it as saying that because I drink coffee, I am exquisite, it is just a way of life. I used to go to one of the old cafes in Shanghai, where you could have unlimited refills until 8 or 9 a.m. If you go to that place, you'll see that it's full of older people. In fact, its function is similar to that of a teahouse, and the coffee is not very good, but these people have been sitting here for many years, rain or shine, and everyone will have their own place. I went there for an interview, and an old man told me that so-and-so hadn't been here for days, and that he was probably dead.
When I was younger, I never thought I would stay in Shanghai for the rest of my life, and I really wanted to go out and see it. When I actually went out and looked back, I realized that Shanghai had left a lot of marks on my life and could not be washed away.
The Yellow River Road in Shanghai that was set on fire by "Flowers" (Photo source: Visual China)
For example, when I first arrived in Beijing, I liked Beijing very much, and I thought that everyone was very enthusiastic, and I was very flattered when people told me, "Come to my house for dinner", because there is a sense of alienation in Shanghainese interactions, and if you are in Shanghai, you must be very good friends to invite you to your home. Then I also take this matter seriously, the contract spirit of Shanghainese people is very heavy, if I promise you, then I will definitely work hard to complete. But when I really want to go with him, he may say that my pot hasn't been brushed yet, and I can't go. Later, I learned that in Beijing this is a very simple greeting or politeness, don't take it seriously.
There are many people who think that Shanghainese people are very indifferent, but this is not the case, of course, Shanghainese people also talk about affection, but everyone's way of understanding affection is different. For example, Shanghai people give gifts, of course, it is not good to give them too cheaply, but everyone will also think that giving too expensive will also make people have a burden. We feel that to give a gift that makes the other person feel comfortable is actually thinking about the other person.
For example, one of the proprietresses I interviewed told me that she had a customer in her early years, but later lost the stock market and her family's fortune plummeted, and when she came to her store again, she only ordered Yangchun noodles. She thought, "Oh, he's a bad worker" ("sin" has a sympathetic connotation in Shanghainese). I thought she wouldn't take any money from him, but no, she still had to take it. But every time she wanted to ask him to eat more, she would say that she had recently developed a new dish and wanted him to try it, so she used this method. She said that if you don't charge him money for this kind of guest, it will hurt his self-esteem very much.
You can hear a lot of similar stories from these hostesses, who at first glance are still talking about money, and they are happy to share those "smart" things with you, but when you peel them back layer by layer, you will find that their affection is sometimes wrapped under this seemingly detached and cold exterior.
Of course, these differences do not matter whether they are good or bad, just like Beijing cuisine and Shanghai cuisine, but the style and evaluation system are different, and each has its own charm. Everyone has a lot of interpretations of Shanghai, of course, because Shanghai is a very attractive and indeed very complex city. In the past few years, I have been writing more and more about the stories of Shanghai, and eventually you find that you can't avoid it.
My current home in Shanghai is close to Moganshan Road, on the edge of the Suzhou Creek, very close to where Xiao Mao lives in the book. In the book, Xiao Mao practiced martial arts with the fist master, and they fished out a dead man in the Suzhou Creek or something, which was near there. In fact, it is more "lower corner", a gathering of people from all walks of life and nine streams, and it is a very marketable environment. Now, of course, there are things and people there, and Mr. Jin once told me that those alleys have been demolished, and the gallery in that huge creative park has held an exhibition of Mr. Jin's paintings. Now when I go for a walk by the Suzhou Creek, I like to listen to two songs, one is Yao Li's "Suzhou Creek", and the other is the Shanghai opera "Zhichao Reading Letters". I don't know how to describe how I feel when I hear these two songs, but I recommend everyone who comes to Suzhou Creek for a walk to listen to the song "Suzhou Creek", really.
My favorite thing to eat when I was a kid was the old-fashioned buttercream cake, which was a little hard and the piping was old-fashioned. It certainly doesn't come every day. If you could have a cake like that on your birthday as a child, you would feel like the happiest person in the world.
Later I actually ate a lot of very good cakes in France and Japan, including some of the works that won prizes in dessert contests. But when I celebrate my birthday, I still want a piece of old-fashioned cream cake like that. When you grow up, you always feel that having a cake does not mean happiness, and happiness is very complicated. But in fact, the standard of happiness may be very simple, but you become more complicated as a person, so it is very annoying.
To put it bluntly, that's what my philosophy of life is. No matter how much you eat, isn't that all you love to eat in the end? It's still the most comfortable to eat with rice.
Kaisling's signature buttercream cake, Reiko's birthday cake.