For many Urumqi people, 40 kilometers southeast of Urumqi City, Chaiwopu Lake should be a good place for outings, especially in the autumn high and cool days, a few friends gathered together, on the turquoise lake while chatting in the south of the sea, while sharing the authentic big plate of chicken, can be described as a great enjoyment of life.
The reason why Chai Wo Fort is full of tourists all year round, many of them are going to the big plate of chickens. Some local elderly people recall that since the end of the 1980s, Chai Wo Bao Lake was built as a tourist attraction, the unique flavor of the big pan chicken has been very popular, the big pan chicken has become a weather vane of that era, that place, and even some people say that the origin of the big pan chicken is Chai Wo Fort.
As a dish that has been widely accepted and loved by people, it is not difficult to trace the historical origin of TaiPan Chicken, but there are too many versions of Tai Pan Chicken.
Some people say that in the early years of the Republic of China, a master surnamed Zhang settled down in Shawan from Sichuan to avoid war, and opened a small restaurant specializing in spicy chicken. Because this dish is served on a large plate, the color and flavor are complete, and it is very delicious to eat, and at the end, it is accompanied by a few wide noodles, and soon, the name of "big plate chicken" spread throughout Xinjiang;
Some say that the founder of the big plate chicken was a court cook. Big plate chicken is a delicacy specially made for the harem of the Qing Dynasty, which is deeply loved by the court. One year, after the old chef left the palace, he quietly brought the simple and easy-to-learn practice of large plates of chicken to the people, and it was transmitted to Xinjiang;
Some people say that it is an appetizer eaten by long-distance bus drivers, and it is said that this saying is more popular among drivers in northern Xinjiang. At that time, from Urumqi to Ili, Tacheng, Altay and other places, you must pass through laoshawan, Shawan County on both sides of the road there are many small restaurants for passing drivers, one of the Sichuan masters with appetizing dried peppers and green peppers with chicken stir-fried, coupled with potatoes, lasagna, etc., popular with everyone, and later this dish slowly evolved into today's large plate of chicken.
These claims seem to have their own merits, but until now, there has not been an official conclusion as to who is the real founder of Big Pan Chicken.
After consulting some materials, including reading Mr. Fang Ruo's "The True Biography of Dapan Chicken", in my mind, there seems to be a rough combing of the historical context of Dapan Chicken, which roughly divides Xinjiang's Dapan Chicken into two categories, and the signs played by these two categories are concentrated on two place names, one is Chai wo Fort and the other is Shawan.
So, which of these two places is the birthplace of Xinjiang's big pan chicken? Let's start with the Chai Wo Fort big plate chicken, which is closer to Wushi.
In the mid-1980s, with the increase in the popularity of Chaiwopu Lake, the number of tourists slowly increased, and Chen Jiaqiao and his lover Su Xianlan, who had just arrived in Xinjiang, felt that it was a good place to make money.
At first, in addition to running a Marinated Chicken with a Shanghai flavor, they also sold snacks, and after a few months, it was almost difficult to make ends meet. They were planning to do some small business elsewhere, but Chen Jiaqiao was very unhappy to see the traffic coming and going so much.
With the construction of railways near the 312 National Highway, the number of construction companies and various vehicles in the past has gradually increased, and the number of people who come to Chen Jiaqiao's restaurant to eat has naturally increased, and in order to retain customers, Chen Jiaqiao has used his brain in the method of making chickens.
Chen Jiaqiao is a Hunan person, Hunan people love to eat spicy, he tried to use spicy fried chicken, this stir-fry, actually fried addicted, they ate it, the diners from the south to the north also ate it, the brine chicken shop became a Xinjiang spicy chicken shop, the taste is delicious, many people even come to admire. Hunan people love to eat spicy seeds, which are famous in the country, so how can spicy chicken become a large plate of chicken when eating?
Chen Jiaqiao recalled: "At the beginning, it was loaded on small plates, and a chicken was loaded on four plates, which was very troublesome. Later, I wondered, if you use a dozen inches of enamel plates, just filled with a large plate, it looks very affordable. In fact, the name of this large plate of chicken was proposed by the customer. They came to eat chicken, saw us on a large plate, casually said the three words "big plate chicken", unexpectedly, inadvertently, "big plate chicken" was retained until now.
Driven by Chen Jiaqiao, the people around him began to imitate one after another, gradually forming a scale, and the reputation of chaiwobao big plate chicken became bigger and bigger. Today, there are more than 80 large plate chicken shops on the spicy chicken street of Chai Wo Fort. It seems that this Chai Wo Fort spicy chicken really brought wealth to the locals. It is also because of the popularity of Chai Wo Bao spicy chicken, so Xinjiang Dapan Chicken is an improved product after Chen Jiaqiao combined brine chicken and Hunan spicy chicken, and has also become a major version of the origin of Dapan Chicken.
Another version that can stand up is the Shawan Large Plate Chicken. When it comes to this dish, most Shawan people are very proud, in their view, Shawan is the true birthplace of large plates of chicken. One of the most powerful pieces of evidence is that the first registered trademark of Xinjiang Dapan Chicken was born in Shawan. The person who registered Dapan Chicken is Zhang Kunlin, the owner of the famous Xinghua Village Dapan Chicken Shop in Shawan.
When further tracing that history, the reporter found that Zhang Kunlin was not actually the founder of Shawan Dapan Chicken, he just had the foresight to register a trademark first. Many Shawan people say that the founder of Shawan Big Pan Chicken is "Old Li", and he knows it casually in Shawan.
The man who was called "Old Li" by Shawan was named Li Shilin. In the 1970s, when Li Shilin came to Shawan to join his father, Shawan was not as rich as it is now, when it was sparsely populated and looked a little desolate. Introduced by relatives, Li Shilin, in his early 20s, began digging coal at a state-run coal mine.
It is understood that the conditions in the mine at that time were very difficult, and Li Shilin, who had been eating in the canteen for a long time, felt that the food was not good, so he opened his own stove to cook and eat. Later, Li Shilin left the coal mine to work as a farmer in the suburbs, and in his spare time, a friend invited him to help the cook to make a banquet, and twice helped the cook to make a reputation, and since then relatives and friends have invited him to wedding and funeral banquets, and slowly, he has become a well-known local country cook.
The shrewd Li Shilin realized that this craft may be a way for him to make money, so he rented a house in the west of the city and opened a small restaurant, and in half a year he did a very prosperous business, his business was booming, but the landlord was not happy and took the shop back.
In desperation, Li Shilin decided to restart the stove, he saw that the popularity near the old commercial bureau of the county town was OK, he rented a storefront in Ye'er, and named it "Manpeng Pavilion", slowly, more and more people came to eat, others are mainly to make beef and mutton dishes, but he found another way to make spicy chicken.
In fact, Li Shilin's original fried spicy chicken is more like the current braised chicken nuggets. At the beginning, Li Shilin's spicy chicken was also packed on a small plate, and the reason why it became a large plate was entirely because of the customer's words. "At that time, there was an employee of a construction company who came to eat chicken and thought it was delicious, but it was too little. Seeing that I had come out of the back hall with a chicken, I was asked to fry the chicken for them. However, after the frying was done, it was not so large, so I put it on a plate with noodles, and from then on, I thought of using a large plate to serve the whole fried chicken. Li Shilin recalled.
In this way, in the winter of 1988, in a small restaurant in Shawan County, today's Shawan large plate chicken was born. That year, Li Shilin was 37 years old. Li Shilin broke into fame with the Shawan Large Plate Chicken, and his "Man Peng Pavilion" was as high as the name he took.
Since Li Shilin's Shawan Dapan Chicken broke into fame, many people in Shawan County have seen business opportunities from it, including Zhang Kunlin, who was later known as the first person of Shawan Dapan Chicken. Zhang Kunlin, a native of Yongcheng, Henan Province, saw li Shilin make money by opening a big chicken shop in the late 1980s, so he mobilized his family to open a big plate chicken shop.
In 1992, Zhang Kunlin, who was very good at business, registered the brand of "Xinghua Village Dapan Chicken", and after more than ten years of hard work, "Xinghua Village Dapan Chicken" has become the largest dapan chicken store in Shawan County, and has opened branches in Yili, Gansu and other places.
In fact, from the perspective of time, the big plate chicken of Chai Wo Fort and the big plate chicken of Shawan were born in almost the same period, almost all around the 80s of the last century. However, Zhang Kunlin of Shawan first registered the brand of Dapan Chicken, and the operators of Chai Wo Bao then registered the brand of Spicy Chicken, thus forming a situation in which Shawan Dapan Chicken and Chai Wo Bao Spicy Chicken each have their own advantages.
Judging from the formation process of Xinjiang Dapan Chicken, Xinyun Dapan Chicken can also be regarded as a relatively typical product of the great unity of various ethnic groups, although it is a dish, it reflects the same family affection as a family.
In terms of selection of ingredients alone, the dish of large plate chicken has chicken nuggets, potatoes, belt noodles, flower rolls and other staple foods; if you look at it from the perspective of diners, almost all the people who eat this dish include Han, Uighur, Hui and other ethnic groups.
In the continuous development and change, now, Xinjiang Dapan Chicken has spread all over the country in various cities, and the innovative development of many different tastes of Dapan Chicken, but also derived "Dapan Goose", "Dapan Fish", "Dapan Duck", "Dapan Belly", "Dapan Ribs", "Dapan Hu Spicy Sheep's Trotters" and other flavor dishes with Xinjiang characteristics, forming a lot of "Dapan Food Series", and quickly spread throughout Xinjiang and even the whole country, becoming a unique scenery of Xinjiang food culture. This scenery not only prospered the catering industry, but also led to the development of Xinjiang's regional economy.