In the north, people's most intuitive understanding of Hangzhou is Hangzhou Xiaolongbao. Its popularity is comparable to Lanzhou ramen, Liuzhou snail powder and Shaxian snacks.
But the strange thing is that reading the word "bun" in Hangzhou dialect makes it strange and awkward to read horizontally and vertically. What makes Hangzhou people feel more affectionate is the "steamed bun": the steamed steamed
In short, in the eyes of Hangzhou people, most of the steamed noodles can be described as "steamed buns". What is the reason that makes "Xiaolongbao" firmly associated with this city that can't tell the difference between steamed buns and steamed buns.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">No.1 壹</h1>
The word "steamed bun" appeared much earlier than buns. According to the notes of many literati before the Song Dynasty, when Zhuge Liang conquered the southern barbarians, he used human heads to sacrifice the river according to local customs, and felt that it was too cruel, so he used pasta to fill in minced meat and make a human head to worship the gods.
Although the legend of the attached celebrity is not credible, the origin of steamed buns is credible in the era after the Qin and Han Dynasties, when Confucianism was deeply rooted in the hearts of the people and the budding of humanitarianism - it was also at that time that human martyrdom was abolished on a large scale and completely replaced by figurine martyrdom.
As a sacrificial item, the steamed bun naturally has a higher style status than its brother", because it uses meat filling. For the early farming civilization, meat was a very difficult ingredient, but for Chinese who had a tradition of respecting the heavens and the ancestors, it was necessary to do it occasionally on the occasion of solemn sacrifice.
Yes, the real name of the steamed bun is "steamed cake", and the real name of the bun is "steamed bun".
In Hangzhou dialect, "steamed bun" without any prefix refers to meat stuffed buns. This is not a linguistic confusion, to some extent, it is Hangzhou that preserves the simple cognition of this food in the Middle Ages.
Interestingly, in the Turkic languages such as Uyghur and Uzbek languages of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, thin-skinned buns wrapped in lamb and onions are called "Piti manta". "Piti" means "dead side", while "Manta" is clearly derived from the Chinese word for "steamed buns".
To this day, in the flavor restaurants of Xinjiang, Uighur bosses still chant when counting buns for diners: "Burmanta, Xiyin Manta..." means "one bun, two buns...".
In Japan to the east, there is also a kind of "steamed bun" among the dim sum and lettuce that best represent the food tradition. Its essence is actually a bean paste stuffed hair bun.
According to Japanese folklore, steamed buns were brought back in the eleventh century by the high monk Sheng Ichigoshi Yuan'er, who traveled in the Southern Song Dynasty. At that time, Japan was still in the period of meat ban, and the whole people did not eat the meat of land animals. Therefore, the meat filling that is popular in China was abandoned, and the red bean paste, which is more in line with the taste of the Japanese and has a sweet and delicate taste, is used.
In fact, the phenomenon that different ethnic groups refer to buns as "steamed buns" is precisely a testament to the strong cultural export of China as a highland of civilization in the Tang and Song dynasties to the surrounding areas.
And Hangzhou, as the former city of the Southern Song Dynasty, one of the most Song Dynasty cities in China today, has a reason to preserve this food culture to this day.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">No.2 贰</h1>
Also in the Song Dynasty, another name for steamed buns quietly sprouted.
According to the Tokyo Dream Record, street vendors at that time sold a snack called "Bao'er", with a translucent skin and shrimp, meat and broth.
It is speculated that the appearance of this food is very similar to today's soup bun made of dead noodles.
The fame of this folk snack has even affected the official eating habits. In the Southern Song Dynasty's scholarly sketch "The Curse of Yan Yi", it is recorded: "On the birthday of Emperor Renzong, give the group of ministers a bun." The author also specially added a note after the word bun: "That is, the alias of the steamed bun." ”
This may be the first time that the name "bun" appears in Chinese court recipes.
For a long time after that, the titles of buns and steamed buns were mixed, and in the Ming Dynasty, when the "Water Margin" was written, Sun Erniang sold human meat steamed buns or human meat buns, and each version had different ways of writing. But it is certain that in the Ming and Qing dynasties, in the northern region, there was a gradual distinction between filling and no filling in the northern region, which was the difference between steamed buns; but in Hangzhou, the hometown of the Southern Song Dynasty, the two were insisted on mixing. Even the use of steamed buns, which represent etiquette and classics, is expanding day by day, while buns with strong ichijing meaning are gradually disappearing from the spoken language.
This may reflect the careful thinking of the people of Hangzhou to follow the wind and currents of the Song Dynasty, or the shelf holding the ancient capital of the Southern Song Dynasty. In short, buns are highly compatible with the tastes of Hangzhou people and are closely related to the culture of Hangzhou.
In the middle and late Qing Dynasty, the salt merchant Tong Yuezhuan wrote a skit about diet, "Tuning Ding Collection", which recorded a kind of steamed bun that was "as big as a walnut", "steamed and used in cages, and each basket can be sandwiched with a pair".
People often regard this kind of bun as the origin of morning tea soup buns in Huaiyang area, but few people know that although Tong Yuejian did business in Huaiyang area, his hometown was in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. Decades later, another of his Shaoxing compatriots, Sun Yizhai, picked up a burden on Renhe Road in Hangzhou and sold this "walnut-sized" steamed bun to tourists on the West Lake.
Business grew bigger and bigger, and the small burden of flowing became a shop. This shop is the later famous Hangzhou Zhiweiguan, and the "walnut-sized" steamed bun is the Zhiweiguan Xiaolong that every Hangzhou person has eaten.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">No.3 叁</h1>
After the liberation, in 1971, a 17-year-old young man named Wang Renxiao entered the zhiweiguan work of the then state-owned enterprise, following the older generation of white case master Zhao Aniu to learn to make Chinese dim sum.
The techniques of filling, kneading, pouring and collecting the noodles in Hangzhou Xiaolong, like the history of hundreds of years before, have been passed down to the younger generation.
After leaving school, Wang Renxiao was transferred to work in a restaurant in Hangzhou, where he met Hu Zhongying, a native of Jiangxi. A few years later, two later masters were assigned to prepare for the establishment of the Hangzhou Southern Grand Restaurant. In those years, Hu Zhongying created and summarized the "Mizong Cuisine" that later became the source of Hangzhou's cuisine; and Wang Renxiao, who was in charge of the kitchen white case, combined the soft and noisy dough characteristics of the northern buns with the local meat stuffing and skin jelly soup in Hangzhou to create a snow-white, fluffy, juicy and fragrant "Mizong Big Bag".
The "Southern Big Bag", which has become the memory of a generation in Hangzhou, turned out to be a world.
In the early 1990s, there was a long queue at the door of the Southern Grand Wine House every day, waiting to buy the Southern Bag. The people of Hangzhou, who have eaten "steamed buns" for hundreds of years, have re-touched the bustling scene of the streets of Lin'an in the Song Dynasty and the delicious "bao'er". The so-called "Big Bag of Lost Sects" is actually not a mystery at all, it is deeply imprinted in the culture of the city of Hangzhou, and it is also inherited in the genes of the tip of the tongue of every Hangzhou person.
According to Wang Renxiao's recollection, in the southern big restaurant that year, the two tables selling buns at the door could sell more than 30,000 pieces a day at most. At its peak, there were more than 30 chain stores and franchise stores in Hangzhou.
A year after the southern buns of fire spread through the streets of Hangzhou, a noodle shop called "Xinfeng Snacks" was opened. Small dumplings, fresh meat buns, bean paste oil buns, as well as soup wontons and soup vermicelli with various buns, have become the most popular breakfast for hangzhou people regardless of class, rich and poor, young and old, regardless of age. To this day, "Xinfeng Snacks" is still one of the most influential and chained dim sum brands in Hangzhou.
The story of Buns and Hangzhou doesn't stop there.
In 2005, a Taizhou Wenling man named Tong Qihua, who graduated from Tongji University in Shanghai, was shocked by the enthusiasm of Hangzhou people for buns after visiting Hangzhou. Four years later, in 2009, he opened his own shop in Luojiazhuang, Wenyi Road, Hangzhou.
Different from Zhiweiguan, Southern Restaurant and Xinfeng Snacks, Tong Qihua's positioning is more precise: only sell buns.
As a high-achieving student in science and engineering, according to Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching": "Willing to eat, beautiful to serve, settle down, happy and customary" for the bun to lay out a Wen Zou Zou name "Willing to eat".
No one expected that this bun shop that went out from Hangzhou would become an industry giant selling hundreds of thousands of buns a day in a few years.
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From the prosperous city of Lin'an in the Southern Song Dynasty to the vigorous commercial environment in Hangzhou today, from the popular "bao'er" to the endless buns. The taste of Hangzhou has never changed.
All business legends have cultural origins and historical origins, which are vividly reflected in Hangzhou buns.