In 2020, a reader left a message in my comment section recommending a food called Dingsheng cake. In order to try Dingsheng cake, I took a train across 1,100 kilometers from Tianjin to Hangzhou, walked into the rainy Jiangnan in March, and also stepped into the centuries-old Hefang Street of Hangzhou for the first time.
The deeper you go into this ancient street, the more you feel that the history here has been buried and sealed in the dark, and those elements that you can see are not real history.
Hefang Street, known as Qinghefang in history, because the residence of Zhang Jun, the king of Qinghe County in the Southern Song Dynasty, was located here, so it has this name. Zhang Jun was originally an anti-Jin general, but the imperial court wanted to make peace with the Jin State, and Qin Hui wanted to collect the general's military power, because Zhang Jun was very cooperative when he handed over the military power, and also participated in framing Yue Fei's behavior, so Zhang Juncai was crowned the king of Qinghe County.
History remembers Zhang Jun's merits and demerits, and there is a kneeling statue of Zhang Jun in front of Yue Fei's tomb, lined up with Qin Hui and others to be beaten. But on the other hand, Hefang Street has continued to this day as an inscription reporter of the glory of the prince.
The local characteristics of Hefang Street are reflected in various industries, and there is a time-honored pharmaceutical brand that is very eye-catching, that is, Hu Qing Yutang Chinese Medicine, which is an industry opened by Hu Xueyan, a red-top merchant in the Qing Dynasty. Birth, old age, sickness and death, everyone can't escape a sick word, so the pharmaceutical economy will always be prosperous.
Of course, some industries are older. From ancient times to the present, there has been no shortage of dazzling "Wuhang" products here. The so-called "five hang" refers to Hangzhou powder, Hangzhou scissors, Hangzhou smoke, Hangzhou line, and Hangzhou fan.
"Hangzhou powder" is the West Lake lotus root powder, until the eighties of the last century, the lotus root powder is a rare thing, and now it is just an ordinary thing.
"Hangzhou scissors" is Hangzhou scissors, good steel, good fire, durable and durable, among which the top stream is Zhang Xiaoquan scissors.
"Hangzhou fan" mainly refers to the folding fan in Hangzhou, and the fan surface can be directly painted and painted, so there is a lot of room for price maneuvering, and the water inside is very deep.
"Hangzhou line" refers to the thread twisted with silk as raw material, to put it bluntly, it is a silk product, and the common one is silk umbrella and silk clothing, which is a best-selling product all over the world.
I have seen a lot of the first four specialties along the way, but the fifth "Hangzhou tobacco", that is, Hangzhou's dry tobacco, I really didn't find where it is. Later, it was discovered that the common "Liqun" cigarette was Hangzhou tobacco.
It is these products that have been sold for thousands of years that have supported a corner of the glory of Hefang Street, just as Xu Wei, a genius in the south of the Yangtze River, said, 800 miles of lakes and mountains know what year the picture is, and 100,000 fireworks are all returned to the buildings here. It's a spectacle that has lasted for hundreds of years.
But 800 miles of lakes and mountains cannot escape the years of scrubbing; 100,000 fireworks will eventually be extinguished. Hefang Street, which has a history of several hundred years, also faced the fate of demolition and reconstruction in the 90s of the last century. After that, some of the historic buildings disappeared and were replaced by today's Ming and Qing Dynasty antique streets.
Of course, there are also many historical buildings that have been preserved, even if I look at it at night in the dark, let alone see more than a dozen cultural protection signs, of which five or six are buildings with names and surnames.
The history of Hefang Street today may as well be called a mixed bag. The years behind these cultural protection signs represent half of the real history, and today's Internet celebrity snack street is magnificent and full of vitality, and it is they that support the other half of the glory of Hefang Street.