Before returning to Shanghai from Suzhou, I went to Bifengfang on Guanqian Street, and the goal was to fry chestnuts with osmanthus sugar there. After thinking about it for a whole year, this time it finally got its wish.
In the past, on Chengdu North Road near my home, there was a long-established new long-hair branch, once a year, I was used to smelling osmanthus sugar fried chestnuts, and I was used to buying chestnuts, and I liked to be with sugar fried chestnuts since I was a child. I remember that when the chestnuts were on the market, the streets were full of signboards of Tianjin Liangxiang chestnuts, and I heard my fathers say that in the early years, the sellers still carried the burdens around, and they wrapped them in red paper with "Real Liangxiang Chestnuts" written on it. Shanghai's "Bamboo Branch Words" recounts the scene at that time: "The street is fried with chestnuts and bright lights, and the smoke of the trees extinguishes the flames." Eight big money called four two, did not taste the taste of early smell. "Such a scene is fascinating, and the foundation is, of course, the pursuit of sugar-fried chestnuts by fascinating people.
Pursuit, there is always no small movement. Traveling to Gannan, via Lanzhou, there is a farmers market near the hotel, travelers are shopping for fruit, and I am aiming at the sugar fried chestnuts at the mouth of the market. After that, they kept introducing the chestnuts of this family to everyone, and many people immediately donated money to buy them, which caused the stall owners to smile happily. This chestnut comes from Qianxi, Hebei, golden in color, sticky and sweet, and secretly thought it was the best it had encountered in recent years, and it was actually only 16 yuan and 8 corners a pound. The so-called cheap and good quality is nothing more than this.
Nowadays, it seems that sugar-fried chestnuts can be eaten at any time, and seasonality has been diluted. However, the new chestnuts are marketed in the autumn, and it is a great pleasure to travel every year after the autumn to find local sugar fried chestnuts. In the mid-autumn of that year, in Tonglu to stay in the hotel, there is also a fried street full of sugar fried chestnut stalls, bought a pound, with his wife next to the hotel, smell the flowers, watch the bright moon, eat chestnuts, and have a fairy moon night. Afterwards, I often think back to the scene of that day, and I have the taste of "hanging on the old wine marks in Hangzhou". In fact, replacing wine with chestnuts is also the habit of many old literati, and the reason why I searched for osmanthus chestnuts in Suzhou was precisely because I read Lu Yaodong's "wine flavor" food articles with strong flavor, and looked for the old taste of Suzhou under its guidance. Before going to Guanqian Street, when our group visited the Fengqiao Scenic Area, I "disappeared" alone for more than ten minutes, which was also related to smelling incense and buying osmanthus chestnuts on nearby stalls.
The "density" of the shops selling sugar fried chestnuts in our Jinshan petrochemical area is comparable to that of the urban area. In the past few days, those small shops have been very busy, quite "one household fried chestnut busy, a hundred families are fragrant" meaning. I was familiar with a small boss from Shaoxing, bought chestnuts from him for many years in a row, and listened to him tell about the bitterness of the chestnut sellers. He created a brand of his own, and many times he talked to me about the mysteries of chestnuts. Unfortunately, due to various costs rising, his chestnuts, although good, could not expand the scale of the operation. The small shop is always moving, and I also "toss and turn" with this shop, every year the new chestnut is listed, always have to buy here several times, but also many times in bulk to buy and give away.
There are many shops in Shanghai that sell sugar and fried chestnuts, but forgive me for being lonely and unheard of, and it seems that there are no osmanthus chestnut brands. In the past, Lu Yaodong, Lu Wenfu and other gourmets who lived in Suzhou for a long time were proud of this, and there was always the meaning of rare things being precious. In addition, just as it is better to examine whether Liangxiang has chestnuts, which is better than qianxi chestnuts, and to say that the public is reasonable and cannot agree, this osmanthus chestnut seems to be a kind of thought of people in temperament. As for the taste of osmanthus chestnuts in Guanqian Street, it is left to everyone to guess.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Huang Wei Text Editor: Zhu Rui Title Image Source: He Wenya Photo Infographic Photo Editor: Xiang Jianying
Source: Author: Feng Qiang