Text/Hu Zhenhua
Old Kaifeng people, there are very few who do not know Bao Yaoji, although it is only a pastry shop. In the 1950s and 1960s, when relatives went out to visit, they could bring two bags of bao Yaoji's snacks, which was very face-saving.
I heard the name Bao Yaoji when I was five or six years old. It was the Mid-Autumn Festival of one year, and my father brought back a pack of mooncakes, saying that it was Bao Yaoji's, and grandma said, what to do with buying such expensive things. My brother and I ignored this, and when we saw that my father had cut the moon cake into four pieces, he took one of them and ate it. Ah, it's so delicious, fragrant and sweet, it's not the same as the dim sum we ate before! Look closely, there are green and red silk in the mooncake filling, green fruits (that is, sugar-stained olives), large pieces (I think "big") rock sugar, small pieces of orange cake, watermelon seeds and walnut kernels... In short, because the contents are wrapped in the charred yellow crisp skin of the mooncake, it tastes like a mooncake.
I remember that I also picked out the rock sugar and kept it for later. Since then, I have heard these three words from time to time: Bao Yaoji. I especially like to eat Bao Yaoji's Southern Sugar. Today's children may not have heard of it, sugar is still divided into north and south?
Our family only buys a pack of southern sugar during the New Year's Festival. Thirty nights, the whole family sat together to make dumplings and eat southern sugar, which was really beautiful.
There are many types of southern sugar, including shortbread, skin sugar, peanut sticky, sesame stick... Peanut sticky sesame sticky is similar to now, but the skin sugar is different. Soft candy inside, wrapped in peanut green and red silk, so that your taste buds and the tip of the tongue get the greatest satisfaction and pleasure. For many years, I couldn't eat authentic southern sugar. Last year, a private bakery in our community launched a new product, called Snowflake Crisp, which was a bit familiar at the time, but did not think much about it, and today I wrote here before I suddenly realized: it was the taste of southern sugar, the taste of peanut peel candy!
When I was eight or nine years old, my family moved to Zhongshan Road, because it was close, and once my mother went to Bao Yaoji to buy snacks, she took me with her.
Bao Yaoji is located on South Bookstore Street. Coming out of our house and walking through an east-west road called Sihou Street, I saw its golden plaque. The first feeling is that its door face is not very wide, that is, it is slightly wider than the average door. The face of the door is engraved with reliefs such as birthday peaches and hydrangea dragons and phoenixes, and children naturally do not care about these, but only want to go inside early to buy things. There are seven or eight steps in front of the door, and when you go up the steps, you enter the shop.
Ah, the atmosphere is obviously better than the outside: the store gate faces west, so there are half-human-high glass counters in the three directions of the north, south and east, and the snacks inside are so dazzling that I don't know what to look at. Mother obviously also wants to buy that, because what kind of dim sum looks so beautiful and attractive: Cantonese, Su-style, cloud cake jade with cake mung bean cake, stuffing without stuffing... Although I hoped that my mother would buy more and buy more, in the end, my mother still bought a few puff pastries that we usually liked to eat, which made me regret it.
When my mother picked out snacks, I watched the clerks get busy. They really can't stay idle for a while, because there is an endless stream of people who come to buy snacks. The guys' hands and feet are really sharp enough. After the snack is weighed, put it on a beige square piece of paper and set it up, and then divide the two packages into an angular trapezoid, then take out a red paper square from under the counter, and tie it with a thin paper rope pulled down from above the counter. Just look at this appearance, it is the level of famous stores. On the red paper square were some patterns, with three large characters in the middle, "Bao Yaoji". To say that this is not technical content, if the imitation should be no problem, but never heard of a shop counterfeit Bao Yaoji dim sum.
I once asked my mother: Such a delicious snack, what if the guys want to steal it? Because in the heart of a small child, it is an irresistible temptation. I remember my mother saying this: All the owners of the dim sum shop have a secret: when the guy first comes, let him eat the hot heart he just made, it is greasy and greasy, so the guys will be disgusted when they see the dim sum in the future, and they will never steal it. This statement is also possible. A few years ago I went to Europe to travel, every morning is a variety of sweets plus milk and ham, eat until the seventh or eighth day, as soon as I enter the restaurant, smell the sweet taste is disgusting, willing to make a bowl of instant noodles in the room to eat a few squeezed vegetables, do not go to the restaurant to eat. Not only that, but since then, I have become disgusted with bread cakes, and I don't eat them much until now.
Of course, this is just a rumor. Later, I broadened my horizons and realized that this might not be the case. At the very least, this is not the case with Bao Yaoji.
It is said that Bao Yaoji practiced a humane management of his employees, and he was both strictly managed and cared for his apprentices in many ways. At that time, the salary level of Bao Yaoji's employees was first-class in the same industry, in addition to eating, he also made tobacco, alcohol, tea, and bathed in haircuts. During the New Year, each person is also given a red envelope equivalent to three or four months' salary. Therefore, Bao Yaoji's employees are highly motivated and loyal. Because I said to others that I worked in Bao Yaoji, I had a great sense of superiority.
Bao Yaoji was founded during the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty and has a history of about 150 years. The founder, Bao Yaoting, is a native of Nanjing. Bao Yaoting is good at calligraphy and painting and understands jinshi, settled in the sauce and vinegar alley of South Bookstore Street, hung up the sign of "Bao Yaoji Big Play Shop", picked up and sold, and bought real estate in the east of South Bookstore Street after making a fortune. First it was called "Bao Yaoji Silk Satin Village", and later renamed "Bao Yaoji South Goods Store". In 1934, his descendant Bao Junsheng adopted the suggestions of the old employees, carried out mergers and acquisitions, received all the equipment and personnel of the Zhengzhou Daoxiangcun Pastry Workshop, which had collapsed, and added a fine cropping workshop in Bao Yaoji to start producing various southern pastries. Due to the exquisite skills, exquisite materials and moderate fire, the dim sum produced by the pastry is "sweet and not greasy in the mouth, soft and crisp, and the color and flavor are excellent", so it quickly opened up sales, occupied the market, and was sought after by the people of the ancient city.
Legend has it that when the mooncakes are on the market, the store door is not opened, and there is a long queue outside the door. Just don't buy it, stand there and look at it, and feel quite interesting. At twelve o'clock on the fifteenth of August, whether there is any surplus of mooncakes, they are no longer sold, which has become a habit in Bao Yaoji.
Now there is no trace of Bao Yaoji's dim sum shop, and the delicious delicacy, aroma and prosperity of the past are only left in the memory of the people of Kaifeng. It is said that Bao Yaoji's building is still there, left in the vicissitudes of time.
Now, we advocate the spirit of craftsmanship, and I think that the Bao family should have this spirit. Without dedication, dedication, perseverance and innovation, there will be no glory of Bao Yaoji. Being able to leave a mark in history is the glory of Bao Yaoji and the pride of Kaifeng people.