Wen | Zhao Yipin
Song people poetry, Song people painting, Song people costume Song people food... A large number of banquets and restaurants with Song Dynasty elements suddenly became lively and noisy.
I am curious about what Zhou Ziling, who proposed the "Song Dynasty Aesthetic Theme Restaurant" earlier, thought? What kind of shocks and pressures will she and her restaurant, Yinlu, face?
So there was this conversation.
A feast for life
Author: Is the Song you express, the ideal space, contradictory in the advancement of reality? After all, Yinlu is also a place of business, and it also needs to consider commercial factors.
Zhou Ziling: The earliest original intention of this space was to do a Song banquet, which is the cultural theme banquet we created - "Elegant Song Banquet", through which the aesthetics of the East and the Song Dynasty are displayed, including the life scenes of the Song Dynasty.
For the presentation of the feast, it is more solemn. Unlike the feast we usually eat, there is no need for any dining table aesthetic arrangement, space layout to performance scene, lighting, music, atmosphere creation, etc., which requires a large number of personnel to interpret, including professionals, one-on-one service, aesthetic design on the table, etc., the cost is indeed very high.
Considering the huge human resources, it is better to present it occasionally, otherwise many people do not know the concept of "banquet", and we use it for very important anniversaries, such as birthdays, wedding banquets, important company celebrations and other occasions.
This life is worth feeling what a "feast" is.
Ibiza, Spain, there is one of the most expensive restaurants in the world called Submarine, solemn sense of ceremony, per capita 1850 us dollars, dinner only 12 people, there are 15 to 20 dishes, is the world's "banquet" concept is the best done.
Our goal is to make an Oriental feast that is rare in all of China and the world.
Author: I admire your spirit very much, which is also the topic we mentioned earlier, national self-confidence and cultural self-confidence. How is it presented? After all, most ordinary people in China are still relatively unfamiliar.
Zhou Ziling: Yinlu does Song feasts, the first has Song words running through the banquet, and the second has a lot of intangible cultural heritage in Sichuan, Shu brocade, Shu embroidery, lacquerware, paper cutting, etc., each dish is interpreted by Song Words.
The Song Dynasty paid attention to the beauty of the artistic conception, westerners could not understand what the artistic conception was, the artistic conception was a very elaborate thing, and only Chinese could understand it thoroughly.
Westerners don't have such a thorough understanding of the mood, so they have to explain the dish, what seasoning, what ingredients, how to make, it is very concrete.
But Chinese things don't need to be so concrete, they can be expressed in a single word.
We also used the tangram that the Song Dynasty people liked to change, expressing the seven links of the banquet.
"Jade plate delicacies are worth tens of thousands of dollars", although this is Li Bai's poem, it represents our understanding, represents our fanatical love for the industry, represents a respect for food, and represents respect for the chef's team.
Hope to use this respect, attitude to lead more diners to respect our food, it is a work of art that will disappear in an instant.
Author: "A work of art that disappears in an instant"?
Zhou Ziling: Aesthetics is a thing that is gradually disappearing in our fast-paced era, especially the aesthetics of food.
The reason for the disappearance is because of business, because many things need to be industrialized, "fast", "copied", "bigger", but manual, including complicated workmanship, time-consuming, measured by the value of business is not worth it.
But it's part of our culture, who's going to keep it? This is not something that business can explain, what is absolutely needed is love, responsibility and obligation in the industry.
I believe that everyone who comes into the world has a mission.
So, I think, it's also gradually on its way back.
Author: So, the mission gives us hope.
Zhou Ziling: I don't know why I wanted the whole thing inexplicably, but suddenly one day I felt the need for the whole thing and kept it.
It's not just to make money, it's not to make a big business, it's just a little thing I want to do.
There is an arrangement in the dark, and it is the sense of mission and responsibility that makes you want to do this thing.
The "Song" that never ends
Author: According to the previous thinking and adjustment, the current Yinlu should have a better operating structure, and also find a balance between ideal and reality?
Zhou Ziling: Song Yan is very good, but after all, the cost is very high and the audience is limited. Now that we have let go of the operation, guests can come to enjoy this environment and come to relax their mood.
Feel free to order food, frugality by people. Let more people come to understand this place, to feel the Song Dynasty culture unfolding in this space, so that more people can enjoy the beauty of the lake.
In terms of software content, we set up a lot of Song Dynasty games, and what guests smoke is what they are, for example, Song painting, writing, flower arrangement, making and fruit and other things that embody the four elegances of the Song Dynasty.
Shadow dance has also become public, unlike the former Exclusive Song Feast. Through modern image technology, we are creating an "artificial moon", through the creation of a variety of scenes and experiences, to complete not only the Song feast, but the entire Song Dynasty aesthetic experience.
Author: The future of Yinlu should be better.
Zhou Ziling: We can't go back to the Song Dynasty, nor can we completely copy the Song Dynasty, because it doesn't conform to the way of life of modern people. We should take its essence and remove its dross, take out the good things of the Song Dynasty and use them in modern life scenes or food.
Author: How?
Zhou Ziling: First, for Sichuan cuisine, many people think that it is spicy, and the use of aesthetics is not enough, I want to make a combination with Sichuan cuisine from the aesthetics of the Song Dynasty.
We have a room called "Penglai" private room, which hangs a picture of a thousand miles of rivers and mountains, in fact, it is a tribute to a female chef of the Song Dynasty, Fan Zheng, who can skillfully use ingredients to spell out a "food scene" in front of everyone, what pavilions, mountains and rivers, everything is available, and the dishes of a table can eventually be combined into a large landscape map. To be able to do this, it is obviously not a simple cooking skill. It can be described as the peak of dietary aesthetics, and many people in later generations have not reached it.
Author: The same is a woman, so you also hope to become a contemporary Brahman, to achieve the same realm as Brahman?
Zhou Ziling: I think this is a spirit, maybe I can't do such a peak, and I can't be a Fanzheng, but this spirit will always inspire me to push Sichuan cuisine forward, so that the aesthetics of Sichuan cuisine, including the taste of Sichuan cuisine, are improved.
Do a good job on the basis of deliciousness, make adjustments in the soul of "taste", and break through in the way of presentation to make it look more beautiful.
I'll go back to the example of snowflake chicken and rice noodles. It is very beautiful, and the flowers of Hibiscus City are like our city, wrapped in the crystallization of the wisdom of the ancients. Ancient Chinese molecular cuisine is used in cooking. Eating a chicken is very simple, you can just nibble it, but we just want to make it so complicated. More beautiful, tastier, we want this effect.
Author: It seems that the Song Dynasty is the direction that leads us to pursue a thing to the extreme, and it is something that Chinese bones, but some people understand it, and some people do not understand it.
Zhou Ziling: Economic globalization, cooking is also globalizing. Like many top restaurants in the West are using Chinese elements, Chinese food uses a lot of Western elements, why not?
I don't think so. As long as the pinch is right, the balance is right, the taste is not abrupt, thinking is a way to follow, it can convince people with reason, and it can be recognized by the market.
In addition to the development of pepper flavor, we are now talking about cooperation with a large domestic plant spice processing plant, applying more plant spices to food cooking, for Sichuan cuisine, which is a high-level expression and a direction.
Author: Sichuan cuisine can also be so picky, which is really exciting.
Zhou Ziling: No matter how modern the society is, no matter how convenient the society is, that is, robots can replace everyone's work, but they cannot replace the human spirit.
As Chinese, we must look for the roots of Chinese, no matter which dynasty, this is never over.
Only spiritual things are superior.
Back to the very beginning, why do so many people like Song?
It is what will make you focus on yourself and return to the higher pursuit of the spiritual level!
A covenant of mountains and rivers spanning thousands of years
At the end of the conversation, I suddenly thought of a "no-name" person, who was a prodigy of the early Northern Song Dynasty, and his name was Lin Kui.
Emperor Zhenzong of Song gave him the title of "Virgin of Hejing", and the literati of the Song Dynasty gave him a title of "Plum Wife Crane" (because he never married a man for life, and entertained himself by planting plum cranes).
The so-called no fame, just did not enjoy enough "retirement treatment", unlike Ouyang Xiu, Su Dongpo, Xin Qiyi, Li Qingzhao, etc. for posterity stars to hold the moon.
Lin Kui's ancestors had been confucians for generations, and his grandfather was a confucian scholar of the Qian clan of the Wuyue king. In Lin Kui's generation, the family road fell, the family situation changed, and after the age of 40, he returned to Hangzhou and settled in the isolated mountain of the West Lake.
Since then, Lin Kui has integrated his life into the West Lake and written many fresh and natural landscape poems.
The natural aesthetics of the Song people are relatively light, and the poets of the Song Dynasty often appreciate the landscape with the eyes of ink painters, and many poems show the painting situation of pingyuan idleness, smoke and rain.
Lin Kui is the representative of this aspect, and his Lonely Mountain of the West Lake contains a strong pictorial meaning and presents a light meaning.
For example, "Late Look at the North Mountain": "Late to the north view of the mountain, the picture should not be." The village road is full of yellow leaves, and the people are wet and green. When the tree was seen outside the clouds, the monk returned to the water's edge. A song who crosses the flute, and the white bird flies. ”
It means that the north mountain is high and vast, and the village is small and exquisite. There are white clouds on the top and white birds flying low below. Woodcutters carry firewood from high, and monks return from the creek carrying water.
It does not lose its empty and lonely spirit atmosphere, but also has a chic and warm beauty.
Where is the poem, it is clearly a wonderful landscape painting.
There are mountains and rivers in the heart, and there is no distance between time and space.
A thousand years ago, Lin Kui achieved a poetic life in Hangzhou's West Lake, and a thousand years later, Zhou Ziling was immersed in the aesthetics of the Song Dynasty in Chengdu's Luhu Lake.
In the darkness, they have a mountain and water covenant that spans thousands of years.