When beijingers who are a little older, when they mention Yili food, there is a good chance that they will turn over and talk about a bunch of stories related to it. For example, how to display fruit bread with a sense of superiority during the spring tour, how to think about stealing animal biscuits hidden at home when adults are not there, how to deal with the salesman aunt when playing soy sauce and buying vinegar, how to save three or five cents to buy a few pieces of sour tricolor, butter ball fruit candy, how to carefully lick the layer of glutinous rice paper when eating sorghum dumplings... That momentum, that frame, perfectly interprets a sentence: They eat feelings. No wonder some Sven people have commented: righteousness is good for old Beijing, it is a kind of softness, a cut of temperature, a nostalgia that cannot be dissolved.
Today's Beijing fan talks about righteousness, not soft text, only for feelings. I don't know how many Beijingers, like me, the smell of fruit bread wafting in my childhood seems to have never dissipated...
Hidden in the bread is the modern history of China
Today, on the wall of the "Centennial Yili" main store, there is also a portrait of a foreigner, who is the founder of Yili - James Neal. You are not mistaken, this beijing old brand is not only not Beijing, or even founded by Chinese, the old brand of "foreign blood" is really rare.
In the thirty-second year of Guangxu (1906), the crew member James Neil came to Shanghai and set up a small stall on Nanjing Road, producing and selling Scottish-style pastries and bread, which was very popular. Later, his business became bigger and bigger, and he founded "Yili Foreign Firm". James Neal is a Chinese expert, and the name "Yili" is derived from the Confucian ideas of "righteousness before profit" and "heavy righteousness over profit". For more than 30 years, Yili Foreign Firm operated very well in Shanghai, until James's death, and Yili Foreign Firm changed owners several times. In 1946, the poorly managed Yili was bought by Shanghai industrialists, ending the history of "foreign brands".
After the liberation of Shanghai, Dong Zuhong, the owner of the Beijing New China Food Factory, arrived in Shanghai and delivered a message: the capital Beijing urgently needs to develop the food industry, and he suggested that Yili move to Beijing. In the winter of 1950, Yili Food Company moved to Beijing under the leadership of the backbone of the company headed by Ni Jiaxi and established Beijing Yili Food Co., Ltd.
The original Yili new factory was located in the Prince Tomb in Guang'anmen, according to historical records, because the Yili Food Company developed into a famous old brand in Beijing, it took the "Yili" character in "Yili" and named the Guangnei Prince Tomb as "Guangyi Street". In 1951, Yili opened the first store department on Dong'anmen Avenue and put forward the slogan of "small profits, high sales, facing the public". After 1955, it was subordinated to the Light Industry Bureau, and since then Yili has become a veritable state-owned enterprise.
Yili Company for the first time to the people of Beijing to bring Western-style food culture, before, bread is only living in Dongjiaomin Lane foreigners and rich people can afford to eat rare things, and that winter, Yili Food Company a few cents of bread, so that "West Point" for the first time patronized the beijing people's table, ordinary people can also eat bread! The scene of the people of Beijing rushing to queue up to buy Yili bread is really red-hot and unforgettable.
Unique "fruit bread"
Yili's entry into Beijing has set a precedent for the popularization of bread in Beijing, and laid the foundation for several generations of Beijingers to be inseparable from the Yili complex. At that time, the "whirlwind of righteousness" blew in Beijing, and the fruit bread that accompanied The Beijingers for more than half a century was launched at that time.
Fruit bread, commonly known as "big fruit material", was once Yili's "fist product" in Shanghai. However, in Shanghai, fresh fruit is used to make fruit bread, which is exclusively for the concession area, which is a high-end "luxury". Coming to Beijing, facing ordinary people, the demand has increased, and the supply of fresh fruits is not available, what to do? On a whim, Yili's chefs improved it with Beijing's specialty, "preserved fruit", and exchanged fresh fruit for preserved fruit to create this unique bread of Chinese and Western fusion.
Illy's fruit bread is different from French bread, this bread is somewhat blackened, because the walnut kernels are mixed with the noodles to make the color, taste sweet, especially the fruit in the bread is carefully selected one by one, the apple can not have a core, the walnut can not have a skin. Thanks to the excellent selection of ingredients, the resulting bread is both delicious and nutritious.
There are five kinds of fruit in the fruit bread, preserved apples, raisins, green plums, walnuts, and melon strips, which are added to the dough in a "5:3" ratio. So, the portion of the fruit bread is very solid, full of "real guys", and a mouthful of fruit.
In addition to fruit bread, Yili also has another type of bread that must be mentioned, that is, vitamin bread. Vitamin bread is wrapped in familiar red, yellow and blue striped wax paper, and when broken open, the color is tender and yellow, and the entrance is sweet. In the mid-to-late 1960s, when materials were scarce and the health of the Chinese people was not ideal, Yili added riboflavin, that is, vitamin B2, which people urgently needed, to the bread to make this bread with a "therapeutic" effect. It looks like bee-yellow bread is very appetizing, and it is sweet and silky in the mouth, and it also has its unique aroma, which is called authentic.
In addition, there is a solid taste, light milky flavor of milky bread, followed by butter bread, are the classic memories of a generation. In those years, the "bread king" on the table of Beijingers was none other than Yili.
Talking about the spring outings of the student days is even more spectacular, and almost all the students in the class will bring Illy bread for lunch. Three or five children while visiting the garden, rowing, facing the breeze on the lake, enjoying the beauty of nature, while invariably pulling out bread, and then a bottle of Arctic Ocean soda, the air is wafting with sweet smell...
I have also heard a rumor that it is said that Yili fruit bread even became a souvenir of emotional communication between men and women in those years, becoming a fashion, and today, it is simply a sister artifact: "Love her, take her to eat Yili fruit bread!" "Perhaps, this is just an advertising slogan, but with a strong sense of the times, chasing girls, at that time, there is no need to mention the house and car tickets, a bread is good, can not go back to the innocent era!
"Sweet" childhood memories
In addition to bread, Yili also left a lot of old taste, just to mention the candy item, is a wave of "memory killing". There are fruit-flavored hard candy "sour tricolor" packaged in cellophane, soft glutinous sorghum dumplings, sweet and sour plum sugar, sweet and mellow butter, prawn crisp...
Also associated with sugar is the deep memory of sugar paper. The girls are reluctant to discard the beautiful sugar paper, and the sugar paper has become as precious as the boy's cigarette box painting. Sugar paper has wax paper, cellophane, the more fine the pattern, the more fancy color of the sugar paper, the more precious. Sugar paper is similar to philately, and many sugar papers are equipped with sets, some of which are several colors of the same pattern, and some of which are series of patterns. It was a great pleasure to gather it up and flip through a book.
In addition to bread, Yili also brought chocolate, wafer biscuits, butter biscuits and other Western-style pastries to the people of the imperial capital, according to statistics, there were as many as 74 kinds. The most unforgettable thing is this kind of bulk chocolate, completely unpackaged, is a simple plastic bag, when I was a child, it was a luxury that I wanted to wear, the most luxurious one was the middle school held a sports meeting, to supplement the energy of the long-distance running students, I took the class fee to buy half a pound, the heavy feeling, like happiness in hand.
In the era of not being able to eat imported food, Yili was the first chocolate producer in China, so we ate this imported product, as well as chocolate wafer, which was called chocolate wafer at that time, so it has a sense of the times.
Can not forget also this kind of sesame sauce wafer, wafer cake to maintain the public level of crispy flavor, characterized by the sauce brown sugar taste of the sandwich, compared to the chocolate wafer, more than the characteristics and aftertaste of the old Beijing, the inspiration is probably from the sesame sauce sugar cake, Beijing people's favorite sesame sauce is simply everywhere.
Today, all kinds of dessert shops and bakeries are all over Beijing, and I am no longer the little girl who has never eaten anything, but every time I walk through the "Century of Yili", I still can't help but walk in, usually buying one or two fruit breads and some small snacks.
My favorite milkshake grape crisp, which is also a rather simple plastic bag, looks very ordinary, even a little ugly, the price is not expensive, a bag of 6, equivalent to the price of a cake in a café. However, it is full of sincerity, the cake embryo is mixed with butter and cheese, the inside is full of raisins, the taste is mellow, belongs to the kind of sweet and greasy category that I like, must be accompanied by oolong tea or black coffee to be able to hold it, eating is particularly satisfying.
The earliest fruit bread, five cents per dime, is now bought in the supermarket and has risen to five or six yuan, but it is still quite cheap compared to other brands. More than half a century has passed, the packaging of Yili fruit bread has not changed at all, the content has basically maintained the original standard, some people say that the fruit has become less, this is not really remembered, perhaps, just because we grew up.
Nowadays, the first generation to eat Yili fruit bread has been upgraded to grandparents, grandparents, our post-70s have also experienced vicissitudes, stumbling middle age, food shortage era has long passed, but the memory of taste buds has long existed, stubbornly identifying the taste of having eaten, which has the joy of childhood, the troubles of growth, and the feelings of youth.
Many people say that the old brand is not the taste of the earlier, yes, maybe the ingenuity of the inheritance is no longer there, maybe the taste of the people has changed, maybe it is simply that there are too many delicious things now, or because we are old, for a fruit bread, for a piece of chocolate excited days, can never go back.