In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a considerable group of stubborn lords in Beijing, and later this group went through several revolutions, as well as the reform and opening up of the transformation of society, play is no longer regarded as a kind of pride by the rich, and the whole society is caught in the frenzy of consumerism.
To say that in recent years, in the cause of play, what other characters can be named, the second head of the Deyun Society, Yu Qiansuan No. 1, he wrote a book called "Play", which wrote about how he raised horses, raised birds and tamed eagles, etc., how he accidentally owned a 60-acre zoo on the outskirts of Beijing, and his love affair with thousands of animals. It turns out that our humble brother's hobbies are not only drinking, smoking and perming.
However, although Yu Qian's hobbies look like immortal qi, his involvement is not all-encompassing. Among the stubborn lords of old Beijing, there are many high-end players, but basically only specialize in one field. One person is different, he can do everything, because of the play and won the highest honor of the Prince of Klaus of the Netherlands, thus becoming the first Chinese to receive the highest honor.
He is Wang Shixiang.
As long as it is the Cultural Circle of Beijing, whether you are studying literature and painting, opera literature and art, or literature and history, mentioning the name Wang Shixiang basically gives you a thumbs up.
For the literati of old Beijing, Wang Shixiang was a god-like being, or the last super big boss in Beijing.
As a well-known cultural relics expert, scholar, cultural relics connoisseur and collector, Wang Shixiang has a deep understanding of Ming Dynasty furniture, music, calligraphy, poetry, architecture, sculpture, animals, insects, food and other fields, and has written many monographs.
Wang Shixiang was born in a family of eunuchs, Gaozu Wang Qingyun was the governor of Liangguang, his grandfather Wang Rendong was the secretary of the cabinet, Wang Renkan was Liang Qichao's teacher, his father Wang Ji was a diplomatic envoy and served as Zhang Zhidong's secretary, and his mother was a painter...
Since he was a child, he has read the prosperity of the world, but he does not have the problem of a literati and eunuch, and believes in what kind of "gentleman is far away from the kitchen", but since he was a child, he likes to drill into the kitchen.
Although he was born in Beijing, because his ancestors were Fujianese, his favorite dishes are not Beijing cuisine, but mainly Fujian cuisine, Huaiyang and Jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisine, and occasionally dabble in it.
In Fujian cuisine, "bad" is a very special technique, which has had a decisive influence on Wang Shixiang's cooking skills and tastes throughout his life. Since childhood, my family likes to invite famous teachers from all walks of life to cook, and famous chefs like Chen Yisi in Fujian are Wang Shixiang's teachers.
"Bad" in Fujian cuisine, plays a soul-like existence, the same as the Spirit of Fujian, many Fujian people who are wandering in other places will miss their hometown because of the bad fragrance.
There are always gourmets who say that nostalgia is actually a familiar taste.
"Bad" is strictly speaking, a derivative of wine after fermentation, in general, Fujian people like to use the rest of the lees of red lees, which is regarded as the best. Generally, in cooking, it will not be directly used with red rotten, but it should be mixed with Shaoxing rice wine and salt, and fermented together for at least 12 hours, and finally produce a fragrant sauce.
This kind of fragrant sauce, for Fujian people, is simply the same as the water of life, just like the pepper to the Sichuan people, even if the Fujian people in a foreign country, eat a mouthful of dishes made of fragrant juice, will immediately shed tears of homesickness.
Fragrant juice is introduced in Wang Shixiang's son Wang Dunhuang's book "Eating the Lord", this kind of divine object that can make fried, drunk, kang, and bad, is almost the soul of the master of Fujian cuisine, so that Wang Shixiang will bring a bottle of fragrant juice to a friend's house, and when he is happy, he will personally cook a hand.
In his book "Guiyu Feast", Wang Shixiang once made a rigorous analysis of the influence of xiangba in Chinese cuisine, and he believed that compared with Fujian cuisine, Shandong cuisine is actually the best at using xiangyu, like Zhejiang cuisine and Huaiyang cuisine, which can only be ranked behind them.
In the use of incense, Wang Shixiang's skills are the same as his words, directly hitting the souls of diners, and many literati and scholars who have attended his family banquets can't help but write praises. Wang Shixiang is best at bad eggs sea cucumbers, bad simmered winter shoots, bad simmered fish fillets, bad simmered white, and each shot is amazing.
Wang Shixiang does what he loves, what he loves, what he is proficient in, as a cultural person, he especially likes to go to the market. He said there is nothing more refreshing than a wet market.
He is more than 80 years old, and he often runs to the Chaoyang Market to queue up, and when he is happy, he has to pull a group of friends together, which is really the so-called stinky smell, and everyone feels the steaming life in the sound of chickens and ducks and carp.
Wang Shixiang has a natural passion for cooking, and likes to cook everywhere he goes, for example, when he travels on business, he will borrow the back kitchen of the restaurant; for example, when the "May Seventh" cadre school is decentralized, he will borrow the kitchen of his hometown to use it; even if he goes abroad to play, when he misses the taste of his hometown, he will use the senior's pot to make dishes to relieve hunger.
As a cultural person, Wang Shixiang loves to make friends, from the three religions and nine streams to the dignitaries, who may be his guests. His friendship with Hubei fisherman Han Zuxiang was rumored to be a good story.
In 1971, Wang Shixiang was sent to Xiangyang Lake Commune with the "May Seventh" cadre school of the Ministry of Culture to work, and he loved fish, so he met the fisherman Han Zuxiang. Wang Shixiang has a lot of research on food culture, but he does not understand a lot of knowledge of fish, Han Zuxiang is an expert in fish farming, but he does not know how to cook, the two people learn from each other's strengths, and have achieved an incredible friendship.
Wang Shixiang feels that everyone in the world has strengths, and one of his best dishes, "Pot Collapse Tofu", was learned in a small restaurant on mamiao Road in front of Beijing.
He learned this dish from the chef, invited his friends to this restaurant, he personally cooked for everyone to eat, when the friends told the chef his true identity, the other party was so surprised that he could not speak, probably he had never seen such a celebrity without shelves in his life.
Onions have sacred value in Wang Shixiang's recipes, and he likes to use onions as the protagonist and sing different plays. He attaches great importance to the seasonality of the ingredients, such as the onion must be after the frost, but not frozen, and use it to make scallions and roasted sea cucumbers, which is the best taste in the world.
Once Wang Shixiang was traveling with a friend and saw a farmer selling cabbage on the side of the road, he said that the cabbage was just right in this season, so he bought two and took it home. Stir-fried with green onions and slices of ginger, as well as lard, the freshness of the cabbage, accompanied by the aroma of lard, made him unforgettable for a long time.
Wang Shixiang likes to eat many ingredients, such as mushrooms are one of them. Beijing is a city with a shortage of ingredients, but this did not affect Wang Shixiang's enthusiasm, he once ran to the Yongding River to find mushrooms, every time he found mushrooms, he would deliberately make a record, and also drew a route map.
The old man is very funny, this secret route map, he generally does not tell, only a particularly good friend, will pull each other together to explore the treasure. Later, about this interesting story, in his son Wang Dunhuang's "Eating the Lord", all of them were presented, which was regarded as a leak of the family's first-class secrets.
For life, Wang Shixiang has an unusual passion, he will invest in every small thing around him, will invest in meticulous attention, and enjoy himself in it.
Once a friend invited everyone to come to the house as a guest, let everyone make a special dish, in a table of hearty dishes, the most popular is Wang Shixiang's braised onions, the ingredients are minimal to Shandong green onions, swept away by everyone.
The old man always said that he made a "ticket friend dish", but no ticket friend had ever reached his height.
Without the seriousness of one board and one glance, Wang Shixiang could not be known to the world as a living family, and all this is nothing more than a slow word.
As depicted in the writer Mu Xin's "Once Upon a Time Slow" -
I remember when I was a teenager
Everybody is sincere
Say a sentence is a sentence
Train station in the early morning
Long Street is dark and pedestrianless
The small shop selling soy milk is steaming
The old days became slower
Cars, horses, mail are all slow
There is only enough to love one person in a lifetime
The former lock also looks good
The keys are beautifully presented
You lock it, people will understand
Regrettably, after the 1990s, Wang Shixiang stopped writing about food. He believes that the root of a good meal lies in the ingredients, and many of the current ingredients are promoted by fertilizers and feed additives, and there is no longer the taste of the year, and the soil and other aspects of the environment have undergone fundamental changes.
This has to be said to be a tragedy of the times; as a gentleman from the Republic of China, the old gentleman will stop writing because of poor ingredients.
In today's fast-food society, this is unthinkable.
This is an era when everyone is almost blind to numbers, in which all people are exhausted and they are only a tiny point in the numbers.
This is a crude era in which 400,000 will be eaten at a meal, and it will be taken out and put on social networks to show off, so crude that in addition to the taste of money, the rest is pretentious and pretentious, which is what the rich people call the way of life.
The real literati and the bones of the times all went away with the rain and the wind.
If the old man is still alive, what kind of emotion will he make?