Who eats who is stupid, who is stupid eats.
(This article is longer, and the gray italic part of reading requires a little ancient Chinese foundation)
Text: Manuscript Wang Editor: Say no
Recently, Wang Hai, who called himself a "market scavenger", got on the bar with bird's nest again, and continuously questioned the "net red fresh stewed bird's nest" Xiaoxian stew and the "Ming Zhi" of Simba with goods, saying:
"The bird's nest that Simba sells is sugar water, and the little fairy stew is the king of the HARVEST OF THE IQ tax."
Wang Hai began shelling bird's nest in June this year, and finally detonated the network.
For a long time, Wang Hai and a group of nutritionists have opposed the efficacy of bird's nest claimed by various merchants. In 2016, Wang Hai once questioned the "Jiyan" who invited Meng Fei to endorse and Du Zijian as the guest of honor at the press conference, and ordered more than 10,000 "Jiyan" products, during which he and Du Zijian also exchanged fears.
More than four years later, the once red-hot "Extreme Swallow", did not become a friend of time, and slowly disappeared in the market, but "Yan's House", "Tongrentang", and later "Xiaoxian Stew" and other brands, with the concept of "fresh stewed bird's nest", each led the way for more than ten or twenty months.
According to the "2019 China Bird's Nest Industry White Paper" released for the first time by the Bird's Nest Market Professional Committee of the National Federation of Urban Agricultural Trade Centers, the overall market size of Bird's Nest in China reached about 30 billion yuan in 2019, with an annual compound growth rate of more than 30%.
Comprehensive multi-party data, due to the impact of the "Quan Jian" incident, China's current health care product market is about 300 billion, if the data of the "White Paper" is accurate, bird's nest this variety accounts for one-tenth of China's health product market.
The National Medical Insurance Bureau bargained for heart stents earlier this month, saving 10.9 billion yuan, which is not enough for the whole country to drink bird's nest for half a year.
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Since the Ming Dynasty has been recorded, because of the difficulty of collection, bird's nests have been "rare and expensive", even in high-consumption groups, it is also a rare ingredient, and it is more known as "official swallow".
Although modern technology has advanced, the price of bird's nest is also high, the price of about 20,000 a kilogram, in addition to a very small amount of tonics that exist in the legend, the market is open to trade health care products, only the "Cordyceps sinensis" of the year can compete with one.
Such expensive ingredients, how to eat, how to use, has been a variety of opinions, difficult to adjust.
In the "Record of Awakening the Garden" written by Li Huanan, a Qianlong seventh-year scholar of the Qing Dynasty (a proper high-end person), a native of Luojiang, Sichuan, recorded two ways to eat Sichuan:
Use a bowl of boiling water, throw a little charcoal ash, wait for clarity, pour the water up, soak it in bird's nest, that is, mold yellow and white, shred and wash it. The next time the meat will be cooked, take the semi-fine white shredded, and add the chicken shredded is even better. Fill a bowl, pour it in the broth and pour it out two or three times. Put another bowl of bird's nest, also pour it two or three times first, and when the meat is drizzled, the bird's nest is laid out one by one, with a clean broth, to the oil to leave clear, add sweet wine, soybean oil a little each, roll down, sprinkle pepper noodles to eat.
There is another law. Use cooked meat files as a very fine ale, add mung bean flour and soybean oil, peppercorns, wine, egg white to make balls, long as bird's nest. Wash and shred the bird's nest, paste the meatballs to cover the dense, pay the boiling soup, fish it up, wait for it to be boiled together, use the clear broth as the juice, add sweet wine, soybean oil a little, roll one or two rolls under the pot, roll the pills down and roll again, that is, take off the bowl, sprinkle pepper noodles, green onions, shiitake mushrooms, eat very beautifully. Or wrap the bird's nest in meatballs as balls, also blanched first, the rest of the same.
It doesn't matter if you don't understand it or not, these two recipes are permeated with typical Sichuan characteristics: heavy taste. If these two recipes are promoted, then what we can eat today is likely to be "bird's nest spicy and hot".
And the famous "foodie" and the most cultured "cook" who entered the army three years earlier than Li Huanan, Yuan Ming, a native of Qiantang, Zhejiang, scorned these two ways of eating. In his private recipe, Suiyuan Food List, he said:
Bird's nest precious things, the original is not light use. If used, each bowl must be two or two, first soaked in water from the heavenly spring, and the silver needle is picked out of the black wire. Roll it with three soups, including tender chicken soup, good ham soup, and new mushrooms, and watch the bird's nest turn jade color. This thing should not be greasy and miscellaneous; this thing should not be strung with weapons. Nowadays, people use shredded meat and shredded chicken to mix, they eat shredded chicken and shredded meat, and they do not eat bird's nest. And in vain, he often covers the bowl with three dollars of bird's nest, such as white hair and several stems, so that the guest can not see it, and the empty coarse things are full of bowls. The real beggar sells the rich, but shows the poor. As a last resort, mushroom shreds, bamboo shoot tip silk, crucian carp belly, pheasant tender slices are still available. Yu to eastern Guangdong, Yangming Province winter melon bird's nest is very good, with soft with soft, to clear into the clear, reuse chicken juice, mushroom juice only, bird's nest are jade color, not pure white also. Or make a ball, or knock it into a face, and it is all chiseled.
Translated over, roughly means: bird's nest is very expensive, you add what meat shredded, chicken shredded, is simply a tyrannical thing, have to add side dishes, at most add some mushroom shreds, there is really no condition, add some bamboo shoots, crucian carp belly, pheasant tender slices can also be on; you see Cantonese people are very understanding, winter melon with bird's nest, more chicken juice, mushroom juice, delicious!
Yuan Ming's temper is not very good, and he is deeply disgusted by taking expensive ingredients such as bird's nest, and he said "quit ear food":
What is ear meal? Ear eaters, the name of the word also. The name of greedy nobles, the meaning of praising guests, is to eat with ears, not with mouths. I don't know the taste of tofu, far better than bird's nest; sea vegetables are not good, not as good as vegetable shoots. Yu tastes chicken, pig, fish, duck Haojie people also, each has its own taste, its own family; sea cucumbers, bird's nest mediocre people also, all temperamental, sent to the fence. Taste a certain too guarded banquet guests, large bowls such as jars, boiled bird's nest four two, tasteless, people argue about it. Yu Xiao said, "My generation came to eat bird's nest, not to sell bird's nest also." "Can be sold and not eaten, although it is more than xi? If you exaggerate your decency, it is better to put a hundred pearls in the bowl, which is worth thousands of dollars. What if it can't be eaten?
The core idea is: You guys, don't listen to the wind is the rain! Tofu is well done, better than bird's nest to know where to go, boiled bird's nest has no taste at all, you still say good? immature! Why don't you bring a bowl of pearls?
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For eating, Thumb Jun is not as well studied as Mr. Yuan Ming, and whether bird's nest is delicious or not, there is no way to know (mainly because of poverty), but such an expensive thing, according to tradition, it should be effective.
Sure enough, during the Xianfeng period of the Qing Dynasty, Ling Yan of Wuxing, Jiangsu Province, recorded in his "Materia Medica Harms profits":
Nests
[Harm] The seafood is cold, cold and cold is not suitable for use, and the fear of eating is increased.
[Li] sweet and smooth, nourish the lungs and yin, dissolve phlegm and stop coughing, supplement and clear, cure lung qi can not clear the downward disease. And can be appetizing, already diarrhea. Can be fried or served alone. If it is boiled with porridge or chicken juice, it will mess up its nature of clearing qi and replenishing yin. Frying with rock sugar is sweet and warm, which can help the lungs to clear the downward trend.
Rock sugar bird's nest can help the lungs clear down, good! But what about the clinical effect?
Lin Daiyu, a famous lung disease patient, used this formula recommended by Xue Baochao:
One or two high-grade bird's nests, five dollars of rock sugar, and boiled porridge with silver choles
The famous warm man Jia Baoyu, felt that it was not right, could not eat the bird's nest given by Xue Baochao, and changed the bird's nest used by the old lady, but the square was still the same:
The result? Although she ate it for a long time, Lin Daiyu eventually lost her jade due to lung disease.
Doesn't rock sugar bird's nest help the lungs to clear the downward trend? Could it be that there is something wrong with the square?
Of course there is a problem!
As early as before the "Dream of the Red Chamber" was written, thirty years after Qianlong, Yuan Ming's compatriot, Zhao Xuemin, a native of Qiantang, Zhejiang Province, wrote the "Compendium of Materia Medica" and said:
(Bird's nest) has been fried with rock sugar, then it is sweet, how can it help the lungs to clear the downwards?
Rock sugar bird's nest, sweet to the mole, how can it help the lung gold to clear the downward trend? Isn't that silly?
The ancients published medical books differently from the papers published now, there is no peer review, basically they can make their own decisions, and they cannot let two authors with different opinions do an academic exchange. But judging from Lin Daiyu's medical records, rock sugar bird's nest is at least of no use.
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So how did rock sugar bird's nest become a "tonic product" in the cognition of the Chinese people?
This should start from the "bird's nest saccharin" of Sun Jinghu, a famous "counterfeit drug dealer" in Shanghai more than 100 years ago, at the end of the Qing Dynasty.
The novel "Mirror of the Medical Circle" signed "Ru Lin Yi Yin" was published in Guangxu Thirty-fourth (1908), which was slightly modified according to Yu Wenyao's "Records of the Present Form of the Medical Circle", and in the twelfth time, the author named Sun Jinghu "Hu Jingsun", telling the context, the original text is slightly longer, but it is indeed worth reading:
However, it is said that Hu Jingsun is one of the three major slippers in Shanghai, opened a pill powder shop, hung many plaques of prominent officials, and used to create fake drugs.
In April this year, because of something to the Wusong River, saw a net fish boat, net up a lot of small white fish, that is, the common celebrity fish, the mirror sun took two or three, to the nose of a sniff, felt some fishy taste, and the flesh color is white and lovely, dried up, can be mixed with guan yan, at that time thought: this thing as an official swallow, research powder, and into the sugar frosting, made a round, must be palatable. Now the people of Shanghai, which one can distinguish between true and false?
That is, he said to the fishing boat: "The little white fish in your net, how much does it cost to sell it to me, how much does it cost?" The fisherman replied, "Forty dollars a pound." "Immediately bought dozens of pounds back, dried in the sun, ground into fine wood, and into the frosting, properly prepared, loaded with glass boxes, the name of bird's nest saccharin, the price of silver large box two yuan, small box one yuan."
Like Xiaoxian Stew, Hu Jingsun also thought of using the celebrity effect to promote his own "bird's nest saccharin". In the literature, he invited the famous doctors of the time, such as Zhang Lianxiu, Bei Zuyin, and Gong Qilong, to taste it, but the famous doctors did not give face.
Finally, once, Hu Jingsun saw Zhang Lianxiu and offered ten bottles of bird's nest saccharin, hoping that Director Zhang would taste and appreciate. Zhang Lian Xiugui is a big expert, of course, disdainful of selling health care products. Hu Jingsun visited Pei Zuyin's house again, and Director Pei did not give face.
After finding a big expert to hit a wall, Hu Jingsun had to think of another trick: to find a soft article from the media.
"Secretly invited many readers to make saccharin praises and publish them in the newspaper; or to name a province where a sick person ate saccharin, and all the diseases were eliminated; or a weak person, who ate saccharin, was mentally strong..."
More than 100 years later, this trick was learned by "little fairy stew", the same recipe, the same taste.
The story of bird's nest saccharin is far from over.
More than a decade after Hu Jingsun's "fake bird's nest" scam was exposed, in 1921, the famous novelist Zhu Shuangju (pen name: Sea Dreamer) came to a divine echo in "Xiepu Tide":
The two of them lifted up a few packages next to them and said, "These four boxes of bird's nest saccharin were given to the ancestors of shushi by Liu Kun, the governor of Liangjiang, because this was a precious product, cherished to this day, and did not dare to use it lightly. ”
Zhen Wusu smelled this bird's nest saccharin, but in the past years in Shanghai a drug bureau slippery head, get to the end of the mountain, occasionally saw the fish stall picked out to feed the cat of the small fish, suddenly whimsical, every day to the fish stall to collect the small fish dried, grind into fine powder, mixed with water sugar crumbs, loaded with a brocade box, named bird's nest saccharin, fake a copy of the list, saying that this thing nourishes the yin and yang, has great effect. At that time, a group of people in the official field coveted him for being gorgeous and novel, and they all regarded him as an official ceremony... I don't feel secretly funny, so I can't thank you for accepting it.
"Lavishly decorated, novel in name, as an official ceremony"... These few can basically match the current brand of fresh stewed bird's nest. Although the "bird's nest saccharin" has long been dead, the various methods of Sun Jinghu hyping "bird's nest saccharin" have been the same for more than a hundred years.
("Gorgeously decorated" fairy stew)
There is nothing new under the sun, using people's fear of aging, disease, and death, every few years to package a useless thing into a "holy product", find some faceless people (including the media) to tout and divide the money together, this year's maca, next year's bird's nest, the following year's cordyceps, a sickle cut for another, I don't know if the knife wielder is too fierce, or the leeks are forgetful.
As the old saying goes: who eats who is stupid, who eats who is stupid.
A hundred years later, bird's nest is still so expensive, it really does not replenish the brain.
(Next trailer, Thumb Jun reveals the ultimate way to prevent buying health care products)