Produced by | Tiger sniffing young group
Author | Slag County
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This article was first published on the tiger sniff young content public account "That NG" (ID: huxiu4youth). Here, we present the face, stories and attitudes of today's young people.
It is no exaggeration to say that tasting "Donkey Meat Fire - Donkey Burger" has now become a punch card project for foreigners to travel deep into China.
David Chang, the star chef in the Netflix travel documentary "Ugly Delicious," and his friends roam the globe eating delicious food; and when they walk to Beijing, they first try not Peking duck, but donkey meat.
Image source: Netflix
Long crunchy pancakes are paired with the marinated Bohai donkey meat of the Hejian pie, which makes the Asian brother who has never eaten donkey meat blindly into the soul.
Not only did they interpret the beauty of the Chinese called the roasted meat, but they also became crazy about this first encounter meat, and from then on they planned to eat every part of the donkey's body.
Although it is not clear whether the sound of chewing donkey meat is more psychedelic, or the faint sound of fire cracking is more romantic, it is certain that this scene has maddened many old beauties.
On Reddit, a Texan brother admitted to being mesmerized by the food the moment he saw donkey meat burning. But, frustrated by the laws prohibiting the consumption of local horse creatures, he was a little worried about being arrested. So he hoped that someone would show him the truth about buying donkey meat.
Image source: Reddit
The picture presented in the documentary is naturally an intuitive factor that makes foreigners hungry to madness. But what makes them even more impatient is Chinese classical saying about the taste of donkey meat.
Whenever donkey meat is burned, foreigners always mention a phrase with a Harry Potter flavor: In heaven, there is dragon meat, but on earth, there is donkey meat. Translated is the advertising slogan you can see in every donkey meat restaurant - heavenly dragon meat, underground donkey meat.
This mysterious statement undoubtedly breaks the cultural circle of donkey meat taste, so that people who can no longer understand the description of rhetoric can quickly feel the Chinese resby for donkey meat. After all, the legendary food of dragon meat is too far away from people, and only donkey meat can make people taste it without going to heaven.
Image source: tripadvisor
Under this mystical remark with a little bit of Cthulhu's unknowable flavor, going to Beijing to eat donkey fire has become a punch card item for every backpacker who tries to deeply experience the exotic style of the East.
Although donkey fire in China is in most cases a lunchtime meal for wage earners, it is a feast for backpackers, a reflection of the depth of tourism, worthy of a big green stick.
Image source: IG
Don't think I'm talking nonsense. In the travel guides of foreign travel websites atlasobscura and Lonely Planet, travel gurus suggest that the food you have to eat when you come to Beijing may not have shabu-shabu, roast duck and Jingtianhong, but there will definitely be donkey fire.
Although there are 1661 donkey meat restaurants in Beijing, in the eyes of foreigners, the donkey meat restaurants only have Wang Fatzi in the second ring road, and this is the Jerusalem of the donkey meat cuisine industry in their hearts.
Therefore, you don't need to work hard, as long as you type Donkey Burger on the social platform, you can easily see countless photos of foreigners at the door of Wang Fatzi.
This cult stems from the guidance of KOLs.
As early as December 2014, in an article in The Beijinger, a magazine dedicated to foreigners in Beijing, the author suggested that anyone who tasted donkey fire should use Burgundy red wine to accompany it, because it would get a richer taste.
Foreigners are not mysterious, with the sour taste of Burgundy red wine with a tender donkey meat fire, it will indeed produce an extraordinary chemical reaction between the two, let you taste a fresh and simple and cheerful honey from chewing, this kind of artificial touch in the mouth will even make you feel a small donkey jumping on the tip of your tongue waltz, every step is like a massage, let you indulge in the comfort zone of taste, be psychedelic to the point of about to sit into a fairy.
In a sense, these foreigners who taste donkey fire are explorers who retrace marco polo's path. After they spread the legend of donkey fire delicious to the Western land, true fundamentalists began to understand the real blood behind the donkey fire in Beijing.
Donkey fire believers went to Hebei and ran to the river to investigate the real donkey fire and taste the most authentic taste. This kind of religious pilgrimage fanaticism has made them even figure out the difference between The Donkey Fire in Baoding and the Donkey Fire in the River, as well as the difference in the taste of the Bohai Donkey and the Taihang Donkey, and become the real donkey eating masters.
After figuring out the Donkey Fire faction, some asshole metaphysicians believe that the perfect match between Burgundy wine and donkey fire between the rivers is a divine providence: because the wine is also produced in Burgundy under the "river" wrapped in the Rhine, Seine, Loire and Rhône, and more interestingly, France is one of the few countries in the West to develop donkey sausage cuisine.
In fact, there are very few countries in the world that have a tradition of eating donkeys and can invent their own dishes, so many foreigners will have psychological barriers to donkey meat before tasting donkey fire, thinking that it is a doomsday food, a stopgap measure after the shelter has not eaten.
France has donkey sausages and charcoal-grilled Mari ridges, so the French have a relatively high acceptance of donkey meat.
In the United States, due to the "love of horses" habits and legal restrictions left by the history of western pioneering, people's acceptance of food made from horses and donkeys is not so high.
However, after tasting it, no one will refuse to praise it, and they all rush to give a thumbs up to this famous food in northern China.
Image source: Youtube
Even some foreigners, after tasting the Chinese donkey meat fire, thought about this taste, but they were bitter about no craftsmanship, so they had to hold their own little donkey and nibble on two bites in the air to relieve the pain of lovesickness.
In this era when urban people are popular to eat light food and light food, donkey meat fire, a simple traditional food in the North China Plain, has been reduced to plain, and even began to be forgotten by some small white-collar workers in office buildings.
Although it is a little niche compared to bacon meat sandwich steamed buns, and less hardcore than guerrilla three-wheeled wool eggs, it is this food that looks like Chinese cuisine is not so outstanding, but it has become the oriental diet that foreigners are most in line with their eating habits.
Therefore, for foreigners, donkey meat fire - Donkey Burger, is a delicacy full of oriental mystery, like an adventure to create a low-intensity oriental cuisine for them.
In fact, in everyone's impression, the rustic donkey meat fire is actually a big business. The article reporting the 2020 Hejian Cultural Tourism Season and the Fourth Donkey Meat Fire Food Festival shows that the annual output value of the donkey fire business is nearly 8 billion yuan!
In the face of the prosperity of the domestic market and the enthusiasm of foreigners, Zhang Haitao, founder of Kung Fu Donkey, and Wang Haibo, founder of Wang Fatzi, both said in an interview with CNN that they hope that Donkey Fire can become a model of Chinese fast food like McDonald's.
Image source: Dagong Net
But some observers argue that donkey fire's path to conquest is not optimistic, as evidenced by the former Australian fire king and the permanent closure of a donkey fire shop in Italy.
The memories and admiration of foreigners on the Internet are just the sunk costs in their hearts, and they love not the original taste of donkey fire but the beautiful memories of Chinese tourism.
Image source: Google
Today, the world is divided by the epidemic, tourism has stagnated, and exchanges have been blocked; not only has it become a luxury for foreigners to taste the donkey fire in Zhenggang, but even business expeditions have become difficult.
But the power of food can still bring the world closer together and make people on both ends more aware of each other's lifestyles. Therefore, whenever I drink donkey meat soup and eat donkey fire at noon, I can always have respect for it, both because it is an expression of lifestyle and from an inexplicable respect:
After all, the historical truth behind the painting "Napoleon Over the Alps" is that the conqueror is not riding a war horse, but a stupid donkey.
Image source: Google