#吃在成都 #
Around 1992, in the upper grades of primary school, I fell madly in love with a traditional Snack in Chengdu, Zhong Shui Dumplings.
Many years later, the New Century has the Internet, and the other day I saw some information through the Internet: In 1992, "Zhong Shui Dumplings" was named "Chengdu Famous Snack" by the Chengdu Municipal People's Government; in 1995, it was awarded the title of "Chinese Time-honored Brand" by the Ministry of Domestic Trade; in 1999, it was awarded the title of "Chinese Famous Snack".
Looking back, I can't help but feel a kind of "prophetic foresight" surprise! I met Zhong Shui dumplings in 1992, and it was a kind of chance.
If you don't pay attention, thirty years have passed.
In 1992, when I was in the fifth grade of elementary school, my mind was super simple, and I thought that reading well was the whole meaning of life. In the fifth grade, I was also the hardest time in the whole school period, and the other post-80s children were still busy playing arcade machines, playing football, playing marbles... And all my time is spent studying, learning, learning. It was in that context that I formed an indissoluble relationship with Zhong Shui dumplings.
On weekends, I pedal my bike alone between Chengdu Sanguiqian Street Primary School and the Municipal Youth Palace. The morning school, the afternoon Olympiad, the cycle repeats, but I am happy to do it, because the strong internal drive is the source of faith to persevere to the end. I had two hours of leisure between the Ba school and the Olympiad, and it was impossible to go home, too far, so I needed to find a place to settle for lunch.
The Zhong Shui Dumpling General Store next to Admiral Street is located in the middle of Sanguiqian Street Primary School and the Municipal Youth Palace. I locked up 20 bikes, walked into the dumpling shop, and bought a few bowls for a few cents, every weekend at noon.
The dumplings were so delicious, it was so delicious for me in elementary school! The skin is thin and fragrant, the saltiness is moderate, and there is a slight sweetness, which is different from the dumplings eaten anywhere else! When I have a good appetite, I can eat four bowls in one go.
By the way, at that time, the dumplings were two cents and five bowls, and even if you eat four bowls, you only need one dollar, which is really not expensive. Buying a can of Coke soda costs two dollars as it is today.
A year later, after graduating from elementary school, I suffered the first major blow in my life without warning. Since 1993, The policy of Chengdu Xiaoshengchu has been greatly revised, and the original system of selecting good middle schools based on academic performance has been abolished overnight, and it has been transferred to the computer ranking and the nearest enrollment. That is to say, I became the first school bully in the first grade from the third grade of primary school, and after living for four years with the primary goal of entering Chengdu Seventh Middle School, fate made me a big joke.
After the blow at the beginning of the primary school, I never worked as hard as the fifth and sixth grades of elementary school, even in the third year of high school. Due to the change of thinking, I chose a very different life path from that of single-mindedly studying books. The xiaoshengchu incident may be a good thing or a bad thing for my whole life, and the butterfly effect is everywhere, who can say for sure?
Therefore, in 1992, the bell dumplings every weekend became a beautiful memorial to my simple life as a bully.
As I got older, I still used to go to the restaurant to eat a bowl of dumplings. The price of a bowl of dumplings also changed from 0.25 yuan in 1992 to 0.35 yuan in 1993... I remember it was $2.50 in 2004, it went up to $4 in 2006... In 2020, it is already 13 yuan.
The photo above was taken by me in 2015.
From 0.25 yuan to 13 yuan, almost fifty-two times. Maybe everyone will think that this price increase is very normal, after all, prices and house prices have risen a lot. However, from the trend of the price of dumplings, I saw some very interesting phenomena that triggered my thinking and made me seriously study it for several days.
When Dumplings sold for 0.25 yuan a bowl, cans of Coca-Cola were 2 yuan per can, and bagged Nestlé three-in-one instant coffee was 1 yuan per bag.
Today, when zhong dumplings sell for 13 yuan a bowl, cans of Coca-Cola are still 2 yuan 1 can, and bagged Nestle coffee is still 1 yuan 1 bag.
Why do some things go up in price and some things don't go up at all? Of course, the price increase is very normal, and it seems strange not to increase the price. In other words, if you accidentally put on an industry that does not increase prices, is this a great sadness for practitioners?
At least for me personally, the answer is yes. Twenty years ago, the newspaper fee was the same as today, and you can buy a square meter house by writing a few articles, but now...
I couldn't just end it, I worked hard to restore my curiosity like in 1992, and after several discussions with my friends in the media, I finally came up with the answer to this mystery. In fact, the answer is not simple.
First of all, the price increase of zhongshui dumplings is normal, but the increase exceeds the level of regular price increase. After all, if you make your own dumplings to eat, the cost will never rise fifty-two times over the past twenty years, and at most eight or ten times will top the sky. Nowadays, the dumplings in the dumpling shop are so expensive, and the core reason is the sharp rise in rent. The rise in shop rents has killed countless industries, including computer cities and many department stores, which is a pain in the hearts of many people, and I will not repeat them.
The above theory can explain why Coca-Cola and Nescafe have not increased in price, both products are the product of assembly line factories, not only without the concept of store rent, but even labor costs are getting lower and lower, and mechanized operations are becoming more and more popular. Therefore, even if there is a price increase in related products, the amplitude is extremely weak.
However, this is not the end of the matter.
It is also a large-scale industrial production, why have the prices of biscuits, bread, and soy sauce also increased? I have come to the conclusion that Coca-Cola and Nescafe are imported products, which were already international prices in 1992 or even earlier, although they cannot be said to be absolutely consistent, but at least they are in the same grade as developed countries in Europe and the United States. In the 1980s and 1990s, when the Chinese people were still relatively poor and prices were low, imported products were naturally sky-high in the relative sense. For more than two decades, the economy and prices of developed countries in Europe and the United States have not risen as rapidly as in China, so it is reasonable that cola and coffee have maintained the prices of more than twenty years ago.
To add, if you think back to the 90s of the last century, when McDonald's and KFC first entered China, it was a much more expensive high-end lunch than Zhong Shui Dumplings, but today? It seems to be completely reversed, and it costs more money to eat in Zhong Shui Dumplings.
Many seemingly incomprehensible phenomena have laws to follow behind them, and it is important to maintain the habit of thinking!