As the saying goes, "seven things to open the door in the morning, chai rice oil salt sauce vinegar tea", in the traditional Chinese diet structure, the oil as a cooking product has an unshakable position in the kitchen of the people. Soybean oil is one of the most important edible oils in China, the Ming Dynasty Song Yingxing wrote in the "Tiangong Kaiwu": "Where the oil is for food to eat, flax, lai, soybeans, spinach seeds are the top, Su Ma, brassica seeds are second, tea is second, amaranth seeds are second, and cannabis kernels are lower", and the "Rich And Strange Books" in the early Qing Dynasty said that "today's Jiangnan hemp cakes and bean cakes press the field, then more is harvested." Fu ma and beans take their oil, and their residue can still be beautiful", it can be seen that the oil pressing industry in Jiangsu during the Ming and Qing dynasties has been more common, and the oil mills that squeeze soybeans and sesame seeds are all over the city and countryside. From the end of the Qing Dynasty to the founding of New China, the traditional industry of oil pressing was once the pillar industry of Yancheng Binhai County. Today's traditional oil pressing industry has long been in decline, and the prosperity of the oil pressing industry in Binhai County in the past can only be glimpsed in the old chronicles.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, the Dongkan area of Funing County (Binhai County formerly belonged to Funing County) developed rapidly, and the oil pressing industry was its main industry. Guangxu's "Chronicle of Huai'an Province" Volume II Property Part records that "Yancheng and Funing are the best, and those who have changed sides have since the Ming Dynasty, with salt wine and oil as the most important ... Soybean oil and bean cake Daoguang used to be resold to Jiangnan, and the profit was thick, and Yuguan also used this as a huge amount of money", and the "Funing County Xinzhi Commercial Chronicles and Markets" recorded that "the ancient name of Dongkan Town was Wang Jiakan (Old Zhi)." In front of The Town of Renhe, it is also called the Former Set. When the South River was fortified in the Qing Dynasty, the economy was abundant, the goods were flooded, the cars and mules were crowded, the boats were flying, and the traffickers belonged to the Tao. ...... However, the south of the river, the northern boundary of ripples, irrigation, water and land connection, convenient transportation. With 3,000 or 4,000 smokers, it is still the largest town in Benyi. There are many soybeans in the vicinity, and the commerce takes soybean oil and soybean cake as the bulk, and other miscellaneous grains and distant purchasers also import more. Most of the goods come from Suzhou, Hangzhou, Chang and Zhen. "❷ The oil mill industry based on processing soybean oil and bean cake is booming, the large and small oil mills are densely packed in urban and rural areas, the southern merchants and northern customers gather in Dongkan and Batan, the market purchase and sales are booming, the local economy can develop, and Dongkan Town has become the first of Fuyi.
The development of the oil pressing industry in Binhai County is due to its superior geographical conditions, and its western and northern parts are dry-working areas in Huaibei, with a wide planting area of soybeans and extremely rich yields. "Funing County Xinzhi And Product History" records: "Soybeans, commonly known as soybeans, are the main crops in Northwest Township, filled with food, used to squeeze oil, slag bean cake, all produced by Benyi Bulk, divided into spring beans and autumn beans with different sowing periods, a total of about 30 kinds of ❸, "Jiangsu Province General History Draft • Commodity Value Zhi · Agriculture" recorded in the Republic of China's 21 years (1932) The Ministry of Industry investigated "The beans produced in Jiangsu are mainly soybeans (also known as soybeans), the most abundant counties, when pushing Rugao, Tongshan, Funing, Taizhou, Lianshui, Wujin, Yanghu and other counties. Rugao counted 2.865 million stones, Tongshan counted 911,000 stones, Funing 500,000 stones, Lianshui 424,000 stones "❹, "Yancheng Chronicle" recorded: "From the fifth to the ninth year of the Republic of China, Yancheng, Funing, Dongtai three counties, the average annual planting capital of 985,000 mu, the total output of 47,500 tons, planting area, output accounted for 15% and 20% of the province, respectively. From the 20th to the 26th year of the Republic of China, the average annual planting was 1.15 million mu, with a total output of 52,500 tons, and the planting area and output accounted for 20% and 25% of the province respectively" ❺. Many of the above documents show that the Funing region, which belonged to Binhai at that time, produced huge soybeans and abundant raw materials for the oil pressing industry.
Soybean oil is in vegetable oil, rich in production, convenient to manufacture, and inexpensive. The traditional oil pressing method is simpler to operate and easy to get started. At that time, there were two main methods: water generation method and pressing method. The water substitution method is to sift the oil, stir-fry, grind it into a pulp with stone grinding, and then stir it with hot water to oscillate, and then use water to substitute the oil. The pressing method is to squeeze the oil out by steaming and crushing, and then use the lever or impact method to squeeze the oil out. The earthen pressing tools are mainly wooden, and there are different types in various places, including horizontal pressing, vertical pressing, girder pressing, etc. In the folk, as long as you have a little capital to buy a buffalo and make a wood squeeze, you can operate it locally. So the oil pressers, who are good at business, compete to invest and open. At that time, the oil mill was the most important in Dongkan, followed by eight beaches, and other market towns were also distributed, according to Guangxu's "Funing County Chronicle", "At that time, the towns of Eight Beaches, Dongkan, Yangzhai, Donggou were collecting cakes, bean Changzhou, wuxi, and the sails belonged to each other." ❻ The "Xinzhi and Industrial Chronicle of Funing County" records that "the system of soybean oil and bean cake is based on Dongkan as the sheng, followed by eight beaches, and the oil is sold in Benyi, South and Yancheng, and the cake is transferred to Hai'an, Jiangyan and other places and sold as fertilizer." ❼ After the soybean oil is pressed, the remaining residue can be made into soybean cakes, which can be used as fertilizer for farmland and fodder for livestock.
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Ancient oil pressing process: stone milling, sieving, fire steaming, cake wrapping, squeezing, hammer collision (Source: China National Geographic)
At that time, the oil mill had the difference between the main square and the township square, and the main square generally had strong funds, good reputation, and high pass rate of soybean oil and bean cake. Most of the townships are rural workshops, which are smaller in scale. Between the 23rd year of Guangxu (1897) and the 32nd year (1906), there were 14 oil mills in the Dongkan area, of which 9 were zhengfang (that is, larger workshops) and 5 were smaller. The larger scale is Fenghe Oil Mill, which has 7 high-pressing, 2 foreign mills, 4 large mills, 23 buffaloes, and 70,000 working capital; the smaller one is Meidongji Oil Mill, which has 3 high-pressing, 2 large mills, 8 cattle, 3,000 soybean turnover, producing 9 crops per day, producing 157 pounds of oil and 198 pieces of cake. At that time, the 14 oil mills had a total of 82 high-pressing units, 22 foreign mills, 42 large mills, 217 buffaloes, and could press 112,000 crops (the folk calculation unit in the coastal area, with one processed bean as one crop) soybeans, 2,800 rapeseeds, 1.95 million kilograms of soybean oil per year, 2.464 million pieces of bean cake, 184,800 kilograms of rapeseed oil, and 92,400 pieces of rapeseed cake. ❽
During the period from the second year of the Republic of China (1913) to the twenty-second year of the Republic of China (1933), the Dongkan oil mill industry developed year by year, the number of main mills increased to 28, the number of high-pressing mills increased to 126, the number of foreign mills increased to 25, the number of large mills increased to 68, and the number of small cattle increased to 275. In the sixteenth year of the Republic of China (1927), the Qianyuan oil mill in Dongkan began to use machines as the power to squeeze oil, and by the twenty-second year of the Republic of China (1933), there were 16 large and small machines in the oil mill in Dongkan. In the 24th year of the Republic of China (1935), Dongkan Qianyuan and Yiyuan Er Oil Mill united 24 industrial and commercial households to invest 600,000 yuan and purchased two 60 horsepower diesel engines as milling power and as power generation lighting. According to the "Chronicle of Chinese Industry and Jiangsu", the 17 large oil mills in the Dongkan area between the 20th and 22nd years of the Republic of China were Zhenyuan, Tonghe, Yiyuan, Yuan, Yuyuan, Fuyuan, Chen Hongtai, Jiyuan, Jinyuan, Xiang Qianda, Lao Hongtai, Liu Taiyuan, Qianyuan, Zhao Qianda, Tongtai, Guangyuan, and Chen Binji.
Oil pressing machines during the Republic of China
These 17 oil mills have a working capital of 88,000 yuan, 212 workers, an annual oil output of 17,104 quintals (output value of 307,900 yuan), 248,700 quintals of cake (output value of 1,118,930 yuan), and an annual total output value of 1,426,800 yuan. ❾ In addition to the 28 large oil mills, there are still dozens of small oil mills with a capital of 1,000 to 5,000 yuan distributed around Dongkan. This period was the heyday of the development of the Dongkan oil mill industry. The larger-scale old HongTai and Xiangqian big oil mills each have a capital turnover of more than 30,000 hue in the spring and autumn, and the general small mill also has more than 10,000 hu. During this period, there were 11 oil mills in Batan, of which the larger ones were Shenghe, Qianhe, Tonghe, Zhuyida and other oil mills, with capital ranging from 3,000 to 5,000 yuan, each with 1 diesel engine, 6 to 8 wood presses and high presses, more than 10 cattle, about 20 employees, and 20 daily squeezes. Liu Wanyuan Oil Mill in Zhanggou Area has 8 high-squeeze oil mills, and Yuyuan Oil Mills in Tianchang area has about 4,000 yuan of funds.
The prosperity of the oil pressing industry promoted the prosperity of the market, when the market soybeans were listed on the market for hundreds of thousands of catties a day, a large number of soybeans were transported to Dongkan by the peasants on both sides of the Guanhe River (now Xiangshui and Guanyun) to Be sold, and more than 200 soybean trucks gathered in Dongkan every day, and the larger grain merchants could reach three or four thousand soybeans at a time. In addition to being sold in the county, Dongkan's soybean oil and bean cakes are mainly sold to Nantong, Rugao, Hai'an, Jiangyan, Qutang and other places. Nantong's "Xiangji", Hai'an's "Cai Yixing" and other large businesses have personnel living in Dongkan, engaged in the purchase of soybean oil, soybean cake and the promotion of native cloth. Merchant ships from Jiangyan, Qutang, Hai'an, Taizhou, Xinghua, Wuxi, Shanghai and other places to purchase oil and cakes are often lined up in the area of present-day Hongtao Village. Hundreds of oil and cake ships travel from Dongkan to Nantong. Soybean oil and bean cakes were shipped out, and "Wuyang" groceries were shipped back. Larger commercial owners operating the oil cake industry have appeared one after another, such as Zhang Zipan and Xu Zhichao in the Dongkan area, and Zhang Shunhe, a merchant on the south road who collected cakes in Dongkanzazhuang, has 400,000 pieces of bean cake as capital, and the transaction settlement is through bank remittance. The annual output of soybean oil in Dongkan area is more than three million kilograms, and the output of soybean cake is more than two million pieces, of which Jinyuan Oil Mill sells 5,000 pieces of soybean cake and 3,000 kilograms of soybean oil in one day during the peak season.
Oil pressed cake
The view of the present town of Dongkan
With the prosperity of the oil mill industry, the commercial and trade service industry in Dongkan has also developed successively. According to statistics, there were about 250 commercial, handicraft and service industries in dongkan at that time, due to the prosperity of business and market prosperity, foreign merchants poured in, long-term stationing in Kan, and various guild halls also came into being. The Bank of China, the Jiangsu Provincial Farmers Bank, the Electric Light Factory, the Theater and the Hospital were also established. In February of the second year of the Republic of China (1913), the Dongkan Business Branch was established, and the president Yang Guofan was the owner of the oil mill. Dongkan grew from a rural market town located in the lower reaches of the abandoned Yellow River to a commercially developed Yanfu town. In September 1942, the writer Ah Ying (Qian Xing Estate) said in his article "Diary of An Enemy Behind Enemy Lines: Journeys in Dongkan": "According to the japanese invasion of Kou and the bombing of Funing into ruins, Dongkan nai became the most prosperous area in the county." The city is three miles long, and nantong north of Xinqiao, Liujia Town, Lvsi Town, can be compared with Bozhong. ”➓
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, due to the blockade of traffic and the poor sales of oil and cakes, the oil mill industry gradually fell into depression and snub. In the spring of 1943, after the Japanese puppet army occupied the Dongkan and Badan areas, they vigorously implemented the three-light policy of "burning the light, killing the light, and robbing the light", and many oil mills and machines were demolished. At the end of the year, when the Japanese army retreated, 5 steamboats and more than 30 civilian ships were driven, and a lot of equipment was snatched, and the oil mill industry in the county was seriously injured from then on.
At that time, the anti-Japanese democratic government of Fudong County attached great importance to the recovery and development of the oil pressing industry, and took many measures to support the recovery and development of oil mills. After the japanese army retreated at the end of 1943, in order to restore oil production, the county cargo management bureau issued a 400,000 yuan oil mill loan. According to the "Yanfu Mass Daily" reported on November 13, 1943, after the loan was issued, "only one of the eight beaches has been better reflected, some small oil mills have expanded, some have resumed business, and even newly opened..." After 1948, oil mills were very short of funds, and many oil mills relied on selling "period cakes" (that is, selling bean cakes to be produced before production to obtain part of the capital turnover), which was risky and the price was less than a quarter of the market price. To this end, the county cargo management bureau issued a loan of 50 million yuan (Central China dollars, the same below) to the oil mill in accordance with the instructions of the anti-Japanese democratic government. The issuance of the loan is mainly determined according to the production scale of the oil mill, the loan time is 5 months, the monthly interest rate is 4 points, and the total loan before and after is 40.9 million yuan, and there are 45 oil mills that have received loans.
Handmade oil mills
After the resumption of production, the oil mill generally lacks milling and grinding tools, and there are only 3 plates of foreign mills and 47 plates of large and small mills in the oil mills that have been started, and only 116 pieces of soybean material can be produced a day. There are 67 oil presses, which require nearly 200 soybean crops per day, which directly affects the increase in production. The government decided to entrust the three machine oil mills belonging to the Jianghuai Fourth Branch to wait for the rolling bean material at a low price (1 soybean material was rolled to pay 2 kg of soybean oil as the labor fee). Oil mills often have difficulties in capital turnover due to blocked sales channels, and the county government decided to set up an oil cake trading department for the county Fengmin Company. The Ministry of Trade supports the production of oil mills from two aspects, one is to carry out the acquisition of soybeans when they are listed, and then use soybeans to finalize oil and cakes to the oil mills; the other is to purchase oil and cakes when oil and cakes are unsalable, and then sell them. In the month after the establishment of the Ministry of Trade, 10,000 pieces of soybean cake and 100 quintals of soybean oil were collected from private oil mills. During the acquisition period, when the oil cake was unsalable, the market price of soybean oil was 315,000 yuan per quintal, and the trade department received 327,000 yuan, and there was a slight profit when exporting.
Thanks to the support of the anti-Japanese democratic government, the oil mill industry in the county has developed, from 28 to 45, and later to 51, and the production equipment has also been expanded. In 1948, in accordance with the policy, the Fudong County government issued some of the oil mill property that had been wrongly confiscated during the land reform, such as the Jiang Gongyuan Oil Mill returning 5 squeezed and all the tools and 6 houses, and the Wang Wanyuan Oil Mill returning all the houses, foundations and some machines, and also paying 1 million yuan in compensation fees, thus dispelling the ideological concerns of the oil mill owners. After the land reform, the production of peanuts in the countryside around Dongkan continued to rise, and the peanut oil and soybean oil in Yantai, Shandong Province, were transported by sea to Dongkan by sea, through Lianyungang and Guanhe, and the production and marketing of oil mills gradually flourished, and new oil companies such as Zhenhua, Fumin, Huacheng, Maosheng, and Hengsheng were opened in the Dongkan area. In 1949, when the spring beans were listed, within a month, the oil mills received more than 27160 soybeans, a total of 5432 works, the market purchase and sales were also more active, the export of oil and cake increased month by month, and most of the 45 oil mills were profitable, such as xihongtai machine oil mills, a total of 236 works, a gross profit of 14.4664 million yuan, and a net profit of 3.752 million yuan for going out.
After the establishment of democracy, in order to develop the economy, break the blockade, and solve the problem of processing grain and oil for military use, processing plants organized by the army and the government have also risen one after another. In 1941, the 24th Regiment of the Eighth Brigade of the Third Division of the New Fourth Army stationed in the Batan area founded the Huaxin Oil Factory, and soon established the Xinfeng Oil and Rice Factory, which mainly pressed oil and processed some rice. After the large-scale production campaign in 1943, government agencies established oil mills, but on a smaller scale, mainly for self-consumption. In March 1945, the county finance and economics department founded the Hengfeng Rice Factory on the basis of liu Yuxiang, a landlord in the central port of Zhanggou District, on the basis of a private rice factory, and in July, the Fudong County government established a new agricultural oil rice factory on the basis of dongkan Tongde oil mill. By the end of 1948, the oil rice factories began to implement centralized operation, because Dongkan is located in the central area of Fubin two counties, nearby is the raw material production area, urban and rural areas are dense, the market is developed, so the Four Branches of Jianghuai Hengfeng, Yuqing, Xinnong, Huaxin and Linxian and other 6 factories merged in Dongkan, to Dongkan landlord Yang Zhonghua's fangji (formerly Tongde Oil Factory) as the site, named Hengxin Oil Rice Factory. Production tools have also been moved from various factories to Dongkan, and the operation is supplemented by oil pressing as the main milling rice, and in addition to self-operation, the processing of military grain and oil accounts for a large proportion.
After the founding of New China, the government developed the state-run cooperative grain and oil processing industry, maintained the current level of the private oil mill industry, and appropriately restricted the policy, and the scale of private oil mills became smaller and smaller. In 1950, all private oil mills were registered and issued, and there were 24 oil mills in Dongkan area before the renewal of the certificate, which increased to 28 after the renewal, with more than 100 million yuan of funds. By 1954, the state implemented unified purchase and marketing of oilseeds, and all private oil mills were abolished, and the private oil pressing industry in Binhai County entered history.
END
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❶ Wu Kuntian,Gao Yandi. Chronicles of Huai'an Province. Ten years of Guangxu. Volume II
❷ PANG Youlan. Funing County Xinzhi. 23 years of the Republic of China. Volume XIV
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❹ Jiangsu Province General Journal· Value Of Goods. Volume III
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Author: Li Qunlong, a native of Anqiu, Shandong, graduated from the Japanese Department of Nankai University and is currently the deputy chief of the Comprehensive Section of the Binhai County Local History Office.
Source: Binhai County Local History Office
Audit: Gao Hongqiang
Posted by: Yizhe Zhang