At the intersection of Zhongshan Middle Road and Guyang South Road in the old city of Songjiang, on the plots that had been idle for many years, tower cranes, piling machines, etc. are under intense construction.
The plot was originally a district supply and marketing cooperative, Songjiang supply and marketing staff secondary professional school and other land, a 6-story building facing the street, that is, songjiang hotel, has also been called Songjiang hotel and ancient city hotel. The people of Songjiang who used to live in the old town of Songjiang have an indelible impression of the Songjiang Hotel.
Back in time, more than forty years ago, in 1975, the then prefectural commercial bureau (changed to the prefectural supply and marketing cooperative after 1978) resolutely decided to raise funds to build the largest commercial project after the liberation of Matsue, the Matsue Hotel. The following year, the Matsue Hotel was completed and opened. After its completion, the Matsue Hotel has four floors and has become a landmark building in Matsue from the 1970s to the 1980s. The hotel has a catering department and a hotel department, the ground floor is for catering, and the 2nd to 4th floors are for guest rooms. Under the material living conditions at that time, the catering and guest rooms were very simple, and the catering only had no private rooms in the lobby, and the guest rooms did not have independent sanitary facilities, and only set up two, four and six rooms.
In order to strengthen the operation and management of the Songjiang Hotel, the completed Matsue Hotel was directly subordinate to the county commercial bureau of the county company structure, and only a few years later did the state-owned catering general store of the county catering service company take over the management.
In 1978, the spring breeze of reform and opening up was blowing, and the superior units of the Songjiang Hotel, such as the County Supply and Marketing Cooperatives and the Catering Service Company, took advantage of the situation and overcame difficulties in 1982, adding two floors to the original building of the Songjiang Hotel (at the time of construction, it was a 6-storey pile foundation, which was built 4 floors due to financial difficulties), two floor rooms were added, and some rooms on the second floor were changed to elegant small private rooms. At the same time, in line with the improvement of material living standards, Songjiang citizens began to buy wedding banquets in hotels in the market demand, built wedding banquet venues that can accommodate more than 100 people to eat at the same time, launched business projects to undertake wedding banquets, and expanded the scale of hotel operations.
Not only that, but also the deployment of "elite soldiers", the Songjiang catering industry young and strong middle-aged business backbone, Songjiang only two special chefs (assessed by the Shanghai Supply and Marketing Cooperative Suburban Cooking Industry Association) Yu Zenglei and Wei Linyuan from other catering restaurants to Songjiang Hotel to take charge. Master Chef Zhou and his wife, the head chef of the staff canteen of Shanghai Xinjiang Machinery Factory, were also willing to give up the preferential treatment of the municipal large enterprises and voluntarily joined the chef team of songjiang hotel.
Under the supervision of the chefs, the variety of dishes in Songjiang Hotel has been constantly innovating on the basis of inheriting traditions, attracting guests from all over the world and increasingly affluent citizens. Every national day, Spring Festival and other holidays are even more bright lights and people. At its peak, more than 90 employees of the two departments of the catering department and the hotel department were always working at full capacity, showing a prosperous scene.
I remember that the wedding banquets of my brothers and sisters and many relatives and friends were held at the Matsue Hotel. The bride and groom are overjoyed to have a wedding here, feeling that they have a lot of face in front of relatives, neighbors and colleagues.
In the minds of Songjiang people, the most memorable and admirable thing about Songjiang Hotel is the morning crab noodle soup bun and shrimp ravioli launched by the restaurant department in the early and mid-1980s. The chef team of Songjiang Hotel is skilled, leading the "red case" (as the catering industry colloquially goes, the cooking is called "red case", and the dim sum is called "white case") are the above-mentioned masters such as Yu, Wei and Zhou; those who are good at doing "white case" are Cao Yuanlong and Zhu Erguan, two senior dim sum chefs. The crab flour soup bun and shrimp wonton, which are popular among the public, are the breakfast varieties that Chefs Cao and Zhu have made on the basis of selecting ingredients and repeatedly developing and mixing the fillings.
Crab flour and shrimp wonton shrimp in the crab flour soup are carefully selected, the crab flour soup foreskin is thin and fresh, and one bite is full of soup soaked with crab powder; the meat filling of the shrimp wonton is made of plump shrimp, made of broth, accompanied by egg skin, and the entrance is delicious.
At that time, the restaurant in the west of the hotel's breakfast and dining department had customers every morning, and the citizens who came to eat breakfast had to queue up to buy tickets, and then go to the reception office to wait for the crab flour soup buns from the steaming grid and the shrimp ravioli from the cauldron. In this way, you can sit down at the table and taste it. In the middle of summer, the breakfast restaurant also offers drinks such as shaved ice and chilled mung bean soup in the afternoon and evening, which is also very popular.
In 1993, the county catering service company cooperated with a mixed ownership company in Shanghai to renovate the Songjiang Hotel, and all the rooms of the original hotel were changed into standard rooms with sanitary facilities, a number of medium and high-end configuration meeting rooms were added, and the "Grand Hyatt City" was opened to attract young people to relax and entertain. The hotel began to operate externally according to the standards of two-star hotels, undertaking hotel operations such as accommodation, catering, conference services, and weddings.
In 1993, the street scene of Zhongshan Middle Road (Renmin Road to Guyang Road) Tang Xilin / photo
In 1999, after the suspension of cooperative leasing operations at the former Matsue Hotel, the Matsue Hotel was subleased to a private enterprise to open the Gucheng Hotel, which was closed until the lease expired in 2011. The Matsue Hotel, which was in the process of demolition a few years ago, was demolished as a whole. From the construction, glory and demise of the Songjiang Hotel, to the rebirth of the broken cocoon of the plot, it is undoubtedly the epitome and portrayal of Songjiang's reform and opening up for more than 40 years.
Correspondent: Gu Yijun
Photo: Wang Shushu, data map
Editor: Shushu Wang