In 1947, two teenagers on the streets of Guilin were carrying grain of rice in baskets. (Infographic)
■ Reporter Yang Liye
In the middle of this year, the Guilin Dongxi Lane Historical and Cultural Block, which integrates history, culture, tourism, commercial services and other functions in the downtown area, has added a new place for people to explore Guilin culture, appreciate guilin flavor and shopping consumption. In the face of the ever-changing new scene of Guilin today, looking back at the scenes of eating, wearing and accommodation of Guilin people before liberation, we will definitely have more feelings for today's beautiful life. The reporter recently inquired about some materials and compiled them into articles for the benefit of readers.
Professional identity is evident from the clothing
Before the liberation, the clothing of the People of Guilin can be roughly seen from the clothing of a person, such as a civil servant who wears a gray cloth Zhongshan suit, a student who wears a Shilin cloth (a kind of cotton) uniform, and the guys in the shop are wearing Tang clothes, most of the people wearing suits and leather shoes are bank managers or foreigners evacuated from other provinces, those who wear yellow Zhongshan suits are ordinary businessmen, and some barbers also wear suits.
At that time, people's clothing was very simple, that is, Huang Xuchu, whose cloth was also "a cloth hat for two millimeters and a set of cloth for two dollars". Ordinary people and peasants in the countryside wear clothes made of local hand-woven native cloth. Soil cloth factories are concentrated in Wutong Street near the Dongjiang Imperial Garden Hotel, there are also a small number of cloth factories in the north gate, west gate and south gate, the earthen cloth factory usually works all day, in the middle of the night, in the other side of the river Fubo Mountain can hear the sound of looms, the general earthen cloth factory only two or three machines. The cotton yarn of the soil cloth is made of cotton yarn from other places, and the woven cloth is dyed with dyes such as blue indigo, and it becomes a native cloth that can be sold when dried. At that time, the famous cloth factory was Zhang Yongfa's LaoTonghe Tubu Factory, and the native cloth produced by it was famous for dyeing and washing, and Zhang Yongfa also made a fortune because of this, and there were many properties in Wutong Street.
One of the fabrics that people like to wear is the xiabu produced by Lingui Liutang, which is now called "Liutang linen cloth", which is the intangible cultural heritage of Guilin City. This kind of fabric is thick but very cool, known for its fine white, and in the summer, looking around on the streets of Guilin, many men are wearing long shirts made of Liutang summer cloth, a white, very dashing. This kind of fabric is not only popular in Guilin, but also a sought-after commodity in other places, so hot sales also once made every household in Liutang busy spinning and weaving, before liberation, Liutang xia cloth can reach an annual output of 50,000 horses. But with the impact of foreign cloth, Liutang Xiabu also began to decline.
Popular foreign fabrics in Guilin, the early years of the use of Suzhou-Hangzhou satin, and later Japanese rayon dumped, cheap, it eliminated the Suzhou-Hangzhou satin, the United States produced wool in Guilin also has sales, but the later fabrics are mostly Shanghai and Guangzhou production of fabrics. Near Zhongshan Middle Road, there are two or three high-end western clothing stores, which are lavishly decorated and take orders from some high-class people and rich families. The general tailor shops are blooming everywhere, Tang costumes, Zhongshan suits, robes, short clothes, everything is done, the boss and the guys are mostly Hunan people. In order to avoid too fierce competition, the tailor shops at that time were pasted with a price list, which formulated the manual cost of making different clothes, which was unified throughout the city.
At that time, the simplicity of Guilin people's clothing, first of all, because the geographical location of Guilin determined that its degree of urbanization was not as developed as Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places, that is, fashionable things, it also took a certain amount of time to spread to Guilin, and secondly, people's economic ability was not enough to support advanced consumption, and the quality of guilin's local cloth was not bad, of course, people used local economic and practical fabrics nearby, otherwise Zhang Yongfa would not have made a fortune.
In 1942, people stood on Shuidongmen Street (now the eastern section of Jiefang East Road) and could see people's various attire. (Infographic)
The government implemented the "saving of guest meals" to restrict consumption
It is said that "the people take food as the sky", when it comes to eating, there are many cuisines in Guilin before liberation, and each cuisine department has one or two signature facades in Guilin: Cantonese cuisine has Taiping Restaurant on Zhongshan Middle Road, Guangdong Restaurant on Zhengyang Road; Yulin cuisine has a semi-alcoholic garden; Northern cuisine includes "Tianjin Canteen", "Hebei Canteen", "Xihuachun"; Shanghai cuisine includes "Wufangzhai" and "Songhe Tower". And the most occupied is still Guilin cuisine restaurants, "Beautiful River", "Guilin Restaurant", "Qingzhen Restaurant", "Yan Yucheng", "Yanlin Restaurant", "Xiufeng Restaurant", "West Lake Restaurant", "Paradise Restaurant", etc., distributed throughout Guilin City, and these restaurants are also very large in operating area, can effortlessly undertake hundreds of tables of feasts, because most of the chefs of these restaurants are from Lingchuan County, and once guilin cuisine was also called Lingchuan cuisine.
Due to the economic conditions of Guangxi before liberation, the Guangxi provincial government also promoted the "saving of guest meals" at that time, issued the "Implementation Measures for the Implementation of Diet and Consumption Conservation in the Capital of Guangxi Province", which made strict regulations on banquet standards and prohibited extravagance and waste. Among them, it is clearly stipulated that national celebrations and consolation soldiers, public service organs to receive foreign guests and hold important meetings, weddings and funerals and birthday banquets over the age of sixty are not allowed to hold banquets, the standard of banquets is that each table of Chinese food must not exceed six dishes and one soup, the standard outside the banquet is one dish per person and each table must not exceed five dishes and one soup, the dinner can not use bird's nest shark fin abalone whole suckling pig and foreign tobacco and alcohol, the dinner time and guest list must also be reported to the police station, the police station will send people to inspect at any time, and the banquet must start on time, and the time must be fined.
Due to the large number of foreigners pouring into Guilin before liberation, some people could not cook their own rice, so they had to solve the problem of eating two meals a day in small restaurants and small restaurants outside, so they gave birth to the economical method of "monthly" eating, that is, paying money to the restaurant owner every month to open a gang, and using the small restaurant and small restaurant as a canteen. Diners who have eaten more have also summed up their experience, the food in the monthly restaurant near the school is cheaper, but the quality is also relatively poor, the food in the restaurant near the organ is good, but the price is a little more expensive, and the food in the restaurant in the center of the city street is also expensive. Therefore, in order to find a good restaurant to cover the moon, some people usually have to spend a period of time to go to several tastings, and finally set a place to "wrap the moon".
As for breakfast, it is similar to what we have today, nothing more than paste, fritters and Guilin rice noodles, Guilin rice noodles not only have the Guilin rice noodle shops distributed in the streets and alleys today, but also the Guilin rice noodles sold along the street with people carrying burdens, called rice noodles. Guilin snack desserts are also a lot of tricks, according to the 86-year-old old Guilin Zhang Meimei introduced, there are cold powder, mung bean soup, mung bean cake, mints, crisp sugar, etc., at that time there were many snack bars in front of the Zhengyang Gate, is the children out of the street to play the most want to go to the place, because there are a lot of snack bars, you can eat a variety of small food. The famous Guilin crisp candy, the color and flavor are better than the puff pastry in Hunan, Guangzhou and other places, in the impression of old Guilin, Zhongshan Middle Road's Day and Dayan crisp candy is their childhood precious memory. Lotus root candy is also a well-known food in Guilin desserts, and later, the master surnamed Cai who made lotus root candy passed away, and the children's candy box was missing this flavor.
Single people have difficulty renting
In Guilin to solve the problem of living, in addition to the local people's own houses to live, it is easy for others to get a place in Guilin: short-term stay in hotels, long-term to rent or buy a house.
Before liberation, guilin hotels were most commonly mid-range hotels, the most widely distributed, southeast, northwest, and city centers and near stations. However, the hotel near the station, experienced people will not go to live, the sanitary conditions here do not dare to compliment, they would rather spend more money to the porter or coachman, let them go to a farther hotel, rather than feed the bed bugs of the hotel near the station. Those who have money can stay in hotels with higher fees such as Lingnan Hotel or Lequnshe. Most of the cheapest hotels are named "inns" and "gang shops", which can be priced by bunks, because the price is cheap, the sanitary conditions and the simplicity of the equipment are conceivable, so most of the people who live in such places are porters, coolies and short-distance hawkers, etc., and most of these hotels are distributed near the city gates.
There was also a market that wanted to rent a house, at that time, renting a house in Guilin was about sixty or seventy pounds of rice to rent a good room, and then there were more outsiders, the rent rose to one hundred pounds of rice, and the room was ordinary. Because the intermediaries who undertook the housing lease at that time were only a few institutions such as Lequn Society, it was best to have a friend introduce the renter, so that it was good to rent a suitable house. If you go to the landlord according to the post of rent, many people have to be prepared to accept the high price offered by the landlord, and if the landlord feels that the other party's origin is unknown, he will sometimes refuse to rent. Especially for single people to rent a house, because there was an unwritten renting rule at that time, that is, "non-dependents do not ask", the country is not peaceful, you do not bring your family, single to rent a house, in case there is any problem, how dare the landlord take you in?
Of course, if you are a person with financial ability, you can buy a house in Guilin to live, and institutions such as Lequn Society will undertake such requirements. At that time, Guilin also had "middle people" who specially introduced house sales, most of them were women over the age of fifty who were poor and childless, most of them could speak the Tao, observe the color, and also knew some Mendi families, giants and emerging upstarts, who usually relied on their superior eloquence to persuade the two sides of the transaction to reach a deal, and obtain a handling fee from it, so that they could solve their living expenses.
In addition, if you come to Guilin from other places to run to relatives and friends, there will generally be friends or relatives to take care of, and the problem of living will be easy to solve. Like at the end of 1943, Tian Han's family of nine was evacuated from Changsha to Guilin, not only a large number of people, but also with a salute, with the help of the widow of Guilin's anti-Japanese hero He Xin, who lived in his home for nearly a year. At the beginning of 1942, when Mao Dun and his wife arrived in Guilin, Shao Quanlin took the initiative to let out his kitchen for them to live, and Mao Dun wrote a large number of articles such as "Frost Leaves Red Like February Flowers" in such a simple place.