Tofu is a very delicious ingredient, and it is said that it was accidentally invented in 164 BC by Liu An, the king of Han Huainan, in the process of refining Dan medicine on the Bagong Mountain in Huainan Province. Although the legend is no longer verifiable, I still have the most primitive way of making tofu in my hometown.
In this traditional cultural experience and inheritance practice activity, I visited the history of Bagong Mountain, the birthplace of tofu, and visited the tofu town located at the foot of the mountain to experience the ancient method of making tofu. On the scenic Bagong Mountain, there is still a palace of the practice of Liu An, the king of Huainan, the Palace of the King of Huainan, and the statue of the king of Huainan, the ancestor of tofu, is enshrined in the palace. In the midst of the quaint palace, as if traveling through time and space under the green bricks and brown tiles of more than 2,000 years ago, Liu An, the king of Huainan, inadvertently made the soybean milk into a paste, and inadvertently planted willows and willows to leave this magical ingredient for future generations.
Han Huainan Royal Palace
"The ancestor of tofu" Liu An
From the mountain to the tofu town below the mountain, I was full of stalls and tofu workshops selling various tofu delicacies, and I had the privilege of coming to one of the workshops to experience the ancient method of making the process. Walking inside the workshop, you will be greeted by a seated stone mill, a filter hanging from the four corners and a neatly arranged wooden box for the original pulp. Under the careful guidance of the staff, the soaked soybeans are first put into stone grinding and grinded into a pulp, then boiled over high heat and poured into the filter, and the hanging four-corner wooden frame is shaken to filter into the original pulp. After that, the professional staff adds the plaster point brine and lets it sit for a while before getting the most original tofu. The staff introduced to me that the tofu at this time is the most tender one, and after some special processing, you can also get tofu varieties with special taste such as old tofu. In the process of experiencing the antique production, I found that although the production process is very interesting, due to the limitations of the equipment, the manual workload is larger and the quality of tofu is greatly affected by the environmental conditions and sanitary conditions.
According to the survey, in order to further expand the scale of production and improve product quality to promote tofu culture, our municipal government has set up a special capital project to provide financial subsidies for the tofu industry, and set up a soy products industrial park for the development of investment scale and export tofu culture to the outside world. At the same time, as a 4A-level scenic spot, Bagong Mountain has also been vigorously publicized by the province with its beautiful natural scenery and long cultural history. Every year, the city also specially opens a tofu cultural festival to publicize domestic and foreign tourists and local people, and invites participants to participate in the tofu feast. The local people have a high level of understanding and positive attitudes about the culture, which I think is a positive result of the government and the people actively promoting traditional culture.