Mihara Tateshina Candy - a cultural business card that has been precipitated for a long time

Mihara Tateshina Candy - a cultural business card that has been precipitated for a long time

Ray Wynn

Mihara indigo candy, lotus or spherical in appearance, yellow-brown on the outside, skind white sesame seeds adhered to the outer layer, plump and round, mesh-like inside, white and delicate, crispy and sweet in the mouth, rich in flavor. After more than 500 years of inheritance and development, this local specialty food of Sanyuan County has been condensed into a nostalgic cultural business card of the humanistic Sanyuan.

According to the book "Three Original Food Extracts", the three original indigo candies were first made in the Ming Dynasty Zhengde (1506~1521). It is said that around the time of the Waxing Moon, southern traders made local high-quality rice rice into rice cakes and transported them to The Commercial and Trade Center of the Northwest at that time, Sanyuan, for sale. At the end of the Year, it is inconvenient to sell the remaining rice cakes to bring back, and they are stored in the homes of relatives and friends and placed in a cool corner. After the following year, the already dried rice cakes are mashed, formed into strips, fried in oil, and sold. This next year's aged rice cake, fried in oil, is fluffy inside, the volume is expanded, it is crispy and sweet to eat, and it has a different flavor, and people call it "marshmallow". According to legend, this marshmallow was first produced in the long-established pastry workshop "Jingyuande" in Luqiao Town. At that time, there was a pastry chef named Liaohua in The famous long-established Nanmao shop in Sanyuan County, who further processed it according to the production method of marshmallow, and after frying and dipping with caramel, the sesame seeds were sticky on the outside, which was more sweet and delicious. In order to praise this brain-stirring pastry chef, people call this food "Liaohua sugar". There is a poem in the "Testament of JiTang" by Wen Yi, a Qing Kangxi jinshi sanyuan person: "The red carpet is extended to the green pendant, the gold plate is embellished with colored balls, the fragrance and the cold color accompany the spring and autumn." Born with ice and snow posture, the heart is like a valley. The color is like lotus root, and the flavor is told to be a lotus root." Local specialties were praised.

In the 26th year of the Qing Dynasty (1900), the invaders of the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded the city of Beijing, And Empress Dowager Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor fled to Xi'an, and the local officials collected delicacies and offered the Sanyuan Liaohua sugar as a local food. Empress Dowager Cixi appreciated it after tasting it, and saw that the shape of liaohua sugar resembled the indigo flower she had seen on the grassland, so she took its harmonic sound and transformed it into indigo candy, which has been used to this day. The story of this name change is so widespread that later the candy has been used as a court tribute to the hall of elegance.

Passed down from generation to generation in the three originals, indigo candy has continuously enriched its content, produced intricately and strictly operated. Indigo sugar is made of glutinous rice as the main ingredient, with soybeans, white sugar, caramel and sesame seeds, bean flour, honey, refined vegetable oil, etc., through 24 processes such as material selection, washing, soaking, grinding, steaming, and noodles, rolling slices, rubbing strips, blank making, yin drying, storage, hair blank, oil immersion, frying, pouring, hanging skin, etc.

In the early days of reform and opening up, many individuals and food enterprises in Sanyuan began to process indigo sugar, and there were more than 30 manufacturers of a certain scale at that time, producing about 1500 tons of indigo sugar every year, which was sold to more than 20 provinces and cities across the country. In 1985 and 1987, Sanyuan Indigo Sugar won the title of Shaanxi Provincial Quality Product and Quality Product of the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries, and in 1988 and 1992, it won the Silver Award of the First China Food Expo and the Gold Award of the China Special Economic Zone Achievement Expo. After the choice of survival of the fittest in the market, the manufacturers of sanyuan indigo candy that exist in the market are in strict accordance with the requirements of laws and regulations, standardized production, and start their own brands.

The once brilliant Nanguan Indigo Sugar Factory in Sanyuan County was one of the main manufacturers of Indigo sugar in Mihara. In 1985, Jiao Zhenfang, deputy secretary of the Sanyuan County CPC Committee, Li Tiancheng, secretary of the NanguanCun Party Branch, Cao Xinmin, director of the Nanguan Indigo Sugar Factory, and Liu Jianfeng, deputy director of the business factory, went to Beijing and, through wang Feng and other Shaanxi township party members in Beijing, asked Ai Xinjueluo Pujie, then a member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (aixin Jueluo Puyi's younger brother), to write seven characters for the Sanyuan Indigo Sugar Inscription and stamp it with an seal. It has been more than 400 years since its birth, and since then it finally has the voucher used by the royals of the past.

In 2010, the production technology of Sanyuan indigo candy was included in the second batch of intangible cultural heritage protection list in Xianyang City. In 2011, the production technology of indigo sugar was included in the list of intangible cultural heritage in Shaanxi Province. After layers of declarations, in August 2015, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine approved "Three Plains Indigo Candy" as a national geographical indication protection product. In June 2019, the local standard for the geographical indication product Sanyuan Indigo Candy was issued by the Shaanxi Provincial Market Supervision Bureau and began to be implemented, and indigo candy has since had a talisman. Analyzing the inheritance history of Sanyuan indigo candy, we can not only see that it is an excellent food with distinctive local characteristics, but also its development history shows the spiritual outlook of Sanyuan people's excellence, pursuit of excellence, and bigger and better in the candy industry, which has become a cultural business card of Sanyuan people who have gone out of Shaanxi, marched to the whole country, and looked at the world.