Beijing, September 9 (Zhongxin Net) -- For those who like food articles, the name "Zhao Heng" is not unfamiliar. Sanlian Publishing House recently launched his "Three Strokes of Gluttony", writing about things in the mouth, remembering the feelings of the wind and people, and describing the history of the past, still "on the grounds of food, talking about some old things that have been experienced", or "reading from a nostalgic perspective", or "acquiring some unheard of food knowledge".
"Three Strokes of Gluttony" consists of 42 articles, from Guilin's horse meat rice noodles to Japanese kaiseki cuisine, from Suzhou's Guanqian Street, Nanjing's skin belly noodles, to Barcelona's street food. There are red cherries, green bean seedlings, fragrant mushrooms, wonderful spices, spring leeks and autumn pines, white water sheep's heads, prawns and sea urchins, beef potstickers, and tiger carts and black bungee that have disappeared or are disappearing, rotten stewed vegetables and fried three puree...
Cultural scholar Zhao Heng (left) and essayist Wang Lang (right), son of Wang Zengqi. Photo courtesy of Sanlian Bookstore Press
Since the first book of the "Gluttony Series", Chinese society has undergone great changes in the past twenty years, the lives of ordinary people have prospered, and the diet has naturally been enriched and much more refined. There are a variety of books about food, programs about eating and drinking, various food bloggers, food broadcast videos are emerging, and food has even become a narrative. Mr. Zhao Heng's writing has not changed, and it is still full of style, with an "old-school" elegance and fun.
Talking about "takeaway", in "Qingming Shanghe Map", there is the image of the shop Xiaoer hurriedly delivering food with two plates of food. He said that takeaway probably flourished in the Song Dynasty, because the city's economy was highly prosperous and the catering industry developed, and even the emperor ordered takeaway from time to time (the emperor called takeaway, called "Xuansuo") to adjust the taste of the court. The second emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty, Song Xiaozong, liked "Xuansuo" the most, and liked market snacks such as "Li Po mixed vegetable soup" and "Zang Sanzhu pancreas cake". He talked about "Chinese cabbage", also known as "autumn pine", the light ink freehand vertical scroll that his mother had hung at home since he was a child, and the Chinese cabbage painted on it was the Chinese cabbage that came out of the soil, "Late pearl rain to send new cool, a few acres of autumn pine ruler long, do not summon people to praise meat, how once forgot the fragrance of vegetable roots." Also talking about the various ways to eat northern Chinese cabbage, the vegetable dumplings made by the old grandmother with chopped stuffing with autumn pine are the most delicious.
It stands to reason that now that the delicacies on the market are also endless, why do you always feel a melancholy and a faint sadness? "Why are so many of the bad stews of traditional Jinglu cuisine missing? Master Wang Yijun of Fengzeyuan just smiled at me, shook his head and said, "That's all that has disappeared." "In today's rhythm of life, many of the original tastes and habits of life have disappeared and are disappearing, and young people have not only not eaten or seen them, but have not even heard of their names." ...... Mr. Zhao Heng's melancholy, perhaps because he had "obtained" and felt a different beauty, solidified these attachments to food, to people and things entangled with food, into vivid memories, amber-like reappear in front of the reader.
The cover of the book "Three Strokes of Gluttony". Photo courtesy of Sanlian Bookstore Press
In the recent book release dialogue, he and Wang Zengqi's son Wang Lang talked eloquently. Regarding the public's imagination of Mr. Wang Zengqi's cooking skills, Wang Lang bluntly said: "The articles written by (father) are much higher than his cooking skills, so you can't use the standard of a cook to require a writer, you can only say that he is a good cook in the circle of writers." For the name of the Wang family banquet, he even pushed back repeatedly, "They are all very homely dishes, and the family can't make banquet dishes." He remembers that the guests at home were usually based on the hometown Huaiyang cuisine, and his father made an improved version of the large boiled dried silk, and the soup was much thicker than in the south. (End)