Chapter 4 Section 4 Quanjude: The golden furnace burns for thousands of years

Quanjude, a long-established restaurant in Beijing, has been in business for 138 years. On the sixth day of June, at the Quanjude Yuanyuan store in Qianmen, an electronic counting plate showing the number of the 101436138th roast duck was unveiled. A customer from Northeast China was lucky to get a certificate with the roast duck number printed on it. 138 years ago, farmer Yang Quanren (1833-1890) founded Quanjude and kept the money earned on the first day of opening. The copper coins are round on the outside and square on the inside, and have been with the old store for 138 years. Yang Quanren, whose real name is Shoushan, was born in Yangjiazhai, Jixian County, Hebei Province. He fled from his hometown to Beijing, and once traded raw chicken and duck in the Qianmen Meat Market.In the third year of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty (1864), he bought a dried fruit shop that was on the verge of bankruptcy in the meat market, established its name as Quanjude, and operated hanging oven roast duck.The current old store was built in the 14th year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty (1888).

The golden furnace burns for thousands of years, and the silver hook hangs a hundred ducks.Quanjude Roast Duck is roasted in a hanging oven with fruit wood on an open fire, and the roast duck takes 45 minutes to mature.The skin of the freshly baked duck is crispy, the meat is fresh and tender, and the fragrance of fruit trees is elegant.The duck body is plump and plump, maroon red, oily and shiny, radiant, charred on the outside and tender on the inside, served with lotus leaf cake, green onions, and soy sauce. It is plump and mellow. lung. On the Dragon Boat Festival in 1933, German female photographer Helen Morrison went to Quanjude to eat roast duck. The lingering fragrance was still in her mouth. Helen asked to visit the roast duck site.The shopkeeper Yang Kuiyao made an exception and brought Helen to the roast duck stove. The fire was flying upwards like a flag, and the ducks hanging naked were reflected in red and maroon.The roast duck chef, in black clothes, black pants, and bald head, holds a pole in his hand and rotates the roast duck in the posture of Chinese Kung Fu. The aroma is overwhelming.Helen was fortunate to be the first photographer to shoot the production process of Quanjude Roast Duck.Later, Yang Kuiyao led Helen to the duck farm in the northwest corner of Chenggen, Beijing, where Peking ducks are raised for Quanjude.The owner of the duck farm, Wang Laowu, known as the Duck King, is a family friend of the Yang family.Royal ducks are fed with special grains to ensure that the duck meat is fragrant and non-fishy.The water source of the duck farm is connected to the Yuquan mountain and is rich in beneficial minerals. The ducks eat grains and drink mineral springs. The meat quality is invincible.Helen photographed the duck farm.

Shopkeeper Yang Kuiyao took Helen to visit the roast duck and duck raising scene not on impulse, nor was he moved by a German female photographer's love of food. At that time, China was Germany's largest trading partner in Asia. After World War I and before World War II, China was the weapon of Germany. The largest buyer and largest seller of energy and agricultural products, Germany has invested 300 million marks in China, and units above the military camps of the Nationalist Government are equipped with German military advisers.Tens of thousands of German military advisers are active soldiers who returned home before Japan invaded China.In this way, the shopkeeper Yang Kuiyao had a reason to ask Helen to take pictures of the roast duck and bring it back to Germany for publicity or to show off.Another said that Helen’s father-in-law’s face, Helen’s father-in-law, Morrison, was an adviser to the Qing government and the Republic of China government. An Australian, he worked as an adviser and wrote articles for "Taiwu Shi Bao". Wangfujing Street was once renamed Morrison Street. Very influential.

Fifty years later, a young man named Xu Xing joined Quanjude and was in charge of cleaning in front of the restaurant with a monthly salary of 38 yuan.He likes to work half-drunk, thinking that the ground will be cleaned up and the novel will be written smoothly.Three years later, Xu Xing's debut novel "Variations Without Theme" was published in the official "People's Literature" (July 1985 issue), which caused a strong shock in the literary world. .After that, Xu Xing went to Germany West Berlin University of the Arts to give lectures and to study for a doctorate at Heidelberg University.

Gu Rong, another young director who was admitted to the Central Academy of Drama from the shore of West Lake, directed the film "Old Store" with Quanjude as the theme, and became famous in one fell swoop, which shows the profound cultural accumulation of Quanjude. For more than 100 years, Quanjude has gathered people of insight from all over the world with the heart of "jude"; with the ambition of "juquan", it has deeply absorbed the Chinese food culture. Nearly 200 heads of state and regions and officials have visited Quanjude. The head of the world tastes like a group of ducks.Lao Tzu said: Governing a big country is like cooking a small fish.The largest single-dish restaurant in Asia - Hepingmen Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant was designated by former Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and opened on May 1, 1979. The largest banquet hall can accommodate more than 500 people, and the whole store can receive 2,000 guests for dining at the same time. Senior waiters and senior chefs account for 70% of the total number of people in the store.The large-scale Hepingmen Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant aims to serve international exchanges and national political, economic and cultural activities.Quanjude Roast Duck at Peace Gate has become a political duck, and they shoulder the mission of spreading friendship and culture.Quanjude, Quanju Duck, and Roast Duck have become the carrier of virtue.

On the plaque of Quanjude, there is a horizontal line missing from the heart of the word De, and it is a miracle that the irregular Chinese characters have not been touched in the past.After Yang Quanren, the founder of Quanjude, opened the Quanjude Roast Duck Shop, he asked a scholar named Qian Zilong to write a plaque. There are several versions of the legend: one is that Qian Xiucai said that he was drunk, and he wrote less horizontally when he was drunk; the other is that the number said , when Quanjude opened, Shopkeeper Yang employed a total of 13 assistants, including 14 of his own, and one stroke less was exactly 14 strokes.The real reason is that since the millennium, "Germany" can be written in many ways, with or without a horizontal line.The character "virtue" in Kangxi's imperial book "Great University Monument", which is now standing in the Confucian Temple of Guozijian, Beijing, does not have a horizontal line; Zheng Banqiao, a painter of the Qing Dynasty, wrote "virtue" with a horizontal line and sometimes without a horizontal line.Regardless of whether it is horizontal or not, Jude must be dedicated and benevolent, as well as the true burning of the fire.