Speaking of the time-honored Suzhou Huang Tianyuan Bakery, it was founded in the first year of Daoguang (1821) according to the investigation of Sunan Federation of Industry and Commerce in the early days of liberation and the Record of Members of Wuxian Bakery Industry. Huang Qiting, a native of Cixi, Zhejiang Province, set up a zongzi stand in Duting Bridge, Dongzhong City. Zongzi is of good quality and business is not bad. After several years' operation, I rented a small house in Duting Bridge and opened a Huang Tianyuan pastry shop. The supply of varieties gradually increased five-color dumplings, vermicelli dumplings, salty rice cakes, salty lard cakes, yellow pine cakes, grey soup dumplings, sweet potatoes with sugar and oil, etc. After the death of Huang Qiting's father and son, the Huang Tianyuan pastry shop was presided over by his widowed daughter-in-law, Huang Chen. Due to poor management, the business went from bad to worse. By 1874, the store was burned with the master Gu Guilin, and the price was Yinyang 1111 yuan. In addition, the annual rent for signboards in Huang Tianyuan is twelve stone rice. From then on, Huang Tianyuan was actually a shop named Gu.

After Gu Guilin took over Huang Tianyuan, she brought her cake making skills into full play, worked diligently, and the store business was booming. In 1931, Gu Guilin handed over the store to his son Gu Zifeng. Gu Zifeng is down-to-earth and capable. In addition to operating the pastry shop in the west of Duting Bridge, Huang Tianyuan, she also rented a house at No.241 Guanqian Street and opened East Huang Tianyuan. In 1947, Gu Zifeng died at the age of 73. Huang Tianyuan was taken over by his adopted grandson Gu Nianchun because his only son had died early. Gu Nianchun studied in Qianzhuang and took over the cake troupe business. In 1948, he bought a storefront house on the first floor and the first floor of No.241 Guanqian Street from Xu in Huaishu Lane. Because Guanqian Street was bustling, at that time, although only six and a half tables could be placed on the first floor and the bottom, the varieties supplied at first were only five-color dumplings, grey soup dumplings, sweet potato with sugar and oil, lard cake and yellow pine cake, but they were often full. At the beginning of seasonal cakes, there are mainly green dumplings, pumpkin dumplings, Chongyang cakes and fairy cakes, and a large number of sugar rice cakes are supplied at the end of each year. Sugar rice cakes come in a variety of colors, ranging from a few kilos at the largest to more than ten pieces at the smallest, ranging from arrogant to small pagodas. There are also sugar ingots, the giant is like a fist, and the micro is like a thumb, so you can choose. When people buy cakes, they must buy some ingots. Rich people choose several sizes, take them home and put them on a plate, spread red paper-cuts (similar to window grilles), insert cypress seeds, and match them with oranges and green fruits, and put them on the front desk of the bed on New Year's Eve. In front of the plate, a red candle is offered to rest incense (not lit), which is called Shousui. I wish you peace and happiness next year.

At that time, there was a famous sweet potato in Huang Tianyuan. It is strictly fed, and the sweet potato must be purchased from Yixing. If it is out of stock at the moment, it would rather stop supplying it (it is said that Yixing sweet potato is delicate and crisp, which is incomparable to other sweet potatoes). White sugar is made of top grade, and the cooking process strives to be coarse and fine, which is extremely serious. When processing, the sweet potato should be washed first, roasted with slow fire in a big basin, and white sugar should be added to collect paste when it is half crisp, so that the sugar taste can penetrate the heart before steel can be lifted; Pour the boiled sugar and oil, and then serve it on the counter. Sweet potato, the leading sugar and oil, is bright and shiny. When it is cut open, it can be seen that it is full of red and rich in fragrance. The population is crisp and glutinous, and it is sweet and fragrant. It is especially loved by Suzhou people, and overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia also like it very much.

Gu Nianchun's management of Huang Tianyuan has been developing with the changes of the times. In the store's products, Gu Nianchun pays great attention to the diversity and high quality of varieties. In the early days of liberation, he led workers out of the store many times and visited Wuxi Wangxingji Wonton Store. I also studied with the worker * * *, and on the basis of fried meat dumplings, I developed new varieties such as fried meat noodles and shrimp wonton. After the fried noodles are cooked with lasagna, they are stirred in cold boiled water and dried, and then seasoned with homemade shrimp soy sauce, which is delicious and refreshing. The noodles are poured with sandwich lean meat, which is made of the finest raw materials such as day lily, black fungus, Tianmu Mountain flat tip and shrimp, and is deeply loved by customers. To this day, Huang Tianyuan enjoys a high reputation for all kinds of cakes, and all kinds of noodles with fried meat and shrimp are original and distinctive, which customers never tire of eating.

With Huang Tianyuan's growing reputation, in 1956, when it was a public-private partnership, it merged into Tianyuanli and Feng Bingji's two pastry shops, with more personnel, capital and technical strength, and more varieties of business. According to the season, varieties with timely colors are introduced throughout the year, such as sugar rice cakes, lard rice cakes and cake dumplings on the first day of the first month, sugar rice dumplings on the fifteenth day of the first month, fried rice cakes on the second day of February, green dumplings in Tomb-Sweeping Day in March, fairy cakes on April 14th, various zongzi on the fifth day of May, mung bean cakes, mint cakes and rice maple cakes in June, and cowpea cakes on July 15th. Huang Tianyuan not only supplies various varieties according to the changes of solar terms on time, but also introduces marketable varieties according to Suzhou people's customs as festive and auspicious gifts, giving them to each other to show congratulations. There are birthday balls and cakes for the elderly to celebrate their birthdays, honey cakes and bed-making dumplings for girls to get married, shaved dumplings and one-year-old dumplings for children's full moon and one-year-old birthdays, flat dumplings for students to enter school, and cakes for new houses and housewarming.

In p>1956, around the National Day, Suzhou Food Exhibition was held in Sanqing Hall, and there were more than 1,111 kinds of dishes on display. It was really a world food hall to eat, including lotus bean curd, apple bean curd, fried bean curd and sister-in-law bean curd. The most striking thing is a model of Sanqing Hall made of rice flour by Huang Yaoyuan and Feng Bingjun. The length and width are nearly 61 cm, and the height is 1 meters. The cornices are upturned, the blue tiles are yellow walls, and there are 12 long windows carved in the middle of the main entrance. The three gods in the hall are glittering, and there are many 31 pillars. The Baoding in front of the temple has a straight line, which is especially amazing. Zhou Shoujuan wrote an article praising this exhibition, which is really an ingenious work of art.

Since 1981s, Huang Tianyuan has successively expanded its shops and workshops. There are two halls, Guanqian Street (No.86 ~ 88) and Xuanmiaoguan Dongjiaomen. There are more than 211 kinds of cakes, and more than 61 kinds are supplied every day. In recent years, on the basis of the original, other gift cakes have been innovated and developed, and new cakes with beautiful taste, beautiful shape and beautiful decoration have been designed and produced by drawing lessons from cake decoration. These products have entered thousands of households through our store and branches in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing and other cities, as well as in Anhui and Xinjiang, and are sold at home and abroad. In April, 1995, Suzhou Food Festival was held in Hong Kong, focusing on the products of Caizhizhai and Huang Tianyuan, which are century-old brands, supplemented by other traditional foods, highlighting the three characteristics of Suzhou's tradition, flavor and characteristics. The main foods are cakes, candies, candied fruit, roasted seeds and nuts, which are in short supply and are greatly welcomed by Hong Kong compatriots from Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai.

In October, 1995, on the occasion of its celebration in 2175, Huang Tianyuan Cake Group Store held the first one-week Huang Tianyuan Cake Group Food Festival, displaying more than 311 kinds of traditional, distinctive and innovative cakes from January to December. Among them, there are sweet-scented osmanthus white (yellow) sugar rice cakes that won the Golden Ding Award in South Central China, as well as Soviet-style sesame balls with scallion oil, four-color lard rice cakes, seasonal cakes of various colors, quick-frozen series of cake balls and large-scale art cake balls, all of which have different shapes and are sold internally. Its refined design cake won the gold medal at the 1996 International Food Processing Technology Expo held in Beijing.