As an important node city for cultural exchanges between the East and the West, Dunhuang has embraced various cuisines from the East and the West with her broad bosom. She has not only gathered various dietary varieties from the East and the West, the North and the South, but also absorbed different dietary concepts and dietary etiquette, which has become a "living specimen" of the Chinese dietary civilization.
Dunhuang Hotel is a four-star hotel with a history of 30 years in Dunhuang, known as the "State Guesthouse" of Dunhuang, and its status and image can be imagined. In the past decades, it has successfully received hundreds of Chinese and foreign dignitaries and celebrities. Elegant and unique architectural style, high-quality and diversified services have left unforgettable memories for the guests. Especially Dunhuang Hotel's meals, which are mouth-watering and flavorful, are known far and wide. Dunhuang Hotel is most famous for the "Dunhuang Banquet", which is made according to Dunhuang murals and Dunhuang books, based on a wide range of local folk snacks, and through the unremitting efforts of three generations of local famous chefs. In order to produce a "Dunhuang Banquet" in a variety of flavors of pure delicious, chefs mostly choose local ingredients, places of interest, historical stories, folklore, the remains of the book of medicinal cuisine have become an important element of the ingredients, which are reflected in every detail of the meal.
China's culinary masters, Dunhuang Hotel General Manager Zhang Kefa said "I think Dunhuang cuisine, as if it is their own children, from her conception, to the birth of a child, stumbled and fell, all the way to the Pavilion, become a talent, which should be emphasized, training, development, excavation, innovation, so far Dunhuang cuisine has been developed for 40 years, and has received a number of foreign countries! We have received many foreign heads of state, dozens of Chinese party and state leaders, we feel very honored, honored not ourselves, honored "Dunhuang" two words."
Dunhuang Banquet to outsiders is not only a variety of food, but also a concentrated display of Dunhuang culture, but also Dunhuang people's spirit of the show. 2002 Dunhuang Hotel on behalf of Gansu Province, the catering industry to participate in the China Hotel Association in Hangzhou held the third China Food Festival, "Dunhuang Banquet", "Dunhuang music and dance banquet", "Dream Dunhuang Banquet" three banquets for the first time in the country, and a surprise, it with its new ideas, exquisite techniques, exquisite songs and dances, unique regional characteristics and heavy cultural heritage conquered China's culinary world, won the highest award, including the "National Food Festival". Golden Tripod Award", the highest award of the National Food Festival, and 20 awards including "Chinese Famous Banquet", "Chinese Famous Dishes Gold Award", "Chinese Famous Dishes Gold Award The company has won 20 awards, including the "Golden Tripod Award", the highest award in China, the "Chinese Famous Banquet", the "Chinese Famous Cuisine Golden Award" and the "Chinese Famous Dish Golden Award". These awards are by no means the strength of one person, nor a moment's success, it is the heart and wisdom of Dunhuang's old generation of chefs for hundreds of years, and it is the culmination of more than forty years' efforts of three generations of Dunhuang Hotel.
Dunhuang midsummer, after the rain under the Mingsha Mountain, the Gobi and the desert tightly surrounded by a charming oasis. The air after the rain exudes a rare hint of coolness, sweeping away the unbearable summer heat of Dunhuang. From the city to the countryside, in a field of ripening green corn, Zhang Kefa walks at a slow pace, with a hint of calm in his gaze, as he continues with his secret of the pot. He is searching for a culinary attraction - a kind of sweet corn. Only at the foot of the Mingsha Mountains does the large temperature difference between day and night encourage the sweet corn to ripen earlier in the summer, making it an excellent local ingredient. In order to ensure the quality of the ingredient, the freshly picked sweet corn has to be prepared very quickly to ensure the nutrition and flavor is pure.
Zhang Kefa is making a delicacy called "berry noodles". With a tile pot to collect fresh noodles under the noodle soup, which puts the right amount of ginger, celery, pepper and other spices, in the role of microorganisms, the natural fermentation of three or five days, it becomes a sour and tasty food, you can drink directly, you can also use sesame oil, cauliflower modulation, eaten below, it is the local summer heat relief of the summer on the top of the good taste.
Dunhuang people have a long history of preferring noodles, and there are many varieties of noodles, including water noodles, that can be traced back to the Sui and Tang dynasties 1600 years ago. From Dunhuang mural paintings to various documents unearthed in the Cave of Sutras, there are abundant pictures and records about food. Therefore, Dunhuang people have a very deep historical origin in terms of the traditional custom of eating and honoring food.
Zhang Kefa's tiles are also rich in food culture. He added freshly picked sweet corn to the traditional battered water surface in order to make it more aromatic with the natural flavor of the grain, and this time Zhang Kefa had great success. A week later, the new hotel guests began to be "Dunhuang Banquet" more than a dozen kinds of exquisite dishes beckoned to the heart, but finally let Zhang Kefa's bowl of water slurry appetite.
Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes 492 grottoes 45,000 square meters of murals, there are dozens of murals, the image shows a lot of today's unimaginable varieties of food. There are also Dunhuang Cangjing Cave unearthed in the paperwork, but also recorded a lot of information related to the Dunhuang people's diet, this information from the name of the raw materials to the production method, from the amount of food to the number of people dining and so on have a detailed record of every aspect of its research results have attracted the world's attention. Professor Gao Qian, director of the Dunhuang Business Culture Research Institute at Lanzhou Business School, said: "Dunhuang food culture has its unique position in the pattern of the entire Chinese food civilization. We from the variety of food, from the diet of customs, from the exchange of food culture and so on several aspects, Dunhuang really gathered a lot of food from the east, the diet of the west, and even the diet of the surrounding ethnic minorities, it is such a feature, is the mainland of many places do not have, and due to the literature is very detailed, then it makes up for the traditional history of the dietary phenomena, including dietary varieties, and so on. Some deficiencies."
Over the past 10 years, Prof. Gao Qian has been studying Dunhuang dietary culture, and has published three books, Dunhuang Diet Mystery, Study of Dunhuang Dietary Culture in the Tang and Fifth Dynasties, and Purposeful Wine and Lamb - Dunhuang Dietary Culture, which give all-encompassing attention to the pursuit of gastronomic food from the Dunhuang people at the spiritual level, and unveil the secret of the diet of the ancient people of Dunhuang more than 1,000 years ago, and fill the gap of the research field of Dunhuang Studies. The book is a great example of how to make the best use of the time and space.
Gao Qian's research found that there are no less than 50 different names for Dunhuang people's food from more than a thousand years ago, and these names truly reflect the raw materials, production methods, and even the origins of these foods. These foods were popular throughout China at the time and are a true record of the variety of foods available at that time. Like now still popular in Dunhuang and Heshi, and even in the country is still popular such as steamed bread, all kinds of cakes, stuffed leather, yellow noodles, cold noodles, wontons, soup noodles, noodles, deep-fried noodles, fried noodles, dumplings and so on in Dunhuang murals, Dunhuang documents to find the exact source.
Why are there so many varieties of food at Dunhuang? Is food just for eating, or was it a way of socializing and communicating?
Gao Qian said: "Dunhuang mural paintings have preserved more than 40 pictures of wedding banquets, and the wedding banquets are in the Maitreya Sutra, which means that a woman would not get married until she was 500 years old. But such a sentence in the painter's frescoes are very rich in content, rich to what extent? It has the wedding banquet, the dance in the wedding banquet, the whole program of the wedding banquet. Yulin Grottoes this is of course the most famous, but also the mural content is better preserved such a painting. Such a painting it actually shows the content is very rich, we can see the etiquette between ethnic minorities and Han Chinese are not the same, we know that in the central mainland in the banquet men and women are not the same seat, but this place men and women are the same seat, which is also a kind of dietary etiquette."
In such a modest oasis agricultural area as Dunhuang, such a phenomenon, the main reason is that since the Han Dynasty, the continuous absorption of foreign food culture, accumulation, precipitation results. The excavation of these food varieties undoubtedly provides the right direction for us to study the influence of the culinary varieties of Dunhuang on the Central Plains at that time, and on the development of diet in later generations. Nowadays, when we face these colorful delicacies, when we taste these Dunhuang cuisine, the flavor of the Han and Tang dynasties seems to be restored from our tongue treasured memories of a thousand years.
"A street did not turn around, a sub-scent of the aroma of people greedy. Along the scent to the food street, a wide variety of really rare. There are many kinds of snacks here, donkey meat yellow noodles are specialties. Dunhuang noodles taste fresh, eat a bowl of want two bowls. The cannonballs rub fish, as well as strokes the noodles stuffed with skin. The meat buns are a real treat, and the mutton noodle soup is delicious. Beef and mutton casserole with rice, and flavorful mutton kebabs. Sizzling noodles fried cabbage, chicken casserole, delicious tie! There are so many varieties of food that time is of the essence. To say that the variety of food, that is the open teeth gnawing melon skin - Road Road more." Dunhuang's famous rapper Zhang Han, the early years of Dunhuang fast board said on CCTV, he was in a description of Dunhuang food fast board, a breath listed dozens of tempting varieties of food, witty and humorous language, so that the modern Dunhuang food hooked people's appetites ......
Each year's peak tourist season, when the night falls, the Dunhuang Shazhou night market is bustling, lights flashing, as day, tourists compete to patronize, enjoy themselves. This market is affectionately known as the "Dunhuang Parlor" by tourists, and is vividly referred to as the "Starlight Night Market" by CCTV. And the most attractive than the night center of the city's "famous snacks square", thousands of different kinds of snacks concentrated in front of the tourists, the south and north of the colorful food once again in Dunhuang this piece of magical land convergence, different shapes and colors, so that they can hardly resist the temptation of delicious.
The thick history of Dunhuang unique food culture connotation and endless artistic charm. From the Han Dynasty to today's civilization, the people of Dunhuang have taken food culture to the extreme. When we walk in the city of Dunhuang, everywhere you can see the inheritance of a hundred years of famous restaurants, you can always taste the inheritance of a thousand years of Dunhuang food.
Zhang Zheng is the fourth-generation owner of Shun Zhang Yellow Noodles, and the second oldest among his brothers. Because of the store's booming business, they often work from morning until after 10 p.m. to take a break. According to Zhang Zheng, "Shun Zhang" yellow noodles is Dunhuang's only ancestral yellow noodles, which has been passed down for five generations and lasted for a hundred years. As early as the 1940s, the name "Shun Zhang" in Dunhuang has been a household name, superb noodle pulling skills so that Dunhuang people enjoy, more Chinese and foreign celebrities to Dunhuang must be tasted Dunhuang cuisine. Zhang Zheng inherited the mantle of "Shun Zhang" yellow noodles from his ancestors and father. It is understood that the heir to the "Shun Zhang" yellow noodles have been Peng Dehuai, Zhao Nanqi, Yang Shangkun, Li Zhengdao, Li Xuejian and other celebrities have done authentic Dunhuang yellow noodles, "Shun Zhang" yellow noodles to them left an unforgettable flavor.
With a yell, a plate of yellow noodles poured with brine on the table, the noodles are yellow in the shiny, strong in the mouth, the aftertaste is not endless. The special marinade, a plate of fresh donkey meat, supplemented by a small dish of garlic, a small dish of chili peppers, so that people's appetites are wide open. "The yellow noodles of Shun Zhang are delicious mainly because the marinade is well made. The marinade is made of minced mushrooms, donkey meat, Dunhuang old tofu, etc., with soup, and the tofu is cut into small pieces, which is a bit hard and chewy. Brine poured on the yellow surface, exudes a mellow meat greasy and mushroom sweet flavor, smell that smell, appetite suddenly increased.
In business, "Shun Zhang" has always followed the "wine is not afraid of the deep alley" of the old motto, do not advertise, do not accept any honor, only rely on customer word of mouth. However, there is one thing that happened, but let Zhang Zheng completely change such ancient teachings. A man named Daning was once an apprentice in the store of "Shun Zhang". Some years ago, he opened a donkey meat and yellow noodle shop in the neighborhood of "Shun Zhang". Daning was willing to learn and study, not only in the art of noodle pulling, but also in the sauce of donkey meat up and down a lot of effort, and gradually have a reputation, and continue to win awards, and continue to expand the store, and finally opened the store on the street, the business is booming, and ultimately won the "Chinese famous snacks" honors.
Society is progressing, the food industry in the focus on cultural taste at the same time, but also in the maximum competition for the market, "Shun Zhang" people are also y aware of this point. So Zhang Zheng also secretly with a force, he and his brother Zhang Bin, sister Zhang Cailian three people a discussion, the store in the alley moved to the bustling farmers' market Shizi, *** with the funding of a grand two-story building, while also relying on the original authentic yellow noodle skills, in the dish brine on the drilling improvements, and take the initiative to participate in a variety of food and beverage competitions, so that the "Shun Zhang" taste has been a good thing.
Deep in the Dunhuang folk food and not just a variety of noodles. Look, this alleyway Xiajia Haoju, the front is not big, but it is also the door of the city. A careful inquiry, and is a century-old store, and is an inheritance of more than a thousand years of Dunhuang snacks. This Dunhuang unique mutton juice, fully absorbed the West and the Central Plains dietary features, soup meat flavor, meat crispy delicious, soft and smooth noodles, "Gaza", "balls", a different flavor, coupled with turquoise cauliflower, can be described as "The color, aroma and taste are all excellent.
Hidden in the downtown area of the "Zhong family stuffed skin", in the eyes of outsiders is an inconspicuous store, but it is in the eyes of the people of Dunhuang is a necessity of life. According to Dunhuang Cave excavated documents, brewing (RANG) skin in the Tang Dynasty Dunhuang market has been a very popular snack. It is made of good white flour, after a special process into the skin, white and translucent, when eating the skin stacked up, cut into strips with a knife, and steamed and sliced gluten a piece of the above, poured with the prepared seasoning can be eaten.
Zhang Zhong, an expert in Dunhuang literature and history, said: "Zhang Daqian, who came to Dunhuang during the Republican period, is a famous gourmet in China. I remember I was a teenager, was close to see Zhang Daqian. According to Yu Youren's evaluation, the most famous northwest Dunhuang dish at that time was roast lamb. Dunhuang roast lamb is to cook the lamb, and then put it on the grill, roasted not with charcoal, with a kind of Dunhuang locally produced red willow firewood. The red willow grows in the saline land, it has been from the small seedling is saline alkaline, so it contains saline content is quite rich, use it to generate fire grill, smoke, saline content through the smoke seeped into the meat, the grilled meat is particularly fragrant. Because Yu Youren came to Dunhuang in 1941, personally in the old Dunhuang city in the mutton car squatting down to eat twice, he said that this is a real real Northwest flavor, and then there is no."
These age-old varieties of food, most of them can still be in our vision of the occasional flash, but there are a lot of varieties, has quietly hidden in the simple folk, we rarely see its true face.