Shabu-shabu mutton is a typical northern hot pot with a long history. According to records, during the Three Kingdoms period, copper hot pots appeared, which could be used to cook various meats such as pigs, cattle, sheep, chickens, and fish. During the Northern Song Dynasty, the economy was prosperous and supplies were abundant. Restaurants already served hot pot in winter.
Shabu-shabu brings warmth and happiness to the cold winter in Beijing, and the best place to eat hotpot is Donglaishun, a time-honored Chinese brand.
Donglaishun, founded in 1903, is famous for its mutton-boiled "one-dish meal". Its mutton with rich aroma and unique taste has become many people's gourmet memory of Beijing. In 2008, Donglaishun's mutton-shabu processing techniques were listed as national intangible cultural heritage.
Nowadays, when tourists from all over the country come to Beijing, they will definitely go to Donglaishun, where they can taste the fragrance of mutton-shabu-shabu and experience Master Chen Lixin, the fourth generation inheritor of national intangible cultural heritage skills, and his apprentices. Their knife-throwing skills.
Flying knives are like gods
Chen Lixin, one of the first batch of traditional Chinese skills masters in Beijing, won the Golden Tripod Award of the Ministry of Commerce in 1989, and the gold medal of the first national halal cooking competition in 1994 and 2008. He was awarded the title of the fourth generation inheritor of national intangible cultural heritage skills.
When Chen Lixin was only a teenager, he became a disciple of He Fengqing, the third-generation inheritor of Donglaishun’s meat-cutting skills, specializing in mutton-shabu processing techniques for nearly 50 years.
Donglaishun Shabu Shabu uses big-tailed sheep from the Xiwu Banner of Xilingol League in Inner Mongolia, and they must be castrated Jie sheep that have just been weaned. In this way, there will be less fishy and odor in the mutton. For shabu-shabu, Donglaishun only chooses five parts: upper brain, small Sancha, big Sancha, cucumber strips, and grinder. In the bottom of the clear soup pot, only simple ingredients such as onions, ginger, and mushroom soup are placed, in order to allow customers to taste the most delicious taste of the mutton.
Shabu-shabu mutton is a representative dish of Donglaishun, and cutting the meat is a key step. The mutton slices cut by Dong Laishun's masters are famous for being thin, even, neat and beautiful. Half a kilogram of mutton can be cut into 80 to 100 slices of 20 cm long and 8 cm wide. Each slice weighs only 4.5 grams, and the slices are folded in half. The texture is clear, "as thin as paper, as uniform as crystal, as neat as threads, and as beautiful as flowers". It is cooked as soon as you put it in the soup. It tastes fragrant and tender, not tangy or greasy.
Donglaishun cuts mutton and pays attention to knife skills and appearance, so the mutton needs to be frozen to a certain degree of hardness before it can be cut. In the past, there were no cold storages or refrigerators. Every winter, the masters from Donglaishun had to dig out river ice and put it into cellars for storage. After the carefully selected mutton is shipped from Inner Mongolia, the chefs must personally flatten and compact the meat layer by layer with ice so that the slices of meat can be cut into shape. And practicing cutting on frozen mutton every day is indeed hard work that an ordinary person cannot endure. Chen Lixin is open-minded and eager to learn, willing to study and endure hardships. After being carefully taught by his master, he quickly mastered the whole set of skills such as deboning the whole sheep, selecting parts, and cutting the meat, and became the best among his brothers.
Chen Lixin has successively served as Dong Laishun's hot-pot meat production technical team leader, deputy manager, manager, and operations director. In recent years, he and the Human Resources Department of Donglaishun Group jointly launched the "Donglaishun Mutton Base Quality Inspector" training course, which provided technical support for standardizing the processing technology and improving the quality of Donglaishun hot-boiled mutton semi-finished products. At the same time, in order to ensure that Donglaishun's mutton processing skills are inherited by others, he also opened a training class on manual meat cutting technology, and the trainees have played a key role in the technology. After Donglaishun established an intangible heritage team, Chen Lixin and retired technicians from Donglaishun served as skills training lecturers and consultants. They are currently exploring and sorting out Donglaishun's traditional dishes and halal pastries.
“We can’t spoil our craftsmanship”
Chen Lixin often recalls the time when his master, He Fengqing, got angry because of his irregular cuts of meat. He was less than twenty years old at that time, but he had already been an apprentice under He Fengqing for several years. At that time, customers who came to Donglaishun to eat hotpot mutton often queued up. Chen Lixin felt that he had mastered the meat cutting skills, so one day, he took advantage of the chef's lunch break to cut out several plates of mutton slices. Unexpectedly, when he was waiting for praise, he was severely scolded by the master: "Boy, look what you are cutting? It is uneven in thickness, twisted and uneven. Are you worthy of the skills I taught you? You Are you worthy of your customers? Customers come here because of the Dong Laishun brand. If we treat our customers like this, will they still come?"
This is the first time that Master He, who has always been kind-hearted, got so angry at Chen Lixin. He felt aggrieved at that time. But later, when he really mastered his craftsmanship and recalled this experience, he felt that the master's words made sense. One minute on stage, ten years off stage, Chen Lixin often said: "We can't spoil our craftsmanship." In this sentence, there is the craftsmanship passed down from generation to generation by the masters of Dong Laishun.
Spring has passed and autumn has come, and the years have changed. Now, Chen Lixin has become a master and has his own apprentice. He taught them skills and principles. Those principles were taught to him by his master back then, and the master's principles were taught by his master's masters. The principle is simple, but it is the "origin" of Donglaishun's development since the late Qing Dynasty and has become the golden signboard of China's time-honored brand "The First Halal Shabu Shabu".
Witnessed foreign affairs activities many times
Chen Lixin’s nearly half-century career was an era of great changes in China. Whether in diplomacy or politics, you can see the influence of mutton-boiled meat. figure.
In the early 1970s, China used "small ball to turn the big ball" and "ping-pong diplomacy" to ease Sino-US relations, which shocked the world. In 1973, the Asia-Africa-Latin America Table Tennis Invitational Tournament was held at the Capital Gymnasium in Beijing. All athletes dined at the Friendship Hotel. Among them, the halal restaurant arranged for three days of mutton-shabu-shabu, and this task was given to Dong Laishun. At that time, the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government specially approved the Dahongmen Muslim Slaughterhouse to provide Donglaishun with 100 live sheep, which were slaughtered in three days, with more than 30 live sheep slaughtered every day. Normally, the master cuts 90 plates a day and the apprentice cuts 60 plates. But this time, 10 masters and apprentices were required to cut 1,000 plates of meat a day. The comrades in the meat cutting team worked overtime, basically for three days and three nights, and completed the task brilliantly. Many years later, Chen Lixin met Zhuang Zedong, the leader of the "Ping Pong Diplomacy" in Donglaishun, for dinner. When chatting about the past, Chen Lixin joked: "You are the world champion in table tennis, and I am the world champion in cutting mutton!"
Shabu-shabu mutton is not only deeply loved by the common people, but also by party and state leaders and foreign dignitaries. Therefore, chef Dong Laishun often appears in Zhongnanhai and Diaoyutai. Speaking of this, Chen Lixin felt proud: "When the State Council held a meeting, there were 15 diners at two banquet tables, all at the level of Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, and they were also served by people from the east. Chairman Mao once hosted a banquet for President Su Su of Indonesia in the beekeeping aisle. "Gano, in addition to the chef being from Dong Laishun, the service staff also directly transferred the waiters from Dong Laishun."
Dong Laishun's hotpot also played an important supporting role in the historical event of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States. Before and after the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States, Deng Xiaoping hosted two banquets in Donglaishun for U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger. At that time, Donglaishun was closed for three days for cleaning, and a red carpet was specially installed for the stairs from the first to the third floor.
In 1975, U.S. President Ford was invited to visit China. Deng Xiaoping hosted a banquet for him in the Great Hall of the People, and the arrangement was Dong Laishun's hotpot mutton. In order to maintain the original flavor of Dong Laishun's hotpot mutton, Dong Laishun is responsible for hand-cut meat, noodles and waiters. Young Chen Lixin was selected to participate in this glorious task.
"Although my skills were not top-notch at that time, I was honored to be selected because of my simple thoughts, honesty and obedience. So, on behalf of my master, I, along with the leader of the meat cutting team and two party member masters , went to work at the Great Hall of the People. Forty slices of fresh lamb brain per plate, evenly distributed, with three fat lines and straight tubes; the pictographic pastries were lifelike, even the green onions cut by the waiter. , coriander all amazed the colleagues in the General Assembly Hall. With everyone’s joint efforts, our Donglaishun hotpot has also played a serious role in the normalization of Sino-US relations!” story, Chen Lixin’s face was filled with pride.
If you have a knife in your heart, the skills will be passed down from generation to generation
Chen Lixin almost became the last master in Donglaishun who is good at cutting meat by hand. It turns out that from 1975, not long after Chen Lixin started working, most of the meat-cutting work in Donglaishun was gradually replaced by machines.
When the meat cutting machine was developed, Chen Lixin was also personally involved and made many suggestions. The machine was designed to imitate the manual method of cutting meat. After the machine was put into operation, it greatly satisfied the needs of diners and eliminated the need to queue. There is a long queue to wait. This is also the reform path chosen by many time-honored brands, replacing traditional manual craftsmanship with efficient and standardized production by machines. However, the spectacle of more than a dozen meat cutters lining up in the glass display window of Dong Laishun, performing meat cuts and competing in their skills in front of diners, can no longer be seen, and the delicacy and human touch of hand-made work have also disappeared. It disappeared.
Although he no longer had to engage in the high-intensity labor of cutting 100 plates of meat every day, Chen Lixin still felt a little disappointed. Later, he changed many positions, from frontline to management, but he never gave up his craft. Even when he was the manager of Dong Laishun's Wangfujing store, he liked to put on white work clothes and go to the kitchen to cut a plate of meat and stir-fry a few vegetables before he felt comfortable.
As time entered the 21st century, just when many old crafts were on the verge of extinction and lost, Chen Lixin heard exciting news. The Donglaishun mutton-shabu-shabu craft was selected as a national intangible cultural heritage, and he became the master of this craft. The fourth generation inheritor. "All the old masters have passed away, and the senior brothers have retired. Now I am the only one left. I have to pass on this craft. This is fate and mission." Chen Lixin took out the meat cleaver that his master had passed on to him. , pondered for a long time.
It is said that a real chef can make people drink tea from his cup, but never let people touch his knife. Chen Lixin still remembers that when he was young, he didn't know the rules of the kitchen and once took his master's knife and used it all morning. When other people in the kitchen saw it, they said, "You are so brave. You dare to touch your master's knife."
"I only understood this truth after using my own knife for a period of time. Everyone has different habits of using force, and the intensity of sharpening the knife is also different, so it seems that the knives in the kitchen are all the same , in fact, every knife feels different.
"When he became an apprentice, Chen Lixin received a one-and-a-half-foot-long mutton knife from his master. This has lasted nearly 50 years. This knife carries all the skills, habits and experience of a chef.
Today, Chen Lixin has dozens of apprentices, and he also gives each of them a meat cleaver. The inheritance of the knife is the inheritance of the skill. Some apprentices said to him: "Master, who doesn't know how to cut mutton slices now?" Meat slicer, use knife to cut, but the customers are not happy. Chen Lixin said to him: "That's not the case. No matter how mechanized meat cutting is, we cannot lose the traditional craftsmanship, because this is the food culture passed down from our ancestors." ”
He often asked his disciples to bring him the meat cleavers he gave them and show them to him. The disciples knew that the master did not check whether the knife was fast or not, but whether they kept the knife in place. The disciples understood the master's painstaking efforts and said to Chen Lixin: "Master, please hold on. As long as the knife is there, the old Beijing mutton-boiled meat will be passed down." "
What is inheritance? In Chen Lixin's view, inheritance is something that should be done carefully throughout his life. Many times, he would miss his late master, and he would whisper to his master in his heart: " My apprentice has not embarrassed you, I am worthy of the skills you taught me! ".