Guo Yingzhou, also known as Guo Zongru, was born in an ordinary peasant family in Yangzhong County, Jiangsu Province in the 34th year of Guangxu reign (1908 10.23). Because of the disaster in his hometown, he left his hometown and came to Shanghai alone at the age of 18. Unaccompanied, I have experienced difficulties and bumps. In ten years of rough life, I made a living by opening a small bookstore in Yaojiaxiang and Fumin Road in Shinan West. During the Anti-Japanese War, he also made a living in Lei Yunxuan grocery store.
Shanghainese who came here in 1930s and 1940s know that "fennel beans" were once popular in Shanghai, tough but not firm, soft but not astringent. At that time, business was booming in the streets and alleys near the old city, but only a few people knew the formula of spiced beans and mastered the cooking skills.
Speaking of the development history of spiced beans, according to Old Shanghai, at the beginning, incense flourished after the completion of the Chenghuang Temple. The temple market is crowded with customers and tourists. Vendors have come here to set up stalls to do business. A foreigner named Zhang Acheng got a briquette stove and an iron pot, sold them and started a spiced bean business. Although spiced beans look ordinary, they are full of flavor when cooked, attracting many customers. Buy a pack and try it. The fly in the ointment is that the spiced bean skin is fragrant, but the bean meat is raw. For this reason, there are often quarrels with customers. Guo Yingzhou, a vendor selling spiced beef and dried bean curd nearby, saw that the spiced beef business was thin and thick, so he switched to trying to burn spiced beans. He is determined to "learn from its strengths and attack its weaknesses" and compete with Zhang Acheng. According to his own experience in making spiced beef, he chose "Sanbai" broad beans produced in Jiading, used his brains in ingredients, added imported essence and saccharin, and paid attention to debugging the heat. Boiled spiced beans are not raw, but sweet and delicious. Later, he found that burning beans in an iron pan would make the skin black and the color not beautiful, so he constantly improved and customized a large copper pot that could burn 40 kilograms of beans at a time, which was good in color and flavor, soft and hard in taste, salty and sweet, and was well received by customers and prosperous in business.
At this time, it happened that the owner of the "Lei Yan Zui Store" in the shopping mall went home for some reason and entrusted Guo to guard the store. Guo took this opportunity to open a shop here and named it "Ba". On the packaging bag made of kraft paper, Guo Yingzhou's head and Ssangyong trademark are printed. After the expansion of business, products also developed from retail to wholesale. Vendors not only set up stalls in front of stations, docks, teahouses, pubs and theaters in Shanghai, but also sold spiced beans overseas. 1956, "Ji Guo Xinglong" was renamed as "City God Temple Spiced Bean". Now there is a spiced bean shop in Yuyuan Mall and a spiced bean factory nearby. Its products have far exceeded the highest level in history and have a far-reaching reputation.