He is the last pure scholar in China, and the most influential gourmet in China cuisine after Yuan Mei.

And the places he walked through all his life are linked with the symbolic geography of China cuisine.

1920-1935: Gaoyou? Hometown of food

Wang Zengqi's hometown is Gaoyou, Jiangsu, which is a small town between Huaihe River and Yangtze River, with Yangzhou in the south and Huai 'an in the north. After Qin Shihuang destroyed Chu, he happened to see a clean and bright highland through this area full of wetlands and swamps, so he set up a post office. The name of Gaoyou came from this.

In the eyes of southerners, it is the rugged Jiangbei; In the eyes of northerners, there is the graceful Jiangnan; In the eyes of gourmets, it is the core area of Huaiyang cuisine.

Gaoyou's unique scenery and human feelings constitute Wang Zengqi's life background and personality traits. He has the natural and unrestrained style of a northern man, but also the clean and restrained style of a scholar in the south of the Yangtze River. As for diet, he loves to eat oily meat, and he can also taste vegetables. China's tolerant and pluralistic personality in diet history is vividly reflected in him.

Gourmet in Hometown is the first essay of Wang Zengqi's prose. Fried rice, burnt crumbs, salted duck eggs, pickled mushroom soup, all kinds of seafood, all kinds of waterfowl and Artemisia selengensis are all well-known foods in the south, but in his works, the characteristics of Huaiyang cuisine and meticulous cooking have penetrated into Wang Zengqi's lines.

Huaiyang morning tea is the most abundant, and Gaoyou people's morning tea is steamed dumplings, steamed buns and Yangchun noodles. Shrimp steamed dumplings are delicious, with thin skin and plenty of soup. Put one chopstick in a small dish, pour a circle of vinegar on it, lower your head and sip it gently, and the skin soup boiled with meat skin will immediately fill your mouth. Shrimp is not the sea shrimp with Cantonese shrimp dumplings, but the river shrimp with more delicious and Jiangnan style. Four or five shrimps can be found in a shrimp dumpling, which is particularly attractive when mixed with pork stuffing.

Gaoyou Yangchun noodle is a kind of alkaline water surface, which is different from dried noodles and handmade noodles. It is thin and tough. When cooking noodles, you should use cold water to stir the noodles several times, and the inner core is still half-baked and chewy.

Gaoyou people also like to have afternoon tea. Five meals a day is not surprising for the rich Jiangsu and Zhejiang plain and the slow-paced town. The small wonton with pure meat stuffing is delicious and slippery, and it is soaked in the soup head hung with chicken soup, which is enough to cheer up the people who have just woken up from lunch break and are sleepy.

Soft pocket is an essential dish for Wang Zengqi's family banquet, and it is also a feature of Huai 'an, which is close to Gaoyou. The so-called soft bag is made of scalded eel meat, shredded, wrapped in thick and fried, and clipped with chopsticks, so that it is beautiful to get rich soup. In addition, there are crispy eel fried raw, saddle bridge braised in brown sauce, braised Zhang Fei, eel back barbecued with open fire, and baked tiger tail treated with strong fire and oil. These are all the foods that Wang Zengqi yearned for in his early years.

Of course, as a Gaoyou person, salted duck eggs are not left behind by Wang Zengqi. He said salted duck eggs in his hometown? Soft protein, red oil in yolk? If it is used to entertain guests, cut the shell in half, but enjoy it yourself. It is best to break the short position and dig it with chopsticks. Between the lines, it is the leisure and interest of the old literati.

1935-1937: jiangyin? Memories of first love

1935, Wang Zengqi left his hometown for the first time and went to Jiangyin on the south bank of the Yangtze River to study in Nanjing Middle School.

This romantic city guarding the rolling Yangtze River every day is the hometown of Xu Xiake. Wang Zengqi later described Jiangyin like this: Every day when the river rises, the river in the city also rises. When the tide receded, the river was calm again. Walking across Hongqiao and watching the river rise and fall, there is a kind of unprovoked sadness.

From his description of Jiangyin Fruit Shop, we can get a glimpse of hazy poetry. There are several fruit shops in Jiangyin, the largest of which is the one directly across the street from Shoushan Park. There are many fruits, which are big, full and fresh. As soon as I entered the door, I was greeted by a thick fruit fragrance. The most outstanding thing is the sweet smell of bananas. This fragrance is not intermittent, sometimes strong and sometimes weak, but it is so fragrant from morning till night, a long-lasting and eternal fragrance. Perfectly fragrant and intoxicating. I have been to many places and walked into many fruit shops, but none of them have the strong fruit fragrance of this fruit shop. The smell of this fruit shop reminds me often and will never forget it. ?

Later, Wang Zengqi often talked to people about a snack called pink salt beans in Jiangyin. Send soybeans to half an inch, stir-fry them with salt until crisp, chew them in one bite, and turn them into a mouthful of fine powder, which tastes as delicious as fennel beans in Kong Yiji. Wang Zengqi recalled his middle school career: Sitting in the study room, drinking water, eating beans and reading Li Qingzhao's and Xin Qiji's ci is a special taste. I studied in Jiangyin Nanjing Middle School for two years, and this is how I spent my Sunday. ?

1937-1946: Kunming? War-torn years

1937, Japanese invaders invaded. Wang Zengqi, who has not finished high school, had to bid farewell to Jiangyin and study in Huai 'an, Yangzhou and Yancheng. Finally, he went from Shanghai to Kunming via Hongkong and Viet Nam, and was admitted to the Literature Department of China, The National SouthWest Associated University as his first choice. After graduation, he stayed in Kunming as a middle school Chinese teacher.

Many years later, Wang Zengqi wrote in an article entitled "New School Building" that a writer and professor who had taught in The National SouthWest Associated University gave lectures in the United States. Americans asked him, The National SouthWest Associated University eight years, the poor equipment conditions, professors, students so bitter life, why can produce so many talents? There are more talents than those from Peking University, Tsinghua and Nankai in the past 30 years. Why? The writer answered two words: freedom. ?

Kunming has brought great influence to Wang Zengqi in the past few years, when he first worked and formed a real world outlook. He said: I learned to eat spicy food in Kunming. I used to burn green peppers on the fire with several Guizhou classmates and drink with salt water. ?

A young man who is weak and used to eating Jiangsu and Zhejiang sweets has made such a big change. It is conceivable that Yungui's taste has influenced Wang Zengqi's diet view for the rest of his life.

Among Yunnan cuisine, Wang Zengqi's favorite may be ham. What's the most delicious? Money legs? , that is, the part of the leg cut into thin slices to the elbow bar, which is lean meat, surrounded by fat, with a circle of thin skin. Steamed chicken with cloud legs as auxiliary materials was praised by Wang Zengqi. The first way for China people to eat chicken? .

Wang Zengqi, who ranks first in the world with steamed chicken, also has sugar-fried chestnuts in Kunming, ham moon cakes in Kunming, and even the most common scrambled eggs, Kunming is more delicious than other places.

Rice noodles and bait blocks are snacks made of rice flour to imitate pasta in the southwest where it is difficult to grow wheat. Wang Zengqi admired them? White, smooth and soft? Compared with noodles and pimples, it has a different flavor.

Dairy products in Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau have also been mentioned by Wang Zengqi many times, including milk skins called milk fans and milk tofu called milk cakes. He studied with interest that these foods may have originated from the changes of Mongolian times? Mongolian dairy products are only used to accompany milk tea, while Yunnan is used as a dish. ? This vision of observing the origin and development of food in the context of history and geography may have laid the foundation for Wang Zengqi to become a gourmet in the future.

During the UN General Assembly, Wang Zengqi (middle)

1946-1948: Shanghai? The most unforgettable Jiangnan

After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Wang Zengqi returned to the mainland to find a job. His first stop was Paris and Shanghai in the East at that time.

In fact, Shanghai is not far from Gaoyou, Wang Zengqi's hometown. Regardless of local customs and eating habits, he has been in Yunnan for nearly ten years and feels very used to it. Represented by Shanghai, many Jiangnan cuisines, including Suzhou, Hangzhou, Huzhou and Wuxi, were also remembered by Wang Zengqi and regarded as classic foods.

For example, in his article about eating elbows, what was the first sentence? Rock sugar elbow, braised elbow, Dongpo elbow, pot-roasted elbow and douban elbow of Sichuan cuisine, as long as they are elbows. ?

In Wang Zengqi's eyes, there is delicious food in the south of the Yangtze River at four seasons. In spring, you should eat the newly picked shepherd's purse Malantou Gouqi Tou, in early summer, you should eat fat pond fish, and in autumn, you should shoot wild ducks. It is best to cut into pieces and braise in soy sauce, and in winter, there are fresh pickled snow vegetables, which are thin, tender, crisp and sweet.

Tofu mixed with Tofu, which is praised by Wang Zengqi as the top grade in tofu, is a home-cooked dish that everyone in Jianghuai area can cook. Toona sinensis is slightly scalded in water, and the stems turn green. Rub salt and chop them up, mix in tofu and add sesame oil. ? One entrance, three springs. ?

Wang Zengqi and Shen Congwen (right)

1948: Beijing? A place to live for life

1948, in order to reunite with his lovestruck fiancee, Wang Zengqi came to Peiping at that time. After being idle for half a year, he finally found a job and settled down. Beijing, the ancient capital, became the place where he settled for the rest of his life and the city where he stayed for the longest time in his life.

Wang Zengqi's feelings for Beijing are complicated. Too many stories happened here in his life. Although he often despises the food here, he says the salted duck eggs in Beijing? The protein is like lime, but the yolk is yellow? . However, the various flavors of Beijing are probably still one of the reasons why Wang Zengqi settled here.

Are you online? Scorpion The Beijing barbecue on the table is one of the most beautiful oily meats written by Wang Zengqi. This way of eating from the nomadic people in the north is to take a round plate nailed by an iron bar and burn large pieces of split wood, pine or fruit trees underneath. Cut beef and mutton into thin slices, and spread them evenly on them with long chopsticks for roasting. Wang Zengqi said this kind of food? Eating meat while drinking white wine is a bit arrogant. The room is full of roasted meat, and this atmosphere can increase people's appetite by three points. ?

All kinds of vegetables in Beijing also have their own characteristics, such as crispy and sweet radish, lentils suitable for cold, fried and braised, chestnuts with thin and cracked shells, and bean juice that can be addictive after drinking, all of which are delicious in Wang Zengqi's works.

Wang Zengqi also likes the way Beijingers drink tea. Compared with tea houses in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces? Holding it? Different, Beijingers, rich or poor, have to get up early to have tea. Drink the tea and feel comfortable for a day? . Wang Zengqi said that he couldn't get used to Beijing's scented tea, but the scented tea he drank at Mr. Lao She's house made him forget it.

Wang Zengqi's family portrait

1958-196 1 year: Zhangjiakou? Fun in the valley

1958, Wang Zengqi was classified as a rightist and sent to work in the Shalingzi Agricultural Science Research Institute in Zhangjiakou. This is one of the low points in his life, but in the photos left today, his smile is the brightest during this time.

Is this an old China scholar? Poor is immune? A typical portrayal of.

Potatoes are the food that Wang Zengqi ate the most at this stage and wrote the most later. He also drew a set of Potato Atlas at the local potato research station, but unfortunately the draft was destroyed. Cultural Revolution? Medium.

Of course, Wang Zengqi won't let go of the mushroom named after Zhangjiakou. He personally picked white mushrooms and went back to Beijing to make soup. The children drank it and said it was fresher than chicken soup.

Zhangjiakou is very close to Shanxi, and there are also Shanxi-style naked oats noodles. Wang Zengqi praised the best local noodles? Thinner than white flour, still white? .

In addition, Zhangjiakou is also adjacent to Inner Mongolia. Mongolian-style milk tea, hand-made meat, steamed meat and shredded sheep tail are all the flavors mentioned by Wang Zengqi on various occasions. ? There is a thin brittle shell on the outside of the spun sheep tail, which has been bitten. It seems that there is nothing inside. A bag of clean water has melted the sheep tail oil. This thing is only suitable for Buddha, and people can't eat it, because it's so delicious! ?

1987: USA? Another vision

1987 10, at the invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Anger and Nie Hualing, Wang Zengqi went to the United States to participate in international writing activities, which lasted more than three months.

Nie Hualing and her husband Paul? Angel

In the letter he wrote to his wife during his stay in America, he spent half his time talking about cooking and eating. He personally wrapped jiaozi and made fish-flavored shredded pork for American students. Making cabbage meatball soup, mixing celery, boiling dried silk and boiled beef for overseas Chinese friends, which won praise; Taste China-style tea eggs, mixed lentils, potato chips, peanuts and Luzhou Daqu with American writers.

After returning from the United States, Wang Zengqi's enthusiasm for cooking continued to rise, and many of them were original and delicious, such as stuffed meat and fried dough sticks. Hook the forefinger: the fried dough sticks are extremely crisp, and chewing them can really move ten miles.

Broaden your horizons and combine Chinese and western. If Wang Zengqi was a glutton when he was young, then after returning from the United States, he became a delicious practitioner who really wrote words and went into the kitchen.

Wang Zengqi loved cooking in his later years.

1989: Fujian? Son-in-law of Shanhai Zhiwei

Before liberation, while teaching in Kunming, Wang Zengqi met Shi Songqing, who taught at the same school and later became a reporter of Xinhua News Agency.

The two young people soon fell in love and became lifelong companions. Shi Songqing is a native of Changle, Fujian, and his father is an overseas Chinese leader from Nanyang. Although Wang Zengqi didn't have the opportunity to accompany his wife back to his hometown in a special era, he stayed with her all his life and was still influenced by Fujian's eating habits.

1989, Wang Zengqi visited Fujian for the first time. The son-in-law of Fujian people finally came to his wife's hometown when he was nearly seventy years old. He knew all about the mountains and seas there.

In the face of all kinds of delicacies, the old man couldn't help but move his forefinger: fragrant oyster fried, fresh soup with Xi Shi tongue, delicious mud clam; Stone chicken, dog meat and snake soup produced in the mountains? In a word, there is nothing he doesn't eat. He wrote? I eat mud clams, and it is without any seasoning that I peel off the shell and get into my mouth. I don't eat much food. I just taste everything with a few pieces. When I eat mud clams, my appetite is wide open. A large plate of mud clams makes me eat a small part alone, and the shells in front of me pile up into a hill, which is still unfinished. Eating mud clams and drinking hot yellow wine is a rare life. Raise a glass to thank the host, saying: This is seafood! ?

Wang Zengqi and his wife Shi Songqing, who used to be a reporter of Xinhua News Agency.

1992: Sichuan? Make up the last lesson of China cuisine.

Sichuan cuisine is one of the important sources of China cuisine, but Wang Zengqi has never been to Sichuan personally. In his early years, he wrote Sichuan dishes, all of which were eaten in Kunming, Shanghai and Beijing. He himself said: the Sichuan flavor of foreign Sichuan cuisine has faded, otherwise the locals can't stand it.

It was not until 1992 that 72-year-old Wang Zengqi finally came to Sichuan, and in his later Miscellaneous Memories of Sichuan, he described in detail the northern hot springs and Sichuan cuisine in Chengdu, Meishan, Leshan, Hongchunping and Chongqing. Completes the last lesson of China's gourmet geography.

Sichuan food is still spicy. ? It is Wang Zengqi's most concentrated understanding of Sichuan flavor. He described the glutinous rice balls with red pepper in Sichuan: Chop the lean meat, with salt, ginger and shallots as stuffing. A layer of red Chili oil floats in the bowl, and the glutinous rice balls are eaten in the mouth. They are filled with glutinous and fragrant, spicy and hemp, and they are particularly tasty. ?

Wang Zengqi's family portrait at the age of 76

1997: Go to another world and taste more delicious food.

1may 1997 16, Wang Zengqi said to his daughter: Give me a cup of green and bright Longjing! ? He passed away before Longjing was served. He left1500,000 words to describe the food, and his understanding of the grand and subtle pedigree of China's food culture.

For Wang Zengqi, the meaning of diet is a mutual gift between the writer and the land; For latecomers, diet is a door to insight into the evolution of time and space.

As the old man said:? I advise you not to be too narrow-minded. Try everything! ?