"It's a pity that you don't eat roast duck until you reach the Great Wall." This is the symbolic propaganda word of Beijing tourism. However, although there are numerous roast duck restaurants in Beijing, the roast duck here seems to refer only to Quanjude's roast duck. It is Quanjude's roast duck that makes it a "signature dish" in Beijing's catering industry. Today, Quanjude has many semicolons. Not only does the south of the city, the north of the city, the east of the city and the west of the city cover almost four or nine cities, but it has also been opened to many cities in China and even abroad. However, many semicolons of Quanjude in all parts of the country are not all like several Quanjude fires in Beijing, and Quanjude in some places such as Shenzhen and Nanjing has also closed down. The reason here is very simple. Quanjude roast duck is a highlight of Beijing, and eating Beijing roast duck in other places is not a taste after all. Therefore, where to eat roast duck is actually very particular. On the other hand, to eat roast duck in Beijing, you have to choose the shop outside the front door. Qianmen Quanjude is the root of Quanjude. At that time, Yang Quanren, the founder of Quanjude, made his home here. Yang Quanren is a native of Yangjiazhai, Ji County, Hebei Province. When he first arrived in Beijing, he bought and sold raw chickens and ducks in the meat market street outside Qianmen. He figured out the way of selling ducks carefully and clearly, and his business became more and more prosperous. Coupled with frugality on weekdays, I have accumulated a lot of savings. Every day when Yang Quanren goes to the meat market to set up a stall to sell chickens and ducks, he passes through a dried fruit shop called "Dejuquan". Although the signboard of this shop is eye-catching, the business is getting worse every day. In the third year of Tongzhi (1864), it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Yang Quanren seized this opportunity, took out his savings for many years and bought the shop of "Dejuquan". What brand name should I have when I have my own shop? Yang Quanren invited a Mr. Feng Shui. Mr. Feng Shui walked around the shop twice and said, "This is a treasure trove of Feng Shui. The two small alleys on both sides of this shop are like two sedan chairs. When a building is built in the future, it will be like an eight-lift sedan chair. The future is limitless! " Mr. Feng Shui added: "However, in the past, this shop was very unlucky, and it was hard to get rid of bad luck. Unless the old word number of' Dejuquan' is reversed and changed to' Quanjude', the bad luck can be washed away. " Yang Quanren is very satisfied with the font size of "Quanjude": on the one hand, his name has the word "Quande", and on the other hand, "Jude" means gathering virtue, and he can flaunt his business and talk about virtue. So he named the store "Quanjude". Then, he invited scholar Qian Zilong to write the three characters of "Quanjude" and made a gold plaque to hang on the lintel. However, eagle-eyed diners may see that the word "De" on the Quanjude plaque is missing a horizontal line. Listening to the elders, at that time, Boss Yang asked Qian Zilong to write an inscription, and they had a good drink first. Because Qian Xiucai drank two more cups, he forgot to write the word "De" in a careless way. However, there is a saying that has a nose and eyes: when Yang Quanren started his business, a * * * hired 13 guys, plus one *** 14 of himself. In order to let everyone work with peace of mind and make concerted efforts, Qian Xiucai was asked to write one less line, indicating that everyone can't cross a knife in their hearts. In fact, the real reason is that the word "de" used to be written more, and there are two ways to write it, which can be horizontal or not. The word "De" in the Imperial Book "University Monument" of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty, which is now located in the Confucius Temple in imperial academy, Beijing, is not horizontal; Zheng Banqiao, a painter in the Qing Dynasty, wrote the word "De" with or without a horizontal line. Therefore, in the past, the two ways of writing the word "de" were correct. After establishing the brand name of "Quanjude", Yang Quanren knew that if he wanted to have a prosperous business, he had to rely on a good chef, a good boss and a good shopkeeper. He often goes to all kinds of roast duck shops to look for the master of roast duck. Later, he found out that there was a master Sun in Jinhua Hall who cooked roast duck for the imperial palace. He was very skilled in roast duck, so he tried every means to make friends with him and often drank and played chess together, and the relationship between them became closer and closer. Master Sun was finally persuaded by Yang Quanren and went to Quanjude with a large sum of money. Quanjude hired Master Sun, which is equivalent to mastering all the techniques of hanging roast duck in Qing Palace. Master Sun changed the original oven into a hanging oven with a large oven height and a wide hearth, which can roast more than a dozen ducks in one oven. You can also roast ducks while facing inside. The duck roasted by him is beautiful in appearance, rich and full, bright in color, bordeaux in color, crispy in skin and tender in meat, delicious and crisp in fragrance, fat but not greasy, thin but not firewood, and has won the reputation of "the capital is delicious, and it is better than a duck" for Quanjude roast duck. At that time, there were many time-honored brands with the same name as Quanjude, such as Cheap House, Casserole House and Liuquanju. However, why only Quanjude has become the representative of Beijing catering? Some old people with time-honored brands all said, "Quanjude has a good place to drive, which is close to Tiananmen Square. Our country invites foreign guests to dine there. You said it would not be a fire. " Perhaps it is just what Mr. Feng Shui said. After the founding of New China, Quanjude's roast duck was as famous as Maotai, and it became a "signboard" for national leaders to entertain foreign dignitaries and show Chinese food culture. Premier Zhou Enlai paid great attention to the development of Quanjude before his death. He not only suggested that the roast duck should be sliced into strips, but also branded lotus leaf cakes into ovals to make it convenient for diners to roll their food. He also personally commented on the word "Quanjude": "All things are not lacking, gathering but not dispersing, and benevolence is supreme". This note has become the core of Quanjude's corporate culture. A roast duck can be favored by national leaders, and it does have something extraordinary. Beijing roast duck is roasted with Beijing stuffed duck. The so-called "duck-stuffing" means that people force the stuffing three times a day and stuff the feed with duck-stuffing. The ducks cultivated by artificial fertilization have white fur, plump figure, tender meat and delicious meat. Quanjude's roast duck process is complicated. Before roasting, ducks have to go through eight processes: inflating, eviscerating, washing, hooking, scalding, beating sugar and airing. Pump up the air, in order to blow up the duck body and make the duck skin tight without wrinkles; Beating sugar is to brush the duck with caramel water, so that the duck skin can be baked with bright and gorgeous color. Not only that, the roast duck should be filled with boiling water before entering the furnace, and a sorghum stalk should be stuffed into the duck tail to prevent the boiled water from flowing out. When roasting, hot air enters, which keeps the water boiling in the duck's chamber. Because it is baked outside and cooked inside, the roasted duck is crispy outside and tender inside, and tastes fresh and delicious. Hanging furnace roasting with open flame, using fruity wood as fuel, usually jujube wood as the main material, supplemented by peaches and pears. The sweet smell of fruit trees is secreted into the duck body, which makes the roasted duck particularly fragrant and beautiful. In addition, when roasting, the hanging stalk should be rotated constantly so that the preserved duck is not directly facing the fire. Well-roasted duck, the fat oil flows out and then penetrates into the duck body. The duck skin is purplish red, and the whole body is oily and bright, which is pleasing to the eye and mouth-watering. Nowadays, when you go to Quanjude to eat roast duck, you are finally given an ID card of roast duck, telling the guests which duck you ate in Quanjude. According to statistics, Quanjude has roasted more than 100 million ducks. These roast ducks are lined up end to end and can circle the earth several times.