Of course, it's not fish [abalone]. It's a very common shellfish in biology and has long been the best food in Chinese food. Even in today's materialistic world, only one percent of people in China can enjoy it. We find that the deep meaning of abalone goes beyond food and is associated with power and wealth, both in history and today. ] The most expensive food One late autumn evening, I followed a bus convoy of nearly 300 people to Nonghai Garden, a rich area in Qingdao, where the house price was as high as 28,000 yuan/square meter. On the open lawn near the sea, we China people and westerners who attended the 5th World Abalone Congress during the day will celebrate this rare gathering together. At this Qingdao conference, the topics discussed by oceanographers from all over the world are abalone culture and disease prevention. "Why is abalone so expensive?" I asked Mr. Mai. Obviously, this internationally renowned abalone expert has considered this problem. He looked relaxed but said with some regret: "If things are rare, there are still many things that are rare! Why is abalone so expensive? I am not picky. Sea cucumber is not delicious either. Why is it so expensive? I don't know China people, there are many strange things. " Mai believes that the popularity of eating abalone and the rising price of abalone in the world today are all due to China's food culture. "You know," he continued, "an abalone is one pound in England and ten francs in France. Americans don't eat abalone at all. Japanese and China immigrants pushed up the price of abalone. With the increase of immigrants from China around the world, abalone is now eaten all over the world. Cao Cao loves abalone. As early as the Qing court in China, all the abalone feasts were recorded. It is said that when high officials from all over the coastal areas went to court at that time, most of them took abalone as a gift, with one official eating an abalone, seven officials eating seven abalones, and so on. One abalone is only one abalone per catty, and seven abalones are seven abalones per catty. The price of the former may be ten times higher than the latter. Obviously, at that time, these abalone could not be paid tribute until they were made into dried abalone, because they could not be alive when they entered the emperor's kitchen. A gentleman needs a kitchen, especially the emperor, who is the king of a country. Dalian fresh abalone is considered to be the best abalone in China. " Mencius once said: Seeing his life, I can't bear to see his death; I can't bear to eat its meat when I hear its voice. At that time, the monarch should set a good example for all people and follow the Tao of Confucius and Mencius. Therefore, Cantonese cuisine, which is popular all over China and contains a lot of raw seafood, could not be the court food of the royal family in China at that time. 70-year-old Mr. Wang Xifu loves China's traditional food culture very much. His family is a famous traditional restaurant family in Beijing, and now he is making a master plan for a high-end restaurant, trying to restore traditional Beijing cuisine. As early as the 6th century, China's culture of eating abalone had spread to Japan and South Korea, and then East Asians spread the custom of eating abalone to the whole world. China ancients listed abalone as one of the eight treasures of seafood long ago, and abalone ranked first in modern times. According to the biography of Wang Mang in Han Dynasty, Wang Mang, the new emperor at the end of the Western Han Dynasty, was greedy for abalone, especially when he was "worried about eating", he would drink and eat abalone. When Cao Zhi mourned his father in the Eastern Han Dynasty, he also mentioned that Cao Cao liked to eat abalone before his death. Abalone Nourishing Yin: In an ancient temple-style building in China, we met Ma Yongqiang, editor-in-chief of the hospitable China Cooking magazine. He divided Chinese food into two categories from an interesting angle: bird's nest, abalone, shark's fin and sea cucumber. China people have long been different in appearance. Sea cucumber and shark fin symbolize men and can aphrodisiac; Abalone and bird's nest symbolize femininity and nourishing yin. "In fact, the ancients in China always thought that abalone was a nourishing food that was very beneficial to the body. Some Chinese medicine theories believe that abalone can tonify deficiency and nourish yin, moisten lung and clear heat, nourish liver and improve eyesight, so it is called "eyesight fish". However, today's nutritionists believe that many extreme foods in China, including abalone, do not exceed the conventional nutritional value. Professor Ma Guansheng, the highest authority on nutrition in China and the Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety of China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, believes that there is little difference in protein between abalone and eggs, and other nutrients such as calcium, iron, zinc, selenium and vitamins have no unique advantages. In fact, abalone is not much different from other common seafood in providing nutrition. Therefore, these precious things are not "precious" in nutrition. Professor Yang Yuexin from the same institute personally led the determination of the nutritional components of abalone. She told me: "From the simple chemical composition analysis, we can't judge why abalone has high nutrition. Even some chefs in Zhongnanhai often ask us what nutrition shark fin and abalone have. In fact, the ability of scientists is limited. "She admits that their analysis is purely from the perspective of Western science, that is, the determination of known trace elements such as minerals, protein and vitamins." We know a lot about the ingredients in plants, but we still know little about animals. Fish should have many unknown ingredients. "Finally, she stressed:" I estimate that no one in China has studied the nutrition of abalone from the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, which is immaterial and holistic. This will not be the direction of our future research, because you can't apply for such a fund. "In recent years, scientists have found that the life science represented by food nutrition is the most complicated of all sciences, and a feature is often expressed by multiple genes instead of one-to-one causal expression. In this case, if one of the ingredients is extracted, it may not have the original curative effect. Professor Mai Kang Sen of Ocean University is also puzzled by the nutritional components of China cuisine, including abalone. Why do people like abalone? Besides non-scientific factors, are there any scientific reasons? Ginseng is also an example, just like a human figure. Science is preconceived, and the current impetuousness of China scientists and their rejection of what they think is not the biggest obstacle to our scientific development. In this case, the prejudice against China culture and Chinese medicine is affirmative. "For example, he said that our immune system should be the most complete, and lower organisms have immunoglobulin, but shrimp is gone, and caterpillars have nothing." But a caterpillar that has no immune system and lives in a dirty environment will live well. What happened? Our method is wrong. You use human immune methods to study worms, and you can't find anything, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't have that system, just expresses it in another way. "Abalone will contain something that is not in western nutrition? Western nutrition is nothing more than five basic substances: protein, fat, vitamins, minerals and sugar. Now people find that the sulfated lipopolysaccharide contained in sea cucumber can improve human immunity, which has nothing to do with nutrition, but has physiological and pharmacological effects. Studies have found that abalone is rich in refined ammonia, and some scientists speculate that human sperm swimming mainly depends on arginine. High-end symbolism of food Although abalone has been accepted by many China scholars and even gourmets who have no special nutrition, it has not stopped eating abalone from becoming a high-end symbol of China. A cooked dried Japanese abalone can be sold to 1680 yuan in a restaurant named SF near Beijing Agricultural Exhibition Hall. 10 years ago, SF Catering Group successfully launched high-grade seafood in China. Last year, its turnover ranked second in the domestic Chinese food industry. Chen Junhai is a senior employee here and also calls himself a gourmet. He told us the ultimate feeling of eating abalone: "Fresh abalone has the taste of fresh abalone, and dried abalone has the taste of dried abalone. Fresh abalone is tender and delicate; Dried abalone is soft, moderate in hardness and a little elastic to bite. When the teeth touch, it will push up and down with a little force. At the same time, there is a special fragrance in the throat, which lingers around the mouth. Some people pursue this realm, one or two is enough, 980 yuan! "China people are usually famous for their rich food culture. On almost any occasion, "eating" is a topic that you can never get tired of. Therefore, when Chinese people become rich, the first thing they may do is to eat. China people can prepare a meal for several days, especially Cantonese food, which takes several days. When cooking, you should add cloud legs, old chicken and red meat to stew slowly to make them taste harmonious and give full play to the inherent umami of abalone. This is hard for westerners represented by male and female cultures to imagine and understand. Beijing is undoubtedly a paradise for wealthy gourmets. Beijing is located in the political, cultural, economic and military center of China, which means that there are the richest people here, and even those rich foreigners will flock to Beijing to spend money. 10 years ago, smart Cantonese and Hong Kong people came to Beijing to open a high-end abalone wing restaurant. Hong Kong man Liang became one of the most successful businessmen with his Viagra abalone. Now he has opened at least 20 abalone restaurants in Chinese mainland and is the chairman of the newly established abalone wing banquet committee in China. One afternoon, he finally called to meet me. An hour later, in a suite living room of the Capital Hotel, I met this heavyweight in the abalone industry. As soon as I saw him, I immediately remembered the words of a photographer in Beijing: "The eyes of gourmets are very calm, not as nervous as ordinary people." "Why is abalone popular in Chinese mainland?" I asked him. This gourmet, who is quite a gentleman in China and has profound cultural accomplishment, thinks that there is a certain distance between food and nutrition. "At the dinner table, the most important thing is taste, not nutrition. Eggs are nutritious, but they can't replace the sense of food in our food world. There is also a cultural pursuit. "Then he explained to me that this pursuit led to a huge difference between American fast food culture and China people's food culture for thousands of years." A steak and a hamburger can live, but abalone is not just a matter of satiety for us. After eating good abalone, I felt it the next day. Even the same abalone, the difference in taste between them is like the great difference in quality between red wines. "Background knowledge The color of abalone shells varies with abalone species, food intake and growth environment. Abalone shells are rich in color, but most of them are green-brown or reddish-brown, which is a protective color similar to the environment where abalone lives (such as rocks or seaweed). However, different kinds of abalone have their relatively stable colors. Black abalone eating giant algae is blue-black, while red abalone is dark red, and yellow abalone is light reddish brown or dark green. Wild Haliotis discus hannai is mostly brownish green or brownish red, but artificial culture will grow a bright green shell by feeding kelp, Undaria pinnatifida or brown algae, while feeding laver will grow a dark red shell. Because of the irreversibility of abalone shell color, we can judge the origin and breeding mode of abalone by it. The whole shell is brownish red, which is wild abalone; The green one feeds abalone cultured in kelp to seawater cages in Dalian; The green in front and the brown in the back are abalone cultured in Qingdao intertidal zone; Shells with green and dark red stripes are abalone cultured in cages in Fujian, fed with kelp and seaweed. In the seafood market, we can often see the abalone marked with the words "Extra Large Wild Abalone", which is expensive, usually 30%-40% higher than the cultured abalone of the same specification. Many merchants use the characteristics that ordinary consumers can't correctly identify wild and farmed abalone, and use farmed abalone as wild abalone. If the spiral part of the shell top of abalone "back buttock" is green, it is an abalone artificially propagated on the seabed or cultivated in intertidal zone; If it is brownish green or reddish brown, it is abalone with wild seedlings. Because the growth environment in natural sea area is similar to the food intake, there is no obvious difference in nutritional components between the two kinds of abalone, but the sales price should be different. Age and Growth of Abalone Abalone is a family of slow-growing shellfish. It usually takes 1-4 years or more from fertilized eggs to commodity specifications of 6-8 cm. Taking Haliotis discus hannai in China as an example, it takes about 3 years to grow to 7 cm. The growth rate of abalone decreases with age, and the weight and shell length of young abalone increase faster than that of old abalone. The shell length of aged abalone grows slowly, but its shell tends to increase and thicken slightly. With the growth of abalone shell, it mainly extends forward, because the thin right side of abalone shell always grows faster than the thick and curly left side, so it grows to the left. Abalone shells will leave growth lines similar to tree rings during their growth. Whether the growth line is obviously related to the living environment, season and food types of abalone. In the fast-growing season, the growth line is obvious and the distance is wide; On the contrary, in the slow-growing season, the growth lines are dense and close. Usually, we can judge the age and growth of abalone shells according to their growth lines. Take Haliotis discus hannai in China as an example: 1 is about 25cm old, 4-5cm old and 7-8cm old. Sometimes it is not easy to judge the exact age of abalone shell directly from its pregrowth line. We can clean algae, oyster shells and lime worms attached to the shell surface and see their annual rings through the perspective of electric lights. Mr. Chen Xuezhi of China Food Culture Research Association is one of the scholars who are opposed to comparing abalone with eggs. He said that their research shows that the taste stimulation of different foods is very different, and its sensitivity is no less than that of acupuncture in traditional Chinese medicine. Other scientists believe that many human tastes come from amino acids. When a dish is cooked for 12 hours, it is equivalent to a chemical reaction in a chemical reactor for 12 hours. The longer the time, the more products, but if the time is too long, the products may be destroyed. Su Dongpo, a famous poet in the Northern Song Dynasty in China, once wrote a trip to abalone, praising the delicacy of abalone. Sue is also a great gourmet in the history of China. But in contemporary times, Yang Guanyi, a Hong Kong resident, pushed abalone food culture to the extreme. He won the highest honor badge award from the International Chefs Association for inventing a unique abalone cooking method. At present, only three people in the world have won this award. " It is he who makes abalone famous all over the world today. "Said to the beam. Twenty years ago, after a central leader ate the cooked abalone and praised it, Yang became famous overnight. Since then, tasting Yang Guanyi's "A Yi Abalone" has become a luxury food, and he has also become a rich man in the catering industry. Now the best "Auntie" abalone can sell for hundreds of thousands of yuan each. Last year, someone stole 15 abalone used as a town shop in Fu Lin Hotel. These Japanese three-headed net abalone are worth 30 thousand yuan each. Chef's position in China is not very high, but there are great differences between famous chefs and royal chefs. Ma Yongqiang said: "In the history of China, the fate of kitchen knives, shaving knives and food knives is different. The kitchen knife is always supreme! For thousands of years, almost all literati, including the emperor, are willing to eulogize the kitchen knife. "However, he thinks that China's food culture also involves too much power, and some top dishes have obviously symbolized people's status and identity. "Yan Baochi's spiritual satisfaction lies in wealth and high-grade, and these four dishes themselves are bureaucratic. In fact, China has been an official culture for thousands of years because many cultures are related to power. " He said. One noon, Zhang Jiancheng took me to visit their customers in Qingdao Wheat Island. These self-employed people go to Dalian Pacific Bao Company where Zhang is located to buy abalone fry every spring. When they come back, they will put them in closed shallow rocks. After 18 months, these abalones, which are basically close to wild farming, can grow to 8-9 cm without feeding, and the yield is quite high. This is very similar to the process of farmers farming and producing food, so some people call these farmers "Baonong" for short. "After these people buy abalone fry from us, they can quadruple it in 18 months," Zhang said with some excitement. Liu Yuan, 43, was the first Baonong I met. He has only been a Baonong for three years. Prior to this, he bought abalone from other abalone farmers and resold it to other places. Later, when he saw the huge profits from raising abalone, he also began to rent sea areas from the local village government. Hey, this industry is very profitable. "As soon as he saw us, he couldn't help saying. Liu has both the heroism and loyalty of Shandong people and the shrewdness of businessmen. He told me that in 200 1 year, he bought18,000 abalone fry, and later sold 1200 kg, earning 200,000 kg. Now, in addition to selling his own abalone, he also sells abalone from other abalone farmers to Dalian and Guangzhou. Today, another abalone farmer in the same village wants to sell the abalone stocked last year, so we followed Liu to the seaside 100 meters away to see how this family collects abalone. In the midday sun, the sea is slowly ebbing, and the famous Laoshan Mountain in Qingdao is looming in the distance along the direction of the sun. In the backlit sea, several figures in black diving suits floated up and down in the water, and they gathered several abalone caught in cages. On the shore, a woman in a pink cotton coat walked up and down nervously. Liu told me that she is the mistress of this land. Obviously, she is anxious about how many abalone can be harvested on this 1 mu dike slope. After all, this is their family's efforts and expectations in the past two years. According to Liu's experience, this time the embankment slope can harvest 65438+ ten thousand Jin of abalone. Three hours later, Liu took 100 Jin of abalone to his house first. After measuring one by one, his wife gave the man the money. Today, the purchase price of 8cm abalone is 165 yuan/kg. In the evening, these abalones will be sold to Dalian by air, and the air freight is 1.35 yuan/kg. The owner there has been waiting for many days. In the past few days, the supply of abalone in the whole China market has been somewhat tight due to the death of large-scale aquaculture abalone in the south. On this day, the price of this kind of 8cm abalone in Changxing market in Dalian is 185 yuan/kg, and once these abalones reach some high-end restaurants in Dalian, they can generally be sold to 750 yuan/kg at least. It is said that the profit of dried abalone is higher. I once saw Japanese dried abalone sold for 8800 yuan a catty in Hongqiao market, the largest aquatic product market in Beijing. The huge profits of abalone farming make it easy for Qingdao local government to lease a large number of sea areas to abalone farmers who are eager to get rich, and the village committee can earn income per mu 1200 yuan from the leased sea areas every year. Since the 27-kilometer coastline of Qingdao is now used for abalone culture, it is a great income for local people. The abalone pond built by Baonong at the seaside has long been a scenic spot along the coast of Qingdao. Professor Mai Kang Sen said: "In fact, the China government has given our people too much freedom. They want to raise it, and the village Committee has the final say, and the Oceanic Administration can't control it. " This fact has caused many coastal areas in China, and you can't enter them at will, because they belong to individuals at any time.