In this fast-paced era, people tend to overlook the subtleties of life in their busyness, including those fond memories that are closely connected to the taste buds. "Food (Part 1)" is a collection of essays on food culture by many famous artists. The content of the book covers many aspects such as genres, flavors, ingredients, markets, home cooking, dishes, snacks, candies, candied fruits, tea and wine, beverages, fruits, customs, styles, stories, food lists, writings, etc., including articles by Zhao Heng, Xue Bing, Wei Minghua and many other famous artists, from the river fresh in Beiping to the crab banquet in Suzhou, from the Guangzhou Waijiang restaurant in the Qing Dynasty to Chef Zhu in Chinatown, each article is like a vivid picture, showing the profundity and regional characteristics of Chinese food culture.

In modern society, the prevalence of fast food culture has made people gradually lose their awe and love for food. On the takeaway platform, there are a variety of delicacies, but most of them are the products of standardized production, lacking the temperature and emotion of handmade. In contrast, the food described in the book contains the intention and wisdom of the maker, reminding us that true food does not come from the delicacies of the mountains and seas, but from the love of life and the pursuit of details.

Poetry in the smoke of the market

When you open "Food (Episode 1)", you will be greeted by a strong smell of fireworks. In "River Fresh in Beiping", Zhao Heng depicts the aquatic market and common food in Beiping with delicate brushstrokes. He wrote: "The fifties in which I lived as a child are probably a continuation of the life scene in Peking in the thirties and forties. "Most of the river fresh food in Beiping comes from Tianjin, and it is difficult for ordinary people to eat fish and shrimp on weekdays, and they can only occasionally satisfy their cravings during the New Year's Festival." Mr. Jin Qicong once said that even for the lower-class banner people who could live with 'hardcore crops' at that time, "mutton and chicken eggs can be eaten on the dinner table as peculiar smells, and onions and sauce are usually used to accompany food." "Usually, it is not without people who sell fish and shrimp in the streets and alleys, and the source is mostly purchased from the Wuqing area of Tianjin, mainly the large shrimp in Bohai Bay, most of which have to go through two or three hands before reaching the hands of hawkers. In the mid-fifties of the last century, Zhao Heng's house would appear outside the door of the prawns to sell, on the "pair" of selling, the general three cents a pair, the best one is a hand, about six or seven inches, can be sold for five cents a pair, this is not a bargain. Even so, people can still create delicious flavors in a limited number of ingredients, such as the crispy taste of fried prawns made by Zhao Heng's chef Feng Qi on the outside and tender on the inside, and the delicious taste of hot dumplings with shrimp filling, which are still mouth-watering even today. This focus on the diet of the common people allows us to see the most authentic side of food culture - it is not only a feast for dignitaries, but also a microcosm of ordinary people's lives.

　　當趙珩在《北平的河鮮》中細數“對蝦須用竹簍裝，蟹腳必以蒲草縛”的舊日講究時，那些沉睡在歷史裡的飲食儀式，忽然在字裡行間睜開眼睛。書中四十余篇文字，恰似四十塊文明的活化石，讓我們得以觸摸到中華文明最鮮活的基因序列。

The "eight pieces of crabs" in the Suzhou crab feast are shining with silver light, and each tool is in line with the creation law of the "Examination of the Work Record". Picking needles is like a lancet, and when the carapace is cut, you can clearly hear the sound of the literati of the Southern Song Dynasty in "The Qing Offering of the Mountain Family" dismantling crabs and drinking in the bamboo forest. When Wei Minghua dismantled the genetic map of "broken golden rice" in "Yangzhou Fried Rice Examination", the imperial chef on the dragon boat of Emperor Yang of Sui and the fried rice master in the alleys of contemporary Yangzhou completed the folding of time and space for thousands of years in the oil and salt heat. These civilization codes circulating between the spatulas are more vivid than the records in ancient books.

In the old Suzhou tea restaurant founded by Lu Wenfu, "the tail of the squirrel Guiyu is still fluttering when it jumps out of the oil pot", this picture is reminiscent of Zhang Dai's West Lake night banquet; When Xue Bing depicted in the south of Nanjing, "the crumbs of duck fat shortbread fell on the bluestone road, like a sprinkled moonlight", the sound of oars and lights of the Qinhuai River flowed from the late Ming Dynasty to the present; Hua Yonggen's Suzhou housewives stewed in pickled freshness, "the fresh air of spring bamboo shoots and the aged fragrance of salted meat whisper in the casserole"; Wang Zengqi remembered that the chicken fir fungus in the Kunming vegetable market murmured with dew. These words make the most ordinary market smoke full of poetry. In Zhou Huacheng's "I Am Running a Tofu Shop", the warm fragrance of tofu residue blooming in the cold night of the wax moon makes the entire winter night in the south of the Yangtze River gently curl up in front of the stove. These taste memories are passed down from generation to generation in family recipes and constitute emotions unique to Chinese. Every meal in this book is delicious, but the more rare things are outside of the meal. In the external world, the goal is to look inside oneself, and when eating becomes a practice, many of the gains are completely different.

Historical rings in gastronomy

If you open the "Lanzhou Beef Noodle Test", you will find that the noodle soup precipitates the afterglow of the Silk Road camel bell - the color scheme of "one clear, two white, three red and four green", which alludes to the color spectrum of the flying streamers of the Dunhuang murals; When psyllium recalls in the carved flower building of Dongshan that "the light spots leaked from the carved window beech danced on the eight treasure ducks", it is clear that we can see the ingenuity of the literati of the Ming and Qing dynasties transplanting garden aesthetics to the dining table; The restaurant of the Republic of China described by Yu Bin in "Nanjing's Food", in the voice of singing the name of the dishes in the hall, there is a rhyme of half of the history of Jinling city...... These fragments of history scattered among the dishes piece together a more vivid puzzle of civilization than the official history. Literati, gardens, and food support the cultural structure of Suzhou cuisine, of which gardens are the basis. Cultural people are elegant, the meaning of the drunkard lies in the poetry and painting, there is a pot of wine, a plate of smoked fish, and a number of white soup noodles, and it is also fun. Since ancient times, Suzhou people have created infinite possibilities in a limited space. Gardening, doing things, being a person, the world is a reason, we must control the rhythm of the development of things, if the pattern in the chest is enough, no matter how big or small it is not enough to fear, the key is that the big place can accommodate the world, and the small place can find the fine needle. The same should be true of a good life. These truths are slowly realized by people after middle age.

Xue Bing's "Gossip Outside Food (1)" is like a knowledgeable guide, leading us to explore the cultural code of food in ancient books. From the record of "gourmet food, steamed fish and turtles" in "Mozi Ciguo", to the description of "those who are warm-clothed and gourmet must be at home" in "Han Feizi Liu Anti", from the regional differences in Zhang Hua's "Naturalist Chronicles" that "people in the southeast eat aquatic products, and people in the northwest eat land animals", to Qian Yong's incisive insight in "Dialect is like a dialect, different everywhere, as long as the taste", the author has a wide range of references and examines food in the long river of history, allowing us to see the blood connection between food culture and Chinese civilization. The words in ancient books such as "Book of Songs" and "Chu Ci" are not only literary treasures, but also the source of food culture.

When Hu Hongxia explores "the molecular cooking of Zen in vegetarian banquets" in "Eight Notes on Vegetarian Cuisine", and when Gao Qing records the use of 3D printing by Michelin chefs to reshape the texture of osmanthus sugar lotus, the dialogue between tradition and modernity unfolds on the plate. This kind of innovation is not a break, just like the nirvana of Dongpo meat in a cast iron pot - the dietary concept in Yuan Mei's "Suiyuan Food List" is reborn in low-temperature slow cooking technology.

The book's experiment on the restoration of the ancient method of "The Qing Offering of the Mountain Family" allows people to see the living inheritance of the Song people's food aesthetics in the contemporary era. Those pickles that follow the ancient method of pickling continue the civilization narrative of microorganisms in glass jars; The kimchi made with the "Su Method" contained in the "Qi Min Yao Shu" allows the farming wisdom of the Northern Wei Dynasty to continue life in the refrigerator. This kind of gustatory dialogue across time and space constitutes the most vivid footnote of modernity in food civilization.

A taste container for nostalgia

"The east gate buys bones, and the acyl sauce orders orange shallots. Steamed chicken is the most well-known, and there are many beautiful fish and turtles. The fireworks in the Song Dynasty market in Lu You's poem are still lingering in the depths of the streets and alleys for thousands of years. Nowadays, when we click on the food delivery app in the middle of the night, it is not only the appetite of contemporary people that flickers under the neon lights, but also the kitchen wisdom that sleeps in ancient books is awakening in modern life in unexpected ways.

The "steamed bear" technique recorded by Jia Siyi in the Northern Wei Dynasty in "Qi Min Yaoshu" needs to be pickled in layers of sake, green onion white, and Sichuan peppercorns, which is similar to the "Xijing Yaki" technique of contemporary Japanese restaurants. This tacit understanding of taste spanning thousands of years is like the hidden inheritance of cultural genes. The "rotary cut mackerel" in "Tokyo Menghualu" is "as light as a cicada's wings", which is exactly the same as the sashimi plating aesthetics of today's Japanese restaurants. Those dietary codes that have been sealed by the dust of time have been brought back to life in the modern kitchen.

In the outer building of Hangzhou Lou, the chefs still follow the ancient method of "crab stuffed orange" in the "Qing Yilu", filling the crab roe with oranges and steaming. When the sweet and sour fruit aroma blends with the sweetness of the crab meat, diners taste not only the court flavor of the Southern Song Dynasty, but also the fresh beating of cultural blood. This seamless connection of ancient and modern techniques confirms the strong vitality of food culture. When Suzhou housewives follow the ancient method of "spring bamboo shoots and winter pickling" to make pickled fresh rice, and when Yangzhou fried rice is churned out in an iron pot with the luster of "broken golden rice" in the Sui and Tang dynasties, food production has become an ecological practice of "time in the sky, and gas in the earth" in the "Examination of Work".

Re-reading these words in the era of fast food with the proliferation of electronic mustard, I suddenly realized that food has always been a container for nostalgia. Zhao Heng's river crab feast in Beiping in autumn, the color of the crab shell is as green as jasper, condensing the autumn sound of the entire ancient capital; Hua Yonggen's record of the crisp sound of the Suzhou crab banquet silverware colliding is the materialized form of the collective memory of the literati in Jiangnan. When we are looking for childhood memories in the boiling and burning in the depths of the hutongs, "Food (Part 1)" uses the rigor of philology and literary brushstrokes to build a taste bridge to the depths of civilization between the bowls and bowls. This anthology of food and drink will eventually become a poetic fortress against cultural homogenization.