Chinese food literature exhibition collector Ermao: old recipes make innovative dishes possible

Cover News reporter Xue Weirui May 15, the upcoming "Chengdu Panda Asian Food Festival", "Chinese food (recipes) literature exhibition" as one of the focus of the launch of one of the special exhibitions, is China's history for the first time in the museum of food Recipes literature exhibition. Ermao, a collector of Chinese culinary literature, selected 1,500 recipes from the Ming and Qing dynasties to the 1980s from his decades of recipe collection, and showed the history, changes and development of Chinese culinary culture (recipes) in an all-round way, taking the era, region, cuisine, events and celebrities as the main clues. Ermao, a collector of Chinese culinary literature For this culinary literature exhibition, Ermao reorganized his collection of nearly 30. ""Many people ask me why I collect, in fact I don't exactly collect consciously, I explore naturally out of love."" In addition to the pleasure of collecting itself, he gains more meaning beyond collecting through recipes. The 30 years of collecting old recipes are also the 30 years he has been engaged in food-related work. As a lover and researcher of Chinese cuisine, in addition to his status as a collector of Chinese culinary literature, Ermao is also an expert in the subject of non-genetic inheritance and protection of Chinese cuisine, as well as a pioneer of modern Chinese culinary poetry. Ermao organizes the collection of recipes Chinese cuisine is not extinguished "I have opened restaurants in Chongqing, Chengdu, and Beijing for 30 years, developed creative dishes for 30 years, read countless books on food, and written many articles on food, but it was not until I was confronted with these old traditional recipes that I truly felt the vastness of Chinese food culture." Decades in these old recipes carefully traced, Ermao saw in them the pulse of the development of Chinese cuisine, felt is the development of the food culture waves and waves, as well as the inheritance and continuation of generations. Chinese Beautiful Cuisine, published in New York in 1923 The earliest in the collection comes from the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty. "China's food culture reached its first peak in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and its zenith in the late Qing and early Republican years, a state of affairs that lasted until the early 1950s, until food culture was suppressed in the 1960s." In Ermao's collection of literature from the 1960s onwards, there are a considerable number of oil-printed recipes, and he is y moved by these informally published documentary recipes, "The fact that there is still a dark current in the suppressed era shows the stubbornness and immortality of Chinese food culture. The so-called immortality of Chinese cuisine is precisely due to the extremely vitalized development of Chinese food culture over thousands of years." Chinese People's Liberation Army Recipes In the 1980s, shortly after the reforms and opening up, food culture was able to redevelop. ""Like the general outburst of poetry, philosophy and other social sciences in this era, traditional food culture was also presented with new colors, aromas, flavors, shapes, utensils and meanings."" Of the many culinary masters who emerged during this period, and their writing and dictation of recipes and food history, Ermao considers them "authentic and insightful." The collection of recipes stopped in the 1980s (a very small number of particularly good ones were collected in the 1990s), and Ermao believes that, from the mid-to-late 1990s onwards, recipes were increasingly copied and generally lacked originality, to the extent that the vast majority of recipes from this period onwards have no collector's value. History and Innovation Recipes without innovation have no value, and the purpose of tracing tradition is to find the roots of "newness". For Ermao, the study of traditional recipes is the process of excavation, inheritance, transformation and utilization, and it is the old recipes and masters that make it possible to innovate and pass on dishes today. Cuisine requires creativity, and creativity cannot be separated from the study of tradition, and the study of old recipes is a necessary condition for pushing the boundaries of innovation. ""I advocate innovation based on tradition, and innovation that leaves tradition is not valid."" Ermao believes that the current popularity of the new school of Sichuan cuisine, the new school of Cantonese cuisine, the new school of Huaiyang cuisine, etc., but if you leave the tradition of the traditional cuisine, the new school of ""new"" is difficult to have a long standing. Rural Food Supply Certificate The exhibition is divided into three categories, namely the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Republic of China, and the post-national period, based on the historical development of the cuisine. In addition to these three categories, the featured recipes will also be displayed in separate counters based on clues such as regions, cuisines, events and celebrities. For example, ""Sichuan Literature" is one of the special cabinets set up separately, with nearly 300 volumes (pieces) of recipes and food lists related to Sichuan and Chongqing, as well as a variety of grain, oil and meat stamps of Chengdu from the 1950s to the early 1990s. "Sichuan food list" also has a separate display cabinet, including Chengdu Restaurant, Jinniu Hotel, Jinjiang Hotel, Minshan Hotel, efforts to meals and other famous hotels and restaurants in Sichuan food list. One of the most special ones is the "Chengdu Man Han Quan Xi" which was prepared in 1959 under the guidance of Lan Guang Jian, a generation of Sichuan cuisine culinary masters, and operated by his direct disciples, masters Zhang Song Yun and Kong Daosheng, ""This is a very rare document and will be displayed as a separate booth."" There are many other documents with special status like "Chengdu Manhan Full Seat", which will be presented separately as special booths at the Gourmet Document Exhibition. For example, "In the foreign language Chinese cookbook cabinet there is a copy of "Chinese American Cuisine" which is the earliest known English-language Chinese cookbook in the world, published in New York in 1923." There is also ""The Processing and Preparation of Famous Chinese Foods" from the 1950s and 1960s, a set of six books presented in a separate cabinet, ""The literature in this series is oil-printed, hence the limited number of copies printed, and is also very valuable from a collection point of view."" During the 1960s through the 1980s, China's major steel companies, including Shougang, Pangangang, and Anshan Steel, had their own recipes. In addition to these, there are also logistical recipes of the People's Liberation Army and recipes of the China Railway Bureau displayed in a special cabinet. "A special feature was also set up for "Grain and Oil Supply Certificates". ""Grain and oil supply certificates are a product of a special era. It can be seen that in those times of material scarcity, we needed to eat for survival and also craved for food more because of hunger, which is presented with historical significance."