Source: Upstream News - Chongqing Morning Post
In a humble small façade on The Delicious Street of The Liberation Monument Bayi Road in Yuzhong District, only one product is sold: brine duck. Many old Chongqing people often come to patronize, cut half of the duck, and then take some duck claws and duck gizzards home by the way, eat, drink, nibble and play, Ba is very suitable!
Today, I want to swing with you, the story of the king duck.
"No duck can get out of Nanjing alive", this is a true portrayal of the duck-loving People of Nanjing. In fact, Chongqing people are also the "natural enemies" of ducks, and over the years they have eaten the Baishi Yiban duck, the Xiong Hanjiang roast duck, and the Yishi Camphor Tea Duck "King Duck", the "four famous ducks" of Chongqing. Among them, from a small brine stall to a banquet of the Prince of Cambodia, it has become the taste memory of countless Chongqing people. The story of Wang Duck is a business legend and the story with the most Chongqing flavor.
Wang Duck began in the 1930s and was founded by Wang Zhongji, a Baishi yiren. Poor, he went to the city at the age of ten to learn duck making and roasting wax techniques. In 1939, Wang Zhongji, who had been apprenticed for nearly ten years, went to work and set up his own portal to make brine duck and roast duck.
It is not easy for self-employed people, Wang Zhongji went from carrying baskets to the streets to selling, and later gradually stabilized, and set up his own stalls on Wenhua Street and Zhonghua Road.
During this period, Wang Zhongji also harvested his own happiness and married his wife Long Suhua. Long Suhua, known as the second sister-in-law of Wang, has a good knife worker, slaughters ducks evenly and breaks bones, moves clean and sharp, and can even make a duck equal into four parts, which was rumored by the majority of diners at that time.
In 1942, Wang Zhongji and his wife set up a stall in Fuzichi (Zhonghua Road, Zou Rongzhi intersection), officially played the "Wang Ji Duck" signboard, because the duck taste is delicious, unique flavor, loved by diners, Wang Ji duck gradually became famous, became the first choice for many high-end banquets at that time.
In 1959, "Wang Ji Duck" moved into the middle section of Bayi Road to set up a store, selling smoked duck (goose), white brine duck, hanging oven roast duck, camphor tea duck, soft roast duck, brine wing foot and so on. Among them, smoked duck is a famous product in the city throughout the year, white brine duck is a seasonal dish, camphor tea duck, soft roast duck, etc. are customized according to the needs of customer banquets.
Here, Wang Ji Duck ushered in a major transformation. In the early 1960s, Yu Yueze, then vice mayor of Chongqing, inspected the market, tasted smoked duck, and was full of praise, and changed the name of the "Wang Ji Duck" store to "Wang Duck" with a big stroke of the pen, a pun, which implied Wang Zhongji's surname and implied that Wang Duck was the king of duck dishes.
In 1989, when the Prince of Cambodia visited Chongqing, the king duck appeared at the banquet as a hospitality dish, which was unanimously praised by guests and hosts, and was once rumored to be a good story. The China Cuisine Association later presented Wang Zhongji with an award in recognition of his outstanding contributions.
The award presented by the China Cuisine Association mistakenly wrote Wang Zhongji as Wang Zhongjie
In the 1990s, due to urban transformation and demolition, Wang Duck lost the business façade of Bayi Road and the processing site of Xiaomi City. The old employees of Wang Duck raised their own funds to rent the façade and continued to sell Wang Duck on Bayi Road, passing on this gold signboard.
Today, The King Duck quietly drives on Bayi Road Delicious Street, as if it had not left in decades.
King duck is made of spices such as sannai, star anise, guangxiang, cloves, sand kernels, cardamom, cinnamon, cinnamon, grass fruit, fragrant pine, peppercorns, ginger and other spices, through the traditional processes of flavoring, embryo removal, drying, smoking, brine and other traditional processes, so that the duck meat tastes tender, crispy skin and bone, which is both a feast dish and a delicious food for light meals and drinks.
In 2014, the traditional art of making ducks was included in the Chongqing Intangible Cultural Heritage Project.
Source: Chongqing time-honored 141 hot pot WeChat public account, Chongqing Yuzhong District Cultural Center
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