The scene of the siu mai food cultural and creative display competition
Cui Rui, the fifth-generation descendant of Cui Tielu, is making knives
The 2024 Hohhot Time-honored Brand Integrity Innovation Development and Financial Support Seminar awarded 16 enterprises that were awarded the "Hohhot Time-honored Brand".
Children learn to experience making roasted wheat in Lao Suiyuan Store ■Photo by reporter Liu Qingyu
The time-honored brand Deshunyuan participated in the World Dairy Congress
Nation Nebula
The time-honored brand is a "golden signboard" nurtured in the history of industrial and commercial development in the mainland, with unique products, skills and services that have been passed down from generation to generation, and play an important role in meeting the consumption needs of residents.
In recent years, the Hohhot Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government have attached great importance to the cultivation, identification, inheritance and protection of time-honored brands, and have taken multiple measures to promote the development of integrity and innovation and the consumption of "domestic trendy products", and promote the protection and inheritance of time-honored traditional crafts and national skills.
Excavation and protection to find out the "family background" of time-honored brands
In Hohhot Shaomai First Street, you can see a siu mai restaurant every few steps. A basket of steaming roasted wheat, accompanied by a pot of thick brick tea, is the fireworks in the hearts of Hohhot people, and it is also a must-eat delicacy in the mouths of tourists.
As a delicious delicacy, siu mai is undoubtedly one of the core attractions of Hohhot tourism. From the back street of Wuta Temple in the east, to Qiliu Street in the west, the 1,100-meter-long Chinese Roasted Wheat Food Street is connected to the Wuta Temple and other tourist attractions, and the whole street is filled with the fragrance of Roasted Wheat, which is an important tourist block in Hohhot. Deshunyuan, Qinyuan, Lao Suiyuan and many other time-honored roasted wheat restaurants are particularly prosperous, and the daily passenger flow is continuous, forming a unique urban landscape.
Hohhot's time-honored brands originated in the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, and these long-established enterprises and brands enjoy a good reputation among the people. In recent years, Hohhot has paid more attention to the sorting and opening of time-honored brands, and conducted a thorough investigation of time-honored brands in the region. According to the survey data, there are 59 well-documented time-honored brands in Hohhot from 1900 to 2024, covering many industries such as catering and services.
Since last year, Hohhot City has carried out the identification of Hohhot time-honored brands, and there are currently 17 "Hohhot time-honored brands" in the city, including 3 national shopping malls, Jinyuan Group Hohhot Special Distillery and Datang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. as "China time-honored brands", and 12 "Inner Mongolia time-honored brands" such as Deshunyuan, Laosuiyuan, Yushengzhai and Yunzhong Liquor, which have initially formed a time-honored brand development pattern of step-by-step identification and gradient cultivation.
In order to do a good job in the excavation and protection of time-honored brands, Hohhot City has comprehensively figured out the "family background" of time-honored brands, focusing on time-honored brands serving residents, and formulated the "Hohhot Time-honored Brand Evaluation Specifications" to further protect and tap time-honored brand resources. In 2024, Inner Mongolia Datang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (trademark: Tongtaiyong) was recommended to be awarded the "China Time-honored Brand" by the Ministry of Commerce, and four companies were recognized as "Inner Mongolia Time-honored Brands".
Inheritance and promotion to enhance brand influence and awareness
"I can't imagine that the oily siu mai can be made into such a lovely cake, and it is still served in a cage drawer, which is so interesting!" At the Intangible Cultural Heritage Festival, Zhang Xinran, a tourist from Shanxi, said happily after tasting the siu mai of the time-honored brand Deshunyuan.
In order to further expand the influence and popularity of time-honored brands, at the beginning of this year, Hohhot City organized six "Inner Mongolia time-honored brands", including Datang Pharmaceutical, Yunzhong Liquor, Yushengzhai, Deshunyuan, Laosuiyuan, and Hohhot Distillery, to participate in the 2024 7th Inner Mongolia Intangible Cultural Heritage Festival and Inner Mongolia Time-honored Brand and Employment Assistance Workshop Exhibition jointly sponsored by the Department of Culture and Tourism, the Department of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, and the Department of Commerce of the Autonomous Region.
At the event site, time-honored enterprises in Hohhot City displayed characteristic products and cultural skills, and enterprises such as Lao Suiyuan and Deshunyuan also carried out on-site production and exchange and tasting of roasted wheat snacks.
At the same time, Hohhot City guides time-honored enterprises to carry out promotional activities in key business districts such as Zhongshan Road, promotes time-honored brand characteristic products, and displays the essence of time-honored enterprise culture and historical skills inheritance. Organize time-honored enterprises to participate in activities such as "Time-honored Brand Carnival" and "Chinese Food Market", continuously broaden the sales channels of enterprises, cultivate and expand the scale of time-honored brands, and enhance the influence and popularity of time-honored brands.
"The industrial assembly line kitchen knives currently used on the market are made of thin materials, and it is very difficult to cut the tendons of beef and mutton. However, the kitchen knife made by Cui Tielu is very thick, and the steel clamp in the middle is much more than the knife of the industrial assembly line, so it is very weighty in the hand, and it is no problem to cut twenty or thirty catties of beef and mutton in a row, as long as it is properly maintained, it will be sharper and sharper. On a live broadcast platform, the anchor was introducing the products of Cui Tielu, a time-honored brand in Hohhot, which attracted many netizens to watch.
After years of development, the development vitality of Hohhot's time-honored enterprises has been continuously enhanced, and the brand influence has been continuously improved. The Hohhot Municipal Department of Commerce gathers the strength of all sectors of society to further enhance the cultural connotation and supply quality of time-honored brands, organizes and holds the "Time-honored Brand Carnival" activity, focuses on brand advantages, and promotes time-honored brands to enter shopping malls, blocks, communities and platforms; Expand offline consumption scenarios and create more immersive, interactive, and experiential consumption scenarios.
Integrity and innovation to create high-quality products and services
Walking into the national nebula, the reporter saw that more than 10 international and domestic first store brands have been introduced here, and at the same time, professional designers are invited to each floor to carefully design to create an immersive consumption environment, which has become an Internet celebrity check-in place for young people's trendy consumption.
Founded in 1954, Minzu Shopping Mall is a commercial enterprise with a long history in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, with a business area of 81,000 square meters. Over the years, the National Holding Group has made positive contributions to the economic construction of Hohhot and the autonomous region, and has been awarded the China Time-honored Brand, Jinding Department Store, National Civilized Unit, National Green Shopping Mall, "National" Well-known Trademark, etc., providing more than 20,000 jobs for the society and being a banner of commercial development in the Autonomous Region. Over the decades, ethnic malls have profoundly influenced the lives of generations and have persistently led the city's fashion and consumption trends. As a "Chinese time-honored brand" enterprise, the gold-lettered signboard of the national shopping mall is still timeless.
Since the development of Lao Suiyuan siu mai, the authentic taste and the culture inherited from the cuisine are the most important, and both are indispensable, which is also the basis for the development and continuation of traditional cuisine. In the process of development, Lao Suiyuan Shaomai has been sparing no effort to develop and innovate, excavate the history and culture of Shaomai, and build brand awareness. Lao Suiyuan is constantly innovating, improving the traditional production process, and introducing healthier and healthier varieties of siu mai, which not only loses the traditional taste, but also adds modern food concepts.
In order to make breakthroughs in integrity and innovation, the relevant departments of Hohhot encourage and guide time-honored enterprises to keep up with market consumption demand, accelerate the creation of consumption scenarios, and develop products and services that adapt to new consumption, have regional characteristics, are rich in cultural connotation, and have excellent quality. To promote the integrated development of time-honored brands online and offline, Datang Pharmaceutical, Lao Suiyuan, Deshunyuan and other enterprises have developed service models such as online booking and online ordering store pick-up by opening official accounts or relying on third-party platforms, and expanded online sales channels.
Hohhot Daily reporter Yang Caixia text/picture