飲食果子

Inside wine houses, cooks who prepared food to accompany drink were called chafan liangjiu boshi, while the young shop workers were generally called dabo. Neighborhood women, with blue-patterned towels tied at the waist and their hair dressed high, changed hot water and poured wine for customers; they were popularly called juncao. Other townspeople entered wine houses and, seeing young men drinking, carefully offered services such as buying goods, summoning women, or carrying and transferring money; these were called xianhan. Others came forward to change hot water and pour wine, sing, or present fruit and aromatic medicines, receiving money when the customers dispersed; these were called sibo. Lower-status singing women might arrive without being summoned, sing before the table, receive a small gift of money or goods, and leave; they were called zhake, also associated here with dajiuzuo. Still others sold medicines, fruit, radishes and similar goods, distributing them among seated customers whether or not they had asked to buy, then collecting money; this practice was called sazan. Meng says such people were found everywhere.

Only the Tan Zhang and Rulao Zhang establishments at Zhouqiao did not allow the people described above into their shops. They also did not sell the usual dishes to accompany wine, serving instead good preserved vegetables together with a single kind of fine wine.

The foods grouped under chafan included baiwei soup, head soup, new-style quail soup, “three-crisp” soup, two-color kidneys, shrimp-and-mushroom and chicken-and-mushroom dishes, hunpao-type soups, freshly ordered noodles, yuqi pieces, Qunxian soup, “mock pufferfish,” white zha-pickle, mandarin fish, “mock yuan-fish,” jueming dumplings and jueming soup, minced or pickled meat, vinegar tuotai, stuffed intestine, fish preparations, double-cooked perilla fish, “mock clams,” white meat, jiamianzi, finely cut meat, hu cakes, soup bones, milk-cooked mutton, the preparation written 𤊯羊, naoting mutton, lamb-horn pieces, kidney, goose and duck, steamed assortments, lychee kidney, huanyuan kidney, roasted breast, fine oven items, lotus duck skewers, wine-roasted tripe, light-sauce “hanging-thread” lamb head, oven-roasted mutton, lamb-head skewers, goose-and-duck skewers, chicken skewers, rabbit platters, stir-fried rabbit, scallion-dressed rabbit, “mock wild fox,” golden-thread tripe soup, stone-tripe soup, “mock roast roe deer,” fried quail, stir-fried lung, stir-fried clams, stir-fried crab, the item written 渫蟹, “wash-hand crab,” and more. Several names and boundaries in this dense register remain philologically uncertain; Galok preserves them rather than inventing modern recipes.

Orders were called for as needed, item by item, and no flavor or dish was supposed to be unavailable. If customers separately requested altered or specially prepared dishes to accompany wine, those too were supplied immediately.

Outside sellers also brought in roast chicken, warmed duck, lamb feet, prepared lamb head, crisp-sinew items, ginger shrimp, wine crab, preserved roe-deer and venison, steamed foods, seafood, seasonal fruit, freshly cut lettuce and greens, and bamboo shoots from the Western Capital.

There were also boys in white cloth shirts with blue-patterned towels, carrying white porcelain jars and selling pungent or highly seasoned vegetables.

Other vendors carried small trays of dried fruit and sweets: freshly roasted ginkgo nuts and chestnuts; Hebei goose pears; pear strips, dried pears and pear flesh; prepared jujubes, jujube rings, pear rings and peach rings; walnut meat, yazaos and haihong fruit; Jiaqingzi and crabapple preparations; dark plums, plum preparations and cherry preserves; Western Capital “rain pears,” pointed pears, gantang pears, Fengqi pears and Zhenfu “turbid pears”; Heyin pomegranates; Heyang hawthorn and hawthorn strips; Shaguan quince; grapes; Western Sichuan milk sugar, lion sugar and the sweet called shuangfeng’er; olives, warm-region mandarins, miancheng citrus, kumquats, longan and lychee; the lotus-root item written 召白藕; sugar cane; drained pears, dried crabapple, branch-dried fruit, dried banana, renmianzi, balanzi, hazelnuts, torreya nuts, and other goods. The list names products and places of origin, but does not by itself reconstruct exact transport routes or whether every fruit arrived fresh.

There were also many kinds of honeyed preserves, aromatic-medicated fruits, jarred preserved plums, persimmon paste, small aromatic pellets, small compressed teas and pengsha pills. Other outside sellers offered tender mutton, assorted buns, pork and mutton parcels, roast meats and dried meats, and preserved preparations such as yuban zha, the form written 𤜱鮓, and pianjiang.

Smaller wine shops also sold dishes to accompany drink, such as pan-fried fish, duck, stir-fried chicken and rabbit, cooked meat, plum sauce, blood soup and starch-thickened soup. Meng says each portion cost no more than fifteen qian.

Wine houses generally had halls and courtyards, with covered corridors partly screened from view and rows of small private rooms. Hanging windows looked onto flowers and bamboo; curtains were lowered, women could be summoned to sing and entertain, and each party could obtain a measure of seclusion and convenience.