The Story of the Cafe there is a Nanlaisheng in Kunming

Luxurious memories, declining sadness.

If one day you sit in the Moulin Rouge in Paris, the most romantic in the world, while listening to the opera while drinking coffee, casually flipping through a yellowed World Travel Magazine, suddenly an article introduces: Nanlaisheng Cafe in Kunming, Yunnan, China.

This scene is bound to touch you in a foreign land and your hometown, and you can't wait to search for the words about Yunnan in other chapters. Unfortunately, this is the only one. Yes, this is the only Yunnan restaurant officially recommended by the World Tourism Organization-Nanlaisheng.

There are no young people who don't know about KFC and McDonald's, but Nanlaisheng Cafe may think it is a small shop opened by several young people in a small street. Suddenly put on the international stage, how can not surprise people, so quickly inquire everywhere. Kunming Catering Service Co., Ltd., the current owner of Nanlaisheng, is puzzled that the staff of its marketing department told you: there is no Nanlaisheng now. Nanlaisheng closed its business at the beginning of this year. In two months, it will become a food processing plant.

I'm afraid this news is even more shocking than seeing the introduction of the World Travel Magazine. However, people in Kunming over the age of 40 do not know the Nanlai Sheng in the middle of Jinbi Road, which is not only one of the earliest foreign restaurants in Kunming, but also Ho Chi Minh has worked underground here, and Tan Kah Kee is also a regular guest. Shen Congwen also specially chose it to entertain Hu Shi. even Zhou Enlai said that the coffee in it was exactly the same as the coffee he had drunk when he was studying in France.

An internationally renowned cafe is about to become a food processing plant, which is acceptable to the old Kunming people who used to sit in the south to taste black coffee and chew French hard-shell bread. Why did Nanlaisheng, the earliest representative of Western culture, go against the wind when the westerly wind was blowing slowly?

Looking at the history of Nanlaisheng, even the "Cultural Revolution" failed to stop its nirvana rebirth on Jinbi Road. Unexpectedly, after the demolition of Jinbi Road, Nanlaisheng moved the store to the opposite side of Yuantong Mountain, and the number of people became sparse, and even the nostalgic old Kunming people did not like to go near and look for it. Some people say that the Bridge incense Garden near Yuantong Mountain can be heated by fire and Dexi, but it is somewhat inappropriate for Nanlaisheng to be there. Because Nanlaisheng is not only a Western-style cafe, it also carries a heavy culture. From its initial petty affiliation to its final nostalgic classics, it means that it was not born as a place for public entertainment.

Although the Parisian leisure and free and romantic life style nurtured by Nanlaisheng has been shown to a certain extent in Kunming, it is, as Yu Jian believes, a superficial phenomenon with no roots. In France, Ho Chi Minh, Tan Kah Kee and Zhou Enlai alone. These names, Nanlaisheng will not have such a lonely fate.

Some people say that cafes are the skeleton of France, and nine times out of ten they are cafes with a random house number on a road. Dismantle them and France will fall apart. The history, background, prestige and fate of their respective cafes, like life, are full of joys and sorrows. The three famous cafes in France: LIPP Cafe, CAFEDEFLORE Cafe and LESDEUXMAGOTS Cafe are all becoming more and more famous because celebrities have left footprints. As the saying goes: wild geese leave their voices, people leave their names.

However, Nanlaisheng, a famous cafe, once sold rice noodles and noodles in order to survive, as one diner wrote on his blog: "I went to Nanlaisheng for a drink at noon today." Basically, it tastes good. It's just that sometimes the smell of sour meat and rolls has an impact. "

Even so, Nanlaisheng did not escape its tragic fate, when its soul has lost its original home in order to satisfy the public taste and attract diners. Disappear is not the best choice, can not continue to leave good memories, silently with the memory of Kunming yesterday homeopathy out of this era. I wonder if the memories of Nanlaisheng will disappear as soon as the old people who have seen the glorious moment of Nanlaisheng leave.

The exotic style brought by the meter-gauge railway

Although Kunming is not a petty bourgeoisie city now, it does not mean that it was not a very tasteful city in the past. If we want to pursue the petty bourgeoisie school with a long history, it can only begin with the construction of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway (Kunming, China to Vietnam) in 1901.

No matter what Chinese people think of this earliest international passage in China, it does not prevent French engineers from creating the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway, which is called the two wonders of the world together with the Suez Canal, at the same time, it also brings the romantic atmosphere unique to the French to Kunming, such as drinking coffee.

In 1910, the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway was opened to traffic, and the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway Station, the "Yunanfu" Railway Station, was built in Tangzi Lane near Guangju Street, just south of the intersection of Jinbi Road and Taihe Street. So it soon became lively near the station, and hotels, restaurants, bathrooms and shops all appeared at the right time. There are also many western restaurants, cafes and bakeries.

Except for a few who are French, the vast majority of these owners of French food and dim sum are Vietnamese. The area around the station became a gathering center for Vietnamese in Yunnan. After slow development, the French sycamore on both sides of Jinbi Road, with French and Chinese architecture on both sides, has become a resplendent and exotic bustling street.

In the early 1930s, a Vietnamese female boss opened a new western restaurant named Xinyue near the eastern section of Jinbi Road and the entrance of North back Street. According to relevant data, the storefront of Xinyue is not large, with only one facade, but there are three floors up and down, and the depth is relatively long, about 10 to 20 meters deep. There is a door in the backyard, which leads east to North back Street. On the first floor are solid high-back benches and tables like train seats, which are suitable for two or three friends or lovers to sit side by side without interfering with each other. The second floor and the third floor are elegant seats with a round table, which is suitable for everyone to sit around.

"the mountain is not high, if there is an immortal, then the spirit". Although Xinyue Dian is not big, because it has its own unique skills, of course, it is remarkable to live in Jinbi Road.

Details make a good name.

"eat" is only a simple word, but "delicious" is a responsible project. How can Xinyue Western Restaurant catch up in Jinbi Road's dazzling array of Western-style restaurants? there must be a unique skill. In the random notes of the diners later, you will find that Xin Yue actually focuses on the details.

In addition to the common western dishes such as mint sauce lamb chops, seasonal seafood salad, macaroni and cheese, onion and mushroom soup and oxtail soup, what impresses guests is a special dish-clam shell meat.

At first glance, the name of this dish is thought to be a rare western seafood clam shell meat. In fact, the main ingredient of clam shell meat is minced pork, it is fun to serve food utensils, using strange shapes, colorful sea clam shells. Mix minced pork with various seasonings such as coriander, spring onions, pepper, shrimp, soy sauce, salt, monosodium glutamate, eggs and small powder. put them in a sea clam shell the size of a child's palm, cover the other half, and steam.

The meat of clam shell made in this way tastes good, tender, fragrant, fresh and with some seafood. Some diners speculate that seafood is mainly from shrimp, and then the sea clam shell in full bloom makes diners associate. The seafood taste of pork is undoubtedly a miracle in Yunnan, a small plateau city far from the seaside.

Although this western food tastes good, it is also very expensive, and there are not many diners, so the Xinyue Western restaurant later changed to sell coffee, bread and other western snacks, and the name of the shop was changed to "Nanlaisheng" Cafe. Even if Nanlaisheng sells coffee, it will find another way and make self-control on the spot. The host chooses the best Vietnamese coffee beans to stir-fry until the heat is right, and then grind them with a special small mill. This kind of mill, from the outside, is a square wooden box with four pieces of top cover folded up, like a kiosk. There is a hole at the top of the pavilion, and the handle of the shake mill pierces through the hole. The lid can be opened to hold the coffee beans and pour out the ground coffee. The coffee-making utensils are also special. it is a tin coffee pot with interlayer, so that the brewed coffee and the dregs can be separated smoothly. The coffee cooked on the spot in this way is of course fragrant and delicious.

The most distinctive of the various pastries sold in Nanlaisheng is French hard-shell bread. This kind of bread has a hard scorched yellow shell with a soft inside. The shell is crisp and chewy, while the inner flesh is tough and chewy. It tastes slightly salty and slightly sour, especially boosting one's appetite and appetite.

Although Nanlaisheng has been closed for many days, some people are still posting online to find a place for the sale of French hard-shell bread, which shows what kind of nostalgia it left to the people of old Kunming.

A small restaurant is full of morality.

Nanlaisheng not only gave nostalgic old Kunming a special favor, but also once enjoyed international acclaim. In addition to the "diet" inside, what is important is the history and culture precipitated inside.

Yunnan, which is located in the southwest border, has always been a close neighbor across the water from Vietnam. In the 1940s, Vietnamese leader Chairman Ho Chi Minh went to Kunming to engage in underground revolutionary activities, leaving a story for the beautiful city of Kunming and the long-standing friendship between China and Vietnam.

In 1940, Ho Chi Minh came to Yan'an, China from the Soviet Union, and later went under the pseudonym Hu Guang to Guilin and other areas in southern China to participate in the anti-Japanese revolutionary work as a soldier of the eighth Route Army and a member of the Communist Party of China. In early 1940, Ho Chi Minh went to Chongqing to stay in the office of the eighth Route Army in Chongqing. At this time, Vietnamese Communist Party members set up the party's secret organ "overseas Department" in Kunming.

In February 1940, Ho Chi Minh came to Kunming with the help of members of the Chinese Communist Party. With the help of Ma Ziqing and Chen Fang of the Yunnan Underground Party of the Communist Party of China at that time, he got in touch with Feng Zhijian, Wu Ying, Hoang Van Hoan (alias Li Guanghua), members of the Vietnamese Communist Party, and Pham Van Dong (alias Lin Bojie) and Vo Nguyen Giap (alias Yang Huainan), who had just arrived in Kunming from Vietnam, and became core leaders.

Under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, the overseas Department of the Communist Party of Vietnam established an open organization entitled "Vietnamese people's response to China's Anti-enemy support Association." Revolutionary work was carried out in various places along the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway to expose the crimes of collusion between France and Japan at that time to oppress the Vietnamese people, and to mobilize Vietnamese compatriots to participate in the anti-Japanese struggle between China and Vietnam. Welcomed and supported by the people of Yunnan and overseas Chinese.

In June of the same year, after France was occupied by Germany, he instructed Vietnamese cadres in China to step up preparations for returning to Vietnam to master the revolutionary movement, and led some cadres to move to Guilin and the Sino-Vietnamese border. Left Kunming.

During his stay in Kunming, Ho Chi Minh lived on the second floor of a small building on Huashan South Road in Kunming. In order to cover his revolutionary work, he publicly identified himself as a baker in the Xinyue Western Restaurant. At present, we have no way to verify the identity of the female boss Nguyen Min Xuan, except that she is a distinguished family in Taiyuan, Vietnam. In those chaotic years, a weak woman had such a vision and dared to hide a glimmer of hope for her ancestors. What can't such courage and courage do to succeed? No wonder only her Nanlaisheng can appear in the official World Tourism Organization publication of countless large and small restaurants in Yunnan for thousands of years.

Elegant and firm in favor of southern laisheng

(source: Huaxia Times "Yu Jian: there are no good poets in Beijing")

Yu Jian seldom goes out and seldom takes part in literary activities. He said that all cities are the same. When I was a child, I wanted to go to Beijing and Shanghai, but now even Kunming is bored. He feels that Beijing is the place that loves daily life the least, and the state of daily life is the most common in the south.

People who know Yu Jian all know that this man has a gift for popularizing elegance and elegance on the surface, but in fact it is very elegant. Things like hanging out in cafes began as early as the 1970s. At that time, the most popular coffee shop in Kunming was the "Nanlaisheng" run by the Vietnamese on Nanping Street, with 50 cents a cup of coffee, reading books and listening to guitar playing and singing in the cafe. We didn't know if we had it or not.

Anyway, when it comes to some words related to cafes in modern Chinese, such as poetesses, such as love, they are very secretive. When asked about sensitive issues such as "what do you think of certain poetesses", they all use "or let's not say this" as an excuse to run away and slip through.

Based on this, Yu Jian has some disdain for those petty bourgeoisie who now sit in cafes. He said that the petty bourgeoisie thought that drinking coffee was fashionable, and the petty bourgeois literati regarded sitting in a coffee shop as a status symbol, but everyone knew in their hearts that such a life was just an accidental and scribbled appearance for most people.

The wind and flavor of the West spread into southern Xinjiang of China.

Dong Baoyan (consultant of this column, well-known writer and critic)

In the food history of Kunming, "Nanlaisheng" has become a thing of the past; in the hearts of several generations of Kunming, "Nanlaisheng" is always a beautiful legend. Not only because its development has been associated with the names of Ho Chi Minh, Zhou Enlai, Tan Kah Kee and other famous figures, not only because its existence and prosperity symbolize a kind of food, a style, and the glory that a country once wrote in Kunming, but also because it often brings a wind from the south or west to everyone who has enjoyed the good time.

In cities where Yunnan and Sichuan tastes are everywhere, the emergence of "Nanlaisheng" is itself an alternative. What is different from later "McDanglao" and "KFC" entering the Chinese market is that its masterpiece is so ordinary that it can buy a hard-shell bread for only a few cents; second, its shop is not luxurious, and people who come here to spend money do not have to pay too much attention to clothes; third, it has brought a little "foreign atmosphere" to this previously simple ancient city, giving it an open atmosphere a long time ago.

When I was in primary school, there were expatriate students from Vietnam. Using hard-shell bread for breakfast or dinner was a common hobby of students in that period. When it comes to "Nanlaisheng", there are few students in Kunming who do not know. Probably in the fourth grade, a Yue Qiao student surnamed Nguyen who lives in Xingren Street invited us to drink coffee inside for the first time. At first, I was surprised at the freshly brewed western drink with strong flavor for a long time, and then, brazenly asked for another cup. That night, my sleep was seriously affected, and the next day, Mr. Ruan told me that it was the coffee. From then on, I firmly believe that "Nanlaisheng" is not only good for hard-shell bread, but also authentic coffee.

However, the best impression is the "Nanlaisheng" in the 1950s and 1960s. In an era when the relationship between China and Vietnam was like "comrades plus brothers" and most Chinese knew little about France, Kunming, a place very far from Kyoto, could enjoy bread and coffee with French characteristics, and the manufacturers and businessmen were its former colonies, which is a strange phenomenon. Or, the western style and flavor have been continuously spread into southern China-who told it to have a Yunnan-Vietnam railway for a long time?