The history of Yonghe Garden

1939, a man named Bian Yongsheng bought the "Snow Garden" and opened a shop in the current "Qingyun Building" in Gong Yuan West Street. It was officially named "Yonghe Garden", which means "eternal harmony and wealth" and covers an area of about 100 square meter. In the early days, there were three bungalows, one rented a tea stove to sell tea, and the other rented a small hotel. The owner of the small and medium-sized courtyard operated by himself, selling biscuits and dried silk. After several years of painstaking efforts, since 1942, the owner has recovered the rent, unified the dim sum business, and hired Yin Changgui, a famous pastry chef, to make dim sum in the store. At this time, the perm-dried silk and crisp sesame cakes in Yonghe Garden have been quite influential in Confucius Temple and famous in Jinling. Generally, the dried silk managed by tea houses is boiled dried silk in Yangzhou, while the scalded silk in Yonghe Garden is not only as thin as cotton thread, but also called threading. What is more distinctive is that boiling water has been scalded several times, and there is no beany smell, and the taste is soft and elastic. "Yonghe source" biscuits are more distinctive. Generally, the biscuits in the store are crispy and oily, while the biscuits in Yongheyuan are "Sanqi oil noodles with four crispy doors", and the varieties will change at any time. * * * There are more than 20 varieties. Sesame cakes are known as "crab shell yellow" because of their golden color. After Master Yin Changgui came to the store, he added some kinds of Yangbang snacks, such as Sanding Steamed Bun, Beicui Steamed Dumpling, Crystal Steamed Bun, Melaleuca Oil Cake, Crab Yellow Steamed Bun, Steamed Dumplings, etc., and the business was very prosperous. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, with the expansion of the business of 1946, "Yonghe Garden" was turned into a two-story building with a business area of more than 270 square meters, which can accommodate more than 100 small square tables, and began to take shape.