Impression of Chaozhou

I am familiar with the name of the city Chaozhou because of the high density of Chaozhou beef hotpot restaurants in Beijing. Chaozhou is in the east of Guangdong Province, next to Fujian. Together with the adjacent Jieyang, Shantou and ***, it forms the "Chaoshan" area. The small town is not big, about half of Guangzhou, and a Hanjiang River flows through the city and flows into the sea. Next to Han Jiang is Han Mountain, both named after Han Yu. It was early summer when I came to Chaozhou, and the heat wave was rolling, with almost no temperature difference between morning and evening. The humid air is accompanied by the fragrance of plumeria flowers, which smells like some tourist cities in Southeast Asia. I'm here on a business trip, only for two days. A local colleague took me there to eat and drink, mainly in the ancient city.

The first Teochew phrase I learned was "jia dad", which means drinking tea. Tea culture is prevalent here. It is said that every household will have a sea of ??tea. Friends and customers come to drink and chat, which can cover up the occasional awkward silence. When I was walking around the streets, various merchants selling clothing, mobile phones, stationery, and vegetables also set up a table of tea. This kind of mix and match did not seem out of place in the atmosphere of the market. Businesses are not done in a righteous way, and you are a customer when you walk in.

Chaozhou’s specialty tea is called Fenghuang Dancong, and its name is full of poetry. What’s interesting is that the cities I visited recently all have their own tea varieties, such as Biluochun in Suzhou and Longjing in Hangzhou. I don’t know much about tea, but I always taste it when I go there. Remember the taste and leave some memories for this city.

There are also some herbal tea shops on the streets of Chaozhou. The signs list various symptoms, corresponding to different styles of herbal tea, which seems to be a cure-all for all diseases. I bought a cup of heat-clearing and cough-relieving medicine, and the clerk asked me in detail whether I coughed during the day or at night. The price is not cheap, a small cup costs more than 20, and it has a strong flavor of Chinese medicine. It was called herbal tea, but it was very hot and made me sweat all over after drinking it.

This word is everywhere in the streets of Chaozhou, and I don’t know its meaning at first. In fact, it is a variety of rice, noodles, and other processed foods. At most it can be regarded as beef offal rice noodles, which is very similar to rice noodles. People here love to eat and are good at it. My friends from Guangzhou, the city of gourmet food, were all impressed. When she posted in her circle of friends that she had arrived in Chaozhou, her friends in Chaozhou responded with a screen full of dish names. Please read it again and leave your saliva silently.

Beijing’s mutton-shabu-shabu takes the lamb to the extreme, and Chaoshan’s beef hotpot specializes in playing with various parts of the cow. The snowflake meat is placed in a colander and raised and lowered four or five times. The meat is still stained with blood. Melts in your mouth. A slotted spoon can be placed on top of the soup to keep it warm. While eating, local friends joked that "no cow can leave Chaozhou alive"

It is said that Chaozhou people all know that "Dangdangdang" refers to Guangji Bridge, and the stem of "Dangdangdang" comes from A Douyin video of the Guangji Bridge light show went viral on the Internet.

Guangji Bridge during the day is one of the four ancient bridges. Due to the limitations of ancient bridge repair technology, the middle of the bridge was connected by boats, allowing people to pass when connected. When disconnected, it plays the role of flood discharge and navigation. Praised by Mao Yisheng as "the world's earliest opening and closing bridge", the Guangji Bridge at night is famous on Douyin. The colorful lights shine on the bridge and change with the rhythm of the music. There are also lights echoing on Hanshan Mountain behind. Guangji Bridge is really a good marketing case and a business card of Chaozhou. It not only has historical stories, but also caters to the visual preferences of modern young people, giving the ancient bridge a second spring.

It is said that the West is a maritime civilization that is more individualistic and pays more attention to rules and integrity, while the East is an agricultural civilization that is more collective and conservative. Chaozhou people can be regarded as an organic combination of the two. They are open to adventure and have strong traditions. Because it is close to the sea and encounters an increasingly dense population, Chaoshan people have taken "red-headed boats" to explore the outside world very early. Among the more than 50 million Chinese living overseas, more than one-fifth are Chaozhou people. Chaozhou people account for 1/4 of the wealth on the global Chinese rich list. Nearly 30 of the top 100 Chinese rich people are from Chaoshan, Southeast Asia. About 70% of the assets in 11 countries are in the hands of Chinese people, and Chaozhou people account for about half of them. So Chaoshan people can confidently say:

The most famous Chaoshan businessman is Mr. Li Ka-shing, who also mainly donated funds for the repair of Guangji Bridge.

Whenever you go to a city with a bit of history, you will go to the ancient city to experience the life of the old local residents. Big cities always look the same. Food, clothing, housing and transportation are basically the same chain. You drink Starbucks coffee, visit Wanda Plaza, live in Evergrande's house, and eat at the Golden Arches. In this environment, only the ancient city may still be able to find the original unique life style of the local people.

Walking in the alleys of the ancient city in the early morning, electric bicycles pass by one after another. The sound of horns makes it difficult to sleep in. There are all kinds of vegetables, freshly killed fish, and fruits with unknown names on the vegetable stalls. I found a breakfast stall with the most people and bought a spring roll, squatting on the street to eat it.

While walking through Jiadi Lane, I happened to walk into a Chaozhou folk house museum. The ticket is 8 yuan. The first floor introduces some Chaozhou customs, Chaozhou dialect, Kung Fu tea, Chaozhou businessmen’s letters, Chaozhou music and drama. The second floor is the training base for Chao Embroidery, where a group of gray-haired old people are doing embroidery work. I don’t know if it’s a hobby or if I make a living from it. The fourth floor overlooks the entire Chaozhou ancient city. The view is very good. Nearby are the layers of old roofs, and in the distance the high-rise buildings of the new city overlap with the mountains.

The taste of ancient cities in various places is very similar, from the hutongs in Beijing, the small bridges and flowing water in Suzhou, to the Kazanqi folk houses in Ili, the strong atmosphere of life is revealed from the doorstep of the house to the small streets and alleys.

It seems that every old object in every corner has a story waiting for you to discover, but it is not like a museum for people to observe through glass, they still maintain their vitality.

I don’t know which boss has such good imagination and execution ability. Karaoke and foot pinching are combined into a new category. There is more than one "K Song Foot Massage" in Chaozhou. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I didn't have time to experience it. But that sour and refreshing image is already in my mind. I lie down on a recliner, hold a microphone in my hand, and put my feet into the boiling water. A stream of heat flows down my legs to the top of my head. When I feel it, the man just clicks "I will die." "Love", the girl clicked "Qinghai-Tibet Plateau", and when she saw that she couldn't sing the high notes, the masseur pressed the Yongquan point hard, everything was perfect.

Traveling is a game of finding differences and finding similarities.

There is insight in differences, and insights in similarities.

Everyone has their own fun.