Jagged Warlord

Huaiqing Mansion is a major town in northern Henan, and the Daoqing Railway, which crosses Henan and intersects the Beijing-Han Railway, passes through here.

The Daoqing Railway was built by the British and Italian cooperation company Fu.Later, Fu Company encountered difficulties such as shortage of funds, and the British came forward to request the Qing government to build the Daoze Railway (from Daokou to Zezhou, Shanxi). The construction cost of the original section of the Daoqing Railway was used as a loan from the Qing government to Fu Company.In this way, the difficulties of the Fu company were passed on to China.Daoqing Railway is 150 kilometers long from Daokou to Qinghua Town. Started in July 1902, the construction was divided into three sections, and it was not completed until January 7 in Tsinghua Town.

The Fu company's theft of coal mining rights in Jiaozuo was not only a manifestation of the government's incompetence in the late Qing Dynasty, but also a direct opportunity for the birth of Jiaozuo city. In 1904, the first street in Jiaozuo, Jamiesen Street, was built. In 1906, the Daoqing Railway was opened to traffic, the population gathered and the business flourished. In 1911, Zhongshan East Street and Zhongshan West Street were built.

The opening of the Daoqing Railway connected Qinghua, an important commercial city at that time, with Daokou and even Tianjin. Jiaozuo’s coal, bamboo goods, and "four major medicines" were continuously transported to Sanliwan Wharf in Daokou, and then transported by Weihe River. Directly to Tianjin; and Tianjin's industrial products, "foreign goods" and various fashions have also made their debut in Jiaozuo.

Jiaozuo's market is prosperous, with banks, silk, foreign cloth, restaurants, bathhouses, brothels, and hotels all in close proximity.Its well-known business names include Tongheyu in the money industry, Juyuanzhan and Zhongyucun in the kerosene industry, Dexinghou and Deyuanheng in the grocery industry, Yishengyong and Yulifeng in the foreign goods industry, Daoxiangcun, Zi Yanchun et al.

Jiaozuo has grown from a small town in northern Henan to a prosperous commercial port where gold and silver are stored, and a large amount of wealth has been gathered.Coupled with the social turmoil in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, all kinds of stragglers, bandits and gangsters appeared in Jiaozuo one after another, and you competed for it.

After some bloody fighting, three big gangs gradually formed in the town——Yihetang, Sandianhui, and Wuhu Gang. These three gangs divided up the territory of Jiaozuo.Whether it is a rickshaw puller, a porter at a railway station, a restaurant owner, or a brothel owner, they are all inextricably linked to these three gangs, and must pay them protection fees on time.

Recently, a mutton soup restaurant named Yizhaoxian opened on Zhongshan West Street.The shopkeeper and the guys are all big and three thick guys.

There is only one main dish of Yizhaoxian, which is mutton soup.Adding at most pork head meat or egg pancakes is the best.Moreover, this store is not trying to make progress, it only has a few things over and over again, and there is nothing else.But it's strange to say that the business of a small restaurant with just a few dishes is indeed full every day.

The reason is nothing else, the freshly cooked mutton tastes good and the price is cheap.There are many varieties of mutton soup in Henan, such as Lingbao mutton soup in Western Henan, Xuchangzhangdi mutton soup, Weichuan mutton stewed tofu, etc.

For example, Xuchang Zhangdi mutton soup requires fresh meat to be frozen, cut into large slices, salted, marinated with tender meat powder, heated with refined five-spice beef and mutton oil in a pan, stir-fried mutton slices, added bone broth, and cooked with seasonings.Before it's done, the aroma overflows, the smell of beef and mutton, the mellow aroma of bone broth, and the fresh aroma of sliced ​​meat all penetrate into the nose.Sprinkle chopped green onion, coriander, and sesame oil, and the hot mutton soup will tease you.

But this is a delicate method that the chefs of big restaurants will use when rich people in long gowns go to eat mutton soup. Many small restaurants for ordinary poor people use very simple techniques.After the head and hooves are washed, they are put into the pot and stewed, which is a typical one-pot cooking.After cooking, take them out, cut them into shreds and slices, and then boil them in soup when the guests want to eat them, and then add them to the hot soup.Of course, the soup used is the offal soup that was cooked earlier, so the guests have a strong visceral atmosphere when eating it.In addition, the store is often reluctant to remove the excess fat on the water from the intestines, which greatly reduces the texture and taste of the offal soup.

But a fresh way is to hang the soup with mutton bones, while the heart, liver, lungs, stomach, intestines, etc. are stewed in old soup in separate pots to avoid odors from each other.Open the sheep intestines with scissors, and remove the oil inside and out, so that the boiled sheep intestines are white and soft.The picked oil is not wasted at all, and all the mature oil will be used in the final preparation of soup.

After all these are done, when the soup is prepared, first dry-stir the base ingredients such as onion, ginger, garlic, pepper, clove, nutmeg, three naphthalene, grass fruit, etc. When the aroma is released, filter out the base ingredients, and put them in the pot Pour in the pre-hanging mutton bone soup, and when the soup in the pot is boiled, put in two or three pre-fried crucian carp, and then change to a simmer and simmer.

Strange to say, after putting in the crucian carp, the originally clear lamb bone soup turned white like milk in a short while, and then the crucian carp was removed, the foam was skimmed off, and a large spoonful of cooked sheep fat was poured into the soup. A pot of thick and milky soup has been prepared, and then the soup can be used to boil the meat in bowls or in a whole pot.

Of course, these are confidential to the outside world.

As soon as the one-trick fresh mutton soup came out of the pot, the business of other mutton soup shops in Jiaozuo Town was completely browned.Especially Yizhaoxian is not far from the train station. Porters working in the luggage room, or passengers who have just got off the train, spend a few copper coins to eat a bowl of fragrant mutton soup in Yizhaoxian, and they are full of heat. , Every sweat pore is comfortable.

The one-hand shopkeeper likes to lean on the earthen wall in the afternoon, and talk about his prestige and prestige history with a group of resting porters, "I think back then, I was in Xuzhou Mansion, with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. The old man Xun is running away with his head in his arms."

"Horse shopkeeper, you can blow it." Every time the porters listened with great interest, but after listening to it, they all burst into laughter, "Look at those revolutionaries last year, which one didn't become a high-ranking official? Why don't you It just falls to be a shopkeeper."

"What do you country folks know~"

The porters laughed again

At this time, a clerk came running and said to the shopkeeper, "Brother Ma, someone is here to find fault."

The shopkeeper is Ma Qian'an. He and a group of brothers followed Li Mohan to Jiaozuo to develop. This one-trick fresh mutton restaurant is their old den.

Originally, Ma Qian'an wanted to cross the river directly and wipe out the local gangs in Jiaozuo Town.But Li Mohan doesn't think so, the so-called strong dragon can't overwhelm the snake, knowing oneself and the enemy, and winning every battle.So a group of people opened this mutton restaurant as a cover, but they were secretly gathering information.

"Who the hell is itchy?" Ma Qian'an stood up awkwardly, clenched his fists, and his bones cracked.

Ma Qian'an followed the waiter back to the store, and saw four people sitting in the middle of the lobby.They ordered a plate of egg pancakes, a plate of mutton and a large bowl of mutton soup, and a pot of rice wine hadn't been eaten yet.