＂Delicious＂ Museum Wenchuang： When Cultural Relics Hit Food
If you only know that the "online celebrity" in the museum has lipstick, it is out of date. After all, the long and profound Chinese culture is not only condensed in cultural relics, but also has a more grounded carrier — — Chinese cuisine. When the cultural relics hit the food, the picture was so beautiful.
There are still more than half a month before the Mid-Autumn Festival, and many museums have already been unable to hold back.
The National Museum of China has developed "Ruyi Cake", with the head as the main shape, and two catfish jumping in the water with shallow relief on the surface, which is homophonic "more than one year". "Ruyi cake" has a traditional shape and a modern taste: mocha, black cheese, cranberry, fragrant mango, matcha honey beans and baiyu pomelo, which cater to the picky taste buds of young people.
The Summer Palace launched a "Yihe Box" mooncake gift box, which was inspired by the Yue embroidery screen of Leshou Hall, six kinds of auspicious birds such as phoenix and magpie, and six kinds of buildings such as Foxiang Pavilion and Seventeen-hole Bridge, and was matched with traditional mooncakes such as golden leg five kernels, egg yolk lotus seed, red dates and walnuts, taking a classic route.
The "lever handle" of museum cultural and creative circles — — The Palace Museum once screened its circle of friends with corner coffee and icehouse restaurant. Last Mid-Autumn Festival, the moon cake "Guicai Mid-Autumn Festival is specially round" produced by the Forbidden City, the theme of which comes from the poem "Leaping Mid-Autumn Moon" written by Zhao Ji, Song Huizong. The gift box is based on the azure of Ru kiln in Song Dynasty, decorated with ice cracks and dark lines. The moon cake patterns are all from the flower-and-bird paintings drawn by Song Huizong, which makes people feel unbearable. This year, a "Mid-Autumn Festival Everything Ceremony" mooncake gift box has been quietly sold in Wenchuang flagship store of the Palace Museum.
In fact, the museum has been working hard to eat this important event.
As early as 2014, Suzhou Museum produced cookies based on the cultural relics in the collection. The most popular cookie is the secret color porcelain lotus bowl cookie with matcha flavor. In the same year, Sanxingdui Museum in Guanghan, Sichuan Province also developed "Bronze Mask Biscuits", which made you feel comfortable with a bite of bronze.
If it was just a spark before, then this year, the "delicious" museum has gradually become a prairie fire. Eating this big event not only happens on holidays, but also all the time.
At the beginning of 2019, the Guangdong Provincial Museum presented three kinds of cakes, named "Guangdong Tibetan", "Guangdong Guangbao Box" and "Fashion", which instantly "went out of the circle" and attracted a large number of foodies. "Guangdong Tibetan" refers to the rich collection of Guangdong Bo, and the dark black grain on the top of the cake is the LOGO of Guangdong Bo; "Yueguang Treasure Box" imitates the architectural appearance of Guangdong Boxin Museum, just like a treasure box; "Fashion" was inspired by export fans. The mid-18th-19th century was the golden age of Guangzhou’s foreign trade. Export fans exuded the charm of Chinese style and European rhyme, and they were popular in the western market. And this fan-shaped cream cheese and green apple cocoa cake has now become a popular commodity in Guangdong Bo.
Zhou Ziniu, head of Wenchuang in the Summer Palace, introduced that Wenchuang cuisine was also launched for the first time this year in the Summer Palace, among which "Yihe Eight Scenery" was the most distinctive. Eight landmark landscapes, such as promenade, Buddha Pavilion, bronze cow, seventeen-hole bridge, jade belt bridge, stone boat, Wenchang Pavilion and Guishou Wuji, were selected and made into cakes with different fillings. Palace cakes, which used to be enjoyed only by the royal family, entered the homes of ordinary people by inheriting and carrying forward traditional cultural elements.
On March 10th, the Dong Qichang Painting and Calligraphy Art Exhibition closed in Shanghai Museum, which is the largest Dong Qichang exhibition held in mainland China. Another "selling point" of the exhibition is that 1,500 sets of "Dong Qichang Afternoon Tea" were sold in three months. Drinking a cup of coffee or special tea according to Dong Qichang’s painting style, coupled with a small dish of "Xuanshang" rice cake and landscape mung bean cake, has become an "immersive" way for people to watch the exhibition.
It is said that no matter what you see, you will ask "how can you be good": can you eat, is it delicious, and how to eat. For the museum, to solve the problem of being able to eat and delicious, it is necessary to let the audience "eat" things other than food.
Liao Fei, director of the Food Culture Center of the National Museum of China, studied cultural relics appreciation at the university. He has worked in Guobo for 15 years, and he knows a lot about cultural relics in permanent exhibitions. Since he started to do food and beverage culture creation, as soon as he saw the cultural relics, he pondered "how to eat".
One of Guobo’s "treasures of the town hall", Siyang Fangzun, is a special-grade cultural relic forbidden to leave the country, but now the audience can take away the "Siyang Fangzun 3D Chocolate". Liao Fei believes that a piece of cultural and creative food, only the face value is not enough, the key depends on the connotation. The most extensive symbolic meaning of sheep among the people is "auspiciousness", and sheep have the habit of "kneeling and nursing", which is interpreted as a model of filial piety to parents. Therefore, Guobo retained the image of the Four Sheep’s Square, and "sprouted" it into delicious black and white chocolate to symbolize auspiciousness and filial piety.
Liao Fei introduced that in the traditional decorative patterns of China, "the picture must be intentional, and the meaning must be auspicious" is emphasized to express the good wishes in the heart, which is especially manifested in colored porcelain, such as happiness, fortune, longevity, happiness and wealth. Thus, during the Spring Festival this year, the most "sweet" cultural creation in the history of Guobo — — The lollipop gift box was born.
Five groups of lollipops selected five decorative patterns of colored porcelain in Qing Dynasty: famille rose hollowed-out dragon-shaped revolving heart bottle (dry dragon), with dragon-shaped dragon-shaped dragon, bat, money and wishful thinking as the theme, which formed the meaning of "happiness in sight, good luck and wishful thinking"; Pastel deer pattern statue (Qianlong), painted with a picture of a hundred deer, "deer" and "Lu" are homophonic; Pastel peach-patterned celestial bottle (dry dragon), with peach bat pattern painted on the outer wall of the bottle, which means "Five Blessingg holds longevity"; Multicolored flowerpots in Hua Niaowen (Kangxi), where magpies live on plum branches, are said to be "beaming"; A rectangular flowerpot with red goldfish pattern (Xianfeng), in which "goldfish" and "golden jade" are homophonic, meaning "happy ever after".
In Liao Fei’s view, no matter what cultural and creative products are made, it is always culture that gives them connotation and soul. "Now the homogenization competition of cultural and creative products is fierce. Can you make your own characteristics, convey the meaning to be expressed, and compete with the theme?"
There is a Guishou Wuji Courtyard in the Summer Palace, which is a resting place for the Empress Dowager Cixi to have tea and snacks before going to listen to go to the opera, a museum of birds, which provides a cultural environment for the research and development of royal cakes. The Summer Palace not only made the cakes mentioned above, but also designed a matching napkin with the patterns of ancient buildings on the roof and verandah of Guishou Wuji Hospital as elements, which is very suitable for cakes.
The museum is so delicious, but the research and development of food culture and creation has its own difficulties.
In Zhou Ziniu’s view, the biggest difficulty in developing food culture and innovation is that there is no benchmark to learn from, and there is no standard to learn from. "To turn an idea into a food, it is necessary to ask professional personnel and manufacturers to make numerous preparations in terms of materials, tastes, shapes, etc., taking into account quality and cost, and it is possible to complete a cultural and creative food that has both characteristics and is suitable for mass consumption." Zhou Ziniu said that the early research and development time is long, the investment is large, the food control is strict, the shelf life is short, and the future sales are uncertain … … Are all risks.
Liao Fei said frankly that there are two main difficulties in making food culture: first, food has a shelf life; Second, there are limited food manufacturers with creative research and development capabilities, and it is difficult to find cooperation. At present, Guobo’s products are independently developed.
Yu Na, head of the Cultural and Creative Industries Section of Yuanmingyuan, feels the same way. Other cultural and creative products have relatively mature processing plants and production lines, which can be converted into products by providing design drawings. However, there are fewer companies that can connect catering cultural and creative products, and many foods cannot be mass-produced.
The difficulty is very realistic, and the solution can be thought about slowly. After all, this audience is full of enthusiasm for the museum, and the support for Wenchuang cuisine is even more with wallets.
The most timely wenchuang cuisine this summer is probably the lotus ice cream in Yuanmingyuan, and there is a legendary archaeological story behind it. In 2017, eleven ancient lotus seeds were discovered in Ruyuan site in the southeast corner of Changchun Garden. After careful cultivation by experts from Chinese Academy of Sciences, six lotus seeds successfully germinated after sowing and blossomed in Yuanmingyuan this summer. From July 31st, Yuanmingyuan will sell lotus-shaped ice cream. Yu Na told reporters that she sold 50,000 pieces in less than half a month. (Reporter Jiang Xiaobin)
