Speaking of Xiguan, to sum up a sentence: food in Guangzhou, taste in Xiguan.

As a general name for the area outside the west gate of Yangcheng in the Ming and Qing dynasties, with the rapid development of Xiguan Commercial Bank in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, a commercial center was established. Nowadays, although the economic and commercial center has become history, with the blessing of Shangxiajiu Pedestrian Street, it has become a famous food paradise, and no matter how the society develops, the old Xiguan people still abide by the ancestral secret system, and strive for the perfect combination of color, flavor, shape and meaning, and the number of delicacies is as many as hundreds, which is definitely a foodie mecca.

When he first arrived, Johnson's impression of Xiguan was not as messy as the renovation of the courtyard houses, and not as crowded as the life of the alleys of the magic capital, but followed the role of commerce and trade.

Most of the frontages of each block are mainly arcades, and there are some shadows of Xiguan mansions in the deep part of the block. If you want to say that the most typical arcade representative, it is none other than Enning Road.

The streets are full of typical buildings, while listening to the majestic scenery of Xiguan merchants, while looking at the old houses that have not been abandoned, the taste of time is very sour with some emotion. The most valuable architectural representative left by Fujia in Xiguan is the Shuttle Gate, which should be the earliest anti-theft door in China.

The three-story composite door resembles a large wooden frame, with more than a dozen logs in the middle, and the logs must be odd and not even. The first is the screen door, like a two-sided window sash, blocking the view of passers-by outside, which is relatively light and easy to open and close.

The third gate is a real gate, and it is not special, and most of the old buildings have this kind of gate. The most distinctive feature is the second door, called the Shuttle Gate, which is pulled horizontally, although there is no roller device, but the switch is flexible, and it is mostly shown in movies with the background of the old Canton era such as Ip Man.

It can be said that it is the most famous arcade street in Xiguan now, and it is also a time-honored street that is the main brand of the government, and it can retain the original old street in urban development, which is really rare in China.

It used to be a pawnshop, but now it's an ordinary bottom merchant. The main body of the arcade adopts the Western sculpture style, which is also the result of the collision between Nanyue B&B and Western-style building, and also shows the recognition of the integration of Chinese and Western cultures by the big businessmen of Xiguan at that time.

Walking to Bantang Road, I have to say that Panxi Restaurant, here is the hometown of Changhuayuan, the imperial garden of Liu Chang, the king of the Southern Han Dynasty more than 1,000 years ago, and it is also the former white lotus and red lychee, and the lychee bay with five beautiful fragrances.

In 1947, Cantonese Li Wenlun founded a small restaurant full of rural style on this ancient flower dock. At that time, there were 5 small streams nearby, one of which was called Pan Creek. The main entrance of the restaurant is decent, and entering the interior is really unique. There are both ponds and courtyards, which are no less than Suzhou gardens.

When I used to watch Hong Kong dramas, I often heard people in the drama say that they brought you a bowl of sugar water for supper, and I always wondered: Is sugar water just soaked sugar in water?

If the world's sweets are rich and sexy, island and confectionery are soft and delicate, and Suzhou-style pastries are small and chic, then the sweet water here is like a lovely girl next door, exuding a charming market atmosphere.

On weekdays, I pass by the sugar water shop after work, buy a bowl of tangerine peel and red bean paste, coconut water chestnut or poplar nectar, sit in the store with the fan whirring, and chat with the neighbors, or take it home and put it in the refrigerator, waiting for the night to share with the family. A whole day's hard work ends in the warm and sweet that lingers in the mouth.

As for the origin of the sugar water, it is no longer available. Legend has it that the ancient princes and nobles will eat a bowl of sweet soup after the banquet to reconcile the food, the Tang has the ice lotus lily, the Song has the red bean sugar porridge, the beauties of the harem of the Qing Dynasty drink a bowl of sugar water, and even because of the high and low ingredients, in order to show the status.

Sugar water, which is equivalent to the body and predecessor of dessert, if you want to say the difference, in addition to the difference between the north and the south, sugar water has a stronger homely flavor, but dessert is a later name influenced by Western food culture.

In the old days, the sugar water shops along the street usually only sold two sand three pastes, that is, red bean paste, mung bean paste, sesame paste, almond paste, and walnut paste, and now red and mung bean paste is still the standard for testing a sugar water shop.

In addition, the restaurant will also use a variety of milk, vegetables and fruits as raw materials, add yellow rock sugar, and then slowly mix it into a fresh sugar water, so that it is as delicate as making soup.

From home-cooked sweet water to highly sought-after desserts on the market, the most popular thing for diners is that in the 90s, the famous Hong Kong Island restaurant Hui Liushan combined traditional sweet water with fruits, coconut milk, mango juice and sago to create a variety of novel and delicious new sweet soups, which gradually formed the very trendy and fresh Hong Kong-style desserts in the current impression.

Because in the past, sugar was hard to come by, and sweets were a luxury that only the aristocracy could enjoy. But eating sugar water is not just for the sake of greedy sweetness. Sugar water and herbal tea, one sweet and one bitter, are two sides of the same body in the Cantonese diet.

The climate of Lingnan is hot and humid, and the most worrying thing in my life is heat, and all ingredients in my daily diet are inseparable from heat clearing and detoxification. Herbal tea and sugar water are also used to remove summer and dryness in summer and autumn, and to prevent cold and cool in winter and spring, echoing the obsession of Cantonese cuisine and medicine.

Therefore, boiling sugar water is the same as making soup, and it must correspond to different ingredients in different seasons - stewed pear papaya in spring, boiled mung bean and water chestnut in summer, stewed white fungus rock sugar soup in autumn, and red bean soup in winter.

On the stove of the sugar water shop, the sweet fragrance of the four seasons wafts differently, in this city where food is the top priority, a bowl of sugar water will condense the scenery and soil of a place, as well as the warmth and intentions of the foodie.

Horseshoe, not only because it is crisp and delicious, but also because it clears heat and moistens the lungs, so it can be seen in all kinds of food, in addition to making soup, it will also break the horseshoe to make a drink, into a chestnut cool.

On dog days when it's so hot that people lose their appetite, this sugar water is easily conquered?? The stomach, the water chestnut meat is crisp and sweet, frozen in summer, it is particularly light and delicious, and there will be no sticky feeling of drinking bubble tea. Some shops also add coconut water, milk or corn to the water chestnut to make it sweeter, warmer, fresher and crunchy.

Stinky grass is the soul of mung bean paste, in the old days, many Cantonese people would plant a pot on the balcony, and cut a few wisps of branches and leaves to use when boiling sugar water. This grass has an unusual aroma, and when boiling mung beans, a little bit can make the whole bowl of sugar water exude an otherworldly sweet taste.

Never thought kelp was also the standard configuration of mung bean paste?

Taste it carefully, this bowl of mung bean paste tastes really wonderful, the fishy sweet and soft kelp makes the softness of the mung beans a little more hard of the ocean, and the layering is immediately enriched.

To make an excellent bowl of mung bean paste, there are also many particulars, if you want to make the mung bean cotton dissolve finely, you must simmer slowly, when the mung bean shell and the bean body are separated and floated, the bean shell is fished out, and then add stinky grass, tangerine peel or kelp until the sand rises. When mothers-in-law cook mung bean paste, they will put half of the white sugar and half of the brown sugar when seasoning, because when they cook it in this way, the sweetness is enough to be fragrant.