Swislocki mentioned Shanghai cuisine in Culinary nostalgia: Regional food culture and the urban experience in Shanghai. He believes that Shanghai Cuisine is Benbangcai, which is now also called Shanghai cuisine. However, is Benbangcai equal to Shanghai cuisine (Shanghaicai)?
The answer is no. If you ask an elderly Shanghai native, he will tell you that there is a difference between Benbangcai and Shanghai cuisine-although there is always a fusion between cuisines in Shanghai today, at least from their definition or judging from the appearance time, the two cannot be treated equally.
Benbangcai (Local cuisine): self-awareness created in the immigrant city
In Hangzhou, not far from Shanghai, the cuisine there is called “Hangbangcai”. “Bang” refers to faction, “cai” is cuisine, so Hangbangcai is a popular type of food in Hangzhou. But in Shanghai, no one would call Benbangcai “shangbangcai”, and even in the whole country, “Benbangcai” has become a Shanghai exclusive term. “Ben” originally refers to “us”, so this group of dishes is “our side dishes”. Why do Shanghai people pay so much attention to this “us” instead of using their place names instead?
Shanghai, as a city of immigrants, the “bang” of the local food has been very different from the current “Shanghai”. This “bang” does not refer to the current downtown area of Shanghai, but the aboriginal residents of Shanghai about 200 years ago. After the opening of Shanghai in 1843, the “Sixteen Cuisine Factions” went into Shanghai, including Ben, Ning, Hui, Beijing, Sichuan, Suzhou, Xi, Zhenyang, Henan, Lu, Xiang, Tianjin, Guangdong, Fujian, Halal, vegetarian dishes, etc. Different catering genres of the Sixteenth Group gathered in the Shanghai booth. Later, in the era of 19C., the flow of people became more diversified, and Shanghai’s demographic structure has undergone earth-shaking changes: the foreign population far exceeds the original aboriginals, so Shanghai’s original “bang” has disappeared in history.
Therefore, we can even say that the local dishes are not the dishes of Shanghainese—even those who have Shanghai hukou now are mostly descendants of immigrants two hundred years ago, rather than their ancestors who settled in Shanghai. Under such a wave of immigration, the term Benbangcai can be said to be a term reserved by the indigenous Shanghainese to miss their eating habits. The meaning of “ben” in it reveals a kind of look at the fading pride of the region and hometown.
Past Shanghai is hard to be missed by people. When people think of the so-called “old Shanghai in the past”, they rarely turn their eyes to history two hundred years ago, or even earlier-what is the history of Shanghai? Neon lights, the big world, the Disney Ballroom, and the Huangpu River, people of different skin colors come and go. These “modern” histories quickly became worthy of comparison due to the rapid development of Shanghai.
Therefore, the longer history of Shanghai was quickly buried-yes, that Shanghai was just a small fishing village. Perhaps, that is what they call the “benbang”.
Shanghai Cuisine: Shanghai-Western Food, Haipaicai- the so-called “Shanghai Style”
There are different opinions on the “haipai” of the “Haipaicai”. In Taiwan, “haipai” means “repatriated overseas”, which means those rich; while Shanghai’s Haipai is a “Shanghai’s hai”, a feature that is exclusive to Shanghai-of course, As mentioned above, this blended culture didn’t show up until the opening of the port in 19 century. This is the difference between Shanghai cuisine and Benbangcai.
The most famous Haipaicai can be said to be the fried pork cutlet. It is served with the unique spicy soy sauce of Shanghainese. It has a unique taste and the large ribs are very crispy. Besides, the famous French dish, seared snails, has been adapted to seared clams, which makes full use of the abundant and fresh characteristics of Shanghai’s aquatic products. At the same time, Shanghai cuisine has become more sweet and greasy under the influence of Suzhou, Wuxi, and other places, and a large amount of soy sauce and rock sugar are used for flavoring-all of which constitute today’s Shanghai cuisine.
We might as well imagine the culinary nostalgia in Shanghai cuisine, which not only contains geographical factors, but also contains rich time factors, because Shanghai has had two periods of history, no matter which period, it is different from the current international city, but No matter which part, there are certain foods as nostalgia.
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