Banquet Fit for a Comrade
After Chairman Mao declared the founding of the
People's Republic of China and waved to millions at Tiananmen, the place he headed for was
the Beijing Hotel, with 600 leaders and glitterati for a grand dinner at 6pm.
Diners can taste that same food, eaten by the greatest late New China leaders on October 1, 1949, at the original location, at the same moment 50 years later. The Beijing Hotel dinner was booked out in early September at a cost of 800 yuan a head.
The original dinner was prepared two days beforehand, all worked out by nine chefs from the local Yuhuatai restaurant. The dinner undoubtedly was a display of the best food they could acquire then, such as bird's nest soup and shark's fin for which each diner had a tiny cup.
Home-style fare included braised chicken, mushroom with vegetable and Premier Zhou Enlai's favorite -- braised meatballs.
No record of leaders' comments was taken, but every National Day from 1949 to 1959 the banquet became a routine. Only two of the original chefs are still alive today. Chef Sun Jiufu, 79, recalls the national menu as above right.
The national banquet was a tremendous test for the Beijing Hotel, as it only served Western cuisine before liberation.
In 1946, the Communist Party and Guomindang held a conference on cooperation in Beijing, but all the representatives of Communist Party only ate Chinese food. The hotel invited chefs from Taifenglou -- not for long, the talks broke down and the Chinese cuisine was immediately canceled. The Communist Party took over the management of the Beijing Hotel in March 1949.
To handle the cadres, the hotel invited seven chefs from Yuhuatai, a Huaiyang restaurant in the busy Xila Hutong of Dongcheng District, to work at the hotel. Chef Sun guesses the reason was the flavor of Huaiyang suited both northern and southern tastes.
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Home-style fare included braised chicken, mushroom with vegetable and Premier Zhou Enlai's favorite -- braised meatballs. |
Cold: Duck with sweet- scented osmanthus; Zhenjiang pickled pork; chicken in oil; smoked fish; mashed cucumber; winter bamboo shoots; winter mushroom with peach seeds.
Soup: Bird's nest soup.
Hot: Shark's fin in small cup; boiled four treasures (nobody remembers what treasures); fried giant prawn; chicken with mushrooms; mushroom with green vegetables; braised carp; braised meatballs.
Dim sum: Steamed dumplings; steamed dumpling with sweet bean paste; thousand layer pie; spring rolls.
Dessert: Date and walnut pie; apple, pear.