The pancake myth in the Northeast, the counterattack of a small city with a population of 200,000

Mondo Social Updated on 2024-01-30

ZhengjieClub (ID: zhengjieclub).

Author: Positive Solution.

A netizen once posted such a question on the Internet: University is not, I haven't entered a big factory, and I haven't sat on the tuyere......How can I get rich fast?

Someone has a trick: spread pancakes.

There is a real basis for saying this.

A few years ago, a pancake stall aunt in Beijing had a bit of an argument with a customer, and the aunt blurted out: "I earn 30,000 yuan a month, how can I miss you an egg!."”

Pancakes are being made.

In a word, the aunt climbed to the "top stream", and the pancakes became a "myth" of making a lot of money and getting rich quickly.

It may seem like an exaggeration to say "myth", but don't underestimate the pancake stand, although it is small, as a representative of the small business in catering and retail, it has all kinds of organs.

In particular, after practical testing, it has been proved that pancakes can be developed into an industry if they are "spread out".

At present, there are several places in the country, because of a small pancake, the villagers have become rich, and even become a well-known local characteristic industry.

More typical, there are Shandong, Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces.

Among them, Muling City in Heilongjiang, a small border agricultural city, is one of them.

Speaking of which, Muling City is only a county-level city, with a registered population of only 22 by the end of 202210 thousand.

But this small city, with its snowflake-thin pancakes, has not only drifted to first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, but also to foreign countries and conquered the stomachs of foreigners.

Japan, South Korea, Russia, Canada and other countries have thrown orders.

It is said that the orders for pancakes in some production workshops are even scheduled from October 2023 to February 2024.

At present, this small city with a population of more than 200,000 people produces and sells more than 6 million catties of pancakes every year.

This is quite a bit of a leap from "staple food" to "main business", which has widened the road to prosperity for people in this area of water and soil.

In fact, in our land, pancakes are not an innovative delicacy.

Regarding its history, some people say that it originated in Linyi during the Three Kingdoms period, and later, it gradually spread and influenced southern Lu, northern Jiangsu and even northeast China.

But in fact, this statement is somewhat too conservative.

Because, in the Yangshao culture more than 5,000 years ago, there were tools used to spread pancakes, such as pottery and other cooking utensils that can be used to make pancakes.

This also means that the history of pancakes can even be called as long as the history of Chinese civilization.

Disc-shaped pottery in the Neolithic Yangshao culture.

What's more interesting is that from historical documents and the pens of some ancient literati and writers, we can also get a glimpse of the different "historical status" of pancakes in different periods.

For example, according to historical documents, during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, pancakes were called "Kaoruten", which means Kaoru took away bad omens and bad luck and sought good luck for his family.

In the Ming Dynasty, pancakes had a more magical "effect".

Shen Bang said in "Wan Department Miscellaneous Notes": "Use noodles to spread pancakes, smoke the bed kang so that hundreds of insects do not grow." ”

The pen of the literati and ink writers can better examine the historical evolution of pancakes.

For example, in the famous Qing Dynasty writer Pu Songling's "Pancake Fu", it describes some interesting stories about making pancakes and eating pancakes in central Shandong hundreds of years ago.

Li Jing's poem in the Song Dynasty, "A pancake makes up for the sky to wear", reveals that pancakes were once an indispensable food in the important festivals of that dynasty.

In modern times, pancakes have an added layer of meaning related to life and the image of women.

For example, Mengyin writer Zhao Xiwei's prose poem "Pick Up Pancakes and Think of My Mother" and Linyi lyricist Zhao Yuanping's song "Pick Up Pancakes and Think of My Mother".

In the history of Shandong, pancakes are not only an "important asset", but also a "life-saving artifact".

For example, in 1967, in Dongyanglou Village, Tai'an City, a "separation contract" was found during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty.

In this contract, "a plate of pancakes, twenty-three catties of pancakes" has become an important "asset" of division.

In the TV series "Breaking the Guandong" released in 2008, Zhu Kaishan's family from Shandong was forced by life to leave their hometown to "break through the Guandong".

Among them, there is an interesting detail, when the family broke into the Kanto, the only "life-saving" item that could not be left behind again and again was a large bag of pancakes.

A scene from the plot of the TV series "Breaking through the East".

These "life-saving" items later spread to the Northeast with the large-scale invasion of Shandong people in the 19th century.

As a result of this spread, pancakes took root in the Tohoku region.

For example, the aforementioned border town of Muling.

So, how did pancakes take root in this land and grow?

I'm afraid it all starts with the raw materials for making pancakes.

The "ancient method" of handmade pancakes is made by soaking wheat, rice, corn and organic soybeans in water, grinding them into a paste, and spreading them on a pan.

This means that, in addition to the technique and heat, the most important thing is that there are high requirements for raw materials.

And these raw materials are precisely the advantages of Heilongjiang.

Data shows that in 2022, the planting area of grain crops in Heilongjiang will reach 22,02480,000 acres, accounting for 12 of the country4%, an increase of 197 year-on-year90,000 acres;The total grain production was 1552600 million jin (the second highest in history), accounting for 11 of the country3%, ranking first in the country for 13 consecutive years.

In 2022, the top 10 provinces in terms of grain production in the country ranked **China Business Industry Research Institute.

In addition, the fertile black soil layer of Heilongjiang has to accumulate for 200-400 years for every 1 centimeter formed.

In most areas of Heilongjiang, the thickness of such a black soil layer is even more than 1 meter, so that this black soil alone is a wealth that nature has spent more than 20,000 years accumulating.

Crops such as rice, soybeans, corn, millet, and sorghum grown in such black soil not only have a taste that cannot be matched by other regions, but also have very high nutritional value.

And these are the most important conditions for becoming a good pancake.

It's the time of day. There is also the geographical advantage.

Once the pancakes are ready, they have to be shipped out quickly, which tests the local transportation system.

Muling, a small agricultural city, is very inconspicuous on today's territory, and it can be regarded as a real remote area.

Not only is it far away from the Central Plains, but even in the Northeast, it is also quite far away from the central city, and the sense of presence is very low.

The border town of Muling, Heilongjiang, on the map.

However, under the special international situation at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, it was a relatively early area of China's modernization and industrialization, especially as early as 1901, when the railway was opened here.

In that year, after the "Eastern Railway" was built here, Muling Station occupied a very important position.

At that time, there were three lines in the territory of Guangmuling: the Middle East Railway and the two branch lines of the China Eastern Railway.

From Vladivostok in the east, through Harbin, Lushun, Manchuria to Moscow.

In the Guangxu period, there are descriptions of Muling Station in the "Imperial Province Map", "Jilin Province Map" and **Xu Xi's "Chronicle of the Three Eastern Provinces".

So far, on the Muling River, 1 km north of Muling Station, there is also the first railway stone arch bridge in Chinese history - the Muling River Bridge of the Middle Eastern Railway.

The bridge was built in 1898 and has a total length of 17403 meters, a total of 10 holes stone arch, each hole net span 128 meters, after it was completed that year, it was specially guarded by the Russian army stationed at the side of the bridge.

Now, Muling City can pass 12 pairs of passenger and freight trains every day, with an annualized transportation volume of 1.2 million tons and a passenger consumption of one million people.

In addition to the railway, the convenient road transportation is a prominent advantage of this small town.

Muling City is an important highway transportation hub city in Heilongjiang Province, with many main roads such as Beijing-Harbin Expressway, Jichang Line and Muhu Highway running through the urban area.

At present, this small city has 469 kilometers of local roads, of which 360 kilometers have reached the national first-class and fourth-level pavement standards, which can be described as criss-crossing and extending in all directions.

The stop sign of the old railway station in Muling is no longer for passenger transport here.

With the right time and place, people are naturally indispensable.

In terms of business environment and industrial innovation, Mu Ling has made great breakthroughs in recent years.

Take a small pancake, for example.

In order to support the development of the pancake industry, the local Maqiaohe Town has also invested millions of dollars to build a small workshop processing area, and the site will be provided to the villagers for free use.

According to public information, in 2019, the full-caliber financial revenue of Maqiaohe Town was only 4.68 million yuan.

This initiative not only shows sincerity, but more importantly, these investments have not been in vain.

Without the pressure of rent, the local villagers are emboldened.

*There are many such typical reports.

Feng Lianshi, a local villager who has been farming for many years, even at the age of 50s, resolutely embarked on the road of pancake entrepreneurship.

Today, his 20 automatic pancake machines are idle every day, and the daily output can reach thousands of catties.

Even so, if you want to eat his pancakes, you have to queue up, sometimes even three months later.

What's even more surprising is that in just two years, he has supported more than 150 local villagers to walk on the bright road of the pancake industry together.

Feng Lianshi's pancake production workshop.

A local woman named Wu Yingchun is not only optimistic about the pancake industry, but also makes more "tricks" for pancakes, and her fruit and vegetable pancakes are the most popular and sought-after goods in the pancake industry.

Her pancake products not only have consumers across the country, but also have many repeat customers in Japan, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

And she led more than 200 local women to get rich together by founding a pancake processing industry.

They are all part of the Muling pancake industry.

At present, there are more than 1,500 pancake practitioners like Feng Lianshi and Wu Yingchun in Muling City.

Data shows that as of 2019, the population size of Maqiao Town, Muling City, is more than 25,000 people, which is not counting the population loss of the widely criticized small county town in Northeast China in recent years.

And a job posting on the Internet shows that in this small town, the salary of workers in the pancake industry is significantly higher than that of workers in other workshops.

On the other hand, this also illustrates the "status of the pancake industry" in this small town.

In November 2013, a recruitment information from Michael in the Mudanjiang area.

Of course, the pancake industry is just a microcosm of the many industries in this small border town.

In 2022, this small city in Heilongjiang will achieve a GDP of 144200 million yuan.

And in 2022, the GDP of the entire Heilongjiang Province will be 159 trillion yuan.

There seems to be no special secret to a pancake becoming one of the major industries that support the local economy, it is nothing more than soft and tough, tough but not brittle, and all-encompassing.

Over the years, the Northeast seems to have been associated with words such as population outflow and decline in many people's cognition.

But after reading the legend of the Muling pancake industry, it may subvert everyone's imagination.

In fact, on our land, there is vitality.

This is also the biggest foundation for China's mighty forward.

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