In Manchuria in winter, it was dark at half past four in the afternoon, and the streets became quiet and silent as the night wore on. The people who live here can clearly feel that the cold has a taste. It's not the cold smell, or the smell of food in the street shop.
Gao Jinglun and Tang Rui run a handmade sausage shop called "Yongchanghe Enema Shop" in this northern border city. There are only three types of products in the store: pork sausages, pork jerky sausages, and beef jerky. The two of them, plus two workers, went to work at 5 o'clock in the morning and left work at 5 o'clock in the evening, and their daily work was to turn nearly 200 catties of raw meat into the above three foods.
Gao Jinglun and Tang Rui stock up in the store.
The exact same sausage taste has been wafting in Manchuria for more than 100 years. In the mid-20s of the last century, Gao Jinglun's great-grandfather Gao Jinxun came here from Ye County, Shandong Province at that time, to learn from a Russian master with exquisite sausage roasting skills and integrate the skills of sausage-making.
It is this skill that has now applied to become the third batch of certified intangible cultural heritage in Manzhouli, which was passed on by Gao Jinxun to his son, who in turn passed it on to his grandson, and then passed it on to his grandson - that is, Gao Jinglun, the inheritor of "Gao's sausage making skills".
Times are changing, and the way of inheritance is also changing. After the opening of the sausage shop this year, Gao Jinglun and his wife posted the story of Gao's sausages on Douyin, groped for the link, and took a series of introductions to the intangible cultural heritage sausage production process and historical evolution.
The effect was unexpected, and in addition to many regular customers who were over 60 or even 80 years old, they also kept pouring new faces into the store. The sausages in the store began to be in short supply, and sometimes they were almost sold out by the afternoon. Some people said in the comments that "I didn't buy it after eight trips", some people said "it was the taste of childhood", and more people said "I finally know what the traditional sausage tasted like in Manchuria a hundred years ago", ......
In front of the cash register, Tang Rui is packing and weighing customers.
Nowadays, like Yongchanghe enema shop, the fireworks in the world that have been seen and rejuvenated on the Internet are becoming more and more abundant. These small businesses in the neighborhood are not only an important part of the city's fireworks, but also the capillaries of the economy and the carrier of a better life. Their respective inheritance, growth, and struggle experiences not only give meaning to their own lives, but also shape the common memory of the consumers who participate in them.
Digital-powered "good business" is happening, and when you walk into their life stories, you will find that the value is much more than that.
"A warm thing, a feeling of home".
Earthen oven it has a taste that an electric stove can't replace. Gao Jinglun, wearing a blue sanitary hat and mask, and holding a long iron frame, said that the temperature in the smoker was very high, and he came in just now to take a look at the state of the intestines, and his hands were accidentally burned.
Gao Jinglun inspecting the sausages in the smoker.
It is really hard to make sausages, he said, "but someone always needs to stick to the craft." ”
In 2015, Gao Jinglun returned to Manchuria after graduating from university and joined a chain restaurant brand with his girlfriend, making Japanese-style teppanyaki fried rice. The store is located opposite a school, and whenever they have lunch, the two of them brush the pot and look at the pot, taking care of more than a dozen meals at the same time, they have to be busy packing. "There's no gap left in the brain to think about anything else. Tang Rui, who is now his wife, recalled.
Even if it was so hard, the two did not seriously consider opening a sausage shop, because Gao Jinglun knew that making sausages was much more bitter than fried rice.
As the successor of Gao's sausage, Gao Jinglun has always had high hopes. In the winter before graduating from college, Gao Jinglun's father Yin Yin entrusted him: "You are going to graduate, I have to hand over the craft to you, in case I lose it one day, our family can't break this thing." ”
In fact, Gao's father is in good health, but he is worried that his son is playful, so he is so "serious".
It was Gao Jinglun's first time making sausages, and when he was seven or eight years old, he had an impression of his father cutting meat in the kitchen — minced pork pieces marinated, stuffed into a household meat grinder, and then hand-cranked into minced filling. Red sausages are grown up with children in the Northeast, cut into thin slices and arranged in layers to form a disc, which is an indispensable hard dish on the dinner table at home during the New Year's holidays. He never thought it was a big deal that his father and grandpa could make sausages. "It's like other people's parents are good at making stews. He recalled.
However, Gao Jinglun, who was picked up from bed by his father at five o'clock every morning that winter and fought with a hundred catties of pork, no longer had the relaxed thoughts he had when he was a child. From processing the fatty meat, digging out the lymph, cutting the meat into small pieces, scraping the large intestine, and making the casing to be used as an enema the next day, the whole process is dark.
Gao Jinglun and Tang Rui's fried rice business is actually doing well, and after four or five years of operation, they can make a profit of two or three hundred thousand yuan a year. However, knowing his father's expectations and regrets, Gao Jinglun always had a sense of responsibility in his heart that he couldn't let go.
At that time, many elderly people came by bicycles, pushed the door and asked, "Are you the old Gao family who used to make sausages?""The taste of memory cannot be erased, and the "*inheritor" itself is a golden signboard. Relatives at home also suggested, "You go and apply for an intangible cultural heritage for Gao's sausage craft, which is an official certification for our family." ”
In this way, Gao Jinglun began to prepare materials in disbelief, and learned a lot of family history, and some old pictures were strung together. For example, his deceased grandfather once handed him the "bragging" of Harbin Red Square: "Don't give me this thing, I've been making this thing since I was a child." For example, his father once told him that after the state-owned cooked food factory started from his grandfather's enema shop, his grandfather was appointed as the director of the workshop, with four or five apprentices, and the sausages produced were of excellent quality and fragrant all over Manchuria.
Maybe it was the strong family affection and memories that shattered his hesitation, maybe it was the fact that 30 local elderly people over 70 years old were willing to hold their ID cards to prove that they had eaten the Gao family's sausages, or maybe it was because he saw that the time-honored shops there were operating well when he was newlywed with his wife in Guangdong and Hainan, and he was touched by ......Gao Jinglun felt that he had to make a decision.
Sometimes when I think of my grandfather when I am making sausages, I feel that tears are swirling, which can produce a kind of spiritual communication. After the application for intangible cultural heritage, Gao Jinglun began to truly become a "craftsman" of sausage-making, and he believes that food and catering may be more like a culture, and his sense of mission requires that this craft must be passed on.
Today's inheritance is much faster than in the past. Tang Rui's original Douyin account used to share life was changed to the account of Yongchang and Enema Shop. "A lot of people saw it on Douyin and then came to buy it, which quickly helped us open up the local market. Tang Rui said that some elderly people who are old and have difficulty moving want to buy them after brushing them, and they are super happy to use a coupon**.
Gao Jinglun has now completely fallen in love with making sausages, and every day he walks into the production area to let him know more about sausages. Usually in a perfect state, when the skin of the sausage appears with beautiful walnut lines, the charcoal below should be just burned out, and one more point or one less point is a disadvantage, so this process requires him to observe and make it with pure naked eyes.
Online reviews are also important to them. "If everyone says it's delicious or if you taste it when you were a child, you'll be energized the next day. They seriously said that making sausages is essentially a warm thing for them, a kind of home feeling.
"A habit of life, or a reminiscence".
Thousands of kilometers away, the Qingquan Pavilion Bun Shop, located on Zhongshan Road in Changsha and close to Zhongshan Pavilion, also lined up in a long queue as in the past. This team, regardless of spring, summer, autumn and winter, from morning to night, is a row for decades.
At the end of the line, there is a row of steamers, each stack is almost more than a person high, and the buns are stacked in the steamer one by one, steaming hot, and the soup has penetrated into the skin, which is very tempting. Regular customers usually buy back in a big bag, which can solve the breakfast for several days at a time, and Qingquan Pavilion is also praised by neighbors as one of the "best steamed buns in Changsha".
The sales window of the Seisumenkaku steamed bun shop.
Not only "good food", this old store in the community has also adhered to the low price of 1 yuan fresh bamboo shoot meat bun. "I haven't raised the price for more than ten or twenty years. Tan Zhiqi, the owner of the steamed bun shop, said that when he took over the shop from his father, his father kept telling him, "No matter what, this one-dollar steamed bun must be insisted on, this is the original intention." ”
The steamed bun shop has been open for 39 years, and Tan Zhiqi's childhood memories of taste and family are inseparable from here. "In the early days, we mainly ate steamed buns and drank morning tea, and in the 90s, we mainly made restaurants, and later because our steamed bun business was getting better and better, we specialized in making steamed buns. ”
He recalls that when he was a child, he almost only loved to eat meat buns, chatting and chatting with his neighbors every morning while eating, and when he reached the age of going to school, he rarely went home to eat, and usually ran to the store as soon as he got out of school.
Such a golden time has remained in Tan Zhiqi's life memory for a long time, so that after returning from working in other places in 2020, he began to consider contacting the Internet, opening new sales channels for steamed buns in the form of **, and doing a good job of inheriting the baton.
In fact, for decades, Qingquange's business has been relatively prosperous, but in Tan Zhiqi's view, there are two nodes that make this brand really hard, not only the community, but also consumers in Changsha and the whole country.
One is the New Year, Hunan Satellite TV and several local TV channels to make Changsha food programs, Qingquan Pavilion through the first publicity to further start the "no price increase" "delicious and not expensive" popularity and reputation. "Even when the price of meat and flour rose very sharply, we gritted our teeth and persevered, as long as we didn't lose money. Tan Zhiqi said that perhaps the reputation and scale of the store have been accumulated and expanded little by little.
Another opportunity is that this year, after having the experience of "touching the Internet", he opened his own small store on Douyin, joined the life service, and started to do live broadcasts. In the first few days, Tan Zhiqi was still a little restrained, didn't know how to phrase it, and was nervous. Later, the live broadcast room stabilized at about 100 people, and even thousands of people when the traffic was high, and he really put his live broadcast career on the right track.
After each live broadcast, Tan Zhiqi will carefully study the data and summarize the experience. For example, he saw that the number of people is usually the largest between 12 noon and 1:30 o'clock every day, and the number of transactions is the highest at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, so he chose to focus on increasing fans at noon, and the wave in the evening is mainly for sales.
In the back kitchen of Qingquange Bun Shop, the chefs are making steamed buns.
In the live broadcast room, people can see the ingredients, production process and production process of the bun very intuitively.
35 grams of skin, 35 grams of filling, 1:1, so that the skin is thin and the filling is more. ”
Our craft is the old noodles, plus our new noodles, this is called meeting noodles. ”
This is our steamer on the first floor, there are more than 100 of them!”
Tan Zhiqi enthusiastically explained to the camera, and the online interaction gradually transformed into real customer flow, not only the "嗲動寭毭" who have been queuing up to buy buns for decades have been able to get benefits through the ** of Douyin life service, but also many young people who are attracted by time-honored brands have a coupon from time to time, and they can directly take the loaded buns and leave when they arrive in the store, saving time and effort. "This also helps us solve the pain point of the long-standing consumer group disconnection. ”
There are also some merchants who find Qingquan Pavilion through Douyin, and buy goods from here to sell them in their own stores, "add 5 cents and 1 yuan, and you can also sell it for 1,800 yuan a day." A merchant said bluntly to Tan Zhiqi, "Fortunately, I found you, otherwise I would have been ready to close down, and it was you who brought me back to life." ”
For Tan Zhiqi, this is undoubtedly a very rewarding career, and there are always many images in the details of the emotional connection that touch him enough to persevere in passing on this traditional craft.
The neighbors around us give us a ** before leaving every day, and bring me some buns after work!When children meet us, they will say, "Your silver silk rolls are so delicious!".He said with a sense of satisfaction that many people may not just regard Qingquan Pavilion's steamed buns as a product, but as a habit of life or a reminiscence.
Ordinary, simple, and warm, there are many connections between people because of this old bun shop in the community. In this sense, the young boss knows that he has found the anchor of life. "I think our Qingquan Pavilion is a bun shop with a lot of humanity. Tan Xingguang said with a smile.
"The sun arches and dies, and the merit is not donated".
Bald "Li Heng is a tossing and down-to-earth person, which can be seen from the profile of his Douyin account: my daughter-in-law said that I was "short, blocky, and ugly", and on September 16, 2012, I pulled a barbecue truck into the industry, and I have been in the business for 11 years to sell conscientious catering ......
His ** usually opens in smooth Kunming dialect: "Hello everyone, I'm bald!."There is no twisting in the camera, introducing the food of his barbecue restaurant, and sometimes sharing some heartfelt words casually.
In 2003, after graduating from school, Li Heng went to work in the hotel where his brother worked, and also had a preliminary understanding of the basic process of the catering industry at that time. After that, he drove a bus, set up a stall to sell clothes, engaged in the tobacco industry, and did stable and unstable jobs, and finally a restless heart made him resolutely choose to start a business and pull a barbecue truck into the Kunming catering market.
In his words, it started out as a complete "crossing the river by feeling the stones" and learning from various peers. "After selling my own stuff every night, I leave the money for the next day's purchase, and the rest goes out with friends to eat other barbecues, and the good taste will be remembered and changed, and then let customers taste it, and adjust it repeatedly, and this is the case until today. ”
From two barbecue stalls, to four, to renting a shop as a processing kitchen, Li Heng's barbecue business as a whole is moving forward in small steps. But since 2019, he found that there are many online celebrity shops in Kunming, with long queues every day, and the turnover of his barbecue restaurant is declining
A friend recommended Douyin to him at the time: "Bald head, how about you go and shoot some **?."But Li Heng was very stubborn at that time: "I felt that I could use my taste to retain customers." ”
"Slap in the face" followed. A blogger named "Very Kunming" looked for a delicious shop in Kunming to shoot **, and specially filmed an issue for him, and the traffic directly shocked him: "The amount of my **** is 500,000, which is too powerful!."”
Guests flocked to the hotel, and from five or six o'clock in the afternoon to two or three o'clock in the morning, Li Heng did not even have time to drink water. It was also at this time that Li Heng decided to make some new attempts and adjustments.
He focused on doing a good job of Douyin shooting. In October last year, Li Heng took a hairy crab **, with a volume of more than 300,000, "and then the account manager of Douyin Life Service in Kunming began to contact me."
Since then, he has gained a whole new perspective on the platform itself and its services. A month or two later, he participated in live streaming training and learned how to change the business of the store through live streaming. "At that time, there weren't many technical things to do live broadcasts, just a desire to do things well. Li Heng recalled that for the first live broadcast, due to the inappropriate picture of a live crab, he was directly cut off from the broadcast.
Fortunately, the sun is arching, and the merit is not donated. Li Heng's number of fans has been growing, with an average of forty or fifty more fans per live broadcast. "I'm a very serious person, and after the live broadcast, I will pull my account manager to review me and teach me how to target the crowd. He said that from only introducing products in the live broadcast room, to interacting with customers, to allowing customers to place orders in a centralized manner, and even to being able to give profits to customers, the daily live broadcast has become a "show of my own".
Li Heng broadcast live in front of the barbecue restaurant.
This year, things are on track. In April, Li Heng sold crayfish live and learned skills such as sending lucky bags and interacting with fans professionally. "Suddenly, there was a week or two of traffic explosion, one night, two little girls from Hekou Yao Autonomous County said that they would go directly to the store as soon as they got off the high-speed rail. Li Heng was very surprised and felt the satisfaction of being strongly recognized - it turned out that eating crayfish here was an important part of their trip to Kunming.
Today, Douyin Life Service accounts for 30%-40% of the turnover of Li Heng's store, and about 10,000 fans grow a year, which is a good report card for small businesses.
Over the years, Li Heng has also lived a more transparent life, he often puts words and phrases such as "making a friend", "trial and error", "persistence" and "sense of achievement", he thinks, "What I have learned the most over the years is not how to make money, but how to be a good person." ”
Live streaming has become a part of his life, and when he goes out to dinner with his son and daughter, he is often recognized by the boss and the clerk, and whenever this happens, the children and the "old father" are very proud.
The children's pride is, "My daughter and son are proud of me, and they will think that Dad works hard." ”
The old father "sincerely believes that it is his greatest value to bring a more secure and stable life to his wife and children."
So far, three small restaurants, three young families, and three experiences of striving for a better life have vividly illustrated how fireworks can be revitalized and returned to the ordinary world with the help of the digital age and platforms.
They are not alone. According to data from Douyin Life Service, in 2023, there will be more than 1.13 million such small restaurants that will harvest new customers and new growth through new forms of communication such as short ** and live broadcasts. Even if the store is small, as long as it is delicious, well-evaluated, and distinctive, it will have a relatively equal opportunity to be discovered by people, and "seeing" and "experiencing" will be connected with one click, and potential consumer demand will be stimulated.
In this dimension of meaning, more fireworks in the world can be raised.
*:Xinhua.