In Japan Saitama Prefecture Nishikawaguchi, this area that was once equated with the "red light district" has become an emerging Chinatown in recent years. There are many Chinese restaurants here, and there is an endless stream of Chinese and Japanese customers coming to taste the delicious food.
The author interviewed bosses from different places in Nishikawaguchi. This article is the last story published in four parts. The name of the restaurant is "Weiweixiang", which celebrates its 28th anniversary this year. In the Japanese media, it is regarded as "Confucius' 70th "The Chinese restaurant opened by the second generation" is famous. When the author interviewed the second-generation owner, Mr. Yamada Yoshitada (the 73rd generation of Confucius), he found that his story was rich and interesting, as shown on the menu of this restaurant, which includes Shandong cuisine. (Shandong cuisine) and Cantonese cuisine, as well as homemade Korean kimchi, which are all related to the history of the "Yiweixiang" family.
"I was born in Seoul, South Korea. Let me first talk about this background. My grandmother (note: her name is いその/Isono) is Japanese from Nagano Prefecture. Why my surname is Yamada is also because of my grandmother's surname. Yamada. Grandma’s father is a surgeon. He opened a clinic in Tokyo called Yamada Surgical Hospital. A concubine, I heard that she came to see a doctor, but she later got better. The grandmother was the youngest of four siblings and a daughter. The Yamada family in Nagano Prefecture did not value her, so her father gave her to her. I was raised by my concubine. She loved my grandmother very much, and because she was not my biological daughter, she spoiled her a little. My grandmother became a little willful, which may have something to do with her growing up. Both my father and my concubine died in the Tokyo bombing at the end of World War II, and the hospital was destroyed. My grandmother did not experience the bombing because she had already married a state-sponsored student from China in Tokyo. , a social elite who was proficient in five languages, my grandmother fell in love with him, followed him to Manchuria, got married, and gave birth to a daughter there. The daughter’s name is Haozi, and this is my mother. Dear. After returning to Manchuria, my grandfather became an official and often went to other places to attend meetings. One day he went to work as usual, and then his whereabouts were unknown. "
Mr. Yamada's mother (Hiroko) is now over seventy years old, and she still lives in "Strange Fragrance". At work, she is lively and talkative and is very popular with Chinese and Japanese guests. Some guests come just to chat with her. The author met her when she first came to "Weiweixiang" and ordered the spring pancake set. When she saw that the author was not rolling the pancake smoothly, she reached out and picked up the chopsticks to help roll one. During the interview, she was in the kitchen behind the bar. After Mr. Yamada told the above story, she added: "So I don't remember my father's appearance, but my mother (いその/Isono) once told me that she has The happiest years were in Manchuria, because my father loved her very much. I heard that life in Manchuria was very comfortable, and even the maid prepared the water for her to wash her face in the morning. Speaking of my mother, she was indeed. She is a very beautiful woman, but I think her thoughts are relatively simple, because she told me that when she was a child, she liked this beautiful adoptive mother very much and was very proud of her. How could she take into account the mood of her biological mother. I’m so proud of my concubine. Maybe she’s too young, but she’s still a little too naive. But my mother is a smart person and is proficient in Chinese and Korean. She learned them all by herself.”
Mr. Yamada continued: "World War II is over, and there is no news about my grandpa. The Soviet Union sent troops to Manchuria, and my grandma decided to take my mother to flee to North Korea Busan because she heard that the ship repatriating Japan departed from Busan. My grandpa is here There was a brother in Manchuria who was the director of a paper factory. This grandpa told my grandmother that the child could stay in Manchuria so that when she returned to Japan It would be easier to find a partner. Grandma refused, saying that this was the first time in her life that she fell in love with the father, and she must take care of the child by herself. Grandpa gave him a sum of money and asked him to accompany him. My grandma arrived in Busan. After arriving in Busan, this Korean seemed to have a crush on my grandma, but my grandma didn't mean it. In addition, she was not used to the environment of the Japanese asylum, so she escaped alone with her daughter not long after.The daughter of a doctor's family and the wife of a high-ranking official in Manchuria must not be able to adapt to life in a shelter. "
Because his daughter complained that she was hungry, Mr. Yamada's grandmother (いその/Isono) went into a small restaurant. It happened that the owner of the restaurant was Chinese and his wife was Japanese. She advised Ms. Isono not to go back to Japan. Anyway, they were all bombed into disgrace. Ms. Kono took her advice and stayed in Busan instead of taking the boat. Later, she remarried a Chinese man through the help of this Japanese wife. Mr. Yamada said: "This is the grandpa I know. , was working as the director of a foundry in Busan. "
"Then why our family came to Japan was because the bid for the Tokyo Olympics (1964) was successful. My grandmother in South Korea learned about the level of economic development in her motherland. She felt homesick and wrote a letter to her hometown in Nagano Prefecture. My relatives back home couldn’t believe it at first. It had been many years since the end of World War II, and they had already prepared my grandma’s grave. After a few exchanges of letters, they finally understood that this was not a scam, so they helped my grandma apply for a visa to temporarily return to China. Grandma was very happy. Later, she traveled back and forth between South Korea and Japan too frequently. The South Korean government suspected that she was a spy, and it became difficult to apply for a visa. So my grandma decided to settle in Japan. She would go back to Japan during the Olympic year and then bring her family over one by one. When picking up my grandpa, the Japanese government required him to find a good job in Japan first, so my grandma went to Kawaguchi City (Saitama Prefecture). Did you know that Kawaguchi is famous for its foundry industry? She found a job for her husband in a factory. . Grandpa felt out of place when he arrived at the factory, mainly because of his different status. The man in his forties who was the factory director before became an ordinary worker after coming to Japan. He couldn't accept it. Because he sprained his waist, my grandfather quit his job at the factory and later opened a Chinese restaurant, Pengchun Restaurant, in Nishikawaguchi. It was about a ten-minute walk from the station and served Japanese-style ramen and shredded pork with green pepper. "
During this period, Mr. Yamada's mother (Hioko) married a Chinese in Seoul, which is why Mr. Yamada was born in Seoul. And the "Pengchun Hotel" opened in Nishikawaguchi, the business situation at the beginning It was not ideal, but because there were not many ramen shops opened by Chinese in Nishikawaguchi at that time, people thought it was fresh, and because my grandfather was motivated, the restaurant business gradually got on track. A few years after the store opened, they finally brought their daughter and her family to Japan. Mr. Yamada said that he still remembered the appearance of this ramen shop because he ate breakfast and dinner at this shop. The restaurant was later inherited by Mr. Yamada’s younger brother, but it soon closed due to problems with borrowing money. “My grandpa was a tall, burly man, worthy of having been a factory director. Although his personality was a bit stubborn and a bit chauvinistic, he was quite capable. A man of courage. He died when he was seventy-three, and my grandmother died just the year before last, at the age of ninety-four. "
So who started the business of "Weiweixiang" now? That is Mr. Yamada's father, Mr. Kong Xian'e. He was already forty-two years old when he went to Japan with his wife (Hiroko). Not long after he came to Japan, he started working in Ueno ( Taito Ward, Tokyo, half an hour's train ride from Nishikawaguchi
"The owner of this restaurant is from Shandong, which is my father's hometown, because my father-in-law was born in Muping County, Shandong Province, not far from the hometown of Confucius. Far. My father-in-law was engaged in Chinese medicine business and often traveled to the Korean Peninsula. Later, he moved the family to Seoul. My father was only seven years old at that time. Soon the Sino-Japanese War started and they could not return to Shandong, so my father-in-law opened a restaurant and hospital in Seoul. It is said that the business was booming. Later, they lost everything due to the Korean War, so they moved to Busan for a while and returned to Seoul after the armistice. By this time, my father had grown up and was working as a manager in a restaurant in Seoul. He married my mother (Hao Zi) when he was thirty-four. "
"My father is not only handsome, but also a shrewd man. While working as a restaurant manager in Seoul, he also served American military families. Do Americans like to hold family banquets? My father selected local ingredients for them and arranged them. The process and chef of the family dinner.Therefore, it was easier for him to work in a restaurant after coming to Japan, and he understood the chef's mood. For example, my father goes to work earlier than anyone else and starts sharpening the chef's knife as soon as he gets to the kitchen. He is very popular and of course very easy to learn. The boss's wife often invited people to dinner. One day she asked my father to make dumplings. My father made seafood dumplings, which were a little different from Chinese dumplings. They used minced squid, leeks, eggs and ginger as the meat filling, and the dumpling skin was smaller than the traditional Chinese dumplings. Locally made in China, it is thin and has a fresh, tender and slippery texture, which the landlady is full of praise for. My father once told me that at that time, he thought that if he could open his own shop one day, he would definitely sell dumplings. We are still making this dumpling, called ‘Bicui Dumpling’. Come and try this next time. Our fried dumplings and steamed dumplings do not need to be dipped in sauce because the meat filling itself has enough flavor, while the 'Bicui Dumplings' have our special sauce, which is made with vinegar, light soy sauce, chili oil, sesame oil and yellow mustard. . "
Mr. Yamada's father, Mr. Kong Xian'e, later learned cooking skills at a Shantung restaurant in Ueno for seven or eight years. After switching to another restaurant, he opened a restaurant in Hatanodani City (located in the southern part of Saitama Prefecture, in 2011 In 2001, he was hired as the head chef of a Chinese restaurant owned by his relative in Kawaguchi City. After working for this restaurant, there was a steady stream of repeat customers, and the monthly turnover reached 10 million yen. Mr. Kong was very impressed with his cooking skills. With confidence, 1991 Mr. Yamaguchi founded the Chinese restaurant "Yiweixiang" in 2011, which means "exotic taste and fragrance". It is better than the "Pengchun Restaurant" opened by his parents-in-law.
He continued: “My father was already 58 years old at that time. At first, it specialized in selling dumplings, but Japanese people generally eat fried dumplings. No one knew about dumplings at that time, so business was very bad. I had no choice but to start selling fried dumplings in the third month after opening the store, and then slowly added other Chinese dishes. The number of guests also began to increase, but more than half of them were Chinese, because there was a foundry in Kawaguchi City nearby and there were many Chinese workers, and they lived in Nishikawaguchi. At that time, there were not many Chinese-owned restaurants near Nishikawaguchi, so our business was pretty good. In addition to the workers, there are also various Chinese people. For example, a group of people placed a dozen passports on the table while talking on the phone after dinner. They were all fake passports. (Laughs) There were quite a lot of Shanghainese and Fujian people in Xichuankou at that time, and they were very willing to spend money. "
Mr. Yamada, who is currently the second-generation owner of "Weiweixiang", worked in two restaurants for five years before coming to help with the family business. "After graduating from high school, I didn't get into the university I wanted. I repeated my studies for a year and it still didn't work. , so I started looking for a job. At that time, "Wei Wei Xiang" hadn't opened yet, and my father was working in another restaurant. I happened to find a Chinese restaurant that was about to open a new branch in Ikebukuro. The owner was Japanese. During the bubble economy of the 1980s, securities companies in particular were doing booming business, and their employees all liked to eat takeout from Chinese restaurants. We had more than a dozen bicycles and delivered takeout late into the night. But then the entire Japanese economy fell into a trough, and I heard that the owner of this store sold all his branches. I worked in this store for two years, and then I went to a Cantonese restaurant in Yokohama Chinatown to study for three years. The owner of this store is also Japanese. The original chefs were all from Hong Kong and had extremely high cooking skills. However, when I joined the company, the generation had changed and they were mainly Cantonese. Many chefs only wanted a Japanese visa. Before going to Japan, Everyone drives a taxi. During this time, my father opened ‘Weiweixiang’. Unexpectedly, shortly after the opening, my mother encountered an accident and was hospitalized. I had to go home to help my father cook. I originally planned to return to Yokohama to continue working in a few months, but it turned out that I helped my father cut ingredients and he was responsible for cooking. This would improve the speed of food delivery and seat turnover rate, so I decided to quit the restaurant in Yokohama and return to Nishikawaguchi. My father retired just a few years ago. Unfortunately, he is a little inconvenient now. Otherwise, I would have asked you to take a photo today. He has a fairy-like style and it is quite interesting to take pictures. "
"Actually, we all opposed it when my father wanted to open a store. He was nearly sixty at that time, an age when others would retire. Besides, he was the head chef at the time and had a good income, so we felt there was no need to open our own restaurant.My mother also said that she believed that conflicts would inevitably arise when couples opened a shop together, because her parents opened a ramen shop, and my mother often saw her parents quarreling fiercely. But my father was very insistent. This was his dream. Also, at the restaurant opened by a relative, the owner's son started to get involved in the business. This young man and my father didn't get along very well. My parents did have conflicts after opening 'Weifangxiang', but they never scolded each other as soon as they got home. I admire them for this. And now that I think about it, I still have to thank my father. If he hadn’t prescribed ‘Odor Fragrant’, I don’t know what I would be doing now. Maybe I will work as a chef in other people's restaurants for the rest of my life. In fact, the social circle of chefs is very narrow, and there is almost no chance to meet female friends. It is very likely that I will not get married. "(Author's note: Mr. Yamada is married and has three sons.)
Dumplings, which were once ignored, have now become one of the special dishes with "unusual smell". Some Japanese customers order three kinds of dumplings, fried dumplings, Compare the different tastes of steamed dumplings and boiled dumplings. In addition to the various dumplings, pork trotters, and barbecued pork dishes developed by my father, the restaurant also has dry-roasted oysters, stir-fried scallops, and fresh shrimps using seasonal ingredients. XO Sautéed asparagus, etc., these were all learned by Mr. Yamada when he worked at a Cantonese restaurant in Yokohama.
“Now it’s mainly Japanese customers, because Chinese people still like hometown cuisine. Shanghainese go to Shanghainese restaurants, and Northeasterners go. Northeastern cuisine restaurants, and now there are many types of restaurants in Nishikawaguchi, can meet individual requirements. It is not that I have no interactions with them. For example, the Fu Ji you just interviewed is going to participate in a food event in Kawaguchi. Because I am a member of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry here, I have communicated with him several times. I also know the owner of a Malatang shop. She carries out garbage picking activities in Nishikawaguchi. This year, Japan’s NHK TV station introduced it. But overall there is very little real communication. The problem is that there are many new stores opening and many being eliminated, so it is difficult to maintain long-term relationships. For example, the restaurant opposite used to serve iron pot stew and was featured on a famous Japanese TV show. However, it moved out the second week after the show aired. The day after the move, someone put up a new sign. The new restaurant is also a Chinese restaurant that serves iron pot stew and hot pot. The interior decoration is exactly the same as the original one. This new restaurant has been open for more than a year and closed again. In fact, the business was quite good, but the boss's wife was exhausted. This place seems to be opening a new Chinese restaurant in June. "
" Nishikawaguchi has indeed gained a reputation. Now almost every corner is being targeted by agents. Once a room becomes available, someone will come to sign for it immediately. Many Chinese are optimistic about Nishikawaguchi's economic trends, but not many are actually making money. There are not many companies around Nishikawaguchi. Unlike Tokyo, the flow of people during the day is actually quite small, so there is almost no business at noon. It will be more crowded at night or on weekends, but not necessarily. There are a lot of Chinese people here, so you can open a restaurant to support it for a few months. After all, people are curious about newly opened restaurants. But after a few months, if customers find problems in taste, service, etc., the number of people will gradually decrease, and in the end only relatives or friends will come to support. This will happen. In short, it is actually quite difficult to survive in the catering industry. But from another point of view, because the Japanese media has done a lot of reports about Nishikawaguchi, many Japanese people come from all over to eat in Nishikawaguchi, which is a good thing. We also often receive guests who speak Kansai. They are from Osaka or Kyoto and come to Tokyo on business. They stay in Nishikawaguchi because there are budget hotels here, there are so many restaurants and fun places around, and the transportation is very convenient. Very convenient. So let’s see in the future, maybe we Chinese restaurant owners can do something together for the overall development of Nishikawaguchi. "
After the interview, the author and Mr. Yamada continued to chat, and naturally they talked about health issues. Because of the store's business hours, he lived a life of reverse day and night. He returned home at four or five in the morning and slept until one or two in the afternoon. We have to spend the night at the restaurant twice on Mondays. “Otherwise, we won’t be able to get anything done. But my wife is very suspicious that I am doing bad things somewhere else."(Laughs) Mr. Yamada is fifty years old this year. He believes that he is able to survive this physically demanding job because he practiced judo when he was young and has more muscles than the average person. "Learning judo can also strengthen your spirit. More than ten years ago, the police cracked down on illegal custom shops in Nishikawaguchi, which resulted in a decrease in customer flow throughout Nishikawaguchi. The business of our restaurant was also hit hard. At that time, I really considered whether to close it. Later, the Youth Department of Kawaguchi City Chamber of Commerce and Industry launched a B-level food event, and I participated deeply in it and won the championship once. I can confirm that I learned this spirit of patience and self-denial from judo. It's not too late now, let's exercise more. "
After taking the photos, the author thought of another question when he was about to leave the store. Mr. Yamada left Seoul when he was young. Has he ever returned to his hometown?
"Yes, twenty-eight years ago, my father was about to open the 'Odd Fragrance Shop'. ' time. Since I definitely wouldn’t have time to arrange travel after opening a restaurant, our family took a trip to Seoul and stayed at a relative’s house. At that time, there were many public bathhouses in Seoul, which opened at four or five in the morning, which was very convenient. We went out and walked to a nearby public bathroom around 7 a.m., which happened to be the time when every household was making breakfast, and the aroma of making soup filled the air of the city. What's that called, miso soup? Anyway, it's like miso soup. In fact, I have almost no memories of the time when I lived in Seoul as a child, because I was only a few years old and too young when I left. But when I smelled that fragrance, a voice came from the bottom of my heart, 'I'm back.' ”
Notes
Chinese Shandong Cuisine Wei Wei Xiang
1-26-24 Nishikawaguchi, Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture (three minutes walk from the station)
Business hours: Tuesday to Thursday 17:00 ~ 1:00, Friday and Saturday 17 :00～2:00, Sundays and national holidays 17:00～0:00 (closed on Monday)
The author of this article introduces
Yoshii Shinobu is a Chinese-speaking Japanese writer who currently lives in Beijing. He graduated from the International Christian University in Japan and studied in Chengdu. He worked as a farmer in southern France and worked as an economic news editor in Taipei, Manila, and Shanghai. He is now a full-time writer. "Four Seasons Bento" and "Tokyo Honya", review and review of "MUJI Light Cuisine" series, etc.
Title pictures and pictures in the text are all taken by the author
.-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-