The year 2020 celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birthday of Wang Zengqi (1920-1997), a prominent essayist, short story writer, playwright, and gourmet. For many readers, Wang was an outstanding gourmet and food writer and whenever the name of Wang Zengqi is mentioned, his delightful obsession with food and his essays about food and food-related anecdotes first come to mind. In comparison, not so many people are aware that Wang was an outstanding essayist, short story writer, and playwright.

In his lifetime, he visited Hangzhou only twice. From 1946 to 1948 he taught at a middle school in Shanghai.

In the spring of 1947, he and some colleagues came to Hangzhou for sightseeing. In an essay about tea, he mentioned he sipped tea at Tiger Spring, a scenic spot near the West Lake. It is widely known that the water from Tiger Spring is the best water to brew a cup of Dragon Well tea. That’s probably why he acknowledged in the essay that it was the first time he became aware of the importance of spring water used to make a cup of tea. During his brief two visits, Louwailou was the restaurant he chose to satisfy his curiosity and passion for the famous Hangzhou cuisine.

Over the years, he wrote essays about food in Jiangnan in general and about the dishes he had at Louwailou in particular. One delicacy that fascinated Wang was very thin slices of fresh raw fish at Louwailou Restaurant on the West Lake. As a gourmet and food historian, Wang once compared, in an essay, the raw fish slices he had at Louwailou with minced fish mentioned in history and ancient literary classics. The delicacy mentioned in ancient literature is long gone in history. Wang deduced the raw fish of Louwailou was very close to the lost delicacy. Unfortunately, the raw fish has long since vanished from the menu of Louwailou though, from texts of the past, foodies and food historians know exactly what the dish is.

Wang Zengqi knew quite a lot about the culinary preferences of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) in general and the Southern Song (1127-1279) in particular. In an essay about the food and beverage of the Song Dynasty, he mentioned that some luxuries such as sea cucumber, shark fin, and swallow nest which became popular in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) were not seen in well-known books written about the Song Dynasty. According to Wang, restaurants in the Song preferred simple food and convenient service. A lot of dishes were prepared in advance and they were easily served. Moreover, court banquets were also relatively simple, for at such banquets, entertainment was most important and food and beverage were only secondary. After examining historical records, Wang Zengqi dismissed the menu of such court banquets was just so so. That doesn’t mean, however, that people in Hangzhou ate at a low level. Back then, local restaurants served customers individually just as in restaurants in western countries of today. In other words, eaters at restaurants in Hangzhou back then did not share food. 

If one reads food essays written by Wang, one can easily run into detailed descriptions of delicacies popular in Jiangnan, namely, the south of the Yangtze River Delta. For those who love life and love food, Wang is a writer who makes life and food better.