Soy Sauce Brewing Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
Soy sauce developed and evolved from bean paste. After natural open-air sun-exposure fermentation, the cycle usually lasts over three years; the oil is extracted by the natural leaching method, concentrated by intense sun-exposure, then settled and again intensely sun-exposed for more than three months.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Xianshi soy sauce brewing craft is a traditional skill that uses soybeans as raw material and, through 13 traditional process steps and long-term natural fermentation, produces soy sauce with a distinctive flavor. The traditional Xianshi soy sauce brewing craft is rooted in Xianshi Town, Hejiang County, Sichuan Province, on the banks of the Chishui River, and is also practiced in Hejiang County, Gulin County, and Luxian County of Sichuan Province. The Xianshi soy sauce brewing craft inherits and carries forward the principles and norms of China's classic ancient methods of traditional soy sauce brewing and the handed-down manual brewing skill, mainly including steaming and braising whole soybeans, starter-making with natural wild strains, long-cycle open-air sun-exposure fermentation, oil extraction by the natural leaching method, and concentration of the oil body by intense sun-exposure. Specifically, the soybeans must first be soaked and washed, then steamed and braised—steamed for 12 hours and braised for 12 hours. Afterward, the soybean material is spread out to cool to about 35°C, until it feels warm with no scalding sensation to the touch, then mixed with flour. Then, using the yellow seed starter of Aspergillus oryzae in the koji room as the seed culture, when the white mycelium gradually turns yellow-green, the koji-making is complete. Finally, it is filtered, left to settle and clarified, and the product is made. The Xianshi soy sauce brewing craft has five major characteristics: natural multi-strain koji-making, long-cycle natural open-air sun-exposure fermentation, oil extraction by the "natural leaching method," three-stage fermentation with concentration by intense sun-exposure, and the whole-soybean steaming-and-braising method. At the turn from the late Ming to early Qing, Xianshi already had a sauce-garden industry. The "Jianghanyuan" Sauce Garden was the predecessor of today's Hejiang Xianshi Brewing Food Factory, with a history of over a hundred years.
Archival Record of Process Steps
The Xianshi soy sauce brewing craft is a traditional skill that uses soybeans as raw material and, through 13 traditional process steps and long-term natural fermentation, produces soy sauce with a distinctive flavor.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Xianshi soy sauce brewing craft upholds the classic ancient-method brewing culture of traditional Chinese soy sauce while also possessing regional characteristics. In the nineteenth year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty, local gentry Yuan Yingbin founded the "Jianghanyuan" Sauce Garden; the soy sauce it brewed won fame throughout southern Sichuan and northern Guizhou for its "rich sauce aroma and mellow, delicious flavor." The traditional Xianshi soy sauce brewing craft is a typical expression of the traditional soy sauce brewing culture of the Chishui River basin, a representative of the manual traditional ancient-method soy sauce brewing skill of the southern Sichuan–northern Guizhou region, reflecting the region's people's outstanding creativity and their profound understanding and effective use of the natural ecological environment, with rather high historical, cultural, and scientific value.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Soy Sauce Brewing Craftsmanship.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
At present, this heritage item is continued through master-apprentice transmission. Chen Siwei (as recorded in the official inheritor archive): male, Han ethnicity, born in September 1963, from Hejiang County, Sichuan Province. Representative inheritor of the fifth national-level batch of the soy sauce brewing craft (Xianshi soy sauce brewing craft), a national-level intangible cultural heritage item. Since entering the factory in 1985 to learn from his master, he has devoted himself to studying and researching the Xianshi soy sauce traditional craft and has proficiently mastered the brewing skill. He currently serves as deputy technical director of Hejiang Xianshi Brewing Food Co., Ltd. His representative skills include the soybean steaming-and-braising skill, the mixed koji-making skill, the high-salt liquid and solid-state fermentation skill, the daytime-sun/night-dew skill, the "Qiuzi" leaching skill, and blending, sterilization, and clarification. Since 1999 he has been the production-technology lead of the Hejiang Xianshi Brewing Food Factory in Luzhou City's Hejiang County, responsible for maintaining the factory's more than 600 century-old sun-drying vats and for protecting and repairing the century-old factory buildings.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Chen Siwei 05-2855
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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