Tongshengxiangniuyangroupaomo Making Craftsmanship
01 · Historical Records
Mutton paomo has a long history. In the pre-Qin era, when sacrificing to ancestral temples and entertaining honored guests, there were rites such as "offering lambs and sacrificing leeks" and "feasting with friends, killing lambs," which have evolved over more than two thousand years to the present. In the early 1920s, the Tongshengxiang Restaurant operated beef and mutton paomo and the like in Xi'an.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Tongshengxiang beef and mutton paomo has heavy seasoning and mellow flavor, tender meat and thick broth, chewy and smooth bread, overflowing aroma, and a distinctive taste. Its production process is very exacting, and from the selection of materials, boiling the meat, simmering the broth, adding ingredients, and seasoning to soaking the bread, it consistently achieves refinement, standardization, and normalization. Beef and mutton paomo is a nourishing delicacy of distinctive flavor, and also has a stomach-warming function; for a long time it has been deeply loved by the people of Shaanxi and even the Northwest. Over nearly a century, the Tongshengxiang Restaurant, on the basis of inheriting tradition, has continued to innovate and develop, greatly improving the beef and mutton paomo in color, aroma, taste, and form, making it the most representative halal-flavored food of Shaanxi. In terms of method, Tongshengxiang's approach can be divided into two lines: one is the broth, the other the bread. The broth puts beef and mutton bones together with the beef and mutton into the pot, adds a spice packet wrapping more than ten kinds of seasonings, brings to a boil over high heat then turns to a slow simmer until the meat is tender and the broth thick; the bread mixes a little yeast into the flour, watching the heat when baking, and only when broken into pieces and dropped into the broth does it become chewy and smooth, neither mushy nor scattered. The broth and bread are made separately but eaten together, continuous with the eating method of first boiling then breaking. At the table, beef and mutton paomo, with its heavy seasoning and mellow flavor, tender meat and thick broth, and chewy smooth bread, is best for a group gathering around a table to share: the diner breaks the bread himself—broken large, one chews and sees the form; broken fine, it becomes a paste in the mouth—and the order of sharing and the act of breaking turn eating into a participation.
The spice bag and slow simmering
Bones and meat are cooked with a bag of a dozen aromatics, brought to a boil then simmered gently until the meat falls apart and the broth thickens.
Baking the huotuomo cakes
A little leavening is used in the flatbread so that the broken pieces keep their glutenous texture in the broth.
Breaking and sharing the cake
Diners break the cake themselves, so the size of each piece — from grainy to mushy — is theirs to decide.
From sacrificial lamb to paomo at table
Its lineage reaches back over two thousand years to pre-Qin rites of offering lambs and leeks to ancestors and honoured guests.
Cooking paomo at the Diaoyutai guesthouse
As head chef of the Beijing branch from 1994 he cooked Xi'an paomo at the Diaoyutai state guesthouse.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
In this process, the restaurant's cooks continuously innovated, developing beef and mutton paomo into a food with distinct local characteristics. Beef and mutton paomo has distinct ethnic dietary characteristics and unique regional flavor, and enjoys a long-standing reputation nationwide. Tongshengxiang beef and mutton paomo is rooted in Xi'an; its craft was established in Xi'an city starting from the early 1920s when the restaurant operated beef and mutton paomo there, and gradually took hold within Xi'an. Thereafter it traveled outward with the distribution of halal restaurants: in Beijing, Shanghai, Lanzhou, and the halal streets of the Northwest provinces, there are shops using paomo as their signboard, but once dispatched outside, the spices in the broth and the bread's heat control each set up their own line according to local products and eating customs. Xi'an is the birthplace and central area of Shaanxi's halal cuisine; beef and mutton paomo taking root here has its geographic logic: the Guanzhong cattle and sheep are both fat and tender, and it is also influenced by both farming and nomadic eating customs, so this bowl of broth-and-noodles is both like the roughness of the Northwest and retains the refinement of Guanzhong.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Wu Ping (per records of the associated officially documented inheritor): Male, Hui ethnicity, born in April 1963, from Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province. Representative inheritor of the fourth batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage item, Tongshengxiang beef and mutton paomo making craft. Tongshengxiang beef and mutton paomo making technician. When making the meat broth, he first puts the beef and mutton bones and the beef and mutton into the pot, then adds the spice packet wrapping more than ten kinds of seasonings, brings to a boil over high heat and continues boiling, and finally simmers over low heat until the meat is tender and the broth thick. When baking the tuotuo bread, he adds a little yeast to the flour and pays attention to heat control, so that the tuotuo bread, when broken and cooked in the meat broth, is chewy and smooth and very tasty. In 1994 he became head chef of the Tongshengxiang Beijing branch, and once cooked Xi'an beef and mutton paomo at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. Wu Ping is the representative inheritor of the fourth batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage item, Tongshengxiang beef and mutton paomo making craft, and a Tongshengxiang beef and mutton paomo making technician. The spice-packet formulation, yeast amount, and low-heat duration recorded in the archives, taken together, are the measure of the Tongshengxiang school. They allow Tongshengxiang branch stores elsewhere, even changing place and ingredients, to still reproduce an approximating flavor by this method; they also let those outside Xi'an follow the method to make a bowl of paomo themselves, moving it from the banquet table of a famous restaurant into an ordinary kitchen. From the mutton-paomo line of the old Sun family to Tongshengxiang's beef-and-mutton co-simmer, the two shops are both in Xi'an, both of the halal line, yet their broths are clearly distinct. Each guards its own broth, neither borrowing nor confusing it—and that is precisely the premise on which such crafts can each establish their own reputation.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Wu Ping 04-1910
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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