The doors to Beijing’s 1970s-era Ha De Men Hotel are barred while inside staff members crowd the lobby with their suitcases in tow. Bian Yi Fang Roast Duck Restaurant, on the hotel’s ground floor, is empty save the tables and chairs – the decorations have been stripped off walls yellowed by decades of cigarette smoke.
The building will be demolished to make way for a modern, five-star hotel but it still feels as if guests could show up at any moment, their voices and laughter again filling the once-grand dining room. Instead, the only sound is that of 50-year-old, sixth generation roast duck master Bai Yongming, possibly the last person ever to sit here.
‘I’ve got so much emotion wrapped up in this place,’ he says. ‘I’ve spent my entire working-life here, serving the people. My feelings are pretty complicated today.’
For 30 years Bai, head chef of Bian Yi Fang, has faithfully prepared Peking duck for guests here at the main branch of China’s first and oldest roast duck restaurant. Peking duck is probably China’s best-known dish and Bai is heir to a tradition that is hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. ‘Peking duck is part of China’s cultural heritage,’ he says. ‘It can’t be learned from books; it is passed on from master to disciple.’
But although Bai is a master, overseeing seven branch restaurants and 15 franchised outlets, he cannot trace his ancestry back to the imperial kitchen, nor does he come from a storied line of restaurateurs. His current position could be ascribed to an ‘accident of history’, but it is an accident that is central to the Chinese experience today.
‘Do you understand Chinese history?’ he asks. I am not sure how to answer. ‘Well, do you know about the Cultural Revolution?’ he adds, to which I quickly nod my head.
In the mid-1970s, and like many other urban youths, Bai was full of youthful passion and volunteered to go to the countryside to learn about peasant life. He later realised that this posting was less about forging unity with the peasantry and more to absorb a surfeit of unemployed youth – after Mao’s policies had triggered a population explosion, economic disaster and the Cultural Revolution’s closure of universities. The experience did little to diminish his zeal.
But in 1978, when Bai was reassigned to Bian Yi Fang’s work unit in Beijing, he leapt at the chance. ‘It wasn’t easy to get assigned to any city,’ he recalls. ‘So getting a job in Beijing was great. And besides, it wasn’t as though you had a choice. You were assigned a work unit and either you went or you starved.’
Bai received a salary of 19.08 yuan per month (less than a dollar in 1978) and considered it adequate. At the time, a roast duck cost 6 yuan while a bowl of noodles was 0.15 yuan . ‘We used to say one roast duck equalled a three-month supply of rice,’ he recalls. ‘People could only afford to eat it once a year, and they would invite the entire family. It was for special occasions.’
‘Business was great,’ he beams. ‘Back then there were only nationalised restaurants and these were very few. You had to eat by 6pm or everything would be gone.’ Looking out over the empty dining room, I can imagine entire extended families sitting around laughing and smoking with their thick, hand-knitted woollen sweaters poking up from beneath their dark blue Mao suits, their breath forming puffy white clouds in the cold, wintry air.
‘There was no food in those days,’ he says. ‘We couldn’t keep ourselves warm or our bellies full. In the winter of 1977, we ate only once a day. Some countries talk about human rights. What greater right is there than to be warm and fed?’ According to Bai, only after 1985 could China feed, clothe and house its people.
‘You couldn’t possibly understand,’ he tells me. And he is right. ‘From the 1990s, things began to change. Restaurants began to open and roast duck became a normal dish. It’s not so special anymore,’ he says without a hint of regret.
Yet Peking duck has a special place in many hearts. ‘Maybe it’s because Beijing doesn’t have many famous dishes,’ says Jen Lin-Liu, author of Serve the People – A Stir-fried Journey Through China, ‘but whenever guests come to Beijing I always take them for Peking duck. It’s one of those dishes everyone seems to love.’
Business at Beijing’s roast duck restaurants supports this claim. By 6:30pm on a Friday night, guests waiting for tables at Da Dong Roast Duck Restaurant spill out onto the street. Inside the elegant dining room, a black-clad waitress prepares thin, ‘lotus-leaf’ pancakes with an array of condiments ranging from red radish and minced soy cucumber to spring onions and hoisin sauce. Deftly wielding her chopsticks, she adds savoury duck meat and crispy skin, wrapping it into a neat bundle.
Quan Ju De, Beijing’s most famous roast duck restaurant, has branches throughout the city including a monolithic, five-storey outlet whose location was supposedly chosen by Chinese premier Zhou Enlai. A legendary roast duck story holds that the delicacy helped break a diplomatic impasse between Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon, and later became the former president’s favourite dish.
One bright, cold Saturday morning, I walk up a narrow hutong (alley) beside Beijing’s National Art Museum of China to Liu Zhai Shifu – a roast duck restaurant set in a traditional courtyard home. Frosty, Gobi winds blast up the alley, blowing back the thick red curtain that guards the door. Inside, artificial trellises hang over the sunny courtyard and the running water is so cold it bites.
By noon the place is full of locals. Perched on an old dresser, glass jugs of homemade spirits bare names such as Peach Blossom, Old Beijing Medicine, and Eight Sea Treasures wine – the latter marinated with sea horses and snakes. Served home-style, the duck meat is succulent, the skin crackling with roasted fat.
I recall something Bai had told me. ‘When I started,’ he had said, ‘we had no fat in our diet, so unless the grease literally exploded across your mouth when you bit into it, people wouldn’t be satisfied. Nobody would accept that today.’
Records indicate the Chinese have been eating roast duck since the 5th century, though Bai guesses it is much longer. The current version of Peking duck most likely originated in Nanjing during the Ming Dynasty. Legend has it that when the capital was moved back to Beijing, black Nanjing ducks followed grain-bearing barges northwards up the Grand Canal and, after settling, eventually transformed into the white-plumed ducks that inhabit Beijing today.
The dish was once primarily for the imperial court, with its popularity later spreading among the nobility. China’s first roast duck shop, Bian Yi Fang, opened in 1416 in the Qianmen area just south of Tiananmen Square followed by the first proper roast duck restaurant in 1855. There are now hundreds, if not thousands, of roast duck restaurants scattered throughout Beijing and, besides the famous ones, all residents seem to have a favourite local spot.
Beijing ducks live a hard, fast life, raised free range on farms for their first 45 days, force-fed four times-a-day for their remaining 15-20 days and then slaughtered for delivery.
Liu Zhai Shifu’s head chef, Wu, says: ‘It’s cruel but there’s no other way to get the meat so tender.’ The chef’s job is then to open the chest cavity, pump air under the skin to separate skin from fat, soak the ducks in boiling water, braise them with maltose syrup and roast them either in hanging or convection ovens.
According to Bai, whose restaurant uses these latter machines, this type of roasting yields more tender meat, while hanging ovens make for crispier skin.
There remains one important question. If Bian Yi Fang is so much older than Quan Ju De, why is the latter so much better known?
‘In 1949, before liberation,’ says Bai, ‘they [Quan Ju De] were doing really badly so they immediately agreed to collectivisation (collective ownership by the people). Our business had been great so we held out till the end, until 1956. During that time, they got a leg up.’
Bai himself has done well from crispy duck. For his efforts, the Communist Party of China has honoured him as a ‘model worker’ and he is pretty much set for life. ‘I’ve spent my whole career working for other people and now I’m totally taken care of. I’m so happy,’ he beams. ‘But I’m really going to miss this place.’
Eat duck
There are roast duck restaurants across Beijing. Ask any local about the best place and they will all give you a different answer. Here is a list combining some of the well-known places with a few local favourites.
Quan Ju De
(Hepingmen branch)
14 Qianmenxi Dajie
Xuanwu District
Tel: (+86) 10 6302 3062
This massive, five-storey roast duck restaurant is probably the best-known place for Peking duck in the world. With a floor space of 15,000sq m and 41 separate dining rooms, it can serve 600 diners at one time.
Da Dong Roast
Duck Restaurant
Bldg 3, Tuanjiehu Beikou
Chaoyang Park
Tel: (+86) 10 6582 2892
Loved by Beijing’s foreign residents for the quiet elegance of its setting and the relative leanness of its duck meat, Da Dong also packs in the crowds. Reservations are recommended or you should be prepared to wait if you arrive after 6:30pm.
Liu Zhai Shifu
No.8 Jiangjiadayuan Hutong
Meishuguan Dongjie
Dongcheng District
Tel: (+86) 10 6400 5912
This charming, traditional, family courtyard restaurant offers great roast duck and an incomparable atmosphere at reasonable prices. Enjoy your meal in a sunny, open-air courtyard or relax in one of the many rooms
if it is too cold.
Bian Yi Fang Roast
Duck Restaurant
New World Centre Branch
3F, 2nd II, Beijing New
World Centre,
No.5 Chongwai Dajie
Chongwen District
Tel: (+86) 10 6708 8609
While the main branch of Bian Yi Fang is being remodelled, visit their restaurant in the New World Centre.It is one of the best places to sample traditional, convection-oven-style roast duck and put head chef Bai’s years of training to the test.
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