How sweet and sour pork gave this former convict in China a second chance - and made her a Xiamen street food legend
- Thirty years ago, Du Yaying went to prison for her part in running a gambling den
- Finding her passion for food, she is today the chef and owner of a popular restaurant in Xiamen, China
It’s 4pm on a breezy winter day in Xiamen, a coastal city in southeastern China. A line of eager diners has formed outside a small eatery on Kaiyuan Road, a major thoroughfare famous for its street food.
The shop, Liangshan Food Stall, does not open until 5pm, but there are already people waiting outside. They’ve come to try the owner’s speciality: sweet and sour pork.
But this is not just any sweet and sour pork. Liangshan’s version is legendary for its textural contrast – crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.
Du Yaying, the owner who has been making the dish for more than two decades, credits this to tenderising the meat by hand for an hour straight before cooking. Pork typically has a tough texture, but by beating it, the muscle fibres loosen and the meat becomes soft.
“If you cook it right away, it will not be crispy and will not taste good,” she says. Her shop goes through more than 9kg of meat a day. “In the summer, your whole body is soaked in sweat.”
Customers flock to Du’s restaurant not only for her sweet and sour pork, but also for her eccentric character and warm familiarity, increasingly rare in gentrifying Xiamen. She is known to playfully scold customers for taking too long with their food.
“Eat before you fool around. Listen to a mother’s words,” she tells a group of young customers, as she shuffles through the small gaps between packed tables.
For 25 years, Du has been running a tight ship on Kaiyuan Road. She has taken a true holiday only twice and occasionally steps in for chefs who quit on her. Not everyone is cut out for the work and heat. “The sweat is so salty that you cannot open your eyes,” she says. But it’s an improvement from her previous life.
Before she stepped into the food business, Du ran an underground gambling operation with a friend. After police raided their den, she and 25 others were sent to prison. She served two years. Du says her heart still aches thinking about that time.
“You weren’t supposed to cry in prison,” she says. “People would scold you if you made a sound. I would cry all day. I’d cry under the covers.”
In prison, Du found her passion for food. She worked in the kitchen, where her duties included washing vegetables and hauling buckets of water.
Prison fare, though, was dreadful, and she was happy whenever the guards would offer her their leftovers. “They had more than 10 types of dishes,” Du says.
After she got out in 1994, Du sold her most prized possession – a necklace she bought with her gambling earnings – and started her business with just over US$300. In the beginning, it was just her, a chef and one other worker. They had two tables.
“I was really scared,” Du says. “I did not know how to run a store.”
But as Xiamen developed and the city’s population grew, so did business. Du says she was the first street food stall to open on Kaiyuan Road, which had been in decline since the 1960s.
Then, several banks, including Xiamen International Bank, decided to build their headquarters nearby, and from the 1990s onwards, the area has seen a revival.
Today, Du has 10 employees, but she still picks out the meat and tenderises it herself. Another friend in the business has suggested she step back a little and let others take over, but she is reluctant.
“I will not stop,” she says.
This article was originally published on Goldthread. Follow Goldthread on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram for more stories about Chinese culture.
