When night falls, if you visit the snack night market, through the peddling cries, you would be enclosed by various sweet smells. In here, there are too many Beijing snacks for your eyes to take in. If you are careful enough, you can find that the snack making methods can be classified into deep frying, baking, steaming, boiling, hot water pouring, shallow frying, roasting, and sautéing. But sautéing mentioned here is not referring to normal dishes, snacks don’t have formal courses in flavour of Lu, Chuan, Huai, and Yue. If you want to try these formal courses, you have to go to large restaurants. Sauteing discussed here is directed to Chaogeda.
To be honest, Chaogeda is indeed a famous snack in Beijing. It is said that at the beginning of Republic of China, in Liulichang outside of Hepingmen there was a small restaurant serving ordinary home-made dishes. The owner of it was an old lady surnamed Mu, who struggled for her survival with the help of her daughter by selling noodles. It is said that they invented this snack by accident. One day, they didn’t sell out the dough they kneaded. The daughter came up with an idea to press the dough flat and cut it into small lumps, then she put them into hot water to boil. After the lumps are cooked well, she fished them out and put in shade against fermentation. At that night, they sauted those lumps together with some vegetable and meat shreds as their makeshift dinner. To their surprise, it tasted quite good and chewy, in one word, it was fantastic. In consequence, the daughter said to her mother, “Let’s sell this stuff tomorrow, and call it Chaogeda”. Hence, the daughter’s decision brought about a famous snack by chance. Thereafter, the Chaogeda they sold got well known in Beijing, new and old customers kept coming to eat. This food is cheap and fine with a special taste, so it was particularly popular at that time. Later, many celebrities came here too due to its high reputation. The mother and daughter became famous, so there were some meddlesome people called the restaurant Guangfuguan as Lady Mu’s Fastness, and named the daughter as Mu Guiying, who was a famous general in operas narrating events happened in Song dynasty. Isn’t this interesting?
(Source: bjchinese.bjedu.cn)