What is the most representative Chinese food?
It’s hard to be convinced.
But.
What is the most representative food in the world.
There may be only one answer.
Right.
Barbecue.
A handful of meat, a fire, a handful of seasoning.
The aroma is overwhelming, the oil glistens, and the saliva you can’t help but swallow has already revealed the most persistent food craving of mankind to date.
It is a desire that is never evasive.
It is purer than love, more raw than power.
It’s painful.
This desire is revealed in one film.
A String of Life 2″.
This week, “Life in a String 2” is coming to an end, and I am so sad to let it go.
Did you notice that the title of every episode of the second season is a secret phrase from the late-night cafeteria – “A String of Life 2”?
“How many of you?” “Our Family Specialty” “Is it spicy?” “A little staple?” “Not enough and then some”.
This is the secret of the success of “Life on a String 2”.
It captures both the aroma of barbecue and the emotional logic of our fascination with it.
It is the Taiwanese flavor of the street corner’s exquisite small fire and slow work.
Even a grumpy biker boy has to give patience to wait for the taste.

It is also a hot bed in the Northeast humming a duet.
Even the most gentle little girl next door can drink a handful of raw meat with wine until dawn at night.

There are two eternal questions when it comes to food.
First, what do I eat?
Two, who do I eat with?
–The same goes for barbecue.
Well, Sir, today I’ll take you along with the menu of “Life is a String 2”.

01
Everything is Bakeable
It is a ritual that less than three people should never move.
The sauce is spread evenly over the meat, the iron stove is hot, and the butter is melted on the iron plate.
A medium-thick slab of beef is laid on top, taking up at least three quarters of the plate.
After a few turns, you’re at ease, waiting for the fat to dance in the heat.
Yes, iron-oven home roasts.

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Kebab 2″ Episode 5 “Not Enough”, Lin Family Barbecue
The Iron Oven Family Grill is definitely the first choice for parties of five or more.
If you’re flamboyant, you can chat and eat without fear of the food getting cold.
If you’re low-key, you can be silent the entire time and only move your chopsticks.
And if you’re afraid of publicity and don’t want to keep a low profile, that’s fine too.
While nodding your head in agreement, flip the meat and sprinkle the salt….
When the meat is overflowing with flavor, you say, “It’s okay.” without looking up.
When a co-worker swallows the roast and smiles slightly without looking up, “It’s okay, right?”
In the midst of a satisfied compliment, an expert aura slowly lights up behind you, and communication, just for a moment, slowly opens up.
It’s a social skill only foodies understand.
Taste, to open up the buzz.
Pain, to open up the conversation.


△
Personal experience: this is the best time to ask your boss for annual leave.
Of course, if the trip is purely male, the style of painting must be a little greasy.
There is a kind of gang out there, called: Let’s go, find some excitement.
The second brother in Shenyang’s Qinjiang Street legally operates this kind of “lower three road” stimulation.
High-energy warning ahead.
–especially the men!
3。
2。
1。

△
Kebab 2″ Episode 2 “Our Speciality” Qinjiang Kebab Restaurant
The rams of the Zarat banner have nightmares that they would never imagine.
One of its own organs can be subjected to such meticulous deconstruction: sheep gun, gun head, gun bank, gun root, gun skin, sheep egg, egg head, egg skin ……
I never imagined that they would become delicious on my brother’s grill.
The lamb’s egg is as tender as tofu, and the lamb’s spear is as elastic as it is firm.

The Chinese have a kind of obsession, called the form to make up the form.
Eat liver to make up for liver, eat brain to make up for brain, what to eat, what to make up for …… Anyway, which organ (worry) is sick, we will eat something similar to that organ to make up for it.
Useful?
Sorry, Sir is not a nutritionist.
But Sir understands the psychology–
If you can’t get the prototype, you can get the illusion.
This spiritual triumph has two major keys to success.
One, the more people believe the more effective.
Just like a pair of brothers in the “what to eat to make up what” challenge, exchanging ambiguous glances, flowing out of the “who knows who uses” heroic.
Second, the core secret must not be made public.
Like the secret lamb gun powder made from the roast goat of Ergo on Qinjiang Street. What is the composition of that powder? Don’t ask, you’re an amateur, and if you do, you don’t deserve to eat.

In fact, in Sir’s opinion, when any party exceeds five people, the social aspect of the food is the first consideration.
At this point, “what to eat” and “how to eat” are far more important than “whether it tastes good or not”.
Like this boneless, thornless, soft and glutinous, smooth and tender bite of grilled “tofu fish”.
It’s a unique taste of the southeast coast.
Eat it while it’s hot.
Only the first time, you can feel the crispy outside and tender inside, the meat “flow” into your intestines and stomach.

△
Kebab 2″ Episode 5 “Not Enough”, Monster BBQ
And a mouthful of this oily, golden-brown, marrow-deep tetraplegic.
Don’t you dare eat it without telling you what it is?
Mickey is so cute, how can you eat it.

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Kebab 2, Episode 5 “Our Family Special”, Original Grilled Mouse
Skewers 2 has always shown us all sorts of weird and wonderful “non-mainstream” ingredients.
Chicken, grilled snake, sausage with curved onions ……
The underlying logic that everything can be roasted is no longer the history of the Chinese people having nothing to eat, nor is it the Chinese gluttony theory that pseudo-historians push today.
“Eat” has been our name since ancient times.
It is like blood recognition.
Like pledging a blood alliance.
Come on, let’s finish this “skewer”, and you and I will take our lives as a pledge.
02
The more it hurts, the happier it is.
Hordes of people want to sing and laugh.
A barbecue with two people out must have a little red passion.
During the day, when the anxieties of city life speed up the oxidation of hormones before they age.
At night, a late-night fun that stems from the sense of pain is always a highly effective way to awaken emotional vitality.
Ahem.
Seriously, Sir is talking about spicy food.
This bloody romance at the barbecue is as hot as the new pants sang about-.
Those ephemeral splendors are the pyrotechnics of an explosion.
The dazzling flame that burns you and me.

△
Kebab 2″ Episode 3 “Eat Spicy” Bear’s BBQ
Nanchang is probably the most neglected city when it comes to spiciness.
Hunan is spicy, Guizhou is sour, and Sichuan is spicy.
What about Nanchang?
What’s spicy?
This time, Nanchang people have something to say.
Without a red warning from the Chuan-Xiang region, Boss Xiong’s Chicken Feet, a heavy sword, would have no edge.
He won’t use “mild spiciness is a compromise” as a sign at the door.
And he won’t scare you off with “the number of red peppers” on the menu.
But Boss Xiong’s respect for spiciness permeates the everyday.
To the crispy chicken feet, add the powder made from grinding the green chili pepper, which seeps into the skin and becomes the main output.
Remember to wear gloves when mixing.

Not finished.
The fierce burn in the mouth comes from the Indian devil spice added during the roasting process.
How devilish?
The Indian military had intended to use it to make a new type of grenade that would have tear-stopping and restrictive effects on enemy movement.
In response to “regional prejudice about spicy food,” the Nanchang people, from sellers to buyers, kept a low profile as usual.
They don’t spout lotus flowers, they just spell it with their tongues.
The willy-nilly bad smile seems to say
You don’t eat spicy food.
I switched to barbering.

One lesson learned is that –
Only a barbecue stand-like wilderness can brave the spicy to a perverted level compared to the well-known chain restaurants.
As soon as the burning sensation stimulates the nerve endings, the body goes on alert: the heartbeat increases, the saliva or sweat production increases.
In the midst of the pain, the secretion of endorphins accelerates, and finally, finally, the pleasure hits.
This pleasure is not only the glue that binds a couple together.
It’s also an icebreaker for you and your mom and dad.
Especially the smell of that age.

△
The first episode of “String 2”, “How Many of You”, the legendary chicken stand.
Charcoal is used for cooking.
Coke is used to make steel.
But Bin, from Shenyang’s Huanggu District, is the lone heir to the Ostrovskian romance of the working class, with the most hardcore chicken grill.
A charcoal-filled grill that runs all night, cleverly combining smoking and grilling.
The thirty-pound cast iron grill, which holds eight ingredients at once, must be turned constantly to balance the intensity of the fire and smoking.
This kind of hardcore DIY shows the shining wisdom and power of our father’s era.

We all know that spicy is not a taste, it’s a burning pain.
Then why do people like “pain”?
On the one hand, “pain” is a kind of self-existence proof that I am in pain, that I am not numb, that I am alive.
More importantly, people are addicted to pain.
Because the extreme “pain” often brings a sense of lost pleasure.
To put it simply, when your gut is kidnapped by a feeling, that is the moment when you are most empty, but also the moment when you are most free.
As in, orgasm.
03
Alliance of Bakers
There’s a saying on the web that goes.
Eating hotpot by yourself is sad.
Sir dares to say that the person who says, speaks, and agrees with this statement, absolutely does not like hotpot.
Like barbecue.
Today, we have so many misconceptions about barbecue.
What ingredients are not fresh, what just depends on the seasoning to taste, and even, nothing technical.
Oh.
How else to say ignorance is fearless.
At this point, Sir has to admit.
Sir is the one who would go downstairs and jerk off alone in the middle of the night.
What kind of pleasure is that?
Oh.
What a relief.
You’ve ignored the barrier of social anxiety.
You’ve crossed the dilemma of loyalty.
Right now, you just want to be alone, quietly, alone, undisturbed by anyone or anything, and run away with your lust for food.
You don’t have to worry about what you order.
You can eat as much as you want.
It is no exaggeration to say that a barbecue stand is a late-night canteen where Chinese people clink glasses with themselves.
Just like Kunming Lao Wang’s nameless store, every night it hosts lonely ghosts wandering for a mouthful of teeth.
Roasted pig’s feet and rice noodles.
–This combination seems simple, but there is a deep comfort behind it.
△
Kebab 2, Episode 4, “A little staple”, No Name Store
Roasted Pork Feet.
Marinated first, the secret marinade simmers for 5 hours, torturing the flesh until it separates from the bone.
Grilled, the fat and chili meet in the charred flavor of the skin.
If pork feet are for dopamine, then rice noodles are all about pleasing your satiety.

Yunnan rice noodles are so thick that they are fierce.
Under Wang’s precise fire control, the outside is soft and the inside is hard, and the texture takes turns massaging the mouth.
Picked up with chopsticks, the sour flavor slides down your throat.
Rub your belly and belch.
It’s addicting, and it’s easy on the heart.
Of all the ways to cook, barbecue is perhaps the most spicy and bold, but it is also the most forgiving.
Take, for example, the movie Sir knows best.
If Zhejiang cuisine is as sweet as love, Cantonese cuisine is as light as a little fresh, and Sichuan cuisine is as spicy as restrictive, then barbecue should be no compromise.
Barbecue, then, should be an uncompromising action film.
The plot is simple and the action is fast.


Most importantly, in its preparation, food returns to its original essence.
It makes people happy.




That’s why, at the end of every episode of String 2, we’re swept away by the same phrase.
“Thank you for your hospitality”.

In Sir’s opinion, this is probably the most common and heartfelt compliment.
Thank you for the food.
Thank you for your hospitality, for your cooking.
Thank you, for all the pleasures you can satisfy without any comparison.
This, perhaps, is the real message of “A String of Life 2″….
Pleasure (of a barbecue) is not precious, nor is pleasure (of a barbecue) rare, but if you want it, if you look for it with all your heart, you will get it.
because–
Pleasure is the need to ask for it.
The summer, the night, the people who want it, everything else is ready for you.
It’s just that you need to take this step-
“Let’s go, let’s eat.”
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