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.
