Reserve
The Qianmen street by day — the 五牌楼 archway spanning the road, the 正阳门 gate closing the far end, the 都一处 shop among distinct-trade neighbours, and a roadway of camels, rickshaws and sedans.

Heritage

Since
1738

The only place of its kind in all the capital.

— The Qianlong Emperor, New Year's Eve 1752

Nearly three centuries ago a wine shop opened in a lane by the Qianmen gate. It had no name. One New Year's Eve an emperor gave it one — and a plaque in his own hand. This is how a bowl of dumplings became the only place in the capital.

一

山西来客

A wine shop at Qianmen

1738 – 1742
A lone traveller with a handcart on a dawn road, the walls and gate-tower of the capital distant on the horizon, the Western Hills behind.

Chapter One · 1738

A Shanxi man comes to the capital

In the third year of the Qianlong reign, a man named Wang Ruifu left the hills of Shanxi and travelled down to Beijing. With the help of his home-province guild he set up a small wine shop just outside the Qianmen gate — the first step of a house that would outlast the very dynasty about to name it.

王瑞福 · Wang Ruifu, founder — a Shanxi man, 1738.

The 王记酒铺 (Wang's wine shop) storefront — its fret-bordered signboard and the red 太白遗风 wine-couplet, a gourd hung as its sign, wine jars at the open counter, women being served, and Wang Ruifu in a long gown.

Chapter One · Xianyukou

A lamp at Xianyukou

His shop stood on the east side of Qianmen Street, just south of the Xianyukou lane. It began as a reed-mat shed, and soon a shop with a board of its own — 王记酒铺, Wang's wine shop — selling home-brewed liquor, sesame flatbread and a few cold dishes, its lamp lit later than any of its neighbours'.

王记酒铺 — Wang's wine shop, known by the gourd hung at its door.

A warm dusk still-life — a big lacquered wine gourd hung as a shop-sign, flanked by wine banners, over a counter and shelf packed with individually-thrown wine vessels, a lantern glowing.

Chapter One · The sign

The drunken gourd

It had no name worth painting on a board. Passers-by knew it only by the wine gourd hung at its door, and called it, fondly, the "drunken gourd." For fourteen years it was one more small shop on a crowded lane — good liquor, a warm welcome, and a light that outlasted the rest.

酒葫芦 · the wine-gourd that served in place of a name.

A modest single-storey timber shopfront by day, a gourd sign and lantern over its warm open door, a few passers-by, on a Qianmen lane.

Chapter One · 1742

A door of its own

By the seventh year of Qianlong's reign, trade was steady enough that the mat-shed gave way to a small timber shopfront, with a proper door and a room above. The lamp still burned late into the night. And still, to everyone who passed, it was a shop without a name.

1742 · a storefront of its own — but nameless still.

二

都一处

The emperor's night

New Year's Eve · 1752
A snowbound street on New Year's Eve, every shop shuttered and dark, a few cold red lanterns hung, distant fireworks glowing over the rooftops.

Chapter Two · New Year's Eve, 1752

The city shutters

On the last night of the year the whole capital closed for the festival. Doors were barred, shutters drawn, the streets given over to the cold and the falling snow. Fourteen winters had passed since Wang Ruifu lit his first lamp. Every shop in the lane had gone dark — but one.

除夕 · New Year's Eve — the capital shut and silent.

A snowbound Qianmen street at night, every shop shuttered but one — the 都一处 doorway glowing warm, a sedan chair drawing up.

Chapter Two · The only lamp

One lamp, still lit

In the lane by the Qianmen gate, a single doorway still glowed. A traveller was returning to the palace that night in plain clothes — cold, hungry, and finding every shop closed against him. Then he saw the light, and turned toward it.

The only door still open in all the capital.

A close view of the glowing 都一处 doorway at night, its imperial plaque and warm windows lit, three cloaked figures climbing the snow-covered steps between the guard lions.

Chapter Two · In from the cold

Three come in from the cold

Three men climbed the snow-covered steps and stepped inside for warmth and a cup of wine. The keeper poured what he had and asked no questions of his late guests — as he would have on any winter night. Only later would he learn who had sat at his table.

Warmth, wine, and no questions asked.

A warm lantern-lit interior — a dignified guest, seen from behind and faceless, seated at a table set with a wine pot and cups, the keeper attending across the table, a latticed window and couplet scrolls behind.

Chapter Two · The name

"The only place"

Pleased by the welcome, the eldest guest asked the shop its name. It had none, said the keeper — only a small business. "On a night like this," the guest replied, "in all this great capital, yours is the only place still open." The guest, it has been told ever since, was the Qianlong Emperor himself.

都一处 — "the capital's one and only place."

A daytime street procession — two porters bear a red-silk-wrapped board carrying the ornate imperial plaque toward the shop, an official leading, onlookers gathered at the warm door.

Chapter Two · The gift

A gift from the palace

Not long after the New Year, so the story goes, palace officers came down the lane bearing a board wrapped in imperial silk. Upon it, in the emperor's own hand, were three characters — 都一处. The nameless little wine shop had been given its name by an emperor.

御笔亲题 · three characters in the emperor's own hand.

The ornate gilded 都一处 plaque, close and large, on a red-silk drape lit by two lanterns — the emperor's calligraphy in gold on dark lacquer.

都一处

The only place

Hung above the door, the gilded plaque made the little wine shop famous overnight. It has been the house's name — and its promise — for nearly three centuries since.

The imperial plaque, 1752 — still the house's name today.

三

镇店之宝

The shop of the treasure

A hushed interior — a chair draped in imperial yellow silk and roped off, the plaque and couplets on the wall behind, and a long low ridge of unswept earth running across the foreground floor.

Chapter Three · The treasure

The earth-dragon

Wang Ruifu treasured his imperial guest. He draped in yellow silk the very chair the emperor had used, and would not let the path the emperor walked be swept. Year by year the dust rose into a low ridge along the floor — the "earth-dragon," 土龙, which old Beijing guidebooks recorded as a sight of the capital.

土龙 · "before the counter, three 丈 long, its back like a sword's ridge." — 《都门纪略》

A warm, full dining room — three round tables of guests, each with different dishes, a server crossing with a steamer, the gilt plaque and couplets on the back wall, a serving hatch to the kitchen.

Chapter Three · Renown

A name in the capital

With the emperor's board above its door, the shop's fortune was made. Travelling scholars wrote it into their accounts of the city; its wine and its welcome drew crowds where once there had been a mat-shed. The only place in the capital had itself become one of the capital's landmarks.

From a nameless stall to a name known across Beijing.

四

烧麦

The signature

Tongzhi era · 1862–1874
A dense working kitchen — hanging garlic, peppers, dried fish and herbs above a shelf of individually-thrown jars, steaming bamboo baskets, a wok-range, a cook mid-fold over a board of shaomai, and sacks and cordwood on the floor.

Chapter Four · Tongzhi era

The shaomai house

In the Tongzhi years the kitchen grew: dozens of stir-fried dishes, crisp fried triangles — 炸三角 — and, above all, shaomai, the open-topped steamed dumpling that would become the house's signature. Pleated by hand and steamed to order, it made Duyichu famous a second time, now for its table rather than its plaque.

同治年间 · shaomai and 炸三角 join the menu — and come to define it.

五

守味

The name endures

The same dining room in leaner years — dim and grey, most tables empty, a single guest at one table, the keeper standing and waiting; the plaque still on the wall.

Chapter Five · The Republic

Lean years, honestly kept

The dynasty fell in 1912, and the Republic brought hard, uncertain decades. Through them the shop held on. When the accounts ran thin the staff kept faith with the food — more meat in the filling, never less — and the shaomai stayed as good as ever. Old Beijing remembered it for its 马莲肉 and its 晾肉.

Through hard years, the filling never got smaller.

A scholar's desk by lamplight — a fresh dark plaque board lettered in wet gold 都一处, a brush poised over it, an inkstone, a water-dropper and a paperweight: a new sign in the making.

Chapter Five · A new age

The name endures

After 1949 the shop became a public–private house; the poet Guo Moruo, a regular at its tables, brushed it a new sign. In 1964 it moved to its present address at No. 36 Qianmen Street. Its old name was, for a time, set aside — and in 1981, 都一处 was raised over the door once more.

公私合营 · 郭沫若题匾 · 1964 迁前门大街 · 1981 复名。

六

二十四褶

Living heritage

A tall warm kitchen — a shelf of jars and bowls, hung lanterns and couplet scrolls, steam rising, and the counter below: steaming bamboo baskets, a board of hand-folded shaomai, and the 走槌 rolling pin.

Chapter Six · The craft

Twenty-four folds

What the emperor's board promised, the kitchen still keeps — every shaomai folded entirely by hand, exactly so:

  • 二十四褶Twenty-four pleats, gathered at the crown
  • 石榴嘴Open on top — the "pomegranate mouth"
  • 荷叶边A lace-thin rim, rolled by hand
  • 时令馅A filling that turns with the season

24 — one pleat for each of the year's solar terms; the count never changes.

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A warm counter still-life — one large hand-folded shaomai showing its open pomegranate-mouth crown and pleats, ringed by twenty-four small marks, beside the many-headed 走槌 rolling pin and a steamer stack.

Chapter Six · 二十四节气

One fold for each season

二十四褶

Twenty-four pleats gather at the crown of every dumpling — one, it is said, for each of the year's twenty-four solar terms. The count never changes; only the filling turns with the season.

荷叶边 · 走槌

The lace-thin rim is rolled out with the 走槌, a many-headed pin found in no other kitchen. Sixteen separate steps, every one by hand, stand between the flour and the steamer.

A warm, close portrait of a master folder at her lit counter, mid-fold over a board of shaomai, steamers beside her, couplet scrolls framing the room.

Chapter Six · The eighth generation

Kept by hand

The craft passes master to apprentice. Today Wu Huaxia — 吴华侠, the eighth-generation keeper of Duyichu's shaomai, a National Model Worker and a deputy to the National People's Congress — still presses each wrapper to its twenty-four folds. She won the national China Pastry Golden Tripod Award, and in 2008 the craft she carries entered China's register of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

吴华侠 · eighth-generation inheritor · 全国人大代表 · 国家级非遗, 2008.

The 都一处 shopfront today, after dark — its windows and gilt plaque glowing warm, red lanterns lit, guests at the door on Qianmen Street.

Chapter Six · Still here

Still the only place

Nearly three centuries on, Duyichu still stands on Qianmen Street — now part of the Bianyifang group — its plaque lit gold after dark, its steamers rising with the same dumpling folded the same way. The lamp that once stayed lit past midnight has never really gone out.

Still the only place — 前门, since 1738.

The record

Nearly three centuries, in eight dates

  • 1738Founded. Wang Ruifu opens a small wine shop by the Qianmen gate.
  • 1752Named 都一处 by the Qianlong Emperor, who gives it a plaque in his own hand.
  • 1862–74Shaomai and fried triangles become the house's signature.
  • 1956Becomes a public–private house; Guo Moruo brushes a new sign.
  • 1964Moves to its present home at No. 36 Qianmen Street.
  • 1981The name 都一处 is restored over the door.
  • 2008The shaomai craft enters China's register of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
  • TodayStill on Qianmen Street — still folded twenty-four times, by hand.

Sources: Beijing 首都之窗 · 中国非物质文化遗产网 · 商务部中华老字号数字博物馆. The 1752 imperial naming is the house's celebrated founding legend, told as it has been handed down.

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