From an old restaurant to the stage: Tianxia Diyi Lou

In 1983 the playwright He Jiping met the director Sun Zhong at a party. He was taken with Peking duck and wanted a play on it, and the two agreed at once. To write it she went into the duck kitchens of Quanjude, interviewing and watching the hung-oven masters, and spent three years revising. When it was ready, the actors of the People’s Art Theatre came to Quanjude to learn the details the script mentioned from the cooks.

The play opened in 1988 and was an immediate success. It follows a roast-duck house, Fujude, founded under the Tongzhi emperor and handed down to the early Republic, from near-bankruptcy to a revival that makes its name in the capital, and then to the threat of collapse again. Its heroes — the manager Lu Mengshi, the young Yuchu, the cook Luo Datou, the waiter Chang Gui — are praised for their wit, drive and hard work. A 32-episode television adaptation followed in 2004.

The link to Quanjude is real: its history was the model, and its kitchens were where the author learned the trade. But Fujude is not Quanjude. The house, its people and its plot are invented, and the ups and downs of the story are the playwright’s. The television version is described as carrying across Quanjude’s motto — complete without flaw, gathered without scattering, virtue above all — and that is a statement of spirit, not a record of events. The documented history is in the Heritage Story.