Recently, a Shandong elder sister became popular on the Internet for making famous paintings by Van Gogh, Monet and other painters with pancakes. This Shandong elder sister is Xu Haixia, who lives in Mengyin County, Linyi City, Shandong Province. She used to be a female worker in an embroidery factory.
In 2007, the embroidery factory closed down due to losses, and Xu Haixia found a way out by renting a storefront to sell pancakes. At the beginning of the pancake shop’s business, the business was not good at all. Xu Haixia began to think carefully, adding some jujube powder and sesame powder into the batter, and made a more delicious and nutritious red date sesame pancake. As a result, the business of the pancake shop gradually improved.
After the red dates and sesame pancakes became popular, Xu Haixia had a new idea: make pancakes with fruits. Xu Haixia said that using fruit to make pancakes can not only increase the flavor of the pancakes, but also improve the appearance of the pancakes and attract more customers.
Just do it. Xu Haixia went to the fruit market to buy dragon fruit wholesale, and then squeezed the dragon fruit into juice and added it to the batter. After dozens of trials and adjustments, she finally formulated the most suitable ratio data, so that the color and aroma of the pancakes were impeccable.
After the dragon fruit pancake was launched, it immediately became popular in the whole Mengyin County. Many people came to buy and taste it, and they were full of praise after tasting it. Some food distributors in neighboring counties also flocked to purchase dragon fruit pancakes in wholesale and sell them locally.
In the next few years, Xu Haixia gradually developed a series of more than ten varieties of fruit pancakes by combining local fruits such as yellow peaches, beetroots, red Fuji apples, and big cherries. After the colorful fruit pancakes were placed on the counter, they not only attracted local customers who came and went, but also many high-end hotels in Linyi signed supply contracts with her.
One day, a female student with a painting clip came to the pancake shop. When she was buying fruit pancakes, she said casually: “This pancake is so beautiful, colorful like flowers!” It was this unintentional compliment that made Xu Haixia Inspiration suddenly came to my mind: Can pancakes be made into flowers?
Because she has no art skills, Xu Haixia started from the simplest little flower and tried it over and over again for three or four months, and finally made a realistic little flower. Afterwards, Xu Haixia can make more and more types of flowers, and now she can make more than a dozen kinds of flowers. After “Jianbinghua” was launched on the market, it quickly became popular in Mengyin and even the whole Linyi, and later spread to Jinan and Qingdao. The price of “Pancake Flower” ranges from 88 yuan to 588 yuan. Although it is expensive, it is still in short supply. Many high-end hotels order “pancake flowers” as flowers for high-end banquets; the elderly and children order “pancake flowers” as flower baskets for their birthdays; young people order “pancake flowers” as bouquets for marriage proposals and marriages…
” The boom in sales of “Pancake Flower” gave Xu Haixia the motivation to innovate again. One of her friends in the media suggested that she use pancakes to make world-famous paintings, so she devoted herself to the experiment of “using pancakes to make world-famous paintings”.
Xu Haixia first made pancakes of several colors according to the color blocks on the famous paintings, and then spliced them bit by bit according to the distribution of the color blocks on the famous paintings. Xu Haixia pointed to a piece of work on the table and said: “This painting of Van Gogh’s “Sunflower” is the most difficult for me. Because the shape of each piece of its petals is different, I have stitched it together many times, and it is finally finished. It has the appearance of ‘sunflower’ in famous paintings.”
On September 15, 2022, at the 3rd China International Culture and Tourism Expo, Xu Haixia’s world-famous paintings made of pancakes attracted attention-Monet’s “Peony Vase”, La Tour’s “Rose and Fruit”, Van Gogh’s “Sunflower”… People sighed again and again: “It’s so beautiful! I can’t bear to eat it!” Today, Xu Haixia’s pancake shop has developed into a pancake factory, “Pancake
Flower ” and “Pancake Painting” also went abroad and were exported to countries such as Singapore, Japan and Thailand. Xu Haixia also recruited more than 50 laid-off workers locally, and at the same time allowed housewives to temporarily work part-time in the factory to subsidize their families. For those laid-off workers who are willing to learn and make pancakes, Xu Haixia is willing to pass on the skills to them, so that they can also embark on the road of mutual prosperity.
Xu Haixia said: “No matter what industry you are in, don’t stick to the rules, but dare to innovate. Only by constantly innovating can an enterprise remain invincible.”
