How much cold knowledge is hidden in the Chinese for 5,000 years?| Flavor World

I have known that China has 5,000 years of food culture, but few people say that what people eat 5,000 years ago are different from us?

This book recommended by the Flame World today is more true -Professor Zhang Jing decided to start this sentence, and dug a diet that is unique to China today!

The title is "The History of China on the Table". The author is a professor of comparative literature in East Asia in Meiji University in Japan. He was born in Shanghai and is about to be 70 years old this year.

At the age of 41, he returned to his hometown. At a time when he went out, he found that all the dishes on the Shanghai Restaurant menu were completely different from when he left ten years ago. He was shocked as an indigenous person: I won't order me!

Shanghai Restaurant in the late 1980s

*Lao Holy Qing Homeland

After returning to Japan, he was curious about the phrase "China’ s five thousand years of food culture ": if the food in Shanghai restaurants within ten years can be turned over, the Chinese diet 5,000 years ago must be completely different from today. Essence

What did the Chinese eat at that time, what happened in the process so that it turned like this today?

He decided to set off from several foods that belong to "tradition" today, and dug out some seemingly inconspicuous decisive moments. Today's flavor world, we come to explore two important moments of them.

If China has not developed metallurgical technology ...

2500 years ago, it was the era of Confucius' life.

The phrase "I don't get tired of eating, I don't tire of it", but I have eaten the food, but what Confucius eats every day. It is estimated that few people have clearly perceived.

Although China had iron farm tools in the Spring and Autumn Period, the advanced iron smelting technology did not spread throughout the kitchen. The Confucius family must not have an iron pot. If he wants to heat the food, he can only be made of clay and burn bronze.

Yes, there is a cold knowledge hidden here: Many bronzes displayed in the museum today are kitchen cooking tools. For example, Ding is the pot of meat, and the pork is the pot of rice.

Song 是, the utensils of Sheng Grain then

*Qilu.com

However, no matter pottery or bronze, there is an obvious disadvantage: poor thermal conductivity. These thick guys can only be stewed and not fried, so Confucius has not eaten food in his life -in his era, this cooking method has not been invented.

I have never eaten rice except for stir -fry.

The Lu State where Confucius is located is today's Qufu in Shandong, which is not a traditional rice producing place. At that time, the rice was only qualified to eat the princes and nobles. Ordinary people mainly used the sticky Xiaomi and Huang Xiaomi that we were familiar with today.

We have shot this kind of millet in Guiyang

So what does Confucius eat?

Professor Zhang Jing speculated that Confucius was mainly based on cooking Xiaomi, and the popularity of chopsticks had to wait for hundreds of years. Sending it, the picture is the same as today's Indians to catch rice.

*"Asia, rich food world"

For dishes, the most commonly ate is cold dishes. For example, the cricket mentioned earlier is cold meat, which can be fish, venison, chicken, etc. It is not eaten empty, you have to be equipped with shallots or mustard. You can refer to the fish shot by "Looking for Shunde".

*Flavor world

The second is cooking, steaming and roasting. In the first season of "Flame World", we mentioned that it was the oldest food in China, and Confucius had eaten it. At that time, it was the cooking vegetable soup, which was also a gap with today's appearance.

Cooker

*The first season of "Flavor Earth"

"Before the invention of the iron, cooking rice is troublesome. The pots and pans are all pottery. Except for cooking and steaming, there is no choice. In addition, the heat conduction performance of the pottery is not good. Time cooks. So the meat or fish is eaten together, and it is actually a last resort, and it is used to it for a long time.

After the popularity of the iron ware, the culture of Chinese eating quickly disappeared. This phenomenon also illustrates from the side that raw eating is limited by tableware and cooking methods. Professor Zhang Jing wrote in the book.

So if you return to the Confucius period and return to the group of heroes, the wonderful competition is wonderful, we can't eat three samples, and there will be no small fried meat. Traditional Chinese food means boiled meat and cold wild vegetables. Get off in the mouth ...

Yunnan has also retained the habit of grasping rice with hands

*The first season of "Flavor Earth"

If Khitan Mongolian female real people did not come to Central Plains ...

Professor Zhang Jing, who lived in Japan for half a century, found an interesting detail in the Japanese life: On the Japanese dining table, chopsticks are usually placed horizontally in front of the bowl. On the Chinese dining table, the chopsticks are placed on the side of the bowl.

Japanese chopsticks are all in front of the plate

*Lizhi Society

If most of the Japanese diet traditions were passed on by China, what happened, which caused China to change the matter of putting chopsticks?

At the same time, when studying "Tokyo Menghua Record", Professor Zhang Jing also observed another detail: "Tokyo Menghua Record" Volume 2 of "Diet Fruit" appeared in nearly 70 kinds of dishes, none of them were made of pork Essence There are almost no pork in other rolls. Sheep occupied most of the meat. This is related to what we have talked about before. The Song Dynasty's admiration for mutton (stamp), but Professor Zhang Jing's curiosity is: Why is sheep and why isn't it a pig?

Sheep: I ... what's wrong?

The answers to these two questions are hidden in the influence of the nomadic people on the Central Plains culture.

From the mural unearthed in archeology, we can determine that until the Song Dynasty. When the Chinese people eat, the chopsticks on the table are placed horizontally in front of the bowl, but in the Ming Dynasty, the chopsticks in the painting were already on the side of the bowl.

The "Field Banquet" of the Tang Dynasty can clearly see that the chopsticks are horizontal in front of the plate

The transformation began at the end of the Song Dynasty and ended in the Yuan Dynasty, and the biggest changes in the three dynasties of the Tang Dynasty and Yuan dynasties were the invasion of the nomadic people in the northern nomads.

"Nomadic people are mainly carnivores and use dining knives during meals. Due to the sharp knife, the tip of the knife will be used to the opposite position -Western food and fork etiquette. Chopsticks also maintain their own habits. When the Yuan Dynasty Mongolia became the emperor, the placement habits of chopsticks have also been completely changed. "

In addition to the placement of tableware, the dietary habits of nomadic peoples have begun to penetrate into the lives of the Central Plains. The location of Jingjing, where the Northern Song Dynasty is located, is very close to the Liao State of the Khitan people, and the diet population blends with the Central Plains. After the death of the Liao State, female real people replaced the north of the Liao State. This is still a nation who likes mutton. So in northern China, mutton has become a sought -after taste. Traditional pork has become a meat food for ordinary people and poor.

Khitan on the horse

*Wikipedia

With this background and watching the Dongpo meat written by Su Shi, is it so more complicated?

This is the perspective provided by the book "Chinese History on the Table". The reason why it is interesting is the long -term life of Professor Zhang Jing in Japan.

The commonly used vegetables in Japan, until the conventional vegetables of the Southern Song Dynasty, and now only the Jiangsu and Zhejiang region still retain the food habits.

*Delicious relationship

Today's traditional Japanese diet retains the style of Chinese diet during the Tang and Song dynasties -it seems to be a parallel universe, so that Professor Zhang Jing realized that if the nomadic people did not enter the Central Plains at that time, if the economy of the southeast coast was later There is no development ... What is the Chinese diet, different from today?

Author: Mei Shanshan

Capture: Flame Jun
Head map:" Flavor Earth "Season 2

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