In ancient times when there was a lack of material, what did the ancients eat as a staple food, vegetables, and fruits?
What to eat in the morning, what to eat at noon, and what to eat at night are known as the three major problems that plague mankind. Living in the modern era of material abundance, we hesitate to choose. As long as we determine our minds, the ingredients that are thousands of miles away will quietly lie down in the supermarket downstairs and let you pick them. The ancients did not have such happy troubles, they often faced multiple-choice questions
What to eat in the morning, what to eat at noon, and what to eat at night are known as the three major problems that plague mankind. Living in the modern era of material abundance, we hesitate to choose. As long as we determine our minds, the ingredients that are thousands of miles away will quietly lie down in the supermarket downstairs and let you pick them. The ancients didn't have such troubles of happiness. They were often faced with multiple-choice questions, and in worse cases, they couldn't choose to be hungry.
It is not necessary to mention that meat is rare, but the food, fruits, and vegetables are the things of ordinary people. "Erya Shitian" states that " unripe fruit is famine, unripe fruit is famine, and vegetable unripe is unripe ". What can the ancients who were lucky enough to be born in the heyday avoid famine and eat?
Figure 1 Xuhao Sanjian Lu (a kind of steamer) in the Shang Dynasty 1. Food As the country of origin of millet and rice, the rations of our ancestors in the pre-Qin period were mainly composed of five grains consisting of rice, millet (yellow rice), millet (millet), wheat, and sun (general term for beans), supplemented by other special grains. . In the years that followed, traditional grains might fade away, and new varieties appeared from time to time. During the Han and Tang dynasties, there was still a kind of aquatic plant called "Zan" that was eaten by Chinese people. It bloomed yellow flowers in autumn and produced black seeds. It was crushed and husked into white rice, called "Diao Hu Mi" , with a smooth taste. Qingxiang was the high-grade food of the time. Zheng Xuan of the Eastern Han Dynasty included it in the nine valleys of the Han Dynasty, and the Tang people also highly praised it. Li Bai Shiyun "kneeled into the carved rice, the moon is bright and the plate", Wang Wei also said "Yun country rice seedling show, Chu people's rice fertilizer" when sending off his friends. . In the Song Dynasty, wild rice gradually faded because of its low yield and varying maturity time, and even more because if the wild rice was exposed to bacteria before the seeds set, it would grow into a sweet and crispy wild bamboo shoot. Song people used wild rice to cultivate wild bamboo shoots. However, the seed-bearing ones are often hoed away, and Diao Hu Fan has gradually become a legend.
Figure 2 7000-year-old rice unearthed at the Hemudu site in Yuyao, Zhejiang Wheat originated in Mesopotamia, and it was introduced to my country very early and was highly valued by our ancestors. In the Shang dynasty, there was already a "moon, eat wheat", Zhou people "The Teng Chun in the moon, eat wheat and sheep" before Jin Jinghong drowned in the toilet, he wanted to eat a bowl of wheat rice made of new wheat. Soybeans are produced in the northeast of our country. Legend has it that Qi Huanglong expedition to Shen Rong from the north, so early soybeans were called "Rong Shu". In addition to direct consumption, soybeans can also be made into my country's traditional soy sauce to cook Chinese specialties. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, with the opening of new shipping routes and the introduction of American crops, my country's food crops joined many new members. During the Zhengde period, corn was introduced to China and planted in coastal areas. It was gradually promoted during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The introduction of sweet potatoes is quite legendary. During the Wanli period, sweet potatoes were introduced to Luzon (Philippines). After seeing them, Chinese businessman Chen Zhenlong wanted to bring them back to China. The Luzon government banned the export of potato seeds. Into the water rope, you have to cross the sea. " After returning to China, the Chen family and six generations devoted themselves to promoting the cultivation of sweet potatoes, or recommended them to senior officials, or promoted potato vines in various places, or wrote books to introduce the cultivation methods, and made great contributions to the promotion of sweet potatoes in our country. The output of sweet potatoes is more than ten times that of millet. "The spring people are not worth a jin, but two jins are enough to be full. So the stubborn, the child, the child, and the beggar can all eat. Hungry and full, much "It doesn't hurt, even chickens and dogs can eat it", which will help alleviate my country's food problem. The introduction of high-yield crops such as corn and sweet potatoes also promoted the population explosion in the Qing Dynasty to a certain extent.
2. Vegetables
In ancient times, vegetables were few and the quality was not high. There are 132 kinds of plants mentioned in the "Book of Songs", and there are only more than 20 kinds of plants that can be used as vegetables. Many of them are no longer edible today, such as the Nymphoides in the "Small Nymphoides, Left and Right" as the people are well-known. Vegetables are nothing but algae that resemble water lilies; "who is so bitter is as sweet as a water chestnut", it is today's bitter vegetable. "Zuo Zhuan" pushing that time "can be recommended to the spirits, ashamed to be princes" of the upper-class dishes "Ping, Fan (white wormwood), and Art, algae's food", but today some plants duckweed.
By the time of the Qin and Han Dynasties, the situation improved slightly. People often eat the "five vegetables" mentioned in "Su Wen": sunflower, 藿 (bean leaves), scallion, green onion, and leek. Among them, the sunflower is called "the lord of a hundred vegetables", and the Chinese poem "Qingqingyuan Hongkui" refers to this thing. There is a special chapter in the "Qi Min Yao Shu" in the Wei and Jin Dynasties on the cultivation technology of sunflowers. However, sunflower itself was "too smooth and profitable," and the planting gradually decreased in the Tang Dynasty, and it was no longer edible in the Ming Dynasty. Li Shizhen included it in the "Compendium of Materia Medica" and no longer regarded it as a vegetable. At this time, leeks are more common to eat, but leeks are very rare, and the palace has the conditions to cultivate and eat in the greenhouse. Radish and manjing (rutabaga) were also important vegetables in the Han Dynasty, and they were still important supplementary grains in winter until the Tang Dynasty. Garlic was introduced in the Eastern Han Dynasty and replaced with domestic low-yield single-head garlic.
Figure 4 Huo, the leaves of legume crops
From the Wei, Jin to the Tang and Song dynasties, the devastated taste buds of the Chinese were finally saved. Eggplants originating in India and Thailand were introduced in the Western Jin Dynasty. Cucumbers introduced from the Western Han Dynasty and originated in India and were called "cucumbers" at the time began to be widely planted. Spinach and lettuce were also introduced and promoted at this time and were well received. The famous foodie Su Shi He once graciously praised spinach for "snow-bottomed spinach is like an iron armor". In my country, the artificially cultivated and improved Isatis cabbage (cabbage) from the Han Dynasty also harvested fruitful fruits at this time. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, scholar-officials used "early spring leek in early spring and late autumn" as the top-grade vegetable. After the successful cultivation of cabbage in the Song Dynasty, the taste is very delicious. Su Shi praised it as "white scalp lamb and porpoise, which came out of the soil and bear swain". Welcomed by working people.
In the Yuan Dynasty, carrots from northern Europe were introduced and gradually spread from Yunnan to the whole country. Peppers and tomatoes were introduced in the great nautical era. Peppers were quickly promoted in the early Qing Dynasty. Tomatoes were first used for ornamental purposes, and then they were eaten as vegetables in the late Qing Dynasty.
Figure 5 Painted bricks from the tomb of Wei and Jin No. 1 in Jiayuguan-eating Three, fruit Different from the misfortune of our ancestors on vegetables, our country's native fruits are relatively abundant. During the pre-Qin period, cherries, peaches, apricots, pears, kana (sago), plums, jujubes, chestnuts, hawthorns, and persimmons had been widely planted in the Central Plains. Cherries are especially valued because they are "the first hundred fruits to be ripe", and they are used to sacrifice to the ancestral temple in midsummer. Peach, apricot, plum, and persimmon are produced in my country, or only cultivated as fruit trees in my country, and then gradually spread to the world. Pears were cultivated more by the ancestors. In the Han Dynasty, there were people who specialized in pear orchards to get rich, with orchards with thousands of pear trees, and their income was "like quench." The pears that had undergone special cultivation were of good quality. Cao Pi praised it as "big as a fist, sweet as honey, and crisp as a diamond" . There are many kinds of chestnuts and jujubes in the north, and they are regarded as important supplementary grains. During the Warring States Period, the Yan Kingdom in the north "has the benefit of jujube and chestnut in the north, although the people cannot help the fields, the fruit of jujube and chestnut is enough for the people. "
Figure 6 Bricks with a portrait of Hu Shi of the Han
Fruit trees in the south are also very prosperous, but due to transportation conditions, they are rarely enjoyed in the north. The most famous southern fruit is lychee, which is unique to our country. After Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty broke through Nanyue, lychee was introduced to the north and planted together with longan in Shanglinyuan. For this, the Liechee Palace was built. However, the temperature in the north is low and it is difficult for lychees to survive. To eat this delicacy in midsummer, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Hanhe, and Emperor Xuanzong of Tang all organized posthorses to transport lychees day and night. Longan and lychee are similar in origin, but relatively small in taste, and are called "lychee slaves" by southerners. The lychee was difficult to move north, but the orange tree moved to the north was quite successful. In the Three Kingdoms period, the orange tree that was regarded as "unused by Yao and Shun" by the Han people was "sowed thousands of miles and planted far away, forming a garden of bronze birds". Central Plains.
Figure 5 Painted bricks from the tomb of Wei and Jin No. 1 in Jiayuguan-eating Three, fruit Different from the misfortune of our ancestors on vegetables, our country's native fruits are relatively abundant. During the pre-Qin period, cherries, peaches, apricots, pears, kana (sago), plums, jujubes, chestnuts, hawthorns, and persimmons had been widely planted in the Central Plains. Cherries are especially valued because they are "the first hundred fruits to be ripe", and they are used to sacrifice to the ancestral temple in midsummer. Peach, apricot, plum, and persimmon are produced in my country, or only cultivated as fruit trees in my country, and then gradually spread to the world. Pears were cultivated more by the ancestors. In the Han Dynasty, there were people who specialized in pear orchards to get rich, with orchards with thousands of pear trees, and their income was "like quench." The pears that had undergone special cultivation were of good quality. Cao Pi praised it as "big as a fist, sweet as honey, and crisp as a diamond" . There are many kinds of chestnuts and jujubes in the north, and they are regarded as important supplementary grains. During the Warring States Period, the Yan Kingdom in the north "has the benefit of jujube and chestnut in the north, although the people cannot help the fields, the fruit of jujube and chestnut is enough for the people. "
There are also many foreign fruits in the past. In the Han Dynasty, grapes were introduced and hybridized with wild grapes in our country to form new varieties and were widely planted. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Chang'an was already a "household planted in the garden, successively growing in shade". At the same time, walnuts and pomegranates were introduced. Both were already into the homes of ordinary people in the Han Dynasty, Cao Zhi said, "pomegranate plant vestibule, misty green leafy shake". The pomegranate has been cultivated by our ancestors. In the Northern Wei Dynasty, the "White Horse Sweet Burrow, a real-value cow" produced at Baima Temple in Luoyang was extremely valuable.
Figure 7 Picture of Banquet, Early Mid-Tang Dynasty
During the Song and Jin Dynasties, the Khitan broke the Uyghur and got the seeds of watermelon, and introduced them to the mainland. The people of the Yuan Dynasty ate it and marveled at the taste like "great initiation, nectar sprinkling the heart".
In the late Ming Dynasty, American fruits were introduced, such as pineapple, dragon fruit, strawberry, and so on. In the late Qing Dynasty, European apples were introduced into my country and replaced with traditional Chinese peanuts and Ringo apples (mean apples).
The ancestors Jianlu Lanqi opened up the mountains and forests, asking for nothing but three meals. After all, the people of today no longer need to be trapped in the poverty of food materials and instead are plagued by wealth and disease. Fresh seafood is delicious, but food, fruits, and vegetables have their own taste. A balanced diet, reconciling yin and yang, is the long-term way.
