Regarding diet, the Han Dynasty scholar Liu Xi explained in the "Interpretation of Names": "Food, breeding, so self-reproduction also." "Human life and reproduction are inseparable from diet, and from the moment you fall to the ground, eating is a lifelong thing." For Chinese, eating is not just to fill the stomach, "food is not tired of fine, not tired of fine", to eat out of learning to eat culture is considered diet.
Want to understand the study of food, come to the National Expo naturally can not be wrong, more than 240 pieces (sets) of cultural relics gathered in the National Museum "Ancient Chinese Food Culture Exhibition", from "food from the eight directions", "tea rhyme wine aroma", "beautiful utensils", "dingzhong change" and "lishi diet" five units systematically present the thickness and splendor of Chinese food culture. The amount of information and text in the exhibition is not small, and the description of each exhibit is very detailed. Here, the author will extend a few exhibits a little to add some cold knowledge to the hot exhibition.
"Inexhaustible" pottery barn
The old saying goes: "The barn is solid and knows the etiquette, and the clothing and food are enough to know the honor and disgrace." "For an agricultural civilization like China, a full granary and abundant food and clothing are the foundation of everything. In the first unit of the exhibition, a Han Dynasty pottery warehouse is shown, on which the words "Madou Wanshi" are written in Zhu pen.
We know that the Han Dynasty people had the concept of "death is like life", and all aspects of daily life utensils will be made into open utensils for burial. However, in the Ming ware of the Han Tomb, the pottery warehouse is different, it is not a vessel, but a building. "Cang, Guzo also." Burying the barn where the grain was stored can be seen in the weight of the barn in the hearts of the Han Dynasty.
Speaking of weight, this pottery barn in the exhibition hall is frighteningly heavy. Han Dynasty official Feng Lu, the highest rank of the "Three Dukes" to reach Wanshi. The words "Madou Wanshi" are obviously just a beautiful hope. However, when you see these four words, you may ask, is there really a hemp bean in the pottery warehouse? The answer is yes. Many of the Han Dynasty pottery warehouses excavated by archaeology have the skins of crops such as millet, rice, millet, soybeans, and hemp, indicating that these pottery warehouses may have contained grain with shells when they were buried. Some scholars have done plant identification on the remains of the pottery warehouses excavated from the tombs of the two Han Dynasties in the Xi'an area, and have come up with an interesting result: the proportion of millet in these pottery warehouses is significantly higher than that of other crops. Millet is millet, and it is most inseparable from the daily life of the residents of the capital of the Han Dynasty.
"Plum bottle" does not insert plums
China is the homeland of rice wine and tea, and wine culture and tea culture have a long history and profound depth. An section of the exhibition is devoted to these two magical drinks.
In the "Tianmeilu" section is filled with various wine vessels, one of which is a white glazed black flower long vase is a Cizhou kiln kiln product of the Song Dynasty, although its appearance is not proud, but the shoulders are long and the shape is dignified. In the Song and Yuan dynasties it was the main wine storage vessel, known as the "jing bottle" in ancient books, and later generations also called the "long bottle". The Song Dynasty's "Book of Wine" in the Records of Hou Ma is recorded: "The pottery man is a vessel, and there is a wine scripture ... With a bucket, you can serve wine. From this, it can be seen that the jing bottle is the standard wine vessel that can hold a bucket of wine. This bottled wine is not only convenient for storage and carrying, but also conducive to metering and selling, which reflects the development of the wine economy in that period from one side.
Many viewers may blurt out at first sight of this bottle – plum bottle! Yes, after the Yuan Dynasty, the long bottle was commonly known as the plum bottle. In some books, it is written that the small mouth of the plum bottle can only be inserted with plum branches, which is a decoration vessel in the ancient literati study, which comes from the explanation of the "Drinking Stream Zhai Porcelain" in the Republic of China period. In fact, the "plum bottle" does not insert plums, but an authentic wine vessel. Inscriptions such as "Drunken Wine Sea" and "Qinggu Fine Wine" can be seen on the long bottles passed down from generation to generation, and the long bottles unearthed from the tombs of the Ming Dynasty kings are still filled with fine wine, and the evidence is conclusive.
Wine jug of the Ming Emperor
After talking about the wine storage vessel, let's look at a wine jug for wine. Since the pre-Qin Dynasty, the spoon has been used for wine, and after the Middle Tang Dynasty, the note with a handle has become the most important drinking and pouring utensils. After the Ming Dynasty, the note was renamed the holding pot, and the shape was different from the previous round and full look, with hanging shoulders and smooth lines.
The owner of this flat-shaped golden jug in the exhibition hall is extraordinary, Zhu Yijun, the thirteenth Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. The Wanli Emperor was the emperor who enjoyed the longest time in the Ming Dynasty, because the absurd behavior of not going to the dynasty for more than 20 years was famous in history. The history books record that the Wanli Emperor became an alcoholic, and when he was a teenager, zhang Juzheng, the first assistant, had advised him with the "Wine Confession". But he did not think about changing, "Every meal must be drunk, every drink must be drunk, and every drunk will be angry." Left and right a little contrary to the word, under the staff, the outer court has no one who knows." In his mausoleum, he buried more than 50 pieces of various types of wine utensils, and there were 5 pieces of gold jugs alone. These court wine vessels were rich and exquisite, and also provided physical footnotes for the Wanli Emperor's covetousness of fine wine.
Tea cups for fighting
After three rounds of wine, a cup of clear tea can both dissolve the wine and nourish the heart. The exhibition uses a group of cultural relics to summarize the formation and development of Chinese tea culture. From the beginning of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, to the peak of the Tang and Song Dynasties, and then to the further development of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, tea has run through China's nearly two thousand years of history.
If we talk about the most prosperous dynasty in ancient China, it is the Song Dynasty. Tea has become an indispensable thing in people's daily lives. Even for poor and untouchable families, tea is one of the "seven things to open the door", which is indispensable. The Song people used the tea method to drink tea, adding the tea leaves to the tea bowl, first injecting a small amount of boiling water into a paste, and then injecting boiling water and stirring with a teaspoon. This tea drinking fashion has formed a "tea fighting" activity among scholars. The so-called doucha is a tea event that evaluates the quality of tea and the techniques of pilot tea. Doucha not only fights tea color, but also looks at tea taste and tea shape. "Biting the cup" (the soup flower floating noodles clinging to the tea cup and not retreating) wins for a long time, and the first water mark is negative. Because Song tea is expensive and white, in order to show the true color of tea, black tea cups are preferred when fighting tea. The black glazed rabbit cup from the Fujian Jian kiln in the exhibition hall is one of the top products. In Song Huizong's "Treatise on The Great View of Tea", it is said that "the cup is precious to green, and the rabbit is supreme".
A steamer from two thousand years ago
Culinary techniques were an important part of ancient food culture and are covered in special chapters in the exhibition.
Ancient Chinese cooking techniques include steaming, boiling, stir-frying, steaming, burning, frying and dozens of others, and now we often use "frying and cooking" to summarize. Modern people mainly eat stir-fried vegetables, but in ancient times, due to the limitations of cooking utensils, the cooking method was still mainly boiling and steaming. Don't underestimate steaming, steaming and stir-frying, are the originality of our old ancestors. Compared with cooking, steaming requires steaming food through the heat of water vapor, and the requirements for cooking utensils are also higher, and the wisdom of Chinese is also reflected in this. The basic instrument of steaming is the Koshiki, whose invention can be traced back to the Yangshao culture period 5,000 years ago. Later, in the Neolithic culture of southern China, there were cooking utensils that integrated the upper and lower kettles, which were archaeologically called "甗". It holds water underneath, with a grate in the middle, and after the water is boiled, the steam steames the food on the top through the grate, and the principle is exactly the same as today's steamer. The early urns were made of pottery, and later cast in bronze. The exhibition shows a piece of copper with the first ring from the Han Dynasty, which is cast separately from top to bottom for easy disassembly. The rings on the abdomen are both beautifully decorated and easy to carry, killing two birds with one stone.
Han Dynasty small hot pot
Nowadays, hot pot is one of the most popular ways of eating and drinking in Chinese, and people sit around the hot pot to cook a variety of foods, which is both lively and delicious. In fact, as early as the Han Dynasty 2,000 years ago, people have begun to enjoy hot pot.
The "Qinghe Food Official" copper dyeing vessel in the exhibition is the most powerful witness. This artifact consists of three parts: a plate, a stove, and an ear cup, and the furnace below can be heated. Earlier, some scholars saw the word "dyeing" in the inscription of the artifact and concluded that it was used for dyeing silk veils. Until the experts determined that it was a food utensil of the Qinghe State during the Western Han Dynasty according to the inscription "Qinghe Restaurant" on this dyeing vessel of the Guobo. So since the dyeer is a food utensil, what does "dyeing" mean? Originally, in ancient times, condiments were called dyeing, and the dyeer contained condiments - sauce. The Han Dynasty had a special cooking method for eating meat. The meat is divided into two steps: first cook the meat, and cook it without seasoning, similar to white boiled meat. After that, the meat is put into the dyeer and dipped in the seasoning sauce. Since the Han Dynasty people liked hotter spices, the dyeer would be heated by a fire. Careful viewers may ask, the dyeer is basically not large, the height is only more than ten centimeters, and today's copper pot is far away, rather like a "one person one pot" small hot pot. Yes, in the Han Dynasty, the dyeing vessel was indeed one person and one set. At that time, it was a meal sharing system, and at the banquet, each person was generally a case, and the dyeer was placed on the case, in order to distinguish it, some dyeing cups were also engraved with numbers!
The earliest silver spoon
We eat every day without using food utensils, and in ancient times, eating was not only a stomach, but also a code of etiquette. In the last part of the exhibition, a group of artifacts related to the eating ceremony is displayed.
Among the various eating utensils, the chief position of chopsticks cannot be shaken. It was invented by Chinese and has now become a symbol of the Chinese diet. Chopsticks ancient called "箸", its appearance is later than the spoon, so far found that the earliest ancient kiln unearthed in the Shang Dynasty tombs of Anyang Yin Ruins, made of bronze, is the handle used in the head. Zhou Li stipulates that the spoon is used for food soup, and the spoon is used for eating, because the dishes in the soup are easier to pick up with chopsticks. Most of the chopsticks unearthed by early archaeology are made of copper, as well as bamboo and bone, which are relatively less difficult to preserve. During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the material of the kiln changed, and many silver reeds made of silver were unearthed.
The pair of silver stalks on display is the earliest silver stalk seen in archaeology, from the tomb of Li Jingxun, a prominent aristocratic girl in the Sui Dynasty. The silver spoon is 29 cm long and cylindrical, with thin ends and slightly thicker in the middle. Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, the shape of chopsticks has become the common square foot circle today, which caters to the concept of "there is a circle in the square, and there is a square in the circle". The size of the chopsticks is also basically fixed at six feet seven inches, some people say that this represents the "seven emotions and six desires" in traditional thinking, reminding people not to forget to restrain improper desires when eating.
The exhibition ends with a reunion and festive Chinese New Year's Eve meal. Tired of watching the exhibition, sitting at the table and looking at the variety of dishes, you may also think: we are Chinese, authentic!
Wen and photography | Xiao Lingxuan
Edited | Shi Yi