Source: Beijing Daily client
The story of Cao Cao and Liu Bei's "green plum boiled wine" has always been talked about, and Gu Shunnian's "Cool Acacia" cloud in the Qing Dynasty: "Pick green plums and cook wine" is an imitation of this kind of leisure and elegance. However, a closer look at the original text of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", "boiling wine" is used as a noun solution, and the Song Dynasty Lu You's "green plum recommended cooking wine" is more in line with the real scene at that time.
In the writings of ancient literati, plums were really common. At the turn of spring and summer, there are green plums, Li Bai's "Long Dry Travel" cloud: "Lang rides a bamboo horse and goes around the bed to make green plums." In the summer, the plum is ripe, it is the yellow plum, Zhou Bangyan's "Man Tingfang" has the words "the wind old warbler chicks, the rain fat plums, and the noon yin Jiashu is round". Why did plums become the favorite of literati?
Spring Exhaustion Summer Coming Plum Blossom Blue Yellow
In spring, the plum is not yet ripe, and the color of the peel is green, which is "green plum". Therefore, the image of "green plum" in the poem sometimes represents spring. Ouyang Xiu of the Song Dynasty has a poem "Ruan Langgui", which describes the beautiful scene of a woman stepping into spring in the South Garden: "Green plums are like beans and willows, and butterflies fly as long as the days grow." At the time of the spring equinox, the green plums begin to grow, and the fruits are small, so many poets will describe "green plums are like beans". This sentence not only names the season, but also depicts the woman's face against the spring scene. The more classic is Kou Zhun in the Song Dynasty's "Tasha Xing": "Spring is about to end, the warbler is getting old, and the red flowers are falling into the green plums." "At the end of spring, the flowers are gone, the green plums are growing, and the spring is about to pass. Similarly, there is also a song "Appealing to Heartfelt Love" by Yan Shu in the Song Dynasty: "The green plum boiled wine bucket is new, and the weather wants to be in spring." "They all use "green plums" to construct a scene in late spring.
In the summer, when the plums ripen and turn golden in color, they are called "yellow plums". Zhao Shixiu of the Song Dynasty "The Guest" cloud "Huangmei Season Family Rain", talking about the area south of the Yangtze River, when the plum is ripe, it is often accompanied by rainy days, so it is called "plum rain". Therefore, as an image of climate, "yellow plum" is used to appear at the same time as "rain". The most classic is He Zhu's "Qingyu Case". The last sentence of this poem has always been praised: "Just ask how much sorrow there is, a Sichuan tobacco, the city is full of wind and flocculents, and the plum is yellow and rainy." People who have lived in Jiangnan have experienced the yellow plum rain at the beginning of summer, and the weather is humid and muggy, which lasts for several days and endures. The sentence "plum yellow time rains" not only points out the specific time of this encounter in late spring and early summer, but also uses an excellent metaphor to express the infinite sorrow in the poet's heart: the colored pen writes heart-breaking sentences, and the sorrow spreads in the heart. He replied, "Like tobacco all over the land, like catkins flying all over the city, like the continuous rain in the season of yellow plums, there is no end and no end." The imagery of tobacco, catkins and plum rain progresses layer by layer, turning abstraction into concreteness and striking people's hearts. This sentence is novel and easy to understand, so that He Zhu has the nickname of "He Meizi" since then.
Accompaniment to wine and plum is called people's arms
The most well-known allusion to plums is "green plum boiled sake". "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" describes "Qingmei Cooking Wine on Heroes", and in just one paragraph, the two vivid protagonists, Cao Cao and Liu Bei, jumped on the page. The article talks about the reason why Cao Cao invited Liu Bei to meet: "It is worth cooking wine and cooking, so I invite Jun Xiaoting for a while." Before the two discussed the heroes of the world, they also "put green plums on a plate, a bottle of boiled wine, and the two sat opposite each other and drank happily". From the point of view of grammatical structure, "boiled wine" here is used as a noun, not directly used to cook green plums, but at present, people have the impression that "green plum boiled wine" is mostly used as a verb.
In fact, "green plum boiled wine" originated in the Song Dynasty, which means to accompany wine with green plums, which is commonly found in the writings of the Song people. Yan Shu's "Green Plum Cooking Wine Bucket is New", as well as Lu Youshi's "Early Summer Leisure" cloud: "Cooking wine and green plums are the first taste, and the warbler and milk swallow occupy the year". Su Shi's "Gift of Plum on the Ridge" also said: "Don't take advantage of the green plum to taste the boiled wine, you have to see the drizzle ripe yellow plum." Jiang Kui also has the words "Partridge Heaven": "Calling for boiling wine, picking green plums, don't wander in official affairs this year." It is not difficult to see that the words "green plum" and "boiled wine" in the above poem are juxtaposed, and "boiled wine" is not an action or behavior, but a noun. Let's look at Wang Yanci's "Linjiang Immortal" cloud: "Break the mud and taste the boiled wine, and lie down on the table to clear the yin." It can be seen that "boiled sake" is the opposite of "clear yin", and it is the object of tasting. Chen Wenwei's poem "Cheng Ziyun Wants to Return to His Hometown to Stop the Rain and Talk about the Drama" cloud: "The pomegranate flowers shine on the new green fence, and the orange is fragrant and the wine is cooked. "Hsinchu is verdant, and the boiled wine is mellow, and the "boiled wine" is the opposite of "Xinhuang (bamboo)".
What kind of wine is the "boiled wine" written by the Song people? In sake brewing, "boiling sake" is also a process in which the brewed sake is boiled to remove bacteria. In the Tang Dynasty, Fang Qianli's "Miscellaneous Records of Throwing Waste" recorded: "Drinking is burned, that is, the real wine is full of urns, mud is on it, and it is cooked by fire, otherwise it will not be drunk." "Boiled sake" as a noun refers to the sake that has been boiled and sealed, as in "shochu".
There are many fruits and snacks that can be accompanied by wine, why do Song people love to use green plums to accompany wine? This is closely related to the time when the boiled sake is on the market. Fan Chengda's "Winter Pastoral Miscellaneous": "Cooking wine before and after steaming in spring, and the urn is clear for a year." Boiled wine is generally brewed in winter, sealed and stored for several months before it can be opened and drunk. Wu Zimu's "Dream Lianglu" in the Song Dynasty recorded: "The inspection office of Lin'an Mansion manages the wine warehouses inside and outside the city, and cooks them before Qingming every year. It means that Lin'an Mansion sells boiled wine every year before the Qingming Festival. Xie Yi's "Plum" also said: "The bottom matter is that the wind is urging knots, and you should cook wine while it is clear." And Su Shi's "Qi Ting" said: "I go to the early summer, cook wine and sparse the curtain." It can be seen that boiled wine is generally listed from Qingming to early summer, and this time is precisely the season when green plums grow. In addition, this "boiled sake" is mostly made from rice, and rice is mostly concentrated in the south of the Yangtze River, which is also the main area where green plums grow. In this way, it is not surprising that the two meet.
What is even more coincidental is that plums also have a sobering effect, and volume 29 of the "Compendium of Materia Medica" records that plum "eliminates alcohol poison and makes people sleep". Seasonal fruits meet boiled sake, creating a wonderful chemical reaction that made green plums the most popular snack to accompany sake at the time. Therefore, "green plum boiled wine" has also become a popular food and customs representative of the envoys in the late spring and early summer in the Jiangnan area, and has been widely chanted and described in literary works. Li Qingzhao wrote in "Rolling Bead Curtain": "Although the casual cups and plates are hasty, the wine is beautiful and sour, and it is just called the arms of people."
Plum has a sour taste, not only to accompany wine, but also to the main source of sourness in dishes before the advent and popularity of vinegar. "Shangshu, Shangshu, Saying Destiny" cloud "If you make and soup, you only salt and plum", the broth is inseparable from the two condiments of salt and plum, just like the country is inseparable from the governance of virtuous ministers. In cooking, fruit acids remove the smell and make the meat more softenable, so for a period of time, people are still willing to use plums to cook food. The famous gluttonous Su Shi recorded in "The Feeling of Things": "Boiled pork, boiled with white plum, afoetus, or vinegar or green salt with the same boil, it is easy to rot."
Of course, plums can also be eaten on their own, but because they have a very sour taste and a poor taste when eaten raw, people prefer to add a "base" to them. There are two specific ways to eat it: honey stain and salted one. "Three Kingdoms" volume 48 "The Biography of Sun Liang" notes the "Wu Calendar" records that Sun Liang, the young emperor of Eastern Wu, liked to dip honey and eat plums. But honey was not an ordinary thing in ancient times, and it was difficult for ordinary people to eat it. Therefore, in ancient times, it was more common to eat plums by salting them and making them into dried plums, which were both delicious and easier to store. "Qi Min Yaoshu" records: "Plum sour, the kernel is picked when it is first formed, it is stained with salt juice at night, and exposed by day during the day." Whoever does ten nights, ten immersions, and ten exposures, it will be done."
The young man's heart is full of plum acid
In ancient literature, "all scenes are love words". When the plum first grows up, it is young and immature, so when describing love, people will use "green plum" to describe the first heartbeat when they are young. The most widely circulated is Li Bai's "Long Trunk Journey": "Lang rode a bamboo horse and went around the bed to make green plums". In late spring, the plums are small. The little girl folded flowers and frolicked in front of the door, and the little boy rode a bamboo horse to play with plums around the well fence, and the two of them chased and played, with a warm and lively feeling. Through the vivid description of the details, Li Bai contributed the romantic idiom of "childhood sweetheart", which is used as a metaphor for the beautiful wish of men and women to know and love each other when they are young and to know and love each other when they become adults.
After Li Bai, there is also Li Qingzhao's "Dotted Lips". This poem writes that when a girl sees a guest entering the door, out of the constraints of rules and etiquette, she immediately runs away and does not dare to meet; In fact, she wanted to see it very much in her heart, so she "walked away with shame, leaned on the door and looked back", secretly glanced at it, but wanted to pretend to "smell the green plum". The greenness of the newborn fruit of "green plum" is used as a symbol of ignorance when the girl's love first opens, which can be described as a long aftertaste.
"Qingmei" is used to compare the first love with Bai Juyi's "Silver Bottle at the Bottom of the Well": "The concubine makes the green plum with a short wall, and the king rides a white horse beside the weeping poplars." The walls immediately looked at each other from afar, and when they saw Zhijun, they broke their bowels." Just look at such a silhouette, the girl is under the wall to get a green plum, the young man is riding a white horse leaning on the willow tree, the two look at each other from afar, only each other in their eyes, bright eyes and bright teeth, fresh clothes and angry horses, looking forward to the brilliance. If the picture is frozen here, it is also the best appearance of first love. As seen here, the image of "green plum" still represents the heartbeat of young men and women when they meet. But it's a pity that the girl made a desperate promise to each other, but the ending was the abandonment of the lover. At this moment, a feeling of sourness and helplessness suddenly came to my heart, recalling the sourness of the entrance of the green plum.
"Plums leave sour and soft teeth", what makes people feel sour is not just love? The bitterness of life, the helplessness of wandering abroad, and the sorrow of friends when they part...... It's also like the taste of unripe plums. Song Baozhao of the Southern Dynasty used plums to express the sorrow of wandering and homesickness: "The wild wind blows the autumn wood, and the heart of the line is broken." Eating plum is often bitter and sour, and clothing is often bitter and cold. "The bitterness and sourness I feel when eating plums is also like homesickness, which makes people miss it.
In addition to the loneliness of leaving home, plums are also used as a metaphor for the sorrow of parting. For example, Liu Lian's "The Emergence of Self-Monarch" clouds: "Sijun is like a plum, green and bitter." Writing about the woman's feelings of missing her lover is like the taste of plums, full of bitterness in the green. Lu Weilao's "Southern Songzi" cloud: "Night makeup should be shortened between the screens." All put a spring of thoughts, pay plum sour". It also uses the sourness of plums to compare the sorrow of the heart, so that the transmission of feelings is more intuitive and profound.
Prunes can be eaten raw, used as a seasoning, made into prunes, or served with wine...... Because of the wide range of uses of plum in life, as well as its indissoluble bond with "boiling wine", the literati of the Song Dynasty who were good at wine liked to talk about this kind of wine snack in their food writings. When the literati's gaze is focused on the plum, it is no longer just a fruit; More often, the imagery derived from plums, such as seasonality, leisure, and sourness, is more likely to resonate with everyone because it retains people's initial impression of it at a certain time.