Ancient cookers, equivalent to today's pots, were used to cook or hold fish. Most of them are round-bellied, with two ears and three feet, and there are also four-legged Fang Ding. The bronze tripod was developed on the basis of the Neolithic pottery tripod. The largest bronze tripod found at present is three feet high, such as Simuwu Fang Ding in the late Shang Dynasty.

The shape of the tripod changes with the times. Generally speaking, in the early Shang Dynasty, there were mostly round bellies and pointed feet, and there were also Fang Ding with column feet and Ding with flat feet. In the late Shang dynasty, pointed ding gradually disappeared, and most of them were round-bellied ding. At the same time, fork tripods were added. By the end of the Western Zhou Dynasty, Pingzu Ding and Fang Ding basically disappeared, and Ding nodded in a hoof shape. From the Warring States to the Han Dynasty, most of them were convergent (the edge of the mouth contracted inward), and most of them were short hoofs covered with buttons or three kinds of small animals.

In the slave society of Shang and Zhou Dynasties, Ding was once regarded as a symbol of ruling power and rank by slave owners and nobles. After entering the feudal society, Ding lost this nature. I lost the pot. It has traveled all over the country, and the tripod as a ritual vessel has disappeared. The official official changed the lion to guard the majesty. The lion stepped on the hydrangea, and the lioness stepped on the baby lion. As a ritual vessel, the tripod can only be seen in temples and used as a censer. From cookware to incense burner, it can be said that this journey has gone a long way, and the dust of history has dissipated for thousands of years.

There is a big landscape in the second paragraph of Preface to Wang Tengting by Wang Bo, a talented scholar in the south of the Yangtze River: "The preface will return to Sanqiu in September. The water is cold and the pool is clear, and the smoke is purple. Yan Yan likes to walk on the road and watch the scenery to worship Afghanistan. Close to Emperor Cheung Chau, you will see the old pavilion where heaven and man are integrated. Terraces are green and the sky is heavy; Feiting, Xiangdan, there is no land under the ground. Heting ancient bamboo, the haunt of poor islands; Gui Dian Lan Gong is the posture of hills. Embroidering Lu and carving Lu: Yamahara is full of foresight, and Kawasawa is bold and unrestrained. Yan Lu, the hometown of Zhong Mingding's delicious food; Ge boat maze, green finch Huanglong axis. Clouds selling rain Ji, colorful. The lonely ducks fly together in the sunset, and the autumn water is the same as the sky. Fishing boats sing late and resound all over the coast of Peng Li; Yan Zhen was frightened and broke the pu of Hengyang. " There is the "Zhong Ming Shi Ding Jia" here. Of course, it is so big that you have to ring the bell when you eat, and there is a big row of dishes. It sounds like you can catch up with a military camp. Such a home is everyone and a giant. In the second episode of A Dream of Red Mansions, there is such a sigh: "Who knows that the children and grandchildren of such a family are inferior to each other!"

Come to think of it, although the tripod is magnificent, it is too inconvenient to cook or simmer soup. You can put it in the Forbidden City for show, but you can cook the world on a tripod! Ring the bell for dinner and you can have a rest. Now you can send text messages before meals, no matter how many people, in groups. However, it is destiny takes a hand that the cookware of Han nationality originated from Ding. In Yangshao culture (500-3000 BC), there were pots made of clay. At that time, it was estimated that no one was extravagant enough to use a tripod as a ritual vessel. Tao Ding was high-tech at that time, and the high-tech before that should have reached the Stone Age. During the Yin and Zhou Dynasties, China people began to cast bronze ding, which was used to provide meat for cooking and sacrifice. According to the pre-Qin literature, Zhu Xia Jiuding was a symbol of the dynasty regime. At that time, Zhou Li stipulated that there were different ding numbers for monarchs and subjects according to their grades, such as emperor Jiuding, seven ding for princes, five ding for doctors, three ding for scholars, four feet square and a cylindrical ruler or square ruler. Zhou Ding's body is thick and simple, but in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the tripod became thinner and lighter, and it is expected that the casting technology will be greatly improved.

There is one of the most famous bronze ding in China, which is called Simuwu Ding. It is Ding Wang, weighing 832.84 kg, with a height of 133 cm, a mouth length of 1 10 cm, a width of 78 cm, a foot height of 46 cm and a wall thickness of 6 cm. Its alloy composition is: copper 84.77%, tin 65438+. There are dragon patterns and gluttony patterns cast on the Si Muwu Ding, and gluttony is a legendary delicious beast. Gluttony? We are all gluttons! Oh, what a lovely animal.

The development from a cookware to a symbol of political power shows the importance of cookware, which contains the original humanistic spirit of China. Without a pot for one household, how can there be a country with thousands of households? In my opinion, the later casserole and tripod still inherited the tripod, and the reason why the feet were removed should mainly consider the convenience of processing and firing, which is self-evident. However, at 1990, I also used the old-fashioned wok in Beijing, with three legs and a small and deep pot diameter. It may be the legendary small wok. D-shaped cookers can still be seen in the vast southern region. When I was five or six years old, my uncle bought a tripod. He used white Guanyin clay as a stove, iron as an iron hoop outside, braised pork ribs soup in a pot and charcoal, and always told me to fan the fire with a big cattail fan. I never take the trouble to miss the time to play. In the place where I was born, daye city, Hubei Province, where bronze is produced, pots and pans are widely used. This pot is made of cast iron and has four ears with holes in them. Except that it has no feet, it is exactly the same as the ancient round tripod. Now you can see it occasionally in the countryside. I went to Shennongjia this summer and saw it in Dashan's family. They are called pot hangers, which are hung on a fire pit all the year round to burn. Because there are no feet, the conical tripod can't be stably placed on the stove or on the ground, so it needs to be supported by a circular shelf with feet.

Blacksmiths in the south often see pots. Blacksmiths like to hang pots on iron stoves and simmer pig's trotters with soybeans. Last year, I met a blacksmith in Susong, Anhui Province in Majia Village, Xialu District, Huangshi, who cooked soybeans and pig's trotters in a pot. At work, he tinkled the sickle for mowing grass with carbon steel, and sold it to the daily department store at the price of 5 yuan. In the era of gas stoves, people in cities and towns rarely use cauldrons as cooking utensils. First of all, it is stupid, big and black, with rough appearance, and its heat conversion is not as good as that of a pressure cooker. Even in the past Ding Guo era, it was used by farmers to hang on the stove mouth and simmer soup with the waste heat from the stove mouth. However, it is very good to stew sweet potatoes or potato rice in a pot, because the pot mainly takes heat from the bottom of the pot, and the heat energy of the conical pot can always reach the neck of the pot, so that the stewed food can be exposed to the heat energy to the maximum extent. Or about this, ancient Taoist alchemists used pots and pans to boil medicine.

It's all gone Both Mao Dinggong in the Western Zhou Dynasty and Hou Yi Kang Fang Ding in the late Shang Dynasty have become history, leaving only a lot of Ding-style vocabulary, for example, referring to the establishment of a new dynasty, the Central Plains, and frankly speaking, going to the Central Plains to cook porridge and drink. To win the championship is to plot the throne, which is as big as today's reforms, such as the death of Ding Xin. On the other hand, Shi Ding refers to the luxurious life of the nobility. "Zhou Li? Celestial officer? Henren: "Henren shared a cauldron in order to blend fire and water. "

A cauldron has formed 5,000 years of Chinese civilization. If there has been a national emblem since the Zhou Dynasty, I believe this national emblem is the tripod with a fragrant bone soup. Today, there are gears and ears of rice on the national emblem, which is a freehand brushwork of industry and agriculture. But why not a tripod? It is a tripod made by industrial means, and bone soup can symbolize agricultural civilization, including hunting, nomadism and farming.