1. People's raw eating habits in the Tang Dynasty
Since the Tang Dynasty, many ancient books have recorded the raw eating habits in the south. After the unification of Sui and Tang Dynasties, the economic and cultural center of gravity moved to the south, and the situation in the south was recorded and reflected one after another. "Yunnan Zhiman Post Custom" records how Yunnan people eat raw geese. They cut the raw goose into small squares and mixed it with seasonings such as raw pepper and chicken pepper. "Yunnan Tongzhi" said: "Or meat or fish, cut and bite it, and eat it with five-color vegetable crisp and five-salt pepper and garlic." The habit of eating raw food in the Tang Dynasty is closely related to sacrifice, and the idiom "blood alliance" is derived from this habit.
People living along the Yangtze River, whether in the north or the south, have the habit of eating raw fish, and they often entertain the most distinguished guests with raw fish banquets. In the Tang Dynasty, Han Yu's poems vividly described the custom of eating raw fish in Chaoshan area. In the 14th year of Tang Zhenyuan, Han Yu was demoted to Chaozhou Secretariat for offending the emperor. When I first came to the south from Henan, I felt very fresh when I saw the local situation of eating raw and fierce seafood.
He can't wait to write poems for his good friend Yuan Zhen. He always introduces chaozhou people's favorite seafood, including octopus, oyster, octopus and snake. And dozens of marine creatures that he can't name. Eating raw seafood has a long history in China, and the Japanese tradition of eating raw seafood was influenced by ancient China. In the eyes of most people, Japanese people like to eat sashimi, sushi and so on. So they regard the Japanese as the originator of eating raw food, but it is not. In the pre-Qin period, China regarded raw fish as a delicacy to entertain heroes. Widely eaten in the Han, Wei and Six Dynasties, it became a cultural prototype because of the most prosperous Han Zhang in the Tang Dynasty.
The species and preservation of fish in Tang Dynasty are worth mentioning. The Chef's Manual in the Tang Dynasty wrote that crucian carp is the best material for cooking fish, followed by bream, snapper, turtle, perch, silver carp, silver carp, yellow croaker and bamboo, which is a summary of long-term experience. In addition, people in the Tang Dynasty also invented a method to sterilize sashimi. They used "coriander, coriander sauce and marinade" as condiments, which had the function of detoxification and sterilization.
Japan once sent envoys to the Tang Dynasty 16 times to learn cultural etiquette, political system, Buddhism, music, tea ceremony, paper making, shipbuilding and other skills. Diet as a part of life may also be its learning content. Please let me know that the envoys of the Tang Dynasty were experts in a certain field. He went to Tang for short-term study. These people may learn about China's food culture and cooking techniques. Japanese envoys in the Tang Dynasty are regarded as vassals of the Tang Dynasty, and they must be very good at eating. This is the way for big countries to entertain guests, and fish soup may also be a dish for the envoys of the Tang Dynasty.
However, due to insufficient information, the above two ideas have not been confirmed. According to the Old Tang Book, the Tang Dynasty sent people to Japan to continue Japanese history, and some of them later settled in Japan and accepted the surname given by the emperor. These Tang people have lived in Japan for a long time, and their eating habits in the Tang Dynasty will certainly continue to be preserved. It is also difficult to prove whether fish culture can spread to Japan through these people.
The tradition of eating fish in China has not been broken from beginning to end. Because there are few people, eating raw fish leads to physical diseases, and the fish culture has gradually shrunk from the whole country to local areas, which has been forgotten for a long time, giving people the illusion that sashimi is unique to Japan.
2. Tea drinking prevailed in the Tang Dynasty.
Apart from daring to eat raw food, China's diet has the most far-reaching influence on the world's diet, which is the promotion of tea and drinking culture. Tea has now become the world's three largest non-alcoholic beverages alongside coffee and cocoa, and has formed different tea drinking habits and traditions in different regions.
Tea, a kind of drink, was eaten by people in the southwest of China in the pre-Qin period, and spread from Bashu to the Yangtze River after the Han Dynasty. However, it was not until the Sui and Tang Dynasties that the wind of drinking tea broke away from the southern corner and was established nationwide. Become the favorite thing in the world. The Tang Dynasty is not only an era when the wind of drinking tea prevailed, but also an era when the wind of drinking tea continued to spread abroad, and it was also an era when tea became the world's drink.
With the development of social economy and the continuous improvement of agricultural production level, the tea wine industry in Tang Dynasty developed rapidly. Tea drinking became more and more popular in the Tang Dynasty, especially after the middle Tang Dynasty, the production, trade and consumption of tea became more and more powerful, and tea gradually became a necessity in people's daily life. Tea gradually developed into a social fashion in the Tang Dynasty. However, society is complex and diverse. Due to the differences in living circumstances, social status, economic conditions and cultural literacy, the actual life of different classes and groups often shows great differences, and the tea life of Tang people is no exception.
As can be seen from the unearthed cultural relics, nobles often eat tea with golden cups and jade lamps; In a simple farmhouse, tea is an essential drink, although there is no expensive tableware to eat tea. No wonder the poet Cen Can has the feeling that "the pine forest is quiet and the tea in Chai Men is fragrant". Therefore, in the Tang Dynasty, there was not only a grand tea ceremony, but also a grand occasion for all princes and ministers to drink, and there was also a scene in which tea was the same as rice and salt.
In a word, although there are great differences in the way and taste of drinking tea at all levels, it is obvious that the Tang people advocate tea. In the Tang Dynasty, the custom of drinking tea not only existed in the mainland, but also spread to the surrounding ethnic minorities and foreign regions. In the fifteenth year of Zhenguan, with Princess Wencheng married into Tubo, tea was introduced into Tibet. At the same time, tea also spread to the northern and northwestern minority areas.
According to the New Tang Book Lu Yu Biography, Uighur consumed a lot of tea. This is also the beginning of the tea-horse exchange in history, and later it gradually developed into a tea-horse exchange. On his return from studying Buddhism in China, Japanese monk Zuyi brought tea seeds back to Japan and planted them by the river. In the following year, monk Konghai brought tea seeds from China, planted them all over Japan, and spread the knowledge of tea-making in Japan. Not only the Japanese tea ceremony was deeply influenced by China, but also the tea culture of neighboring countries such as North Korea, South Korea and Viet Nam can be traced back to the tea culture of the Tang Dynasty.
3. Literati in Tang Dynasty paid attention to "fried tea"
China people have a long history of drinking tea, but before the Tang Dynasty, tea was often only used as an ordinary drink to quench thirst and refresh themselves. In that inch, tea can not reach the height and depth of culture. However, with the popularization and popularity of tea life in the Tang Dynasty, Lu Yu and other cultural people who are good at tasting tea loved, studied and summarized tea, and the foundation work of tea culture, Tea Classic, came into being. That is, when people drink tea to a certain stage, they need some kind of summary and promotion. Cultural people with good tea shoulder this responsibility and eventually condense into books. According to records, the boiling and drinking of tea is the core content of literati's tea life. There are many specifications and exquisite.
1, choose the location. Cooking tea soup always needs a certain place, so the choice of environment is very important. In the Tang dynasty, the place where literati fried tea was also very particular. They hope to have a better tea and talk in a natural and quiet environment to relax their thoughts. In his "Meng Jiao Luobei Izumi brew tea", Liu Yanshi described in detail that he and his friends went to the suburbs to get water and stir-fry tea: "The finer the powder, the better the bamboo shoots, and the wild stir-fry is cold." They regard this kind of behavior as fun and call it romantic and elegant, which shows that the choice of tea frying place was also a fashion at that time.
Second, select equipment. Special utensils should be used to make tea. Lu Yu devoted a chapter to the Book of Tea, listing the types of tea-frying utensils in detail, and under each kind of utensils, stating the raw materials, preparation methods, specifications and uses, it can be seen that tea-frying is both practical and artistic in the life of literati. In the Tang Dynasty, from the perspective of artistic appreciation, literati chose Blue Yue Porcelain to drink tea. Of course, in addition to Yue porcelain, literati will also choose utensils from other regions according to their personal preferences in the practice of tea tasting. For example, Qin Taoyu used Gang 'ou in Tea Picking Song, which shows that for the literati in Tang Dynasty, the choice of tea frying utensils can reflect their own aesthetic concepts and tastes, so they must be considered when choosing.
Third, choose fire and water. The literati in the Tang Dynasty paid attention to tea frying, which was also reflected in their attention to the fire of tea frying. Lu Yu's Tea Classic discusses the grade of fried tea. He said its water is used in mountains, rivers and wells. A man named Liu Bohui was recorded in brew tea in the Tang Dynasty. He tasted the water sources all over the country and finally came to the conclusion that zero water is the first in Jiangnan. Compared with water, the requirements of the Tang people for cooking tea are not simple. "Tea Classic" mentioned that it is best to use charcoal fire when frying tea, so that the fried tea can be fragrant in Wan Li.
Fourth, choose seasonings. The ancients liked to add seasoning before cooking tea, although the Tang people also had this custom. However, this custom was criticized by Lu Yu, a Cha Sheng. He thought that too much seasoning would make tea leaves abandoned like water between ditches, but it would destroy the original taste of tea leaves, so he only seasoned the soup with salt when it was first boiled. Later, among the literati in the Tang Dynasty, many people paid more and more attention to the pure taste of tea itself, which was manifested in gradually abandoning the custom of putting spices in drinking.
In this process of frying tea, it embodies the pursuit and understanding of beauty by literati in Tang Dynasty. It can be said that this has become an important means for them to pursue artistic beauty and flaunt and demand themselves as literati. Exquisite tea drinking habits reflect the literati's exquisite love for life and their admiration and guidance for tea culture.
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In China, diet can be regarded as a culture. China's eating and drinking is by no means a simple solution to the problem of hunger and thirst. Diet is full of stress and connotation, reflecting the living conditions and concepts of China people. This gourmet revolution vividly embodies the inclusiveness of Tang Wenhua, and both fried tea and raw food are reflected in people's small lives, full of vitality and commensurate with the times.