Speaking of pork Bian Xiao, I believe many people know that pork is an indispensable food on the table now, and the food processed from pork is also welcomed by many people. As the saying goes, pigs are treasures. No matter where they are, they can be processed into food and served on people's tables. So, do you know when pork became popular in ancient China? Is there any trace of eating pork? Let's take a look with Bian Xiao!
In ancient China, the means of subsistence were scarce, and eating meat was basically the patent of the upper class. Ordinary people only have the opportunity to eat meat on holidays or birthdays. Moreover, in ancient times, cattle were very important agricultural means of production, and the social status of cattle was also attached great importance to by previous dynasties. In the worst case, you have to kill cattle with your life. Therefore, historically, China people have a strong desire to eat pork. An interesting historical phenomenon is that in the Ming Dynasty when killing pigs was forbidden, pork gradually occupied the dining table of China people until today.
The counterattack of pork
As early as the pre-Qin period, the theory of "Six Livestock" appeared in China. The so-called "six animals" include horses, cows, sheep, pigs, dogs and chickens. The "Six Livestock" consists of five kinds of horses that are basically not Chinese, used for riding, and fish that constitute the main part of ancient meat in China. Among them, cattle, sheep and You Zhu occupy a particularly important position.
The Book of Rites of the Zhou Dynasty called cattle, sheep and pigs "prisons", which are the best products that only monarchs and great doctors can enjoy. As for the people at the bottom, as the salt and iron theory of the Han Dynasty said, "people who don't drink in their hometown, eat fat, and sacrifice no wine and meat" can usually only enjoy it on holidays and celebrations.
Although beef is one of the "prisons", it was also used for sacrifice and eating in ancient times. However, since Tieli and Niu Geng appeared in the late Spring and Autumn Period, cattle have become an important labor tool. Successive dynasties have repeatedly banned the slaughter of cattle. As Tang Wuzong said, "Cattle are endowed with crops, and it is forbidden to be slaughtered in China", which makes beef gradually fade out of the ranks of meat. As for the description of eating large pieces of beef in Water Margin, it is really a challenge to the ruling order by Liangshan heroes.
Except beef, mutton and pork, both of them are in the "prison" and once shared equally on the dining table of China people. In the Han Dynasty, there was a record that "there are thousands of pigs (250) in Zezhong, all of which are waiting for thousands of households", and there are also many people who own "thousands of sheep (250)", which shows that raising pigs and raising sheep are inseparable.
However, after the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the scale of pig raising began to shrink, and mutton became the main meat of China people for thousands of years. In the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Galand of Luoyang once said, "Sheep breeders are the best in the world". "Sheep wine" often appeared in the writings of the literati in the Tang Dynasty, but pork was rarely mentioned. This can be seen from the description of meat in the Tang Dynasty in Taiping Guangji that there are 105, 47 for mutton and only 12 for pork.
Even Buddhist laymen can't break mutton in Taiping Guang Ji. "Tang Yaodai, a native of Zizhou, often holds the Diamond Sutra", but someone around him killed sheep and asked them to eat together, so he couldn't help eating. This reflects from the side that eating mutton has become a normal state in people's lives.
After the rapid development of the Tang Dynasty, mutton diet became a social fashion in the Song Dynasty. The so-called "Su Wen cooked mutton"; Su Wensheng, eat vegetable soup. "In the Song Dynasty, the royal chef spent 430,000 Jin of mutton a year, and the pork was only 4 100 Jin." The royal chef stopped using mutton "even became the" ancestral law "of the royal family in Song Dynasty.
In the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols entered the Central Plains, and mutton was the most popular. Not only do Mongolians take this as their staple food, but it is also common for Han people to eat mutton. Even the popular Korean oral textbook Lao Qi Da talks about "cooking China rice", including sheep and chicken.
However, after the Ming Dynasty, the dominance of mutton changed, and pork turned over successfully. A royal menu left over from Yongle in the early Ming Dynasty shows that the ingredients include 5 kg of mutton and 6 kg of pork, and mutton is gradually declining. By the late Ming Dynasty, the number of court animals left by Guanglu Temple was 18900 pigs and 10750 sheep, and pork had come from behind. Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica simply wrote: "Pigs are beasts in the world."
By the Qing Dynasty, the trend of "strong pigs and weak sheep" was more obvious. Every Spring Festival, Beijing often slaughters nearly100000 pigs. After two thousand years, pork finally "counterattacked" successfully.
Don't eat pork in Song Dynasty.
The court in the Song Dynasty changed the red hump from the jade chicken, the court diet in the Tang Dynasty, and the sweet fish, and ordered them to exaggerate and fabricate the style in the crystal tray, which not only left the exact details of the royal banquet court dishes, but also the raw materials and practices have been passed down to this day. There is an interesting custom circulating in the records full of strong life breath. In the Song Dynasty, the royal chef only used mutton, not pork in principle. According to records, the first dish for Qian Chu, the monarch, was a spinning symbol made of mutton. Renzong, on the other hand, prohibited the imperial court from burning sheep when it was hungry in the middle of the night, so mutton was the supreme food of the imperial court in the Song Dynasty. At that time, the mutton produced in Fengyi County, Shaanxi Province was called tender first. When I was in Song Zhenzong, the chef spent tens of thousands of sheep, which was bought in Shaanxi. With the succession of dynasties, the custom of eating mutton as the main meat in the court of Song Dynasty increased. Around the time of Yingzong, the imperial court bought tens of thousands of Qidan sheep from Hebei. Although a small amount of pork expenditure was recorded, most of the pork was on the list of dishes and side dishes.
As for the "Dongpo pork" made by Su Dongpo, it was only the cheap pork that made the rich people look down on at that time and gave great writers the opportunity to create.
You can't say "pig" meat in the Ming Dynasty.
If the emperor is homophonic with animals, it must be avoided. Otherwise, it is "killing Zhu" to say "killing pigs" in the New Year. In the Ming dynasty, this was the rhythm of rebellion.
So how did the ancients avoid the words "Zhu" and "pig" in the Ming Dynasty? According to documents, especially in the Ming Dynasty, the word "pig" was generally replaced by "ambition" and "reality". So the problem is solved.
In the fourteenth year of Zheng De, King Zhu of Ning rebelled. Since Zhu Houzhao adopted personal expedition. The army marched south, and on the way, Wang Yangming destroyed Wang Ning.
So Zhu Houzhao changed his personal adventure trip. When the local officials heard about it, they dared not neglect it and treated them with delicious food. At a banquet, he looked at the delicious pork on the table and flew into a rage: "Isn't the pig Zhu?"
How to eat this meat? So immediately under the "pig ban", according to "wanli wild record" records, the imperial edict content is like this:
It is common to raise and kill pigs. But when the core tablet of the Lord's life is different from the surname. The eating condition is accompanied by sores, which is deeply inconvenient. To this end, the provincial government instructed the central government to prohibit all breeding except cattle and sheep, so as to facilitate the sale and slaughter. If they know that they have violated the rules, the criminals will be merged into a small house and expelled forever.
Perhaps you think that this is recorded by unofficial history, but it is actually a Ming history: in September, Baoding (Qingyuan County, Hebei Province) was banned from raising pigs by the people (referring to Zhu Houzhao, Wu Zongzong). "
Wu Zongshi of Ming Dynasty recorded that when Shang Xun was lucky, folk livestock and pigs were banned and slaughtered as far as possible. The family with property decided to throw himself into the water. Who sent the exile order?
Since it was forbidden to raise pigs to eat pork, the homonym of Zhu and Zhu is the main reason, and the most important thing is that he is a pig.
However, the next question is awkward. Pigs, cows and sheep have always been sacrificial offerings, calling too fast. Without pork, it is impolite and disrespectful to our ancestors. In case the ancestors of Zhujiajian blame it, they can eat a bag.
At the same time, people who used to eat pork were not used to it, so a few months later, he lifted the ban on pigs, but changed their names to Bi or Dolphin. In short, it can't be called a pig.
Before entering the customs, Huang Taiji loved to eat rotten pork.
From Nurhachi to Huang Taiji, everyone loves to eat pork, and Nurhachi is called a little boar skin.
According to "Man Wen Lao Dang", "When Baylor gave a banquet, there was no console table and everyone sat on the floor." Dishes are usually hot pot with stew, pork, beef and mutton with animal meat. Nurhachi attended the state banquet, but only a dozen tables, dozens of tables, also eat animals such as pigs, cows and sheep. He also gathered around with everyone, eating on the ground and cutting meat with a food knife. After the Qing dynasty entered the customs, this situation changed fundamentally.
At that time, eating meat was also a traditional royal food. After the pork is cooked with clear water in the kitchen, it is divided into white meat, blood sausage, pig's head, intestine, heart, liver and lung, which are respectively put on plates without any vegetables and dipped in seasoning. Huang taiji also likes to eat like this. He also dipped the soft rotten pork from the pig's big bones into the wine and enjoyed it with the ministers.
Pork is indispensable after entering the customs.
After entering the customs, the emperors of the Qing Dynasty loved pork very much.
Pork not only appears in daily diet and palace meals, but also appears in royal sacrifices. The ceremony of the Qing royal family was shamanism, and the ceremony was indispensable for boiling pigs. It is said that the selected pig must be black all over, so that the fat pig can become the only pig who walks into the Forbidden City alive every year. The slaughtered pigs should be "skinned and unbound in sections" and then thrown into the cauldron of Kunning Palace. The cooking process is very simple, that is, boiling with pure water, cooking and cutting into bowls. The emperor first takes the lead in symbolically eating meat, and then personally selects the princes and concubines in the harem.
1784, a royal banquet was held on the 47th New Year's Eve in Qianlong. According to records, 65 kg of pork, 3 pig elbows, 2 pig bellies, 8 small bellies, 15 meal, 25 kg of wild boar and 3 pig intestines were used. I can only think of four words: pork will.
How to raise pigs in ancient times
Since you love pork so much, you can't do without the output of pigs. Without the proof of scientists, everyone can see that pigs produce far more meat than sheep.
In the Ming Dynasty, pigs in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, could get 90 Jin of white meat after six months' feeding. In the Qing Dynasty, a world-famous Taihu pig population was formed. The big sheep in the chef's manual weighs only 50 or 60 kilograms, and the meat production is far less than that of domestic pigs.
What about fertility? There are breeding records in Ming Dynasty. A sow can have fourteen offspring at one birth, but the number of sheep is generally only 1-2. Farmers who can raise pigs will naturally choose pigs that are good at breeding.
Pigs can produce so much, which shows that their feeding cost is not high. In the Ming Dynasty, some people tried to feed the pigs with locusts, and they got a good thing: "The pigs started at 20 kg and grew to more than 50 kg in ten days." In contrast, raising 1 1 sheep in the south of the Yangtze River requires farmers to store at least 15000 kg of feed a year. Farmers can take out 1000 kilograms of mulberry leaves by themselves, and the rest of hay and dead leaves need to be purchased from other places for six taels of silver. This was recorded in Shen Shi Agricultural Books in the Ming Dynasty, and it was a great expense at that time.
"Sharpening the knife does not mistake the woodcutter", farmers are good at controlling cattle and sheep breeding, and they also understand that it is better to maintain soil fertility with pig manure. Pu Songling put raising pigs in the position of "the most important thing in farming" in Silkworm Breeding Classic. Raising sheep can also provide land fertilizer and promote farming. But as the saying goes, "sheep are suitable for the ground and pigs are suitable for the fields", which means that raising sheep requires a vast pasture, which is almost impossible in the densely populated agricultural areas of South China.
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