As the saying goes, the people take food as the sky, Chinese thousand years, there has always been a habit, "sunrise and work", "sunset and rest", "three meals a day"... These are all descriptions of people's daily lives. For diet, Chinese attaches great importance to it, not only to eat well, but also to eat full, but also to have a full range of colors and flavors, and at the same time to have a taste.
However, the eating habits of Chinese are also very unique, and they are more insightful, such as: "breakfast should be full, lunch should be eaten well, dinner should be eaten less", just a few sentences, it directly reflects the overall eating habits of Chinese.
So, what is the diet of the emperor who is high above?
As a son of heaven, the emperor has the mission of making a country prosperous, he not only has to eat on time every day, but also eat and drink well, only in this way can the emperor have more energy to deal with the government and manage the country. However, the emperor's diet is definitely much better than that of ordinary people, even if you have not seen the real emperor's recipe, but you can also see from the film and television dramas, that dish, a variety of tricks, and even, some dishes have not even heard of the name.
Especially in the Manchu and Han Dynasties of the Qing Dynasty, hundreds of dishes are really mouth-watering. However, the emperor's meal is not called eating, but is called "passing meals", "eating", "eating", and the time when the emperor eats is not fixed, which is determined according to the specific activity time of the emperor. The emperor would generally eat two meals a day, breakfast was around 6:00 to 7:00 a.m., lunch was around 1:00 to 2:00 p.m., and in the evening, he generally did not eat staple food, and would eat snacks at 6:00 p.m.
When the emperor was eating, the eunuchs would set up a table in the predetermined place, and when the meal came from the imperial dining room, the eunuchs would quickly arrange the meal according to the rules, and during this period, there could be no mistakes. Usually, the emperor eats alone, and unless there are special circumstances, the emperor will allow someone to dine with him.
According to historical records, the Ingredients consumed by the Kangxi Emperor every day were equivalent to: 18 kilograms of meat plus 6 liters of rice. However, there was a big difference between the two pounds at that time and the current two pounds, when 18 pounds of meat was equivalent to 21 pounds now, and six liters of rice was nearly 10 pounds. So, the question is, so many ingredients, can Kangxi eat all in one day? Could it be that the Kangxi Emperor had such a large amount of food?
The key to this problem is that so many ingredients are not all consumed by the imperial dining room, let alone by Kangxi alone. The imperial dining room only prepared two staple meals a day for Kangxi, which did not change at all, and it was a fixed and timed supply. However, Kangxi did not necessarily eat it.
According to records, Kangxi did not like to eat the meals prepared for him by the imperial dining room, and he preferred to eat in the empress's "inner dining room", the concubine's "dining room" and the "boy's room" in the upper study.
Then, if Kangxi does not eat these meals prepared for Kangxi in the imperial dining room, will he have to be dumped?
Of course not, Kangxi himself would not eat, but he would reward a concubine, a prince, a minister, a Hanlin scholar, or a guard in the guard's room, or even to a eunuch. Giving those he did not like to eat, could not finish eating, and eating the rest of the food to his subordinates was the grace and habit of the rulers of the Qing Dynasty, from Kangxi to Cixi, without exception.
Among the rulers of the Qing Dynasty, Kangxi was relatively frugal, and in the forty-sixth year of Kangxi, the imperial dining room reported a general ledger to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Kangxi's annual dietary expenses were converted into silver 3781 taels, the empress's "external dining room", the empress's "inner dining room", the "dining room" of each palace, and the "tata" of the low-level concubines, etc., adding up to 97441 taels, nearly 100,000 taels.
That is to say, Kangxi's imperial dining room spent several thousand taels a year, and the small canteen of the concubines of the harem spent nearly 100,000 taels. However, Qianlong, as the grandson of Kangxi, did not learn Kangxi's frugality, but learned luxury. According to historical records, in Qianlong's later years, the annual food expenditure in the imperial dining room reached more than 20,000 taels of silver.
According to Ma Garni's feelings during his visit to China, the data he disclosed was: During the Qianlong period, an ordinary family of four had an annual income of 32 taels of silver and an expenditure of 35 taels of silver. That is to say, an ordinary person's annual expenses are 8 taels of silver, so the Qianlong Emperor's annual catering expenses are enough for 2500 poor people to live for a year.
The Qianlong Emperor spent so much in the imperial dining room for a year, in fact, it was not because Qianlong ate more, but because he ate expensively. For example, the Jiajing Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, who wanted to eat pie and fruit, ordered the imperial dining room to make a plate, and as a result, the imperial dining room had a budget and needed fifty taels of silver, but the Jiajing Emperor smiled and said: Only five dollars are needed, you can buy a large box at the entrance of Donghua.
Five dollars of silver on the market can buy a large box of pie fruit, but the royal dining room has opened the budget to more than fifty two silver, which is really incredible. During the Qianlong period, there was also such a thing, saying that Qianlong had to eat three boiled eggs every day, and the imperial dining room opened the budget to thirty-two silver, Qianlong did not understand what was going on, and thought that the price of eggs had increased.
Later, one day, when Wang Youdun, the minister of military aircraft, entered the palace to face the saint, Qianlong asked him what he ate every day, and Wang Youdun said: "My family is very poor, and when I get up in the morning, I will eat four eggs." When Qianlong heard this, he was surprised and said: "One egg costs ten silver, and four costs forty-two, I dare not eat so much, your family is so poor, you still dare to eat so much." ”
Wang Youdun looked around, and the eunuch next to him was looking at himself, he knew that if he said the wrong thing, it would affect the eunuchs and the people in the imperial dining room to get rich, and it would also affect him. Therefore, Wang Youdun quickly explained: "Emperor, you eat good eggs, one is not expensive even if it is twelve, while I eat rotten eggs, and you can buy one for three pieces of money." ”
It can be seen from this that it is not that the emperor eats expensive things, but that people's hearts are insufficient.
The Imperial Palace of the Qing Dynasty was so extravagant and wasteful, but it was still necessary to eat meat every year on the 26th day of the eighth lunar month, from the empress to the emperor, to the empress and the concubines of the palaces, including Gege and Brother, who were not yet out of the cabinet. On this day, they can only wrap the white rice balls with lettuce leaves as a staple food to commemorate the arduous process of the old ancestors to establish the Qing Dynasty... Such a festival is simply an irony.
Resources:
[Records of the Ancestors of the Qing Dynasty", "History of the Palace of the State Dynasty, Volume XI, Palace I, Outer Dynasty", "Great Qing Huidian"]