"Grape wine luminous glass, want to drink pipa immediately urge." Drunken lying on the battlefield Jun Mo smiled, how many people did Gu Lai fight back"? When we recited this tang poem, a warrior holding a wine glass and imagining the dream of the battlefield in the sound of the pipa instantly jumped on the paper.
So the question is, when did the wine that could be drunk in the Tang Dynasty come to China? This must mention one person, that is, Zhang Qian, the Marquis of Bowang who went to the Western Regions, a big person who talked about Chinese cuisine and certainly could not get around.
First, Chinese the world through our eyes
We often say that the two major preludes to the rise of the industrial revolution in the West in modern times are the "Renaissance" and the "Great Discovery of Geography". One opened the spiritual shackles of the Industrial Revolution and the development of capitalism, and the other connected the world as a whole and promoted the rise of free trade.
So is there a "great geographical discovery" in the East? Yes, that is, Zhang Qian's mission to the Western Regions!
Before Zhang Qian went out to the Western Regions, what was the world in Chinese's eyes? Xia and Shang pan huan in the Yellow River Valley; the premise of the Wu King's crusade against Dongyi in the Huai River Valley, the Shang Dynasty was virtual outside and inside; at the time of the Western Zhou Division, the Chu state in the Danshui Valley was called barbarians; the Qin state in Guanzhong was surrounded by Rong Di; the Yan state was even more isolated, and disappeared from the history books for hundreds of years in the Spring and Autumn Period.
Hebei had the Zhongshan Kingdom, and the Yan and Zhao Northern Lin Hu and Eastern Hu were everywhere, frequently destroying the Central Plains states. Therefore, Guan Zhong advised The Duke of Qi Huan to "honor the king and honor the king", which not only made the state of Qi take the lead in becoming one of the "Spring and Autumn Five Hegemons", but also preserved the foundation of Chinese civilization. Therefore, Confucius would sigh: "Microtubule Zhong, I am sent to the left"! This is not only a praise for Guan Zhong's concept of "honoring the king and destroying the yi", but also a true portrayal of the difficult situation of Chinese civilization in the Spring and Autumn Period.
When Qin Shi Huang unified the six kingdoms, he made two major contributions: one was to conquer the land of Baiyue in the south; the other was to order Mengtian to lead an army of 300,000 to attack the Xiongnu and open up the Hetao Plain. At this point, the basic plate of the eighteen provinces of The Han Dynasty has seven seven eight eight.
Then during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Huo went ill to lay down the Hexi Corridor and built the four counties of Wuwei, Dunhuang, Jiuquan, and Zhangye. In addition, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty swept away South Vietnam and established Jiaozhi Commandery (Jiaozhi County); attacked Wei Manchu Korea and established HanSi County (汉四郡) on the Korean Peninsula; this was a pioneering part of the traditional Han Dynasty.
But in general, it was all going around in the east of Eurasia, and it was Zhang Qian who went out of the Yumen Pass in the west, spanning tens of thousands of miles in the western region, breaking the Chinese's understanding of the world for the first time. It also made the powerful Han Dynasty understand that in the far West, there were three equally powerful empires.
Second, the world discovered by Zhang Qian
How much did Zhang Qian's mission to the Western Regions subvert the perception of the Han people? Stretching for more than 1,600 kilometers beyond the Hexi Corridor, the Tianshan Mountains divide the western region into two large blocks, where there are 30 or 40 large and small countries such as Loulan. In the northwest of the western region, there was a powerful nation that dared to fight with the Xiongnu, and they controlled the strings on horseback and called them Wusun.
Directly west of the western region, there is an agrarian country called Dawan, which has more than 70 cities of all sizes and hundreds of thousands of people. Dawan produces good horses, known as sweat and blood BMW; here grapes are made of wine, which has a different flavor; grapes and grape winemaking techniques are the Central Plains that were passed back from Zhang Qian.
Northeast of Dawan is Wusun, with tens of thousands of young and strong nomadic people; northwest of Dawan is Kangju, which is also a nomadic people weaker than Wusun; northwest of Kangju is Xiangcai, which is also a nomadic country; and west of Dawan is the Dayue clan, a powerful country with more than 100,000 young adults.
To the south of the Great Moon Clan was the Bactrian Empire, to the west was the powerful Empire of Rest (Persia), and the Rest, Kushan, Rome and the Han Dynasty were the four major empires on the Eurasian continent at that time. It can be said that in Zhang Qian's perspective, a huge world is taking shape.
From Zhang Qian's mission to the Western Regions, the Han Dynasty learned that the Xiongnu were in the steppes directly north of them; in the place known today as Central Asia, there were kingdoms such as Dawan, Kangju, Xiangcai, Bactria and Dayueshi; the rest of the four major empires, in today's Iranian plateau; and further west of the Sabbath Empire, there was an empire called Rome (the Italian Peninsula).
Moreover, Zhang Qian also inquired that in the south of Bactria, where business can be done, there is also a country called body poisoning. And in the bazaar of Bactria, Shu Jin from Shu Land was found, and the people of Bactria told Zhang Qian that Shu Jin had been bought from a country of poisoning. Zhang Qian thought that from the southwest of Shu land, he could reach the poisoned country, which is today's India.
From today's geographical concept, Zhang Qian, who was more than 2,000 years ago, was on a mission to the Western Regions. He basically clarified the geographical and humanistic knowledge of Xinjiang, Central Asia and some west Asia, and realized that there was an empire called Rome on the Mediterranean coast today, and deduced the location of India in the South Asian subcontinent, and guessed the way to travel from the southwest of Shu to India.
In the early stages of agrarian society and feudalization, the basic contours of Eurasia could be clarified, so that Chinese realized the vastness of the world for the first time. This is the greatness of Zhang Qian, and it is also the fundamental reason why Taishi gong called him "Chiseling the Western Regions"!
Wine, walnuts and the Silk Road
Under Zhang Qian's description, a grand world appeared in front of the heroic Emperor Wu of Han. In that era of active exploration, a group of Han envoys, with their own missions, walked through the Jade Gate Pass in Xi'an and explored the world in Zhang Qian's mouth. Years later, on the Eurasian Land Bridge, which stretched from Chang'an in the east to Rome in the west, a "Silk Road" full of merchants slowly unfolded.
Among them, the grapes, walnuts and pomegranates that we are familiar with are all treasures that Zhang Qian brought back to the Central Plains. In addition, cucumbers, garlic, broad beans, coriander, peas, pepper, green onions and other plants are also good products introduced to China by the "Silk Road".
Taking the grapes we often eat as an example, in the country of Dawan, where Zhang Qian went, there is a tradition of making wine. At the same time, the Empire of Rest, thousands of miles west of Dawan, had sent 20,000 troops to meet the Han envoys, and there was also a tradition of grape winemaking. Zhang Qian depicts the Sabbath Empire in this way: the architectural style is similar to that of Dawan, but there are hundreds of cities and pools, thousands of miles in the land, and it is the largest country in the region. They minted coins out of silver, and the silver coins were painted with portraits of the king, and the king was to replace the silver coins as soon as he died.
Taking this as an example, combined with the world's archaeological knowledge, it is not difficult to know that grapes are plants that continue to spread eastward along the Mediterranean coast and have a history of thousands of years. In China, when it was the latest in the Wei Kingdom, wine was already a popular drink, and the Wei Emperor Cao Pi was very fond of wine and has been popular to this day.
Zhang Qian of the Han Dynasty brought back grapes, and the Wei Emperor Cao Pi loved wine, so it is not surprising that there is such a good sentence as the luminous cup of grapes in Tang poetry. Corresponding to the grapes imported from the West, silk and ceramics from the East also killed the Roman noblewoman circle, and in the markets of the ancient Roman Empire, silk once rose to a sky-high price of 12 gold and a pound.
So much so that the Roman Senate was forced to revise the decree to prevent a massive outflow of gold in exchange for what they thought was nothing more than "silk" plucked directly from trees by the Orientals:
The people of Chinese are famous for obtaining this woolen fabric from their woods. They soaked the silk they had plucked from the trees in water and combed the white leaves one by one. The production of silk required so much servitude, and they came from the other side of the globe, that the maidens of Rome could show off on the streets of the continent in translucent silk coats.
On this long Silk Road, the various ethnic groups in Eurasia have been fully exchanged and communicated, and the initiator China has also gained great benefits. Economically, we once exchanged silk for a large amount of gold in Rome; materially, grapes, walnuts, pomegranates, coriander and other plants greatly enriched the dietary system of Chinese; this is why we still want to "Belt and Road" and restore the former glory of the Silk Road!