In modern society, the pace of life is gradually accelerating, young people have to get up at six or seven o'clock to wash and dress up at six or seven o'clock in order to go to work on time, a series of procedures down, how to get more than an hour, and then add the commuting time of the bus and subway, at least two hours. Therefore, eating breakfast has become a "choice problem", if the time is too late, you can only go to work hungry, and after a morning of mud, you can eat a hot meal, which is not easy.
However, compared with modern people, ancient officials were more "aggrieved", and if they wanted to go to the court the next day, they hardly even had time to sleep, let alone eat breakfast.
In ancient times, hundreds of officials had to go to the early dynasty every three to five minutes, especially the Ming Dynasty, and they had to go to the court every day. Zhu Yuanzhang stipulated that all officials with more than six pins in the capital were required to go to the morning court every day. It is not difficult to imagine that Zhu Yuanzhang was born as a peasant, and after he became emperor, he did not "forget his roots", and after abolishing the chancellor, he was worried about being hoodwinked, so he stipulated a system of frequent visits to the early dynasty, and every day he had to understand the latest situation of the people to avoid corrupt officials running rampant and the interests of the people being damaged.
After Zhu Yuanzhang's death, there were also several emperors who observed the daily morning dynasty as an ancestral system, and once the emperor was lazy and did not go to the early dynasty one day, a cadre of civil officials would publicly accuse, in order to win a good reputation, the emperor could only persist. However, although it is still a model of diligence in the morning dynasty every day, if there is no good body, it is estimated that if you insist on one or two months, you will fall ill, after all, the time of the morning dynasty is too early, which seriously affects the sleep law.
According to the "Great Ming HuiDian", in the early dynasty, the minister must get up at midnight and go to the noon gate to assemble, and at three o'clock in the morning, the people will come almost the same. When the drums sounded from the upper floor of the noon gate, the minister would line up, and at about five o'clock, when the gong sounded, the fish would enter. In the process, if any official coughs, spits, or steps are "unstable," they are recorded by the imperial history in charge of picketing and waiting for the release.
However, going up to the court with a hungry stomach is a big problem after all, once or twice is OK, a long time, no one can hold on. There is a story recorded in the "Cold Relief" that Liu Yan, the prime minister of the Tang Dynasty, once went to the early dynasty on the fifth day, and due to the cold weather, when he passed the steaming cake shop, he bought the cake wrapped in the sleeve of his robe and ate it quietly in the court.
The Pingzhou Ke Tan records that officials of the Shang Dynasty could wait outside the imperial city in the "Waiting Leaky Courtyard", and they could enjoy a breakfast with fine wine and fruit, and some officials would bring their own meat. After the early dynasty was dispersed, the emperor would also "give food" to hundreds of officials, and because the place where food was given was under the hall porch, it was called "gallery meal".
In addition, in volume 1 of the "Yongdong Sketches", it is recorded that Zhu Yuanzhang, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, "looked at the dynasty every day, played the work, and gave food to hundreds of officials", and gave food at the Fengtian Gate, or in the Huagai Hall and the Wuying Hall. However, although the hundred officials' gallery meal system could solve the problem of the hunger of the hundred officials, it was abolished within a few years due to the lack of financial resources of the imperial court, so the courtiers could only think of their own ways.
As mentioned above, many officials would hide grain in the sleeves of their robes and eat it secretly in the courtroom while the emperor was not paying attention, but once this kind of thing was caught by the emperor, it was a crime of great disrespect, and the consequences were very serious. Therefore, in order to supplement nutrition, the Hundred Officials of the Qing Dynasty would take a piece of ginseng in their mouths, so that although they were hungry, they would not endanger their health, and even if the emperor saw it, he would not say anything more.