If you are praised by a Cantonese friend as the "Nine Great Gui", it proves that he is indeed very satisfied with the meal you have prepared, because in the Cantonese context, the "Nine Great Gui" is the highest level of feast. During the New Year's Festival or gatherings of relatives and friends, hospitable Lingnan friends will always put on a table of "Nine Gui" to entertain guests.
However, with the increase in the frequency of the use of the "Nine Great Gui", even the authentic Cantonese people have difficulty in counting which nine "Gui" are the Nine Gui. The reason why Cantonese locals do not understand the Nine Great Gui is very simple, because the Nine Gui is actually more than one in Guangdong, and the Nine Gui in the countryside of eastern Guangdong and western Guangdong are not exactly the same dishes, and what factors cause this difference? This has to go back a thousand years, starting with China's first unified dynasty, the Qin Dynasty.
In 219 BC, the Qin Dynasty swept through the Six Kingdoms and won the Central Plains, and the first emperor of the first generation certainly would not let go of the vast territory of Lingnan, that is, tu Sui led more than 500,000 troops to attack Fujian, Zhejiang and Lingnan in five ways, and then after three wars, in 214 BC, the Qin army under the leadership of Ren Hu and Zhao Tuo, classified Lingnan into the territory of the Great Qin Empire.
This war not only formally incorporated the Baiyue region into China's territory, increased China's land area by more than 1 million square kilometers, promoted the integration of the Chinese nation, laid the foundation for the development and construction of the two Guangzhous, and also brought advanced farming technology from the Central Plains to the Lingnan region, developed transportation and commercial foreign trade, and promoted production development and social progress. The same is true in terms of culture, as the Chinese characters of the Central Plains flow into the Lingnan region, the food culture of the Central Plains also flows into Lingnan. Here we have to mention what exactly is "Gui"?
Eshu Gui Early Western Zhou Dynasty
Gui, an ancient Chinese food vessel, had an open mouth, a corset of the neck, a bulging belly, and both ears. It began to appear in the Shang Dynasty and continued into the Warring States period. Because the gui is made of bronze, the shape is thick, the style is complex, and the body is decorated with exquisite patterns of animal face patterns. It is considered a device that can only be used by the nobility. In the Central Plains, after entering the Han Dynasty, the Central Plains region that entered the Iron Age soon used iron-smelted tableware, and the status of bronze tableware was shaken. However, this was not the case in the Lingnan region, and at the beginning of the founding of the Han Dynasty, the Qin Dynasty general Zhao Tuo proclaimed himself king of Nanyue wu in Lingnan and established the State of Nanyue. (For details, see the author's previous article "The Past of the Former City, A Three-Minute Quick Overview of the Thousand-Year History|.) The first issue - Guangzhou" https://www.toutiao.com/i6940534103666065928/)
According to ancient records, during the reign of Lü Hou, the policy of "not being different from the barbarians" was adopted for the South Vietnamese state, prohibiting the export of iron. Zhao Tuo, the king of Nanyue, wrote three times to request that the ban be lifted, so that later, he did not hesitate to turn his face to Han Ting. The "Geographical Records of the Book of Han" records that the national iron production and iron officials are set up, and Lingnan is a blank space, which is also evidenced by this, and the more solid evidence is that the chemical composition test of the iron weapons excavated from the tombs of the South Vietnamese state shows that it contains a variety of raw materials with different carbon content, which is most likely caused by the lack of iron, so that the collected "scrap materials" have to be re-processed and forged. From a macroscopic point of view, the weapons unearthed from Lingnan tombs are mostly copper, copper swords and bronze spears are the most common, mostly excavated in the Yinling Xi'ou Shu cemetery; while iron weapons are mostly found in the tombs of Nanyue kings and the tombs of high-ranking officials in South Vietnam.
Ancient tombs of South Vietnam
It can be seen that the lack of iron ore resources in the Lingnan region at that time, or the lack of large iron ore, caused the South Vietnamese state to not develop its own iron smelting industry, and could only import "embryos" from the Central Plains and "process" the required iron in the local area. It can be seen that in the South Vietnamese country at that time, iron tableware could not become the mainstream, so when people used bronze tableware, they naturally regarded "Gui" as the highest grade tableware, and yearned for it, which also explained why the memory of "Gui" in Guangdong Province is longer than that of other regions, and has been used to this day.
And why are the "Nine Great Gui" divided into different types in Guangdong? This has to mention the historical evolution of Guangdong Province, which is now the prototype of Guangdong Province in the early Ming Dynasty. In the second year of Hongwu (1369), Guangdong Province was changed to Guangdong Province, and Haibei Hainan Province was transferred to Guangdong, and Guangdong became one of the thirteen provinces of the Ming Dynasty. Moreover, in the past, the Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan Island, which belonged to the same region as Guangxi for a long time, were allocated to guangdong to take charge, ending the situation that Guangdong used to be subordinate to different political districts, and the regional outline of Guangdong Province has basically taken shape since then.
In the thirteenth year of Hongwu (1380), Zhu Liangzu, the Marquis of Yongjia, expanded the city of Guangzhou, extended the northern city wall to Yuexiu Mountain, and built a five-story building on the mountain for spectacular viewing
At this time, Guangdong Province was newly built, and the residents under its jurisdiction could be roughly divided into three categories, the first was the residents who originally belonged to the Leizhou Peninsula in Guangxi, the second was the local Cantonese around guangzhou, the third was the residents of the current Chaoshan area that originally belonged to the southern Fujian region, and in addition to these three kinds of residents, there were Hakka families who migrated south in the Central Plains. Although the three parts of the residents belong to the same Lingnan region and have a deep memory of "Gui", due to the fact that they belong to different provinces and regions throughout the year, there are differences in cultural backgrounds and traditional customs, and the way of eating is also very different, so in the future integration of the province, the specific dishes of "Jiu Da Gui" have gradually become controversial.
The author believes that the variety of the nine major gui in Guangdong Province is precisely the embodiment of the integration of ethnic groups in Guangdong Province, which not only highlights the inclusive background of Guangdong Province, but also provides important clues and trajectories for regional exchanges in Guangdong Province in the history of inspection.
Finally, put on the nine most recognized species in Guangdong Province.
1. Suckling pig platter
The source of the image comes from Baidu Encyclopedia
Second, hair vegetable stew pig hand
3. Dragon eel with soy sauce
Fourth, soy sauce chicken
5. Crispy fried oysters
6. Taro button meat
7. Steamed fish
8. Stir-fry miscellaneous dishes
9. Yaozhu corn soup
Looking for Chinese taste, seeing history, the era of rolling tides, washing away the taste that is carved into the bone marrow, the cold and warm behind each dish, the vicissitudes of the world, are worth savoring.
This work is not a rigorous historical academic study and is for reference only