In the era of cold weapons, there are eighteen kinds of weapons, and the first place is the knife. The knife is the most widely used and equipped weapon on the battlefield of the cold soldiers. According to different uses, it has a variety of shapes and functions, but the most basic core techniques such as chopping and splitting are unchanged. With the knife weight in the momentum of the indomitable, shoot to kill, so it won the reputation of "the courage of a hundred soldiers".
Historically, the knife is one of the earliest weapons made by human beings, and it is also the last cold weapon to withdraw from the battlefield, until the end of the last century, the knife as a weapon still plays a role on the battlefield. It has taken its place in civilization as human beings came out of caves, formed tribes, gathered villages and towns, merged into villages, and became cities.
After ancient humans invented the knife, due to the needs of war and life, the knife produced two "evolutionary routes". One is a saber used on the battlefield, accompanied by an iron-blooded conquest to win the name of Hehewei. One entered the kitchen and became an important daily necessities and kitchen knives for the people, commonly known as kitchen knives.
The kitchen knife is an indispensable knife for every household, and its main function is to cut and cut the ingredients into slices, silks, blocks, cubes, and dices with a sharp side. With the development of agriculture and animal husbandry, the diversification of raw materials, knives have evolved a variety of knife shapes such as bone choppers, bone removal knives, and slaughter knives, but in the kitchen of Chinese, a Chinese kitchen knife is indispensable.
The most pyrotechnic place in the world is the kitchen, the most indifferent and iron-blooded place in the world is the battlefield, but a kitchen knife, but let the two veins connect, in the nearly 10,000 years of Chinese civilization history, a kitchen knife carries the bittersweet, joyous and bitter, joy and sorrow, meet and leave the country.
First, the secular fireworks of the kitchen knife is the difficult road of Chinese civilization
Human civilization has diversity, and it is this diversity that allows civilizations in different regions to embark on a path of different customs and colorful characteristics on the journey of common evolution, however, no matter which civilization has a common feature at the beginning, that is, the manufacture and use of tools, which is an important differentiating sign that civilization can move forward.
Almost all ancient civilizations, far away from the mountains and oceans and unable to communicate with each other, have produced stone knives with similar shapes and functions. In domestic archaeology, scientific expeditions have found the existence of stone knives in all ancient human sites such as Hemudu, Yangshao, Hongshan, Dawenkou, Liangzhu and so on.
The earliest use of stone knives by humans is taken from natural stones, due to the geological movement of nature and crustal activities, a large number of irregular stones with irregular fronts have been produced, and ancient humans found that such stones were particularly easy to use to divide prey, and began the process of imitation. Stone tools were born, and humans began to enter the Paleolithic Age.
Originally, ancient humans made stone knives is a process of "bumping into great luck", they use two stones of different sizes to collide with each other, so that the stones produce sharp fractures in the process of disintegration, which is the blade, and with the advancement of the production technology, they learned to select the appropriate stone, first play the general shape, and then correct in a small area, so that the success rate of the stone knife is greatly improved, and also summarized the hammering method, the anvil method, the smashing method and the indirect playing technique.
So, how effective is the cutting effect of this stone knife? When human beings in the process of making stone knives, constantly summing up experience, will consciously choose those extremely hard stones, and even encounter natural glass formed by high temperatures, so although stone knives are not so exquisite, the effect is not so beautiful, but the sharpness is no less than modern knives.
In the Neolithic Era, when humans mastered the technology of grinding stone tools, the production process of stone knives also reached a fairly superb level, and even stone knives made of jade appeared. The stones currently in the Xuzhou Museum are beautifully shaped and sharp in the blade, like works of art. At this time, humans also mastered the technique of drilling holes, and many stone knives unearthed in this era had smooth and uniform holes.
After the stone knife was crafted, the function was continuously enhanced and extended, and the ancient humans used rattan to tie the stone knife to a wooden stick, which increased the killing effect and was well used in hunting and tribal conflicts. From this time on, the battle knife and the stone knife began to take two completely different paths.
In the Yin Shang period, human beings finally mastered the smelting technology of metal, and bronze knives of copper-tin alloy were made, and human beings opened up a new world of knife making. The hardness of the bronze knife is not as good as that of stone, but its toughness, grinding, extension, processing, etc. are far better than the stone, so it soon replaced the stone knife.
The process of replacing stones with bronze knives is also a critical period for human beings to change from tribal to state forms, which represents a great increase in productivity and further refines the human division of labor. In the long Xia, Shang, Zhou and other dynasties, human beings slowly accumulated strength, like weeds under the ice field, desperately absorbing nutrients, deeply rooted in the foundation, waiting for the call of the spring wind to break through. The Spring and Autumn Warring States finally came.
The Spring and Autumn Warring States is the pinnacle of bronze weapons and the last glory of bronze weapons. The amazing creativity of Chinese civilization has been fully demonstrated in the manufacture of knives. For example, the existing Yue Wang Gou Jian sword, which has been sharp and unchanged for thousands of years, can be easily broken by more than ten pieces of paper. Unfortunately, at this time, the kitchen knife still did not have much morphological evolution.
In the Spring and Autumn Period, human ingredients were by no means as rich and diverse as today, mainly fish, meat, tubers, the staple food was beans, rice, millet, etc., cooking methods were roasting, stewing, boiling, etc., the emergence of stir-frying dishes could not appear until the Song Dynasty, so the shape of the kitchen knife was more inclined to the Western dinner knife today. Of course, this does not mean that the ancients' knife skills are not good.
Pre-Qin Zhuang Zhou", "Zhuangzi Health Lord": "Ku Ding relieves the cattle for Wen Huijun, where the hands touch, where the shoulders lean, where the feet are walked, where the knees are stomped, and the swords are played, and the middle tone is not heard." ”
In "Cu Ding Jie Niu", the butcher's knife use technique has reached the point of divinity, and he has realized the principle of using a knife "with no thickness". Its premise is that it knows the structure of the cow well, can find the weakest place between the flesh and bones, and the blade is inseparable from the place where it passes, and it also maintains a beautiful rhythm. A good soldier with a knife is not necessarily a good cook, but a good cook must be a good killer.
After the founding of the Qin Dynasty, iron knives gradually began to appear, harder and sharper, and it was not until after the Han Dynasty that iron knives completely replaced bronze knives. It can be seen that although the quality of kitchen knives is improving and the use is popularized, the shape of kitchen knives is extremely slow, and the main reason for this is the cooking technology and ingredients.
The overall improvement of Chinese cooking technology to wait until the emergence of merchants as a class, due to the feudal dynasty's policy of heavy agriculture and suppression of business, the status of merchants is very low but amassed a lot of wealth, so more attention is paid to food, clothing, housing and transportation, and truly realized "food is not boring, not tired of fine", the knife processing of ingredients, collocation has higher requirements, objectively promoted the improvement of cooking technology.
The change in the shape of the kitchen knife also depends on the richness of the ingredients, and the richness of the ingredients depends on the external exchanges of the feudal dynasty, and the agricultural civilization for the first time exists as a whole in a country, and the extensive exchanges between the official and external civilizations began with the Han Wudi Emperor. In 139 BC, Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty sent Zhang Qian on a mission to the Western Regions, and the establishment of the Silk Road not only promoted the exchange and exchange of civilizations, but also introduced a large number of ingredients, including cucumbers, peas and various spices.
This kind of exchange inherits the rise and fall of feudal dynasties intermittently, and when the Tang, Song, Ming and other countries were strong, exchanges once reached their peak. A large number of commercial exchanges have also led to the exchange of Chinese and Western cooking techniques and ingredients. In the meantime, kitchen knives are constantly changing, and after two thousand years of improvement, there are square kitchen knives used today.
No matter how the shape changes, the basic positioning of the kitchen knife in human civilization has not changed. Kitchen knives are thus accompanied by human civilization, in the collision of fireworks, pots and pans, emitting a unique and warm pyrotechnic atmosphere, sharp knives, but with the softest background.
Second, the kitchen knife: the most loyal witness of agricultural civilization
Contrary to the common sense of many people, kitchen knives are not as easy to buy everywhere as everyone thinks. During the long period of feudal dynastic rule, kitchen knives were one of the most valuable utensils in the homes of the common people, mainly due to the limitations of smelting technology and scale.
The production process of iron knives begins with mining and coal mining. The mining of iron ore, in ancient times when there was a lack of mechanical tools, was a completely labor-intensive handicraft industry. At this time, due to the increase in population, a large amount of wasteland was reclaimed, the total output of grain was significantly improved, and some peasants could be liberated from farming and become professional miners who were separated from agricultural production.
So the first necessary condition for smelting is that there is a large amount of labor and enough food to feed it. The second necessary condition is to be able to find mines, coal deposits, and places with a large number of water sources, which basically has the basic conditions for smelting. In the feudal era, when labor productivity was extremely low, the production of steel was extremely low, and it was first used for war and then for a very small part of civilian use.
Iron tools have indeed greatly improved labor efficiency, but from the cultural relics unearthed now, pure iron furniture is quite small, such as plows and other utensils, basically iron-clad wood. So it's not hard to understand why kitchen knives are so expensive. Even in the Song and Ming Dynasties, labor productivity has been greatly improved, and iron is still a material strictly controlled by the state, and has always been a monopoly.
Iron is the main material for the manufacture of weapons and armor, and in the process of thousands of years of feudal dynasties, the possession of smelting resources is the top priority. The reason why the Northern Wei was able to occupy a large area of land in the era of the rise of the masses, and was able to stand side by side with the north and south of the Liu Song Dynasty, the excellent mines and experienced craftsmen in the territory was one of the important factors, and the famous Xiangzhou saber was the "specialty" of the Northern Wei.
The main reason why Korea in the Warring States period was able to survive the encirclement and encirclement of Powerful Powers such as Chu, Wei, and Qin was that it had the "Yiyang Iron Mountain" when the "Three Houses Divided the Jin", so South Korea's crossbow and sword armor had the capital to survive. During the Song Dynasty, the nomadic people repeatedly violated the border, and there were actually incidents of running to the homes of ordinary people to snatch the iron pot, which was mainly due to the high degree of blockade of iron resources and related technologies by the Central Plains civilization, which tightly choked the bottleneck of the development of the grassland civilization.
A kitchen knife looks like an everyday utensil, but it has a very high level of technology. The heat treatment, forging, shaping, carbon content control, quenching of metal, each step of the process is no different from the production of a saber. The level of craftsmanship in making kitchen knives actually represents the level of military industry in the era of cold weapons. Of course, no one will be a thousand hammers on a kitchen knife, and no blacksmith will have the crazy idea of making a passed down kitchen knife, after all, a sword used for combat can enhance the reputation of the blacksmith.
At that time, after a thousand years, human beings mastered new technologies such as powder smelting steel, and pushed the material process to a situation that was unimaginable to previous generations, and kitchen knives began to glow with new charm under the blessing of science and technology, and knives that were eliminated by the battlefield became more pyrotechnic.
However, in the feudal dynasty, the level of smelting technology and the development of the smelting industry often represent the strength or weakness of a country, and the control of folk knives can more see the self-confidence and confidence of a country. There is even a saying in the Yuan Dynasty that "ten families use a kitchen knife together".
It is said that Shanxi's specialty food "knife cutting noodles" is because of this policy of the Yuan Dynasty. A family came to the guest, the man of the family went to the kitchen knife custodian to get the knife, but was taken away in advance, so he used a piece of iron to grind out the edge and cut the noodles into a pot of boiling water, because of the convenience of making and the strength of the noodles, it became a famous snack after spreading.
In fact, the saying of "ten families and one knife" is very suspicious, and it has not been seen in various histories. The Yuan Dynasty did prohibit the private mining and sale of iron, as recorded in the Yuan Shi Penal Chronicle:
The iron law, the unscrupulous smuggler, is one class less than the smuggler salt, the staff is sixty, the money is not official, and the half of the discount is paid to the person to fill the reward. Those who forge iron leads are guilty of forging the seal of the provincial ministry, and the officials pay a notice to the person for the reward of two ingots.
The Yuan Dynasty's tight control of iron was not only for the stability of feudal dynasty rule, but also explained the scarcity of iron from another aspect. Of course, not only the Yuan Dynasty, the control of iron resources, successive dynasties and dynasties have been the same, and the status of iron as a strategic material of the feudal dynasty has not changed for a long time.
But even though iron was so scarce, the Yuan Dynasty still issued a special rule: all private iron farming utensils, pots, kettles, knives, axes, and rods, and the destruction of raw and cooked iron utensils were not prohibited. This shows that even the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty understood that although kitchen knives are dangerous and have a certain lethality, you can't help but let people eat anyway.
There is a very simple logic in this: home security is security. With the kitchen, a home is called home, and with a knife, the kitchen can become a kitchen in the true sense. The aroma of onion, ginger and garlic, the fishy fish and mutton, the boiling of oil in the pot, the sound of the kitchen knife on the board, the white and soft steamed buns, the smooth and bouncy noodles, the people's kitchen is alive, and the country has hope.
The kitchen knife is in this pyrotechnic atmosphere, satisfying people's appetites and pushing civilization forward slowly. I have always felt that the role of the kitchen knife in the course of history may be more important than the saber, no soldier can fight with a hungry stomach, and the breath of home represented by a kitchen knife is not what every soldier wants to protect?
Are you shirtless? Robe with the Son. Wang Yuxing, repair my spear. Enmity with the Son.
Are you shirtless? With the son of the same ze. Master Wang Yuxing, repair my spear. With the son of the work.
Are you shirtless? Dress with the Son. Wang Yuxing, repair my armor. Travel with the son.
Armed with sabers, these warriors are not afraid of life and death, they are invincible, fighting the Gobi Desert, are not they protecting their homeland with their lives? Their relatives are in the rear, and the pyrotechnic gas cut out by a kitchen knife nourishes the country, and the battlefield of iron blood and death, and a small family with fireworks and red dust, have always been one.
Third, the dispute between China and the West: the great power confidence and cultural self-confidence behind the kitchen knife
Although a kitchen knife is ordinary, it carries the atmosphere of civilization, and for a long time, the dispute between Chinese and Western cooking technology, knife use technology, and knife quality has not stopped. When using stone tools, everyone started almost at the same time, and in the Bronze Age, Huaxia was far ahead, creating a brilliant bronze civilization.
The real gap between China and the West in the kitchen knife production process began with the industrial revolution, because with steam, electricity, with the assembly line of industrialization, coupled with the needs of war, the mining and smelting process of human beings has made a qualitative leap, and the emergence of a large number of cutting-edge smelting technologies such as electric furnace, vacuum smelting, and powder steel has left us far behind.
Indeed, in the steel industry, there is the world steel to see China, Chinese steel to see Hebei, Hebei steel to see Tangshan, our steel production is proud of the earth. But in the most cutting-edge process materials, we do have many deficiencies, and it is embarrassing that the largest country with the largest steel production cannot produce a ballpoint refill. With the increasingly extensive exchanges between China and foreign countries, the kitchen knives represented by German knives have begun to be used in some families with relatively rich economic strength, and the sophisticated craftsmanship and good grip make the domestic knives dwarfed.
In our neighboring country Japan, in addition to advanced material technology, more importantly, their long-term knife culture and craftsmanship spirit of excellence have created good conditions for the production of high-end knives. Before the Tang Dynasty, the knife making technology of the Central Plains civilization was almost unique in the world, and the Tang knife, the Miao knife, and the simple knife played a powerful role on different battlefields. However, in modern times, Japan has carried forward this process, and in many small workshops in Japan, the world's best knives are produced.
So is the domestic kitchen knife not worth mentioning? Of course not! There are also many very good knives in China, but there is still a gap in the degree of retention and detail processing, especially in the shape. To enlarge this gap is actually the difference in special metallurgical materials, the technical bottleneck that has long restricted our aero engines, and we can also see the shadow on the kitchen knife.
As for the development of Chinese and Western knives, in fact, for a long time, China and the West are similar. On the Northern Song Dynasty "portrait brick" unearthed by Yanshi in Henan, we can see that a kitchen lady is preparing to break the fish, and the knife placed on the board has the shadow of today's "square kitchen knife"?
The Tang Dynasty's "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks" once recorded such a passage of sword-wielding magic skills: "Duan Shuo, a scholar with common sense of southern filial piety, is good at chopping fish." Thin silk strands, light can be blown up,...... The fish turned into a butterfly and flew away."
Sashimi can be cut to the extreme, and the wind blows like a butterfly flying there. This is the kind of fish-killing knife used. And the sashimi that everyone likes to eat, if you use a Chinese kitchen knife, how can you efficiently cut out the fillets of thin fish and cicada wings? In addition, are the knives we use outdoors more like Western kitchen knives? And outdoor cooking, is it more Western-style?
The shape of the kitchen knife is ultimately determined by cooking habits. Western cooking methods, the ingredients to be processed, knives like the Sando knife are better to use. And if you make Chinese food, using a Sande knife to cut out the silk that meets the requirements is simply torture. On the contrary, the thick knife shape of the Chinese kitchen knife, cutting the dish is handy, a good chef, good at using the inertia of the knife, the knife to play with the magic, so Chinese cooking has "a kitchen knife to go to the world" saying.
The wide body of the Chinese kitchen knife makes it have more wonderful uses, you can shoot garlic, you can make a wenwu knife that is easy to cut, and you can also use it as a delivery tool, when we stir-fry vegetables, are we used to using knives to send freshly cut vegetables to the pot? The efficiency is not necessarily high, but it is full of Chinese unique moderation and generalism, or pyrotechnics.
With the improvement of people's culinary requirements, with the exchange and integration of China and the West, a kitchen knife has long been in the past, and knives with different forms have not entered the kitchen of Chinese more and more? And delicious Chinese food, with the increasing influence of China, is not widely known to the world?
But the most proud thing is that the culinary technology accumulated by Huaxia in the past five thousand years is beyond the reach of other countries in any way, not to mention those big dishes with complicated knife work and complicated procedures, that is, home-cooked dishes such as fish and meat shreds, hand-torn cabbage, pickled pepper crucian carp, etc., all of which reveal the unique laziness, fineness and trade-offs of Chinese civilization.
Photo and text shared from: Fat Story
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