Looking at a copy of "Water Margin", you will find that the strange things of the Song Dynasty are endless, in addition to many tea houses, restaurants, and many black shops, not only widely distributed, but also all over the country. Moreover, the ways and methods of "black" are also varied, and the means are more fierce than one. In addition to the innovative "heart and liver liquor soup", there is also a "human skin mask", the most famous of which is zhang Qing, the mother night fork Sun Erniang opened in the cross slope of the human meat bun shop.
The twenty-seventh time in the "Water Margin" is: "Mother Night Fork Mengzhou Road Selling Human Flesh Wudu Head Cross Slope Meets Zhang Qing". In this time, we saw Sun Erniang's mother Night Fork, who opened a black shop: "... Build some straw huts and sell alcohol for a living. In fact, just waiting for the merchants to pass by, there was a human eye, so they took some sweat medicine with him, ate it and died, cut large pieces of good meat into yellow beef and sold it, and piecemeal small meat made into stuffed buns. ”
On the surface, the black shop opened by Sun Erniang appears to be a restaurant for people to drink tea and eat during the day, and an inn for staying in and out of the caravan at night, but behind the scenes, they are doing the work of killing people and robbing business travelers, and they even kill people and make them into meat buns. People in a few miles know that this shop cannot be lived, and there is no return.
At that time, when Zhang Qing took people to the human flesh workshop, the book described it like this: "There are several human skins on the wall, and five or seven human legs hanging from the beams." ”
In the forty-third time, after killing the "fake black whirlwind" Li Ghost, "three liters of rice ripened prematurely, but there were no vegetables to cook." Li Kui came to eat the meal, looked at himself and smiled: "Good fool! Put good meat in front of you, but you won't eat it! Pulling out his waist knife, he went to Li Ghost's leg and cut two pieces of meat, washed some water, and grabbed some charcoal in the stove to burn it, and ate it while burning it. ”
These words alone are creepy, not to mention the people's fear of black shops. Perhaps, you will say, these are all literary works, somewhat fictional and exaggerated, perhaps made up by Shi Nai'an to scare people. In fact, in addition to the "Water Margin", many literary works of the Song and Yuan Dynasties have records similar to black shops.
For example: the Southern Song Dynasty "Yi Jianzhi", which recorded a lot of stories of black shops selling human flesh, the black shops here have more sinister than the cross slope black shop, everywhere organs, in addition to killing people and goods, making human meat buns, as well as burying passengers alive, the means are even more unimaginable. Among them, there is a passage that reads: "When the servant is asleep, he spears his belly from high, and when he dies, he pushes him into the cave, swallows his clothes, and continues to cut the meat as a breast, and sells it in the ruins." ”
This is the drying of human flesh into jerky, and it is also recorded that there is an inn in Dameiling, and the owner of the shop has dug a tunnel under a tree that leads directly to the guest room, and whenever the night comes, the owner pulls the traveler into the hole and buries it alive under the tree.
In fact, whether it is the black shop of The Second Lady of the Cross Slope or the black shop in "Yi Jianzhi", the purpose of these shops is nothing more than to seek wealth and kill people. However, the murder of money and wealth existed in any era, so why did it appear in an endless stream in the Song Dynasty?
First of all, although the Song Dynasty was the peak of China's political, economic, and cultural development, the entire Song Dynasty was almost in turmoil. During the Northern Song Dynasty, the war that had just ended at the end of the Tang Dynasty was uninterrupted, and the harassment from border passes was uninterrupted; during the Southern Song Dynasty, politics was more tense, and harassment from foreign tribes was more serious. In the situation of a country with internal and external troubles, the people do not live well, let alone eat meat, and even their stomachs are not full.
So, it was hard to imagine how rare meat was at the time. Su Dongpo once commented in the "Notes of Qiu Chi": "Huang Feng is as cheap as the soil, the rich refuse to eat, and the poor do not understand cooking." "On the surface, pork is as cheap as dirt, and not only the rich refuse to eat it, but even the poor are not willing to eat it." In fact, when Su Dongpo was an official, he once said to a fat man who was sleeping on the case: "Gu Slaughter Meat Case", and then took out 30 money and said: "And quickly batch four or two!" This passage means that at that time, 30 yuan was equal to 4 two meat, and 1 kilogram of pork was equal to 120 yuan (in the past 16 two 1 kilogram).
But at the time, the best laborers were paid less than 100 pennies a day. It can be seen that ordinary people in the Song Dynasty worked hard for a day and could not afford even a pound of pork, not only pork could not afford to buy, but also beef and mutton. Since pork and mutton cannot afford to eat, they always have to find ways to eat meat, so human flesh has entered the scope of people's consideration.
Secondly, it also reflects the process of hotel development from the side.
The history of the inn can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, when it was called "Reverse Brigade", which was a resting place prepared by the government for officials at all levels to facilitate their work. In the Tang Dynasty, the hotel industry ushered in a peak, and a large number of hotels and accommodation hotels appeared. In the Song Dynasty, "all the guest shops along the city, the mansions such as Yuntun" is an image description of the prosperity of the inns at that time.
At that time, businessmen from all over the world, students who rushed to take the exam, and tourists who traveled and sightseeden made private hotels bloom everywhere. However, once there are more stores, management becomes a big problem. In addition, the turbulent situation in the Song Dynasty and the neglect of the management of private hotels by the rulers also caused a mixed phenomenon of all walks of life. Therefore, there are a lot of black shops.
On the one hand, at that time, meat was expensive, and if you did business in a disciplined manner, you would certainly not make money;
On the other hand, the dead individual, in the chaotic society of the time, would not be managed by the government.
Therefore, in this way, many shops have started to kill people and replace pork with human flesh. It is not surprising to eat human flesh and make human meat buns.
In today's extremely rich materials, we can eat all kinds of poultry meat such as pork, mutton, chicken, etc., and the price will not be outrageous. Therefore, ordinary people no longer have to try their best to eat a pound of meat. Although we are still very shocked and scared when we hear about human meat buns in ancient times, we should also feel fortunate that our lives are so good today.
Resources:
【Water Margin", "Yi Jianzhi", "Notes on Qiu Chi"】