In the 103rd episode of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Sima Yi asked the emissaries sent by the Shu Han military camp: "What is the trouble of Kong Ming's sleep, food, and affairs?" The Messenger said, "The Minister sleeps at night, and punishes all those who are more than twenty years old." The eclipse of the eclipse is not more than a few liters of the day. Sima Yi gu said to the generals: "Kong Ming eats less and worries, can it last for a long time?" "This should probably be true in history.
According to Pei's "Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms" and the "Spring and Autumn of the Wei Dynasty" of the "Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms" zhuge liang, Liang Zhizhi asked him about his sleep and food and the troubles of his affairs, and did not ask about Rong affairs. The envoy said: "Zhuge Gongxing sleeps at night, and punishes more than twenty people, and all of them see it with their own eyes; the food they eat is not more than a few liters." King Xuan said, "Liang will die." According to the "Book of Jin" (Book of Jin), the Emperor asked, "How can Zhuge Gong live like this, and how many meters can he eat?" Right: "Three or four liters." The second time he asked about political affairs, he said: "Twenty penalties have been self-examined." The emperor then told the people: "Zhuge Kong knows that his ability is long!" ”
If you look at it today, one liter of rice is almost 1.5 pounds, and eating three or four liters of rice a day is 4.5 to 6 pounds, that is definitely a large amount of adults. People who don't do manual labor all day generally can't eat so much. So why did Sima Yi conclude that Zhuge Liang would soon die on the basis of zhuge Liang's "punishment of more than twenty years and all self-examination" and "eclipse of three or four liters"?
Ancient weights and measures were different from today's. According to the Book of Han and the Chronicle of laws, the units of weights and measures in the Han Dynasty were Gong, He, Sheng, Dou, and Huo. The two halves are one, ten are one liter, ten liters are one bucket, and ten buckets are one. Weight is the unit of weight, with baht, two, pound, jun, and stone. One 1,200 taels weighs 12 baht; one or two are 24 baht, one pound is 162, one is 30 pounds, and one stone is 4 jun. So one liter is twenty, exactly ten, which is about 190 milliliters today. The proportion of millet is about 0.85, and the one liter at that time was about 161.5 grams today. Then eat three or four liters a day, that is, between 480 grams and 640 grams, which is equivalent to about half a pound today. We now generally for an adult man who does not do physical work, he should eat at least one pound of food a day. Only half a kilogram of food was eaten a day, and for a Shu Han minister who was leading soldiers to fight outside and was troubled by various things, he did eat a little too little. What's more, Zhuge Liang is eight feet tall, about 1.84 meters or so today, and he is only at the age of fifty-three or four, that is, he does not do any work in a day, and according to common sense, he must also eat more than a pound of food.
Zhuge Liang's daily food intake was far lower than the food standard stipulated by the scholars at that time. According to the "Biography of The Prince Daozi of the Book of Jin", "When the army was recommended, the state was exhausted, and from situ below, the sun was seven liters." That is to say, at that time, the war was continuous, the national treasury was empty, and the court officials below Situ could only guarantee the standard of 7 liters of rations per day. Zhuge Liang only ate three or four liters of food a day, which was half less than the general standard stipulated at that time. In addition, in the past, the level of science and technology was low, food was not rich, and most of the nutrition needed to be ingested from meals, which was generally more than seven liters of food per day for people who engaged in physical and mental labor all day. And Bai You's heart, the Shu Han Great Minister, who has worked hard in everything, can only eat three or four liters of food a day, how can the body not collapse and not get sick?
As the saying goes, "the lice on the bald head are obvious." Sima Yi, who was extremely shrewd, faced with the Shu Han emissaries, did not ask about military affairs, but only asked some trivial matters about the life of the Shu Han, so that the Shu Han emissaries neglected to deal with the precautions, and had to answer truthfully in a hurry. When Sima Yi heard it, it was as if he had received a life-saving rice incense, and the Shu soldiers, who were originally strong in battle, could only hang on high to avoid the battle; the women's clothes sent by Zhuge Liang made him angry; and the Wei soldiers would say that he was afraid of Shu like a tiger and made him restless. At this moment of inability to make progress, it was precisely from the mouth of the emissary that Sima Yi's spirit was suddenly lifted, and he immediately passed on his prediction to the generals, which increased Sima Yi's confidence in holding firm and dragging away the Shu army. Therefore, two countries that are hostile to each other, sometimes let each other catch any wind and grass, may be related to the life and death of the country, it is really impossible not to be careless!