Today is the great cold, according to the twenty-four solar terms of the lunar calendar, which is the last solar term of the lunar year.
Although I am in Hainan and have escaped the cold of the northern winter, I still often miss my hometown. I am jingqi, and my roots are in Manchuria, which is the hometown of the roots. Beijing, on the other hand, has regarded Beijing as its hometown since it entered the customs in 1644. Today I heard that the first snow in Beijing in 2022 fell.
(Merlinger's Manchu calligraphy)
The solar terms of the lunar calendar are the product of the farming people's calculation of farming. Manchuria has been a fishing and hunting nation since ancient times, and the Jin and Qing dynasties were all soldiers of the whole people, and they lacked historical ties with farming. However, because the old Manchurian flag people want to go to the battlefield at any time and sacrifice their lives for the country, they usually attach importance to loving life and enjoying life, that is, outsiders feel that the old Manchurian flag people pay attention to eating. The eating and drinking of the Manchurian flag people is also closely related to the solar terms.
Manchurians love pasta, and the Manchurians' eating habits of loving pasta are related to the climatic environment of their hometown of Manchuria and the long cold time of local winter. The Manchu people have a lot of traditional pasta, collectively known as Rao.
In today's great cold, the Manchurians have a special kind of food called "cold cake" for eating on the day of the great cold. This is because the Manchurians love to eat sticky food, also known as sticky cake, close to the sound of rice cake. Da Han, that is, near the Lunar New Year, naturally hopes to be high every year and likes to eat rice cakes. Walnut kernels, guiyuan, red dates are believed to have the effect of cold tonic, so on this day of the great cold, the sticky food sold by the gluttonous food shop is added to the walnut kernels, guiyuan and red dates, which are called cold cakes, taking the winter to eliminate the cold and greet the meaning of the annual high.
Da Han pays attention to eating cold objects and eating more beef and mutton. The Central Plains people are farming peoples, there are few sheep, mutton is very expensive, and ordinary people can't afford to eat it. Cattle are farming tools, and the Central Plains have long been forbidden to eat beef. Manchuria's neighbor Mongols' food is mainly beef and mutton, Manchuria's own history, the proportion of beef and mutton in food is not high, but because of the long-term intermarriage between Manchuria and Mongolia, the Eight Banners of Manchuria and the Eight Banners of Mongolia fought side by side, and the Mongolian custom of eating beef and mutton was absorbed by the Manchurians. After Manchuria entered the customs, because the Central Plains people were not accustomed to eating beef and mutton, the beef business was Huimin, and most of the beef cattle and sheep raised in Guannei were Huimin. In addition, in the Qing Dynasty, the flag people were forbidden to do business, but they were the largest consumer group in the capital, so the Hui people operated a lot of beef and mutton, and what they did was also to cater to the taste of Manchuria and Mongolia.
Manchurians love to eat hot pot in winter, the history of hot pot is very long, Manchuria is a fishing and hunting nation, Yan Chongnian later invented the forest people. After fishing and hunting, the ancient Manchurians would set up a campfire in the wild, and use clay pots with spring water or chicken soup to taste wild game on the spot, called "eating heavenly fire meat", which is the earliest wild hot pot. The Qing Dynasty's "Manchurian Origin Examination" records that the Jin Dynasty had widely consumed hot pot, and the ancient Manchus did not use chopsticks, but used the antidote knife to eat, "each taking a saber, miscellaneous cutting recommended rice" (that is, the Manchurians used the "antidote knife" worn by their bodies to cut their own meat). According to the Qing "Miscellaneous Records of the Xiaoting Pavilion", when the Qing Emperor and his subjects ate the "jubilee meat" of the sacrifice, they also "cut it with the imperial knife (anti-eating knife), and all the courtiers cut themselves and followed the national customs."
I now have a lot of beverage shops in Sanya, Haikou, and it is popular to eat refreshing supplements and old salt series of drinks. Wenchang, where I live now, is a small city, there are not many beverage shops, but there are more Cantonese-style morning tea shops, and people here often drink iced tea and coffee. Hainan Xinglong coffee is still a certain reputation, the general store during the day to brew a pot, a cup of four or five yuan, can add milk, is more affordable coffee drinks. On May 31 last year, I wrote an article titled "Beverage Shops in Hainan", lamenting the lack of promotion of traditional Manchurian beverages. On June 3 last year, I wrote another article, "Traditional Drinks for Manchurians," which included hot and cold drinks. I am cold today, mainly to talk about the traditional hot Manchurian milk tea that Manchurians like to drink in the harsh winter.
In the "Record of the Lady of the Palace", it is recorded that the Drinking of Manchurian Milk Tea has been circulating in the Qing Palace. Because of the fame of Mongolian dairy products and milk tea, some people may mistakenly think that Manchurian milk tea was imported from Mongolia or evolved from Mongolian milk tea. But Manchurian milk tea is indeed a traditional drink in Manchuria since ancient times, and the Manchu language has its own dairy word oromu, which means milk skin, which comes from the Manchu word orombi condensation.
The Mongolian diet is inseparable from milk tea, so they use boiled tea (with tea bricks, which is now called Pu'er tea) to add milk to make milk tea, which is generally salty. It is completely different from the popular Taiwanese bubble tea now. If tea bricks are also lacking, it is the use of dairy products, and the Mongols invented many dairy products.
The Manchurians' own milk tea is at least thousands of years old. Manchurian milk tea is made differently from Mongolian milk tea in that it is made by boiling poria tea (tied with a cloth bag) and rock sugar in milk, marsh milk, and goat's milk.
There are many folk tales circulating in Manchuria, and many folk customs are attributed to the invention of nurhaci, the old King of Han. One of the stories is that because the old Han King went to war with the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty stopped the trade between the two sides, and the tea was naturally gone. Manchurians eat a lot of meat and cannot do without tea. So the old Han King invented the barley stir-frying over a slow fire to make barley tea.
Barley tea is not only found in Manchuria, but also in Korea and Japan, which may have influenced each other, and it is difficult to say who passed it on to whom. That kind of folklore attributes what folklore to the old Han King is definitely not in line with history.
The Xibe people, who are very close to the Manchus, still maintain the custom of drinking milk tea in their diets. Xibe milk tea with Xibe flatbread can be the simplest and most typical Xibe catering. I also hope to see a traditional Manchurian restaurant, in the harsh winter, go in for a cup of Manchurian milk tea.
Author Fucha Chunbing
Produced by the original article of manchu culture network.