Lead:
Eating utensils are indispensable in dietary life and reflect the social production and culture of a region. The economic foundation determines the superstructure, and the economic development of the Wei and Jin Dynasties directly affected the development of food culture at that time. There are constant wars and conflicts between the steppe nomads and the farming Han people in the Central Plains, between different steppe nomads, and between different regimes of the farming Han people.
The most important of these is the tug-of-war between nomadic and agrarian Han chinese. This not only promoted the alternate development of agriculture and animal husbandry in Hexi, but also provided conditions for ethnic integration and exchange in the Wei and Jin dynasties, making Hexi region have a unique connotation of food culture.
I. The structure of dietary consumption in Hexi during the Wei and Jin dynasties
1. In the process of ethnic integration and cultural integration, a unique food culture in Hexi is formed
The structure of dietary consumption varies greatly with the environment. The Silk Road in Hexi runs through the whole territory, where food cultures from east to west converge and blend. At the same time, during the Wei and Jin dynasties, agriculture and animal husbandry in Hexi were equally important, and the nomadic and Han peoples of the grasslands such as Xiongnu, Xianbei, Xianbei, Qiang, Qiang, and Qiang were engaged in agricultural and animal husbandry production activities, and the dietary consumption structure showed new characteristics, and formed a unique food culture in Hexi in the process of ethnic integration and cultural integration.
The Qi Min Zhi Shu records that corn rice was added to the method of making corn koji, and at that time, millions of millet in the Hexi region may also use millet as vinegar. In addition, millet was also a staple food that people often ate at that time, and it was excavated at the Han Dynasty Beacon Tunnel Site in Dunhuang Maquan Bay, and it was a staple food necessary for feasts and sacrifices every holiday. Hu cake is a kind of roasted baked cake, which is the food of ethnic minorities in the north.
Since the introduction of the Han Dynasty to the Central Plains, it has gradually become popular in the Central Plains, and the Han Ling Emperor at that time liked to eat Hu Cake, which led to "all the Beijing masters eat Hu Cake". Sometimes when making the pepperloaf, it is also sprinkled with flax to increase the aroma of the mustache. Dunhuang hu cake is rich in varieties, including big hu cake, small hu cake, and oil hu cake made by adding oil during the production process. Hu cake is easy to carry, can be stored for a long time, and is a good product to eat when traveling.
During the Wei and Jin dynasties, people liked to eat porridge foods, and the production technology became more and more sophisticated. From the imperial family and nobles down to the people of Li, porridge was often eaten. At that time, the dignitaries and nobles ate more meat soup, and the poor people mainly ate vegetable soup. At that time, Hexi still ate camel soup and hu soup produced in the western region.
2. The characteristics of grilled meat forks in Hexi area
During the Wei and Jin dynasties, there were many types of food that could be grilled, except for various kinds of meat food, as well as sparrow system, venison burning, fish burning, Shandong and roasting. The process of cooking and the image of holding meat skewers are a way of expressing the luxurious and rich life of portrait bricks and portrait stones in the Han and Wei dynasties, and it is also a portrayal of the important position of meat in the diet structure at that time.
The tomb murals of the Wei and Jin dynasties in Hexi reflect the integration of food exchanges between the east, west, south, and north in the Hexi region as a cultural passage during this period. At this time, the hot meat was an important way of roasting meat in the Hexi region. The qiang-boiled cooking method reflects the lifestyle that was popular among the royal nobility during the Wei and Jin dynasties, and appeared in the Hexi Shi manor, and the luxurious life was mainly influenced by two aspects:
On the one hand, at that time, Hexi was far away from the social war chaos in the Central Plains, which was relatively stable and people lived comfortably; on the other hand, the Hu-Han exchanges in Hexi region were frequent, and a large number of Hu people moved inland, which affected the food, clothing, shelter and transportation of the Han people at that time.
2. Wei and Jin eating utensils and food culture
1. There are many kinds of food consumption and utensils
During the Wei and Jin dynasties, people attached importance to food enjoyment, and the bureaucratic aristocracy set off a wind of wandering skeletons and indulgence, which was influenced by this, and Zhong Mingding's food house all pursued neat and tidy dishes, and the tricks competed for glory. From the types of diets and cooking methods recorded in the "Qi Min Zhi Shu", it can be seen that the diet development trend of "eating is not tired of fine and delicate" at that time. The clans and bureaucrats in the Hexi region are no exception, pursuing delicious cuisine.
From the perspective of the eating utensils used, at that time, the cooking utensils mainly included stoves, three-legged dings, kettles, and koshiki, inheriting the Han Dynasty cookware at the same time, but also integrated into the new characteristics, the cookware molded on the stove surface with Hexi's unique local characteristics, the stove smoke exhaust device and today's hexi rural chimney has the same magic. The tripod that nomadic people should carry is still visible in the vaults of the ethnic minorities in Hexi. In the daily life of people in Hexi, there are often plates and cases to hold food or eating utensils.
Influenced by the diet of ethnic minorities, the introduction of the dish was introduced to the Central Plains, and there is a scene of a maid serving food with a plate in the mural tiles of the Hexi region. The case was widely used in the Wei and Jin dynasties in Hexi, and the use of food cases, long and round food cases, trick cases, etc. was different, and the shape and types of cases were different. During the Wei and Jin dynasties, the maple with the characteristics of the times was introduced from the Central Plains to the Hexi region and was used by people.
2. The meal system and the combined food system are parallel
In the pre-Qin period, most of the ancestors ate two meals a day, following the agricultural social work and rest law of "working at sunrise and resting at sunset". With the development of social productivity and the increase of social wealth, the three meals a day system in the Han Dynasty became popular, but the common people's families still had two meals. After the Tang Dynasty, three meals a day replaced the two-meal system.
The Wei and Jin dynasties were a transitional period from two meals a day to three meals. During the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, each person placed several cases at the table, knelt in front of the case when eating, and placed food and utensils on the case, which were eaten according to the case, and the food was complementary and mixed. During the Wei and Jin dynasties, the previous way of eating and drinking on the knees was continued, when the kneeling seats were mainly on mats or on the bed, and the seats were generally made of straw mats, such as Lin mats and Xuan mats. During the Wei and Jin dynasties, the style of wine was prevalent, not only the dignitaries and nobles were addicted to alcohol, but also the folk drinking style was not inferior.
Especially the Wei and Jin literati, they are inseparable from wine. They either drink alcohol to dispel their sorrows, or use wine to escape the world, or some borrow wine to indulge. Cao Cao has a famous sentence of "how to relieve worries, only Du Kang", and posterity often quotes it as a metaphor for using wine to dispel sorrows. During the Wei and Jin dynasties, the folk brewing industry in Hexi had formed a considerable scale, and the brewing technology and utensils used had reached a certain level. Hexi's wine is made with grain, but also with grapes.
Third, eating utensils reflect the differences in social hierarchy
1. Differences in dietary classes
At that time, the clans and bureaucrats in Hexi lived a comfortable and leisurely life, with a rich variety of diets, six animals, and abundant fruits and vegetables. There are 229 scenes of feasting and drinking and cooking in the Hexi Wei and Jin mural tiles, and from the mural tiles, you can see the family members and bureaucrats eating delicious food, with a leisurely posture and singing and dancing. There were many slaves in the Hexi Shi clan and bureaucratic mansions, and there were more than a dozen slaves who directly served the dietary life.
During the Wei and Jin dynasties, ethnic minorities entered the Central Plains, bringing new elements in diet, and the dietary structure and cooking methods of the Hu people were deeply liked by aristocratic bureaucrats. During the Wei and Jin dynasties, frequent natural disasters constantly disturbed the fragile agricultural economy, and long and large-scale wars made the land barren, the people displaced, and most of them died. The surviving people were also brutally exploited by the feudal regime, so they were generally trapped in a state of poverty, and it was a common phenomenon that they were hungry and clothed.
The local separatist forces in the Hexi region took advantage of the frequent wars in the Central Plains and had no time to take care of Hexi, and the land annexation was serious. Hexi, which is vast and sparsely populated, has also reached the point where "small people have no place to stand". There are ragged, barefoot people in the murals in Hexi, and a large number of slaves in the murals, who work in the fields, are the main forces of labor in society.
In the Hexi Ethnic Minority Vault, the middle tripod is placed on a ding or kettle, on the one hand, it is convenient for nomadic people to carry, on the other hand, the ethnic minority economy is relatively backward and poor to the Han ethnic group. Compared with the Han Hao people, compared with the feast and drinking scenes of the Hexi Clan Manor, ordinary people can only feed in the stable era, and there are no bones in the war years.
2. Food exchange culture between Hu and Han
During the Wei and Jin dynasties, due to the entry of ethnic minorities into the Central Plains, new elements of diet brought about new changes in dietary structure and cooking methods, and the diets of the Hu and Han ethnic groups in this period were combined for a long time, resulting in many new forms and methods of cooking. The dietary processing methods of the Hu people are mainly burning and cannons, and "Qiang boiled qi burning" and "Hu cannon meat" are its typical representatives.
The food customs of the Hu people and the Han people's food customs of mainly grain and vegetables, supplemented by meat, constantly collided and absorbed each other, and the diet of ethnic minorities during the Jinwu Emperor period became the food fashion of the official eunuch family. From the "blood flow between the fingers", it can be seen that "Qi Hot" is only roasted meat to six or seven points cooked, and there is blood in the meat.
Such cooking methods are not very polite in the eyes of the Han people, each with a knife to divide, with the hand to grasp the food, the way of eating between the fingers of the blood flow must be regarded as "dirty" behavior, unseemly, despised by the Han people, its status in the Han food life must be very low. The introduction of hu beds and hu chairs has changed the eating customs of Chinese sitting on the ground and the eating customs of eating separately.
Wei Jin sat on the ground during the advance meal, and in the Wei and Jin murals in Hexi, it is common to sit on the ground when the chairman of the guest was feasting, and the scene of the case in front of him. After the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the Hu bed became the furniture of everyone's common family, and in the Tang Dynasty, people made chairs and placed tables in front of them.
The Han also continued to spread the food civilization of the Central Plains to the surrounding ethnic groups. For example, the ancient food of the Han people, such as cold gear, ring cake, powder, etc., is also loved by many ethnic minorities. It is precisely because of the interaction and influence of the food culture of various ethnic groups that the food culture of the Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Northern and Southern Dynasties has been greatly developed.
epilogue:
The Wei and Jin dynasties of the Southern and Northern Dynasties were the most politically chaotic and socially painful era in China, but it was also an era of extreme freedom, liberation and artistic spirit. The food culture of the Six Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties is closely related to the style and literary characteristics of this era. Under the premise that the Wei and Jin Dynasties became the era of literary self-consciousness, people's exploration of diet also embarked on the road of aesthetics.
During the Wei and Jin dynasties, the dietary structure, utensils, and methods of the clans and ordinary people in the Hexi region formed distinct differences, and the social hierarchy was obvious. Hexi is located in the main road of Sino-Western exchanges, the food exchanges between the Central Plains and the countries in the western region, the food exchanges between the local ethnic minorities and the Han people in Hexi reflect the mutual penetration of their respective cultures, so that the food culture of Hexi has strong regional characteristics and ethnic minority characteristics.
bibliography:
Book of Jin
Romance of the Three Kingdoms