Why is it that everyone loves melon seeds and eats them all over the north and south?

◎ Ashin

Knock on the blackboard: snort melon seeds, Chinese will stunt?

In the Spring Festival holiday that has just gone far, every household can't stop eating food, what is it?

It doesn't have to be chickens, ducks, pigs and cows, but it's likely to be another humble little thing — melon seeds.

The magic of melon seeds is that unconsciously, anytime, anywhere, a little inattention, a hill out.

Now carrying a handful of melon seeds in your pocket can be tasted anytime and anywhere, but in ancient times, it was not so easy to eat melon seeds.

First of all, find melon seeds that can be sniffed.

Sunflowers native to the Americas were introduced to China at the end of the Ming Dynasty, but the Chinese eating customs of melon seeds can be traced back to the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty.

So what did people say before there were sunflower seeds?

The answer is watermelon seeds.

In the middle and late Tang Dynasty, the Khitan people began to introduce the cultivation of watermelons.

In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, melon seeds appeared in the Taiping Huanyu Chronicle as a native product of the Youzhou area, that is to say, at that time, the people of Beijing and Tianjin had already begun to eat melon seeds.

In the Southern Song Dynasty, as watermelon entered the Central Plains, watermelon seeds also became a favorite snack food for people everywhere.

However, it should be noted that the melon seeds that people eat are not the seeds of the watermelons they usually eat, but a special kind of watermelon - the seeds of the melons.

The taste of melon is average, but the seeds are many and large, which is especially suitable for the production of melon seeds.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, many local chronicles recorded the behavior of farmers specializing in planting melons and harvesting seeds.

"Watermelon... Its taste is sour and large, and the natives are planted, and their sons are harvested in the years. (Thirty Years of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty, Hebei Zhuozhou Chronicle)

"Watermelon... Its sour taste and large seed are called 'melon', which is specially used for sub-filling. (Guangxu Thirty-four Years, Liaoning, Haicheng County Chronicle)

After having melon seeds, it is time to study how to sniff and how to taste more fragrant.

As we all know, stir-fry is a unique cooking method in China, so melon seeds cannot escape the fate of being "fried".

The exquisite Wanli Emperor's requirement for melon seeds was to "use fresh watermelon seeds and slightly add salt to roast them."

Now look, isn't this today's Shiozu melon seeds?

At the same time, melon seeds have gradually become the standard for the folk New Year.

In the "Song of the Year" in the Wuyue region, the custom corresponding to the first month is to snort melon seeds.

In the Qianlong Dynasty", in the "Jisheng in the Age of Emperor Jing", the Zhengyue Street in the capital is like this:

"Selling melon seeds to relieve boredom, selling rice liquor to hit the ice cup... With the sound of firecrackers, it is good to hear. ”

The clamor of melon seeds can be compared with the sound of firecrackers, which shows how addictive people are.

Even in the literature of the Ming and Qing dynasties, melon seeds have become a common pastime for the protagonists. For example, in "Dream of the Red Chamber", there is a description of "Dai Yu sniffing melon seeds and just smiling with her mouth".

In short, from the emperor to the commoner, it became a common practice to snort melon seeds for a while.

The "monopoly" of watermelon seeds was finally broken.

After the introduction of American crops pumpkin and sunflowers to China, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds also naturally entered the melon seed family, but the "curve overtaking" of sunflower seeds had to wait until the Republic of China period.

In the Republic of China, sunflower seeds were called "melon seeds", and people found that its shape was easier to eat than watermelon seeds, and it was out of control ever since.

Melon seeds, Chinese will be a stunt?

In the Internet world, there has always been a legend that foreigners can't snort melon seeds, and only Chinese master the unique learning of "snorting".

In baseball games in the United States, there is often a kind of camera, the audience or athletes directly pour the melon seeds into the mouth, chew, how many melon seeds can be eaten, all by luck.

A certain melon seed brand also specially illustrated the melon seed technology on the overseas packaging bag. Of course, it turns out that Russians and Spaniards also eat melon seeds.

So why do Chinese love it so much? Up to the uncle in the teahouse restaurant, down to the children, they can complete the action of "snorting" without a teacher.

Feng Zikai once wrote a special article "Eating Melon Seeds", he believes that melon seeds are the easiest to "kill the years", because it has three conditions: not tired of eating, not enough to eat, to peel the shell.

But the melon seeds are too much, it is inevitable that the mouth is dry and the mouth is full of bubbles. Is that not the process of eliminating the sniffing and eating melon seeds directly?

Perhaps in order to defend the soul eating method of "Snort", another "jianghu rumor" appeared: ready-made melon seeds are all toothless old lady sniffing.

In the modern food industry, with the love of melon seeds, there is no technology that cannot be achieved.

In the large hulling machine, the shell of each melon seed is crushed, and each melon seed is preserved intact. This efficiency, toothless old lady really can't do.

Whether it is sniffing or eating directly, in the hearts of Chinese, eating melon seeds is not a trivial matter.

The happiness of melon seeds cannot be stopped, and the disadvantage is that this yu cannot stop. Almost half of the melon seeds are fat, and the fat content of each 100 grams of melon seeds can be as high as 59 grams.

Eat melon seeds every day, fat is just around the corner. Therefore, whether to be happy or fat, Renjun chose.

(The article is excerpted from the WeChat public account "CITIC Publishing")