When people reach middle age, my aesthetic suddenly returns to simplicity, and my eyes glow when I see something sparkling.
One day surfing the Internet, I saw my friend and neighbor posting their own handmade gold leaf cake, and the corners of my mouth shed tears of envy. The point is, it's still expensive!
At that time, my money fan's little brain melon had a number of questions: Is there really gold in the gold leaf? In ancient times, there was a saying of "suicide by swallowing gold", can gold leaf really be eaten?
Text | Three cooks of the King Gun Gun
1
There really is gold in the gold leaf!
Speaking of gold leaf, it is inseparable from gold. The ancients found very early that gold this thing, looking very rigid, its material is soft, strong ductility, repeated pounding of satin, can become thinner and thinner, until as thin as cicada wings, he can rise, gold leaf began.
If you're a museum lover, you're sure to find the hints of gold leaf. Whether it is fragments, or integration with utensils, Buddha statues, clothing, and architecture. In the use of gold leaf, the Egyptians were pioneers, and the mask worn by Pharaoh Tutankhamun after his death was made of gold leaf.
Chinese gold leaf products first appeared in the Shang Dynasty. The collection of the Chengdu Jinsha Site, the Shang Zhou "Sun God Bird" gold ornament, is forged from natural placer gold into gold leaf, and then cut with a sharp hard object. The body is extremely thin, but the gold content is as high as 94.2%.
Shang Zhou Sun God Bird Gold Ornament
Image source: Jinsha Site Museum official website
In the matter of thinning the gold, human beings have understood it. The gold leaf excavated from the Yin Ruins site in Anyang, Henan, is 0.01±0.001 mm (about 10 microns) thick, about one-eighth the diameter of ordinary human hair. In Nanjing, the center of the gold leaf industry in the modern world, 1 gram of gold can be made into 0.47 square meters of gold leaf, with a thickness of only 0.12 microns.
So don't think about saving that little bit of gold leaf on food to get rich, that's not enough for 1g.
What is the immortal forging process that can make gold "thinner than paper"?
The earliest text that records the production techniques of gold leaf can be found in the Ming and Song Yingxing's "Heavenly Works and Openings": "Where gold leaf is made, after it has been made into thin sheets, it is wrapped in Ugin paper and beaten with all its might." "On this basis, modern craftsmen have developed twelve delicate processes. I used my ancestral mind mapping skills to help you make a list.
Drawing is so tired, everyone gives me a big picture to see!
These twelve processes, in the past, were not a small amount of labor, and each link relied on the coolie and experience of the craftsmen. Thanks to modern technology, the production of gold leaf has the blessing of the machine.
For example, in the ratio stage, once the gold content was all dependent on the hopes and smells of the old artists, and now there is a high-precision balance; "playing a play", in the past, it was necessary to rely on the precision cooperation of two craftsmen, each holding a hammer weighing several pounds, one for the protection of the hammer, one for the push hammer, taking turns to hammer, at least more than thirty thousand hammers to beat the gold leaf thin, soft and light, and now there is a foil machine to do the work, which greatly liberates manpower.
Issued: Craftsmen use goose feathers to move the beaten gold leaf from the ugin paper into the wool tire paper. Image source: Xinhua News Agency/Photo by reporter Yang Lei
Cutting foil: The craftsman uses a bamboo knife to cut the gold leaf into standard sizes. Image source: Xinhua News Agency/Photo by reporter Yang Lei
But some important processes, such as making twisters, issuing, cutting foil, still rely on the hands of craftsmen and the subtle grasp of the force, a little careless, the gold leaf cracked, the previous work was abandoned.
In the process of making gold leaf, there is also an extremely important auxiliary material, that is, Ugin paper. Gold leaf can withstand tens of thousands of hammers without cracking and deformation, and the high temperature and impact resistant Ugin paper is the greatest.
2
Can I eat the gold leaf in my food?
Eating gold is not a strange thing. In ancient Egypt, gold was believed to have the effect of purifying the body and soul. In medieval Europe, gold was also added to food and drink in the form of flakes or powders for the enjoyment of the nobility.
In 1983, the Codex Alimentarius Commission of the World Health Organization officially included gold in the category of food additives. Since then, gold leaf has become a trend.
Will eating gold leaf harm the human body?
For the human body, gold leaf is neither harmless nor nutritious, and it goes in and out as it is. It's a little bit of a bargain to be spent.
In Japan, the wind of eating gold is even worse, which is a legacy of Japan's bubble economy era. At the height of their economy, Japanese people sprinkled gold leaf on chocolate, pastries, sweets, ice cream, sushi, steak, and sake to show their worth.
But in China, gold leaf can neither be used as a food raw material nor as a food additive. In 2015, the National Health and Family Planning Commission issued a draft for comments on the proposed addition of 99.99% pure gold leaf to liquor, which has not been formally approved so far.
However, in the 1990s, Wuhan Yellow Crane Tower Distillery produced a batch of wine containing gold leaf; in 1993, Guangzhou restaurant imported gold leaf from Japan and launched a "Golden Banquet", of which the "Golden Abalone Wing Banquet" included three golden dishes: gold oil bubble screws, golden summer fruit fresh tape, and gold braised chicken abalone wings, which sold for 3980 yuan in the 1990s, and the cost of gold leaf used per table was less than 400 yuan...
And Nanjing, the capital of gold leaf, has not given up this fashion. The representative dish of its gold leaf dish is "gold leaf brine duck", which integrates the two "business cards" of Nanjing.
Eating gold leaf, drinking gold leaf, eating is the visual experience, the gold that is not discounted at all, the perfect help to the high-profile temperament of diners, and can make the ingredients have a high price in line with the identity of diners. However, not to mention that it is to eat excitement, eat to show off, if someone eats detoxification, youth forever, that is the edge of the wood to ask for fish.
3
Is "suicide by swallowing gold" reliable?
Since gold can be eaten, is the ancient idea of swallowing gold and committing suicide reliable?
In literary and artistic works, there are too many scenes of suicide by swallowing gold. In "Dream of the Red Chamber", You Erjie, who swallowed gold and died, looked like life after death, more beautiful than alive.
In "Dream of the Red Chamber", You Erjie committed suicide by swallowing gold.
But art works always have exaggerated elements, and the suicide of swallowing gold is not as "a hundred hairs and a hundred shots" as shown in film and television dramas.
First of all, the chemical properties of gold are stable, and the human body cannot decompose, so swallowing gold itself will not poison people. But there are two exceptions here, the backward metallurgical technology in ancient times made it inevitable that gold contained heavy metal components; before the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States, the so-called "gold" did not refer to gold, but to other metals such as bronze and alloys. So maybe the person looking for death swallows "gold", but it may be other toxic heavy metals that ultimately cause death.
Secondly, swallowing gold is more likely to cause physical damage to people, but whether it is life-threatening also depends on the volume, weight, and shape of the gold itself. For example, the volume of gold is too large, may block the trachea and intestinal tract, resulting in suffocation or intestinal obstruction; the surface of gold has protrusions, spikes, may be abrasions or even pierced into the esophagus, gastrointestinal mucosa, causing inflammation, bleeding, perforation and other symptoms, if not treated in time, it may indeed lead to death.
The snow kites in the TV series "Beauty's Heart" also committed suicide by swallowing gold.
There are many such statements, and modern people also imitate the ancient "suicide by swallowing gold". It is recorded in the literature that from 1946 to 1949, in the outpatient emergency statistics of Nanjing Central Hospital, there were 104 cases of suicide by swallowing gold. Most of the gold objects swallowed are gold rings, earrings, necklaces and jewelry...
I was shocked, this is all gold, don't you wear it on your body, don't swallow it!