Neither a chef nor a gourmet, Lu Ran has written a book about food with his friends over the years, "Song Feast". They salvaged song dynasty recipes from ancient books and restored dishes that could be seen and eaten.
In the documentary "Ancient Books Through Time and Space", the audience follows Lu Ran back to the elegant and pyrotechnic Song Dynasty. Touch the humanities from the food and collide with the poetry in the cup and plate.
Poster of "Ancient Books Through Time"
Xiaohe Media, the producer of the program, has produced high-scoring documentary works such as "But There Are Books" and "Book Fans", and "Ancient Books Through Time and Space" has found an interesting entry point, starting from the perspective of people who protect, collect, restore and study ancient books in different forms, and look at the cultural value of an ancient book from the outside to the inside.
In the film, you can see vivid stories like Lu Ran, such as the rebirth of dongba ancient books, the life in the family tree, etc. The audience witnesses scholars and artists repairing ancient books and interpreting the contents of ancient books, and also feels that the ancient books that were originally shelved are gradually "alive".
ByteDance and the China Foundation for the Conservation of Cultural Relics jointly launched the "ByteDance Ancient Books Protection Special Fund", and cooperated with the National Library of China to fund the restoration of precious ancient Chinese books, the cultivation of professional talents, the revitalization and digitization of ancient books and other projects. "Ancient Books Through Time and Space" is one of the links in this special project, which aims to arouse more people's understanding of the charm of ancient books by excavating the stories of folk experts on the restoration of ancient books. Among them, the ninth episode of the documentary contains the plot of the ByteDance Ancient Book Protection Special Fund to support the restoration of the Yongle Canon.
Screenshot of Ancient Books Through Time
Of course, the most attractive thing in the film is this Song feast. The most coveted thing in the feast was a dish of crab-stuffed orange.
Cut off the top cover of a large yellow orange, dig out the pulp with a spoon to make a hollow orange urn, steam the crab on high heat for eight minutes, remove the crab meat, crab yellow, pour rice wine, vinegar, orange juice and a little water, mix well with the orange filling. Then brew like an orange urn, steam in a steamer for about five minutes, and a crab stuffed orange with full color and flavor is complete.
"Crab stuffed oranges are recorded in several ancient books. He was a dish that was widely popular with the public and the upper class during the Southern Song Dynasty. Lu Ran said: "I admire the combination and ideas of the Song Dynasty chefs." A few words recorded on the paper, feedback back, can feel the Song Dynasty people eat this dish of joy. ”
The successful trial production of crab-stuffed orange proves the feasibility of restoring song dynasty cuisine. But this success is based on their combing and examination of a large number of documents, in order to find the most accurate recipe for a dish, they often need to compare various recipes and related ancient books of the Song Dynasty and its dynasties.
In the process of restoration, Lu Ran and others referred to both the home-cooked recipe "Wu's ZhongfengLu" written by the Song Dynasty kitchen lady, and the "Mountain Family Qing Confession" written by the literati, which was mainly based on literati cuisine, and the writer of this book, Lin Hong, was a middle-aged southern Song Dynasty literary and artistic man who could poetry and painting, liked elegance, and even had a little temperament.
In "Mountain Family Offerings", he recorded more than 100 dishes with the secluded temperament of mountains and forests, not only listing the methods, but also attaching poetry allusions and personal feelings. The most impressive thing is his talent for naming dishes. If he had lived to this day, he would have been hired by star-rated restaurants. The name "Full of Mountain Fragrance", which has its own fragrance of mountains and forests, is actually just a boiled green dish. The poetic "Bijian Soup" turned out to be a celery soup, a simple slice of shabu-shabu, which he named "Dialing Xia Offering".
Recently, cultural scholar and director of Guanfu Museum Ma Weidu, well-known media person Hong Huang, guardian of ancient books and deputy director of the National Library Zhang Zhiqing, Vice President of ByteDance Zhang Yu, documentary "Ancient Books Through Time and Space" director Zheng Suhang came to the Guanfu Museum to set the table, but also reproduced a Song feast, everyone enjoyed Song Dynasty cuisine, while talking about the ancient and modern with food as the center, while feeling the wonderful culture in ancient books and the significance of living in today's people.
Song Feast live poster
After the live broadcast, in an exclusive interview with The Paper, Ma Weidu talked about the many tests faced by the protection and restoration of ancient books. He believes that ancient books are a matter of high mountains, not only for the public, most cultural relics workers also look up to ancient books, because it is an independent study, and the threshold is particularly high.
"Chinese there are only a few people who can read ancient books, and since the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, less than one or two ancient books can be left behind, most of them are submerged in the vast river of history, and the rest become very precious." Ma Weidu felt, "If as a national project, I think the most important thing is to digitize all the information of ancient books, first, it can be widely used by the public." Second, we are not afraid that once the original paper copy is lost, digitization can, in a sense, make the ancient books retained for a longer time. ”
Ma Weidu
【Dialogue】
"Paper Life Millennium"
The Paper: When was the first contact with rare books in ancient books?
Ma Weidu: For me, ancient books and rare books are not my specialty, but I was exposed to ancient books relatively early, about 30 years ago, I was stationed in Liulichang, a large number of Chinese bookstores sell ancient books, we went to read, at that time there were still some reproductions of ancient books, it was very cheap, for me, useful I will buy, no use do not buy. Ancient books collection, Song edition books are very rare, because the Song edition of books in the Republic of China has "one page one or two gold" saying, I buy some ancient books are for use.
The Paper: Do you have any treasured ancient books in your hand now?
Ma Weidu: Because I have never deliberately collected ancient books, on the one hand, compared with cultural relics horizontally, ancient books were expensive decades ago, and one ancient book and one stele were excavated, these two items are a relatively unique category in the collection, and they are all relatively expensive. In history, the people who collect ancient books are relatively large, like Mr. Zhu Jiaxuan's father's generation and grandfather's generation are all collectors of ancient books, so later a large number of ancient books were donated to the Forbidden City.
The Paper: To understand the protection of ancient books, it may still be necessary to start from understanding the differences in paper, and many young people may not know that ancient handmade paper lives longer than modern coated paper.
Ma Weidu: Papermaking is a great invention in China. The paper of the Tang and Song dynasties, after a thousand years, can still be read, it still has softness, mainly from the ancient method of papermaking, there is no trace element in the paper that should not be there, there is no acid, its life is relatively long, so the ancients have been saying "paper life for a thousand years". For example, it is easier to keep a book that is sent to people, but written on silk, it will become very brittle and difficult to keep. Now there is acid in the paper, and the life expectancy is generally 100 years. Like 100 years ago, when this kind of painting newspaper, which was commonly known as Western coated paper, came in, it was believed that this kind of paper must have defeated China's rice paper, but the reality was that in the major libraries, these pictorial newspapers from a hundred years ago could not be read, and once they were read, they were crisp.
In the past, the old gentleman was optimistic about the ancient books, they all covered their mouths and looked at them, no one spoke in front of the ancient books, and they could not breathe out, because the breath you exhaled was a kind of harm to the ancient books.
The Paper: Although it has a long lifespan, the ancient method of making paper is not widely used, is this also a test for the protection of ancient books?
Ma Weidu: Well, for the restoration of ancient books is really a problem, the repair must be made of ancient paper, now there is a kind of fake ancient method, you look like rice paper is similar, but it you have to measure, it is still acid, if there is acid, it must be affected. This method of restoration of ancient books is to use new paper as life paper (referring to a layer of paper that is close to the back of silk after the silk calligraphy and painting are framed), re-frame it, this paper must have requirements, if there is no requirement for this paper, it may be a problem in one or two hundred years.
The Paper: Like many ancient calligraphy and paintings, they will also be framed many times, so what are the key words for restoration?
Ma Weidu: Reversibility. In China, we have this reversibility towards this value of so-called "property."
For example, a painting, after it is framed, it can be re-framed once after hundreds of years, and the above such as dry cracks, insect bites can be repaired, and the ancient furniture is also like this, and the tenon structure of the ancient furniture can also be dismantled and rebuilt, and after the repair is completed, it is as good as ever, and its concept is the concept of going with the flow.
But now a lot of new furniture use this chemical glue, this glue is irreversible, you such as mounting, now the traditional mounting or use the noodles, if there are now some with chemical paste, that paste is irreversible, once it is dry, it can no longer become soft.
It is difficult for you to know how valuable the paintings painted by people today, the words written after 200 years, the paintings that may be very valuable now, after 200 years it will have no value, maybe the painter has no value now, but after 200 years there is value; for example, if you buy a painting, or the value of people sending it is very cheap, you just frame it like this, then after 200 years, the problem may come out, right?
The Paper: So it is possible that the cost of protection and restoration is higher than the cost of buying it, is this also a key to the failure to pass on the failure?
Ma Weidu: Well, the ancient book must have a fate, it can stay to this day, it must have this fate, like the Dunhuang testament scattered all over the world, we don't talk about who owns this thing, or what was the situation back then, it is better to stay than to burn, right? Every one that remains to this day is the life of the thing itself.
How to make full use of ancient books is the focus of cultural relics protection
The Paper: In the fourth episode of the documentary, "The Fantasy World in the Ancient Books", Satan Jun, who is obsessed with the immortals and monsters in the ancient book "The Classic of Mountains and Seas", uses modern brushstrokes to draw the gods and monsters of the original human imagination.
Ma Weidu: The key is still this part of the treasure, can it be applied more in society? For example, according to the ancient book "Classic of Mountains and Seas", I think this can only be regarded as the use of it, not to protect it, because in a sense, if you want to protect it, it must be original. For example, what was the situation of history at that time, we can see the most real situation of it, if you recolor it, re-tick the line, now people are very happy, but in another hundred years or even a thousand years, this information may be chaotic, for me, to maintain the original state of cultural relics information is the most important.
Ancient books are first of all in small numbers, and secondly, they have a lifespan. Theoretically you protect it, but it will eventually be lost. Civilization itself is a process of substitution, that is, a civilization replaces a civilization, and I do not think it is necessary to completely protect all human civilizations. The question now is, how can we make full use of this part of what we have, and I think this is an important point in our protection of cultural relics, that is, how to apply it.
The Paper: The documentary also talks about family trees, which are complementary to national history and Fang Zhi, and the genealogy of large families can be preserved is also very precious, and now it is also a lot of attention in the collection market.
Ma Weidu: Genealogy genealogy, in the past, we said that it was all a critical attitude, so this kind of genealogy genealogy in China has been destroyed nine times out of ten, and very little is left. I just wrote a book on the interpretation of Tang poetry and Song Ci, "The Code of Tang Poetry and Song Ci", in this book, I wrote a lot of poets and lyricists, all of whom have a clear family tree. For example, like Du Fu, you can find it in more than a dozen generations, if there is no family tree, you don't know who the ancestors in your family are, right? Many celebrities in history, their family relationships are told by the family tree, this piece of what we thought was not important, now feel particularly important.
Surging News: For example, like Anhui, there are still a number of descendants of the Western Xia people, and the Western Xia is also found through the genealogy in the ancestral hall because there are few historical records, and this is also through the family tree in the ancestral hall.
Ma Weidu: Indeed. Because the alternation of civilizations in Chinese history is basically the alternation of nomadic and agricultural civilizations, there will be weaknesses in each alternation process, and that party will be forced to hide their names, and many people will disappear. For example, the khitan finally destroyed the country, let alone millions or even tens of millions, in fact, it was integrated into the big family of the Chinese nation, such as a Roman army in Gansu, a Jewish tribe in Henan, a considerable number of Jews in Kaifeng, who have returned to Israel and entered Judaism, and they finally used DNA to explain this problem.
Screenshots of live streams
The Paper: You ate a Song feast together that day, I think of one of my foodie friends, who also like to turn over ancient books to cook, he said a court fish tendon noodles, a fish only has one tendon, making this bowl of noodles time-consuming and labor-intensive, extremely exquisite, in your memory, is there such a food memory of turning the book and dropping the chin?
Ma Weidu: One famous dish in Jiangsu and Zhejiang restaurants is steamed anchovy. Now the anchovies are artificially raised, the anchovies are half on the table, split in half from the back, you look at a fish, in fact it is only half a fish. Why is it half a bar? It is because the scales of the anchovy are not scraped, the scales of the fish have grease, to be steamed out, and the scales under the bottom will be fishy. Anchovies have a lot of spines, but they are particularly fragrant, this thing is particularly annoying, it dies when it comes out of the water, it cannot be kept fresh in ancient times, if you do not pickle it, it will soon break.
The Qianlong Emperor had eaten anchovies when he went down to Jiangnan, and when he returned to Beijing, he suddenly wanted to eat this fish, but when he was transported from Jiangnan to Beijing, according to the fastest speed in ancient times, he had to run day and night, and he had to run for at least a day. So to transport to Beijing, the ancients have a trick, first prepare lard, lard in a semi-solidified state, after the anchovy hit, directly stuffed in this lard, lard will be sealed, just transport it to Beijing, lard has solidified, half a month is fine, lard will not destroy the anchovy, and now when steaming fish, but to add a little lard. In this way, the Qianlong Emperor can eat fresh anchovies in the north, this cost can only be borne by the royal family, ordinary people you want to transport to Beijing like this, how much do you talk about how much the fish costs?
Surging News: Collectors seem to be very particular about eating, such as Mr. Wang Shixiang, legend has it that a guest suddenly visited, two green onions can also be fried a dish, but also very delicious.
Ma Weidu: There is a friend in a five-star hotel to entertain guests, the old man (Wang Shixiang) will first fry a green vegetable at home, then fry a spinach, fry them in the bottle, you think about their home away from the hotel, riding a bicycle for ten minutes, glass bottle to the restaurant and then open, no matter how fast it takes more than half an hour, right? Bumping all the way to the hotel to put the plate and eat, everyone said delicious, I think this kind of delicious, or a kind of etiquette. But it can show this mentality of a person who has a pursuit of food. The old man likes to eat, the pursuit of eating, pay attention to the season, do not eat against the season, such as this will spring shoots down to eat spring shoots, in fact, pay attention to not pay attention to the personal mouth, the most exquisite dish is nothing more than spending kung fu, such as hanging soup, all kinds of soup to hang 6 hours, how can the average person eat how can it be so? In addition to professional cooks for you to make.
The Paper: Are you particular about eating?
Ma Weidu: No pursuit, I eat very fast, this is a problem developed in the previous difficult period, slow afraid of not being able to eat, like I came over on a hard day, eating anything feels delicious.