In ancient folk tales, there is often a bridge section of "gods boiling stones and eating". As a result, there are some mortals who imitate the gods and immortals, and also find some stones to cook and eat, such as a hundred-year-old immortal man named Jiao Xian in the "Taiping Guangji", who is a strange person who is uncomfortable without eating stones every day.
In fact, according to modern medicine, this is a disease called "pica". I have a distant cousin, who suffers from this strange disease, loves to eat the white ash blocks in the corner, and her parents try to stop it, but she can never quit this "addiction". Although people who know this detail all regard her as an outlier, she does not think so, and goes her own way, not being moved by the words of others. Now my distant cousin has long been married and has children, and after eating the white ash blocks for many years, she has not suffered from gastrointestinal diseases because of this, and she is really a strange woman.
Gossip is less, the book belongs to the main text. Now borrow the ink of the ancients, saying that several Qing Dynasty passages about "pica" are given to the ranking officials to relieve their boredom. Whether these passages are true or false is impossible to examine. Gu vainly said, gu vainly listened, and it was fun to see, and there was no need to think about it.
The first passage takes place in Guangzhou, which happened during the Xianfeng period. It is said that there is a rice flower on the street in Guangzhou, more than twenty years old, skinny and bony, but his stomach is swollen like a big gourd. Just because the belly is surprisingly large, it got the nickname of "big belly hanako".
This big-bellied flower boy walked the streets and alleys every day, shouting loudly: "Collect tile stone porcelain, collect tile stone porcelain..."
He was a man who asked for food called Hanako, and whoever had the money to buy other people's things was just a matter of one mouth, asking for alms from well-wishers.
Whenever he shouted, many of the city's children followed him to watch the liveliness.
Why just watch his hilarity? That's because he has an amazing skill—the stone.
Eat, eat also. In other words, this man can eat stones. Whenever a well-wisher gave him some broken tiles and rotten porcelain, he would "perform" on the street, creaking like chewing rock candy, looking like he was eating very fragrantly.
You say, there is such a unique skill, can it not attract people to watch? Some people saw that he could afford to eat hard, and they rewarded him with a few small dollars. With these small sums of money, he could buy wine to eat. The old wine with tiles is also the number one collocation in the world.
There is a kind of red rice stone in the Dongguan area, and the big belly hanako likes to eat this stone the most. He said, this stone is more delicious than eating dragon liver and phoenix marrow. Someone was hungry, so they tried to taste it. Not only did it not taste the fragrance, but it also almost broke its front teeth. Only then did I know that the teeth and stomach of the big belly flower are not within the reach of ordinary people.
Every night, the big belly Hanako would go to the Three Realms Temple for a temporary stay. Inside the temple there are several large vats filled with rainwater. When it was hot, Hanako jumped into the big vat to cool off, and his big gourd-like belly floated on the surface of the water without sinking, which caused many good people to watch.
Unfortunately, Hanako is a short-lived ghost. I don't know who I offended, and let people open their stomachs and throw them into the river. After the body was recovered, it was found that the bits and pieces inside his large belly were gone. Such a tragic situation, the Orthodox people sighed.
The second passage was said by Wang Shizhen of shangshu during the Kangxi dynasty. He said that there was a servant in his house named Wang Jialu, who had been ascetic in a small temple in Laoshan when he was a child. Later, because his mother was ill and had no one to take care of him, he had to go down the mountain. During his time at home, neighbors noticed that he had a quirk, often chewing small pebbles in his mouth. So I asked him why he ate stones?
He said he had a strange disease when he was in the mountains, and his body was covered with red spots, and the itch was unbearable. Master told him to soak in a small stream in the mountains every day, hoping to help him stop the itch with the coolness of the stream. During that time, he was very bored, so he picked up the small stone in the stream and put it in his mouth, and inadvertently broke the stone, and he swallowed it and felt very comfortable. So from that day on, he had an addiction to eating stones. After a while, the itch on his body was eliminated, but the addiction to eating stones could not be eliminated.
He told the neighbor that in fact, the stone has a taste, there is a difference between sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, salty, he only needs to look at it, he can distinguish the taste of each stone, he only picks up the favorite stone to eat, not all the stones eat.
With such a magic skill, then his teeth must be different from ordinary people. Yes, his teeth are indeed much harder than ordinary people's teeth, and the bite force is beyond ordinary people. He could hang a large bucket of water on his teeth and spin them, but his teeth did not come loose in the slightest.
Later, the man returned to the mountains. As for the aftermath, it is not known.
The third passage is from the writing of the Students' Association during the Daoguang Years. He said that once he was sitting idly in front of the door when he saw a beggar begging for food come to the neighbor's door. The neighbor's child was naughty, reached out and picked up a tile from the ground and handed it to the beggar, teasing the beggar to give the beggar a bowl of rice when he ate the tiles.
The beggar smiled, calmly put the tile into his mouth, creaked like chewing ice cubes, and actually swallowed it into his stomach. Everyone who saw this scene was dumbfounded, and some people thought that the beggar was playing tricks and did not really eat the tiles, so they cut out a piece of tile from the ground and let the beggar eat it in front of everyone.
The beggar smiled again, opened his mouth wide, put the tile in his mouth, and chewed and swallowed the tile under the astonished gaze of the crowd.
Such a magic trick shocked all the people present. Fearful and respectful, the people hurriedly gave the beggar some white rice and sent him away. When the beggar left the village, it was said that the beggar could either do qigong or magic, or it would never be possible to eat tiles as rice.
Indeed, this is strange enough. But what the truth is, I really can't find the answer.
Let's talk about the last paragraph, this is a matter of the Guangxu years. It is said that there is a reader named Li Zhang in Jinan, Shandong, who marries his wife Xu Shi, and the two sons respect each other like guests, and their lives are very happy. Xu is a small-footed woman, usually growing vegetables and flowers at home, even the gate is not out, in the evening, Xu's will be alone to the backyard with fruits and vegetables, it will take a long time to come back.
Li Zhang did not care at first, thinking that his wife was diligent and went to the backyard just to take care of fruits and vegetables. But as the days passed, Li Zhang found that something was not quite right, so he secretly followed his wife one evening to peek at the end.
He saw Xu Shi come to the melon rack, leaning down and groping back and forth on the ground, as if looking for something. Li Zhang wondered, what was she looking for?
After a while, Xu Seemed to have found something like that. Li Zhang saw that Xu Shi smiled and put that thing in his mouth, and then chewed it up. Driven by curiosity, Li Zhang suddenly appeared in front of his wife and asked her what she had eaten?
Xu Shi blushed and refused to say. Li Zhang told her that she had to say it, and she had to tell the truth. It turned out that what she had eaten in her mouth was broken stone. Li Zhang didn't believe it, and Xu Shi spat out the stone that had not yet been chewed and showed it to him. Li Zhang believed that his wife was not lying. But why would a good man eat stones?
Xu shi was embarrassed to tell him the truth. It turned out that when Xu Shi was a little girl, she was often jealous of others, and her mother told her that if she wanted to be jealous, she would take the stone in her mouth. She believed it to be true, so she found a small stone to hold in her mouth all day. When you're fine, you can play with your teeth biting stones. Once the bite is broken, swallow it. Over time, it became a problem, and if you don't eat stones, you will feel uncomfortable. She begged her husband's forgiveness and promised never to come to the backyard to find stones to eat.
Li Zhangzi did not blame her, and he was also worried that if she did not eat stones, her body would be in a state of condition, so he did not stop her quirks.
Once, Li Zhang met a foreign priest in Qingdao, who told the priest about his wife's quirk of eating stones, and asked the priest if there were such people in the West.
The priest told him that there are many such people in the West, and that it is a disease, but it is not fatal. People who like to swallow foreign bodies either have something missing in their body or have psychological problems. If you find the cause, you can eradicate it.
Li Zhang roughly understood the priest's words, and after returning, he patiently searched for the cause of his wife's illness. But after looking for a long time, I couldn't find a clue, so I simply couldn't find it.
Okay, that's it for a short paragraph. I don't know if there are such eccentric people around the ranking officials, welcome to leave a message to discuss.