Why did the Song Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty become the peak of counterfeiting? Is it scientific and technological progress, or is it a moral slippery slope?

Written by: Zhao Libo

Everything in history is corresponding, there are true and false, and even the more transparent philosophy summarized in "Dream of Red Mansions": "False is also true when it is true and false, and there is nowhere and there is nothing." "Coupled with the real and false Monkey King in "Journey to the West", people can feel that China's "Four Masterpieces" are all telling in-depth stories about truth and falsehood, including the food fraud of Sun Erniang's human meat buns in "Water Margin"... Back to business, let's first look at why the Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty became the peak period of counterfeiting, crazy harvesting of leeks from the bottom people, and the counterfeiting technology can be called the pinnacle, disgusting to the point of surprise!

Bustling Northern Song Dynasty trade

The commodity economy developed rapidly during the two Song Dynasties, and counterfeiting activities also took the opportunity to develop and grow, and it was recorded in the books of the Southern Song Dynasty that even the grandmother who sold flowers in Bianliang City, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, would fake, I don't know if the bad guys are getting old, or forced by livelihood, but the harm is not great, and there is no need to discuss it too much. Food fraud is the biggest evil, such as stuffing sand in the stomachs of chickens and ducks, blowing air in the bodies of geese and sheep, injecting water into fish and other tricks such as slippery tricks. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, industry developed greatly, and counterfeit and shoddy products became more profitable. Even Ji Xiaolan, a famous scholar of the Qing Dynasty, suffered from it, he bought fake ink, fake candles, fake roast duck, fake boots... These things will be discussed in more detail later. In the "Old Stories of Wulin", it is recorded that "selling and buying goods is easy to be true, to paper as clothing, copper and lead as gold and silver, and civil engineering as incense". What is said here is that in the Lin'an market of the Song Dynasty, fake and shoddy profiteers abounded, and even some people used paper to make clothes, copper to impersonate gold, lead into silver ingots, and ordinary trees to impersonate sandalwood, which is really an unknown corner of the prosperous and splendid Qingming Shanghe Tu.

Old things about martial arts

In the Song Dynasty, counterfeiting was rampant, and the food sector was the biggest "hardest hit area". The people of the Northern Song Dynasty loved to eat and drink, which is a very famous thing, because during that period, they were really good at enjoying, so the problem followed. At that time, there was a man named Su Song, who was Wang Anshi's junior in the same year, and after being reported, he was specifically responsible for investigating the counterfeiting process of using dead horse meat to impersonate roe meat and venison. According to his detailed records, there was a tempeh making workshop outside the Caomen of Kaifeng, and the owner of the workshop bought a large number of dead horses, and after the dead horses were collected, the horse meat was cut into large pieces, buried in the mud first, and taken out a day or two later, so that the horse meat would look very fresh, but the rotten taste was very heavy. So a large number of tempeh were purchased, marinated and stewed horse meat with tempeh, and after stewing, the color, taste, and taste were not much different from roe meat and venison, Su Song recorded: "Early travel, its smell is not close, and in the past, the fragrance smells hundreds of steps." "These "roe meat" and "venison" are bought in large quantities by liquor restaurants because they are cheap, and the taste after eating them into the stomachs of diners can be imagined, if food poisoning, it is not so simple.

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In addition, people's habit of drinking tea at that time became more and more common, and the demand for tea was very large, especially good tea, famous tea, often in short supply, so some unscrupulous businessmen began to make and sell counterfeits in this regard. In the Song Dynasty, the most common method of tea counterfeiting was to add various spices to inferior tea, which could be mixed with a taste similar to various famous teas, or mixed with dry grass in loose tea and honey powder in tea powder. At that time, people liked tea bricks very much, and some merchants used good tea leaves outside and inferior tea leaves inside, which was not good or bad from the surface. Not only the tea drunk by ordinary people is artificially fake, but even the tea for the royal family also dares to counterfeit. According to the "Daguan Tea Theory", Emperor Huizong of Song once said: "There are greedy people who buy and ask for the buds that have been picked outside the roast, and pretend to make them; Crushing the bread that has already been made is easy to exemplify. "That is, someone mixed ordinary quality tea into the royal tribute tea and mixed them together to make tea bricks for tribute, this courage is indeed not small, even the emperor dares to deceive!" The fight against counterfeit drugs focuses on unified standards, but there has been a breakthrough in progress. Drug fraud is actually the worst kind of business,

"Human life is at stake", it stands to reason that counterfeiting in this regard should be relatively rare, but out of the nature of pursuing profits, unscrupulous businessmen specialize in making counterfeit drugs with medicinal materials, which is really harmful to people without blinking. Tao Hongjing's "Commentary on the Classic of Materia Medica" records that there are many methods of making counterfeit medicines: "Picking and sending the house, passing on the practice to cure the clumsy, the truth and falsehood are unpredictable, so there are stalactites boiled to make white, fine spicy water stains to make straight, astragalus honey steamed into sweet, angelica wine sprinkled with moist, moist with mulberry branches, centipede zhuzu making red." "The stalactites, spices, astragalus, angelica, centipedes, etc. mentioned here are medicinal materials with high economic value, such medicinal materials usually have strict grade division, different grades of prices vary greatly, in order to sell a good price, unscrupulous merchants take various means to counterfeit.

Tao Hongjing

People regard tiger bones and bear bile as rare medicinal materials, so they have become the "main target" of counterfeit drug manufacturers. In ancient times, there were often some people who sold fake tiger bones walking the streets, often wearing ethnic minority clothes, and the "tiger bones" sold were connected with tiger claws. Tiger claws are generally real, but tiger bones are fake, and the most commonly used substitute is the hind leg bones of camels. As for bear bile, the most commonly used alternative is pig bile. There is a book called "Kushi Ya Supplement" introduced: "Pig galls are not limited, take juice and apply it on the plate, dry it, apply it and dry it, until it is hundreds of bile." Scrape off the bile and wrap it in stirrup skin like bear bile and dry it. Can separate ink and remove dust, with pseudo-bear bile. What is mentioned here is that the folk identification of bear bile has a method of "dividing ink and removing dust", the specific method is to apply ink on the glass, and then apply the bear bile to the ink, if it is real bear bile, the ink will be separated. Another way is to "dissolve dust with clean water", sprinkle some dust on a glass of clean water, and then drip a little bear bile, and the dust in the cup will also be dispersed. Counterfeiters are well versed in it, and after their "research" and special processing, those pig bile impersonating bear bile can also produce the effect of dust removal, and some people who think they have certain identification knowledge are often deceived. The more developed the economy, the more varied the counterfeiting. A brief look at the horrors of counterfeiting from the Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty. In literary works such as "Tokyo Menghualu" and "Water Margin", there are scenes of restaurants and merchants in the streets of the Song Dynasty. Some vendors secretly add sand to sealed food packages or water to wine to add weight. Given the prevalence of counterfeiting, the government had to allow businessmen to form "guilds" and register them according to the type of industry. The quality of goods is checked by each guild, and the president of the guild, as the guarantor, is responsible for assessing the quality and price of the goods, which can be regarded as having an official and formal specific enforcement supervision unit.

Tokyo Yumekalu

Wang Yinglin wrote in the "Chronicle of Difficult Studies", "There is no more counterfeit goods in the city today than Bianjing. He told such a story: The owner of a liquor store went to Shanxi to buy a batch of fine wine from Xinghua Village, accidentally broke a few on the way, and when he came back, it seemed that he did not make money, and he was very depressed. At this time, the shop Xiaoer gave him a bad idea: add water to the wine. When the boss heard it, he was happy, and if he mixed two catties of water in each altar of wine, he could earn fifty dollars, and the profit was not cheap, so be it. Another story is that the old ladies who sell flowers in Bianjing City also fake, and they often sell a load of flowers in groups of three or five, and from a distance, the flowers look very rotten and cute. But the buyer even bought it home, and a few days later found that the flowers were wilted, it turned out that these flowers were all plugged in, not potted flowers, but flower arrangements, the so-called "brilliant and cute, no real branch." "Such a small fake, although the danger is not great, but the senses are very annoying. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the mainland shifted from the traditional agricultural economy to the germination stage of the modern commodity economy, the awareness of commodities was increasing, the social atmosphere was becoming more and more impetuous, and counterfeiting and fraud emerged one after another, almost reaching its peak. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, Tian Rucheng described the wind of fraud in "Zhiyu of the West Lake Tour": "Hangzhou wind, a handful of green onions, clusters of flowers, empty inside." Some profiteers, "also make up their own pleasures and hypocrisy, in order to invite the present, regardless of the behind, such as wine as ash, chicken sand stuffed, goose and sheep blowing, fish and flesh in the water... It's really eye-opening, surprising, but not admiration, but anger, it seems that the fake thing is really genetic.

Northern Song Market

The famous literati Ji Xiaolan also recorded in his "Notes on Reading Micro Caotang" that he also recorded the true record of his four consecutive attacks against fakes, and he was also very bright, and recorded in detail the dumb loss he ate: First, fake ink, Ji Xiaolan bought Luo Xiaohuamo, a famous brand of the Qing Dynasty at that time. This ink looks "lacquer box is gloomy, and it is really old", but when I bought it back and used it, it was actually muddyed, dyed black, and brought with a layer of white frost. The second is fake wax and candle. Ji Xiaolan rushed to the exam, bought a few candles, returned to the apartment and couldn't light it, and looked carefully, it turned out to be made of mud, and there was a layer of mutton fat on the outside. The third is fake ducks. One night, Ji Xiaolan bought a duck, and when she went back, it turned out to be made of mud. The meat of the duck has been eaten, leaving only the duck head, duck neck, duck feet and a complete skeleton. The skeleton is covered with mud, the outside is pasted with paper, dyed the color of roast duck, and then coated with oil, and it is difficult to distinguish the real from the fake under the lamp.

Senior fool Ji Xiaolan IV is a fake shoe. Zhao Ping, a slave of Ji Xiaolan's family, once bought a pair of leather boots for two thousand dollars, and he was very proud. One day it rained, Zhao Ping went out in leather boots, but returned barefoot. It turned out that the waist of the boot Tianzi was made of black oil Korean paper, and it was wrinkled, and the top seemed to be made. The boots are made of cotton. It can be seen from the above that whenever counterfeiting continues, then the continuous construction of anti-counterfeiting means and laws needs to be on the road forever, so that the people's style will be better and better, and the tragedy of being hacked will also be converged, so this is indeed a major event that concerns everyone, I hope that from now on there will be no profiteers in the world, and will no longer be harmed by counterfeit goods.