There are several days every year that test the friendship boat, and the Dragon Boat Festival is one of them. Sweet rice dumplings or salty rice dumplings? The lethality of this problem is enough to make netizens who have not met for many years block each other on WeChat. Especially in the summer of the Dragon Boat Festival, the high temperature of more than 30 ° C, the overnight bombardment of mosquitoes, and then look down at a piece of abs that cannot be covered by thin summer clothes, which makes people feel even more impetuous. Originally, there were thousands of reasons for quarrelling, and the dispute between sweet and salty rice dumplings could more or less show some noble gestures to maintain traditional culture, and it is no wonder that the sweet and salty parties have endless fun in fighting each other.
In general, the forces of the sweet and salty factions rule by river. North of the Yangtze River is basically the territory of sweet rice dumplings, red beans, dates, small dates, bean paste four kings according to one side, before the table first a dish of white sugar, even if it is bean paste, dates themselves with sweet rice dumplings, according to the traditional old practice also have to dip in white sugar into the mouth, to show sweetness and sweetness, no wonder after each Dragon Boat Festival dental hospital appointment registration will be full. South of the Yangtze River, is the sphere of influence of salty rice dumplings, compared to the four kings of sweet rice dumplings in the north, the meat in the name ZhenjiangNan has four incarnations: bacon, bacon, bacon and curd meat, peeling rice dumplings, meat hidden between the flesh, but also inlaid with golden salted egg yolk and chestnut. If it is in the coastal areas of southern Fujian, the meat dumplings will also generously add Yaozhu, golden hook sea rice and abalone. Just as the northern sweet rice dumplings dipped in sugar are sweetened, the southern salty dumplings should also be accompanied by soy sauce or salty sauces such as shacha sauce, salty and salty, three groups of eating with a handful of antihypertensive drugs, pasted with a gout patch, is the most perfect match.
Of course, there are also shrewd merchants who are good at reconciling the contradictions between the sweet and salty parties, and the well-known grandfather fried chicken shop at home and abroad is in line with the times, and at the same time launched two kinds of sweet and salty rice dumplings packaged into double rice dumpling packages, whether sweet or salty, there is always one that can satisfy you. Wufangzhai, a century-old famous store that just crosses the border between sweet and salty parties, is also on the counters of supermarkets around the world, while displaying bacon dumplings and babao bean paste dumplings to target the pockets of sweet and salty parties - after all, only the taste of banknotes in the world is sweet and salty, there is no gender, no distinction between north and south, everyone loves the same, and everyone loves it.
So the Dragon Boat Festival, is it to eat sweet rice dumplings or salty rice dumplings? Behind this, it's not just a matter of taste.
Written by 丨 Lee Shane
Sweet or salty?
The ultimate problem for Zongsheng
The root cause of the dispute between the sweet and salty rice dumplings is not just a matter of taste. After all, everyone will agree, the mouth is different. Just like the old Beijingers got up in the morning to stretch their necks to sip a bowl of bean juice, but also smacked their mouths, while foreigners frowned and took a sip, even if they could not spit out the first day's lunch, even if the stomach was strong enough. Northerners go to Chongqing to eat authentic Chongqing hot pot, just smell the taste, the body of thirty-six thousand pores will be steaming, sweat like rain, the table must be placed in turn through five bowls of water, before it can be entered, even so, the next morning when you go to the toilet, you will feel a kind of burning pain sitting on the crater.
Eating is not used to eating, the taste is different, do not have to force. But the reason why the sweetness and saltiness of rice dumplings can be divided into gangs and factions is that it revolves around a word "authentic" - the essence of the sweet and salty dispute is what is "authentic". The so-called "authentic", that is, whether it conforms to the "tradition", and the "traditional" cloud person, according to the popular sublimeism, naturally uses time as the standard, and the more "ancient" it is, the more "traditional". Just like the cultural relics "straw woven rice dumplings" collected by the Lushun Museum, since the early 20th century, the Japanese Otani Guangrui Central Asian Expedition team found this "straw basket woven from the Tang Dynasty tomb in Turpan, Xinjiang, with a total of five pieces of size, all of which are equal waist triangles" after stringing together with a hand twisted cotton thread, after several turns, has been lying in a corner of the Lushun Museum warehouse eating ash, until more than eighty years later, when cleaning the warehouse, suddenly appeared in the world, because of its triangular straw weaving shape, became the earliest surviving zongzi ancestors, Since then, it has been cited by scholars, and it has been discussed as an important historical material evidence that the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty have already passed the Dragon Boat Festival.
But in fact, after careful examination, it is likely that it is just a sachet that looks like today's rice dumplings. Even if it is Zongzi, after all, it is not even two centimeters in size, can not hold a few grains of rice, and naturally can not stuff small jujube bean paste or bacon salted eggs - Zongzi ancestral identity is sweet or salty or concubine is still unknown, which will somewhat disappoint the sweet and salty factions that are anxious to pursue the authentic tradition. However, the truly traditional and authentic prototype of Zongzi may surprise both the sweet and salty parties. The key to unlocking all this lies in the strange shape of the rice dumplings.
The children who were forced to learn to wrap rice dumplings with their mothers, with a look of resentment on their faces, came from Xu Yang's "Duanyang Story Atlas" of the Qing Dynasty.
When I wrapped Zongzi in hours, what made my young soul complain the most was why Zongzi had to be wrapped like a green Transformer to see the edges and corners? Anyway, it's the same as wrapping rice and bean paste or dates into rice dumpling leaves, what shape is really important? Isn't it fragrant to put the rice dumpling leaves directly into the bowl and put the rice and stuffing in it and steam it?
But just as it is impossible to make a spoon more like a spoon, the reason why Zongzi is called Zongzi is because of its angular shape. This is also the reason why Zongzi was originally named "Horned Dragon". The name "Horned Horn" is first derived from the Records of Customs and Soils of the Jin Dynasty Zhou Dynasty in the third century AD:
"Wrap the rice in the leaves of the crab, cook it in a thick ash juice, make it rotten, and eat it on the summer solstice on the 5th of May." Sticky, one dumpling, one horned man. Cover to take the yin and yang still wrapped in the undivisied time like also. ”
The amount of information in a short account is enormous. First and foremost, it is the oldest surviving record of Zongzi, which specifically and affirmatively describes what the most primitive Zongzi looked like: the filling was only rice, and it was cooked in "Pure Thick Ash Juice".
"Ash juice", that is, the juice of grass and trees, which is quite rare in the chemical industry today, which occupies the world, but in ancient times, "ash juice" can be said to be a must-have water in the home, which can be used for fertilization and watering, can also be used as a dye for silk dyeing, can also be used as a cleaning agent for washing clothes, and even used to preserve dried fruits. The color of gray juice was inexplicably loved by the ancients, calling it gray juice color, and this gray juice color may be called yellow today.
(Of course, there are also fashion color codes that will tell you that this ancient color "gives a sense of tranquility and nostalgia, which is a color that makes people feel inexplicably nostalgic and warm")
But it is the noble gold in the eyes of the ancients. The rice dumplings cooked with it are naturally golden and brilliant in the eyes of the ancients, which is heartwarming.
This oldest Zongzi ancestor still has descendants of the concubine lineage whose genes have not yet mutated, but the heirs are thin, and now they are only produced as local characteristics in Ningbo, Dongyang, Hengdian and Xiuning, Anhui. It is called "gray juice dumpling". As for its taste, as a pamphlet about local cuisine, it is "particularly sticky and full of taste". Or directly quote the introduction in the dry but dry sentence in the "Xiuning County Chronicle": "Ash contains alkaline, dissolves grease, should be cold food, easy to store."
These accounts all point to one point: the most authentic and traditional zongzi is neither sweet nor salty, but has an alkaline taste with ash juice, and at most it can be said that it has a natural sweetness of rice, but it is only a little insignificant to make the pointer slightly biased towards the sweet party. From the most traditional and authentic point of view, both the Sweet Party and the Salty Party belong to the unruly and deviant.
The so-called "straw rice dumplings" unearthed in Turpan, the large one is 1.37 cm long and 1.35 cm high, and the small one is 1.1 cm long and 1.01 cm high, which was found in March 1994 when the staff of the Lushun Museum sorted out the fragments of documents excavated by the Japanese Otani Guangrui Central Asian Expedition Team to excavate the Tang Dynasty in Turpan, Xinjiang. The discovery report was published in the 10th issue of Cultural Relics magazine in 1994 under the title of "Straw Rice Dumplings Unearthed in Turpan", with the picture above. Later, according to the Dunhuang research scholar Gao Qi'an, this string of so-called "rice dumplings" was actually a straw sachet worn by children in the Tang Dynasty. See Gao Qi'an, "Examination of the Name and Truth of the 'Straw Rice Dumplings' Unearthed in Turpan", published in Turpan Studies, No. 1, 2014.
Is zongzi a symbol of fertility worship?
But why are the oldest rice dumplings not sweet or salty? This is related to the shape of the rice dumplings with edges and angles. The "horn" in the ancient name of zongzi "horn" is a key word that is enough to attract the special attention of sensitive anthropologists. In anthropological vision, whenever you see a columnar, pointed, piercing object, you will involuntarily burst out of the well-used professional term "fertility worship". The reason why the zongzi with the edges and corners is called "horned" is indeed related to the worship of fertility. Its shape resembles the famous symbol of mythology, the "Horn of Plenty."
（cornucopia）
This magical goat's horn or horn is the treasure of Amalthea, the god of the forest in ancient Greek mythology, and it can be endlessly contained in wine and fruit. The reason for this is precisely because of the similarity of the horns to the male penis that it is endowed with a steady stream of fertility. Since the beginning of the human age, the belief in horns as symbols of fertility worship has spread throughout Eurasia. Middle-earth nature is not exempt from the vulgarity, the Han Dynasty Weishu "White Tiger Tong" so-called "horns, jump also, yang qi jump". Yang Qi, in the ancient Chinese concept of raising the qi for all things, is naturally the endless power of reproduction and reproduction. In fact, the explanation of "horned" in the "Book of Customs" also implies this meaning of "the image of yin and yang when it is still wrapped up and not dispersed", that is, the chaotic image of yin and yang before the formation of all things, which is the driving force of reproduction.
Although the use of zongzi as a symbol of fertility worship will somewhat make people who are ready to eat zongzi feel strange when they put it in their mouths, it does have a solid foundation and does not need to be hidden. The reason why Zongzi has become a special food for the Festival on the day of the Dragon Boat Festival is also because Zongzi is a symbol of the reproductive power of Yang Qi.
Today, the Dragon Boat Festival gives us three days of vacation, even if there is a "diversion" of the weekend, it is enough to make people rejoice. But in the eyes of the ancients, the Dragon Boat Festival is the so-called "evil day", not only that, the entire lunar calendar May is the so-called "evil month". As for the reason, the suffering suffered by the ancients is also felt by today's people: the hot weather after the summer, the rampant mosquitoes and flies and poisonous insects bite the skin, the food is easy to spoil and deteriorate, and various diseases are often prevalent at this time. Regarding the superstition of May 5, especially the Dragon Boat Festival, the may day is incredible, and the "Customs and Customs" of the late Han Dynasty lists many disasters brought about by May 5, the so-called "May to the official, to avoid moving; May to build a house, make people bald" - if the latter is true, this more or less explains the reason for the sad hairline of many middle-aged people, and the lunar month of May is just the peak season for decoration.
And the most terrible thing is that the ancients believed that "the son is born on the fifth day of May, the male harms the father, and the female harms the mother." Therefore, children born during the Dragon Boat Festival must be abandoned, otherwise they will endanger their parents' lives.
Many celebrities born on May 5 include the most talented emperor, Emperor Huizong of Song, according to the Magazine of Decin, "Emperor Huizong was born on the fifth day of May, which was tabooed because it was changed to October 10.". The fate of this emperor is well known, when his father Song Shenzong died young at the age of 37, he was only three years old, and after he became emperor, he broke the great rivers and mountains of the Northern Song Dynasty, and he himself died in a foreign land in the northern country, and it seems that he did not escape the curse of May 5 in the end. Another celebrity is the famous first of the four sons of the Warring States, Meng Tianwen, who was born on May 5 and was ordered to be discarded by his father Tian Bao, because "those who are born on May, who grow up and have households, will not be good for their parents." However, the young Tian Wen dared to rebel against the so-called "Mandate of Heaven", and he questioned his father: "Life is destined by Heaven?" Will you be ordained by the household evil? He will be commanded by heaven, so why should he be troubled? He who will be commanded by the household may raise his ear high, and whoever can reach it! He successfully persuaded his father to abandon the superstition of his parents who had a son born on may and accept him as his heir. When he grew up, he was expected to inherit his father's name - I believe that he must have had a portal as tall when he succeeded to the throne.
Qing Dynasty painter Men Yingzhao painted part of "Qu Yuan Jumping river", which was collected in the "Album of Departures", collected by the Palace Museum.
The meaning of the rice dumplings created is, to some extent, the props that the ancients tried to change their lives against the sky. The ancients believed that the root cause of May's evil was because the summer solstice was in May, and May 5 was the day close to the summer solstice. "Huainanzi" so-called "the summer solstice is the middle rope of the south, the sun is extreme, the yin qi is cute, so the summer is the punishment", the summer solstice day because the yang is extremely strong and decaying, the yin qi germinates, so it is considered to be the murder of the murderer, the so-called "summer solstice is yin and yang, it is to die of all things", therefore, poisonous insects and diseases will be the evil of the world. Counting all the ancient customs of the Dragon Boat Festival, from bathing in orchid soup to winding five-colored silk threads and drinking xionghuang wine, the intention is not to ward off evil spirits and disinfect and dispel epidemics. As a symbol of yang fertility, zongzi eats it precisely in order to replenish some yang qi to oneself on the day when the yin is in full bloom, so as to resist the various evil consequences brought about by the germination of yin qi. As for the ancient legend of using Zongzi to throw rice dumplings into the river to sacrifice Qu Yuan, it is actually a ritual of subjugating the water god in the name of sacrifice by borrowing the yang qi of Zongzi to use Yang Keyin. Water is negative, summer is the period of high incidence of flooding, using the yang qi of Zongzi to deter the water god is the original intention of Zongzi to throw the river, as for the record of Qu Yuantuo's dream of asking Zongzi to eat in the "Jingchu Chronicle", it is just the author's forcible play of ancient customs through the mouth of this heroic spirit.
Well, at this point, seven turns and eight turns, it seems that there is no explanation why the ancestors of Zongzi are not sweet, salty, and tasteless. The answer may be astoundingly simple: because rice dumplings are endowed with the power of the reproductive symbol of yang and yin, it must be like the "yin and yang that are still wrapped in the undivisied elephant" of all things, preserving its original taste, and cannot have any other added flavor. This is also the general practice of food used in ancient sacrifices, just like the "big soup" necessary for the sacrifice of heaven and earth, that is, pure broth, the so-called "big soup, gravy without salt plum taste also." This is the beginning of the creation of the diet" - the ancients stubbornly believed that the gods liked this original thing, but when it was the turn of human beings themselves, they naturally had to add condiments, sweet and salty. The same is true of rice dumplings.
Sweet dumplings take the lead, and salty dumplings counterattack
But change is inseparable from its "dumplings"
In terms of acknowledging the ancestors and returning to the sect, the two parties of sweet and salty dumplings can be regarded as both defeated. But this does not mean that the two will fail and collapse. Although the ancestors are not sweet and salty gray juice dumplings, this does not mean that its descendants cannot genetically mutate and turn to sweet and salty. Therefore, the sweet and salty parties can still continue to cling to their ancestors, search for historical materials, and make themselves ancient.
The Sweet Party first found a visually striking historical source from the fifth-century Southern Dynasty history book The Book of Song. The two dynasties of the Southern Dynasty Liu Song and the Northern Dynasty Gao Qi can be described as two terrifying flowers in Chinese history, and the two dynasties of the First South and the Other North have written in the annals of history for producing evil tyrants, and the abusive methods of these tyrants are even more creepy. The historical data found by the Sweet Party comes from the tyranny of a Liu Song tyrant, The Song Emperor Liu Ziye:
"The deposed emperor killed King Yigong of Jiangxia and looked at him with honey stains, which is called 'ghost eye dumplings.'"
In order not to cause the reader to react in the stomach and intestines, this historical material will not be translated into the vernacular. For the sweet party, the important thing is that the "ghost rice dumplings" mentioned here are made of "honey stains", no matter what the filling of the rice dumplings is, the earliest point of the sweet dumplings is solid.
But unfortunately, the earliest historical material of the sweet dumpling that was triumphantly taken out by the sweet party was a mistake in the process of copying. What is wrong is precisely the key word "粽". The Qing Dynasty scholar Duan Yujue deliberately examined this historical material in the "JingYun Lou Collection", and the answer he gave was that the "粽" character of "Ghost Eye Dumpling" was actually the word "䊉", which means "honeydew melon is actually 䊉". Another historical source often cited by the Sweet Party, the "Puzzle Dumplings" given to Liu Yu by Lu Xun, the Emperor Wen of the Liu Song Dynasty, are also "Puzzle Dumplings", made of nootropic honey stains, not zongzi.
Picture: The inner page of the picture book "Little Zongzi, Little Zongzi"
Compared with the Sweet Party, the source of the Xian Party's meat dumplings is also unreliable, if the Sweet Party only reads books and recognizes fewer typos, then the Xian Party can be said to be deliberately falsifying historical materials. When talking about the history of Zongzi in the "Symbol China" edited by Feng Jicai, this historical material is mentioned:
"During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, there were miscellaneous rice dumplings, that is, rice mixed with poultry and animal meat, chestnuts, red dates, red beans, and so on."
This historical document is written so vaguely that it seems that meat dumplings and red jujube red bean sweet dumplings appeared at the same time. However, the "miscellaneous dumplings" mentioned in this passage appear only once in historical materials, and are also found in the Book of Song:
"Later, Wei Taiwu went to Pengcheng to ask for wine and citrus, and Zhang Chang xuanxiaowu Emperor's will, to the conch cup, miscellaneous dumplings, and the treasures of the southern soil."
In just one sentence, there is no mention of what kind of filling this kind of miscellaneous dumplings are made of. This introduction to the history of Zongzi in the book also appears in no less than twenty popular science books introducing traditional Chinese culture, which shows the seriousness of the plagiarism trend, which has reached the point of wrong and wrong.
So, if it is only a comparison of time morning and evening, which of the sweet and salty dumplings is older?
The answer is probably sweet dumplings. Wei Juyuan, a famous old man of the Tang Zhongzong era, appointed him shangshu ling for the sake of the grateful emperor, and specially set up a "burning tail banquet" at home to entertain Emperor Zhongzong's royal driver. The menu of this tail-burning feast was passed down to posterity, in which a "Zongzi with Fragrant Flavor" was recorded, and its bet was "Honey Cream", which is the real first historical material that proves that Zongzi should be dipped in sugar and sweet. It was not until the middle of the Ming Dynasty, nine hundred years later, that the first historical materials explicitly recorded meat dumplings appeared. The provenance of this historical material is little known, but it comes from the private notes "Zhuyu Mountain House Miscellaneous Department" written by two Shanghai Huating literati Song Xue and Song Gongwang, and it is only one of many fillings:
"Rice dumplings, with finely chiseled glutinous rice Zhanjiezhi, Hou Wei dry, plucked reed leaves to cook, rolled rice, Tibetan honey, bean paste, or pork sauce, or fat dates, or peeled walnuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts, white sugar, and turned into horns, will be tightly bound and firm, cooked in the pot."
The author also deliberately emphasizes that rice dumplings are "suitable for honey and sugar". It can be seen that at least in the Ming Dynasty, sweet rice dumplings still occupy an unshakable position of absolute authority, and meat dumplings can only be mixed with many sweet dumplings, sideways in a corner.
But the time for the salty dumplings to counterattack is coming. The Ming and Qing dynasties changed, and the heavens and the earth were turned upside down. Just after Kangxi finally regained Taiwan from the Southern Ming widow Zheng Shi, the first inspector of Taiwan, Yushi Huang Shuxuan, recorded a special custom of the Dragon Boat Festival in the Fujian-Taiwan region in his private notebook, The Records of the Envoys of the Taiwan Strait:
"On the fifth day of May, in the early morning, a bunch of rice stalks were smoked in the four corners of the room, and sent to the side of the road with a rice money, known as mosquitoes; between the lintels, mugwort leaves, calamus, and a stem of grass were inserted, which was said to avoid mosquitoes and flies, and a branch of banyan trees, which was said to be old and healthy. Give each other watermelon and meat dumplings. ”
This is the first time in the historical materials that the use of meat dumplings as a gift for the Dragon Boat Festival is mentioned. In addition to the feeding of meat dumplings in this record, another confusing point is "sending the roadside with money, known as sending mosquitoes", but why send away mosquitoes to burn paper money to pay tribute to the deceased? There is another custom in the Fujian-Taiwan region that is most confusing to Huang Shuxuan, which is also related to meat. Huang found that in the Fujian-Taiwan area, "meat sellers blow horns, and zhenri blows whistles, and the sound is very miserable." The local legend is that "according to legend, Huang Chaotun soldiers and soldiers, the army is the city, and the horn is called." ”
The fall of meat dumplings: "The rice dumplings in Beijing are headed by white dumplings and bean paste dumplings, and it seems that those who do not know that there are meat dumplings." In recent years, there have been egg yolk dumplings and fresh meat dumplings on the market, but there is no long glutinous, no dipping material, the meat is like fine dice, light and tasteless, and there is the reputation of Jiaxing rice dumplings. Yu Chang is suspicious or because there are many big men in Beijing, so the Beijing people are also empty-eyed, snacks only boast of bean juice, fried liver, enemas, provincial cuisine into the capital, January deformation, February flavor change, March has been Beijing huayi." Chen Wen Ding Wen, Ding Cong painted in July 1997.
The military trumpet selling meat, the so-called paper money for sending mosquitoes, the former meat dumplings, associated with the Zheng regime that was recently eliminated by the Qing army, the implication of these folk strange customs seems self-evident: these simple people may be using this to secretly pay tribute to the dead of the Zheng army who died in the naval battle, and the tragic hero Zheng Chenggong, who was deified by the people after his death. To this day, in the temple festivals of the Fujian-Taiwan area, meat dumplings are still an indispensable and important sacrifice. The rich aroma of seafood and cured meat is full of seafood and cured meat, which is enough to please the gods and make the common people who pray for the blessings of the gods move their fingers.
Tradition or authenticity, the dispute between sweet dumplings and salty dumplings, just like the bean blossom eats sweet and salty, the purpose of the quarrel is not necessarily to prove who is right and who is wrong, just like the sweet dumpling after occupying a thousand years of time, the salty dumplings have come to the top, occupying half of the country. No one will care anymore that the purpose of Zongzi's creation was the fertility cult of the ancients, to cope with the various obscurities brought about by the decline and yin of the Dragon Boat Festival. Even the Dragon Boat Festival, the "evil day" in the eyes of the ancients, has now become a festival that can rest for three consecutive days. Tradition is not a tradition because it is more authentic the older it is, but because it is worth passing down to this day and is accepted by people. Tradition also needs to change itself to adapt to the present, otherwise we until today, there is only one choice of non-sweet and unsalty gray rice dumplings, rather than picking hundreds of brands of sweet and salty rice dumplings in the Middle East, taking the opportunity to live a shopping addiction, and we can also quickly talk in the sweet and salty dispute. The joy of tradition is not in immutable, but in the freedom of choice.
Speaking of which, it is advisable to recommend a sweet and salty rice dumpling that may be acceptable to both parties, Gongbao Chicken Dumpling. It has both a sweet and salty flavor, and also adds a spicy flavor to the care of southern spicy food customs. Chicken looks at the whole country, and no cultural custom rejects it. Ding Baozhen, the nominal founder of Gongbao Jiding, was a native of Guizhou, but he also served as the inspector of Shandong, and went to Beijing to be received by Empress Dowager Cixi, a big celebrity in the food industry, and was also known for his honesty and honesty. Considering all parties, there is no more correct zongzi than Gongbao chicken ding zongzi. Perhaps, it will create a new tradition like leek egg dumplings, fish and meat dumplings, cheese cheese dumplings and crayfish dumplings.
But still that sentence, you can't make Zongzi more like Zongzi, and you can't leave its "Zongzi".
Kung Pao chicken dumplings
Author 丨 Lee Shane
Editor 丨 Dong Muzi Walk away Proofreader 丨 Wei Zhuo