Drinks drunk by ancient Chinese people
This article is written by Ni Fangliu
It's the height of summer and the drinks are selling well.
China has had the custom of making summer drinks since ancient times. The food industry believes that the Song and Yuan dynasties were the most talented era for making cold drinks in China, especially in the Yuan Dynasty, because of the governance of ethnic minorities and the integration of Chinese and Western cultures, the cold drink industry also appeared a new atmosphere.
(Quench thirst)
The most popular drink in the Yuan Dynasty was called "thirsty water" or "thirst quenching water", which was called "Sherbe", "Sheribe", "Sheri Eight" in Mongolian, which is a transliteration of Persian and Arabic. Chen Dazhen, a person at the end of the Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, said in "Nanhai Zhi and Property": "Sheribe, Mongolian daily thirst quenching water, all fruit wood juice, can be done." ”
Thirsty water is actually not much different from the juice drink "cold water" that the Song people like to drink, similar to the "juice" in modern supermarkets. The difference is that the origin of this drink is the Arab region, which is a variant of the local popular "non-alcoholic beverage" - iced shedd, the main ingredient of which is sugar water plus purple ditin dew, banana dew, rose dew, mulberry dew and so on.
When the Mongols invaded Central Asia in the west, they first drank "Sheerbe" and brought it back to the Central Plains.
(Women's Drink)
The father and son of Kublai Khan, the ancestor of the Yuan Dynasty, took this sip well, and until the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, She'erbei was a common drink used by the royal family. Later, when the other drinking methods of the house were introduced into the society, ordinary people would also do it, and the formula was improved, and the "life guide" of the people at the time, "The Complete Collection of Things That Must Be Used at Home, Thirsty Water", recorded many kinds of thirsty water preparation methods. Because the production method is frying, the folk also changed the thirsty water to "XX frying", such as bayberry frying, grape frying, papaya frying.
Although the court's system is more exquisite, the best thirsty water is in the folk. After the thirsty water in many places made its name, it also became a tribute. For example, zhenjiang's "sherribe" was very famous, and its grape frying, papaya frying, and fragrant orange frying were all made as tributes and sent to the imperial palace.
(Concubine)
At that time, the most popular thing in the court was the thirsty water made of "Rimu". "Limu" is lemon, and the so-called "Limu thirsty water" is a lemon drink. In order to ensure the supply of Limu, the imperial court set up a special "Royal Orchard" in Guangzhou and planted 800 Limu trees, which shows the popularity and importance of lemon drinks.
However, China officially began importing beverages at the end of the Qing Dynasty.
At this time, a new type of drink appeared on the streets of China, "Dutch water". The so-called Dutch water is actually the soda that everyone often drinks now, which is also the earliest imported drink that entered the Chinese market, which is more popular than the current Coke. Xu Ke, a late Qing Dynasty man, has a detailed description of Dutch water in his "Qing Barnyard Banknotes and Diets"——
(Summer Break)
"Those made with carbon acid and tartaric acid or citric acid with sugar and other kinds of fruit juices, such as lemonade. At the beginning, our country called Western goods more known as the Netherlands, so it was called Dutch water, which was not created by the Dutch, nor was it produced in the Netherlands. Nowadays, the people of the country can make their own homes, and there are shops for passers-by to drink, and there are summers and early autumn. ”
From Xu Ke's account, it can be seen that there were already soda stores in the late Qing Dynasty, but they were all controlled by the Japanese. The late Qing Dynasty scholar Ge Yuanxu's "Miscellaneous Records of Shanghai Travels" records that the Dutch water in Shanghai was first brought to Shanghai by the Japanese, so most of the stores at that time were operated by the Japanese, and later, only in the cold drink shops opened by the Japanese could dutch water be bought.
(Song and Yuan Dynasty street food stalls)
In addition to Dutch water, the Qing Dynasty people would also eat "cold drink ice" in the summer.
Cold drink ice is a kind of ice cube, when walking on the streets of Shanghai in the summer, you can hear the shouting of cold drink ice everywhere, and selling ice has appeared on the streets during the Tang Dynasty. Dutch water was a high-end drink at that time, drunk by the rich, and cold drinks were a good summer snack for ordinary people in the lower classes, and the upper people did not eat them.
This kind of cold drink ice developed later, that is, the cheap "popsicles" that children often ate in the summer thirty years ago.
(Popsicle boxes that were common on the streets 40 years ago)