The Chongyang cake of the cat powder Lu you | Meng Hui

Lu You's "Ten Rhymes of Huai Chengdu" is a cursive part

After the rise of the "cat lovers" in recent years, it was surprisingly discovered that Lu You became a "historical spokesman", and for those who overlapped the dual attributes of "love cats" and "home", "the creek firewood is soft and warm, and I and the tanuki slave do not go out" is the ancient famous sentence of this great poet.

Lu You also really likes cats, to what extent, in the poem, chongyang cake is called "color cat cake". He has a poem "Nine Days of Mountaineering Drinks" that goes like this:

Old Huai feels a lot of surprise at the festival, and the sick bones should be cold and like thin frost. The orange in the jade is still green, and the chrysanthemum on the color cat cake is yellow. After a few years of vain and unhappy, why look for a lost hat? It is easy to wake up and return to the twilight, and it becomes a pillow to burn incense alone.

On the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, according to the custom, the poet, together with his family and friends, took wine and dishes, climbed the mountain, and set up a feast at the top of the mountain for a drink. To our surprise and drooling, the main dish of their Chongyang feast was freshly cut raw fish shreds, which were crushed with orange puree formed by mashing new oranges instead of vinegar and sprinkled on the shredded fish to taste. Following the festive customs, chongyang cakes are also placed on the table to prepare for post-dinner sharing. However, this Time chongyang Festival in 1192, Lu You saw the "color cat cake", which was quite unique.

Traditionally, the cake noodles of Chongyang Flower Cake pay attention to the small decoration of the three-dimensional embellishment. This form began in the Song Dynasty, and Meng Yuanlao's "Tokyo Dream Record" "Chongyang" recorded: "One or two days ago, each one was sent with a flour steamed cake, and a small flag was cut with color." Mixed with fruits, such as pomegranate seeds, chestnut yellow, ginkgo biloba, pine nut meat and the like. He also made the shape of a lion and a barbarian king in powder, and placed it on the cake, which is called 'lion barbarian'. "During the Song Dynasty, Chongyang cakes can be made with rice flour or flour, usually made a day or two in advance, and each family must make a few to distribute to relatives and friends. When mixing the flour pulp or dough, the nuts of a variety of miscellaneous fruits that have just been marketed in the new autumn are sprinkled, so the flower cake at that time is actually a baguette cake.

On the cake noodles, small bunting flags cut from fragmented silk are usually inserted. However, the real high-grade flower cake, but also with rice or flour to pinch out a lion, and then pinch a Hu face, dressed in a bearded exotic king - the barbarian king, and show that the barbarian king is taming the lion, or he leads the lion to the state, so that this person and beast stand on the cake noodles of Chongyang cake.

Both the Tokyo Dream Record and the Dream Liang Record record that during the Northern Song Dynasty, on the day of the Chongyang Festival, the Kaibao Temple and Renwang Temple in Tokyo held a "Lion Club", and the monks in the temple sat on the lion-shaped pedestal and said, "The most popular tourists". In Buddhism, the lion is the mount of Manjushri Bodhisattva, while in religious art since the Tang Dynasty, the lion on which Manjushri rides is pulled by a Hu person, forming a fixed pattern. It is speculated that during the Northern Song Dynasty, the Chongyang Festival was associated with Manjushri Bodhisattva, and the specific reason is now difficult to understand.

However, the "Record of Dreams" said: "Hangdu does not have this meeting." "Lions" did not spread to Lin'an. However, the custom of arranging Manjushri mounts on Chongyang cakes continued and was further refined into "Lion Chestnut Cake": "The Honey Panning Bureau is molded into Lion Man with five-colored rice flour and clustered with small colored flags." Under the cooked chestnut meat pestle as a fine powder, add musk, sugar, honey and knead into small pieces of cake... The name is 'Lion Chestnut Cake'. This kind of festive pastry is a bit like today's chestnut flour cake, except that there is no cream, but on the cake surface stands lions and barbarian kings made of rice flour, and this group of pocket sculptures is surrounded by bunting flags.

According to the Mengliang Record, the masters of the sweet tooth shop at that time dyed rice flour in various colors to knead and mold the lion man combination, so the finished product was colorful, bright and pleasing to the eye. Perhaps, on the Chongyang cake that appeared in front of Lu You, the appearance of the little lion did not look much like a lion, but it was shaped closer to a small flower cat, which made Lu You, who was a cat fan, like it more, and he happily called it "color cat cake".

There is also another possibility, the human body responsible for buying flower cakes detected that Lu You was depressed and wanted to make him happy, knowing that Lu You loved cats, he specially let the sweetsmith master pinch a flower cat with five-colored rice flour, instead of the lion and the barbarian king, and squatted on the flower cake. Before ascending, he cut off a blooming yellow chrysanthemum, replaced the bunting flag, and planted it on the side of the flower cat, which not only responded to the season, but also conformed to the taste of the literati.

If this is the case, then this trick is very clever, Lu You saw that there was a colorful kitten on the Chongyang cake, surrounded by clusters of yellow chrysanthemums, his mood really improved temporarily, and then the inspiration was active, and he chanted the poem "Nine Days of Mountaineering Drinks". As long as cat fans see cats, they will be happy anytime and anywhere, and it is really a law that can withstand the test.