Wen | Wang Xifu
Illustrator | Zheng Li
The Manchu Han Full Seat is a kind of luxurious banquet held by large-scale mansions such as the eight halls of the capital in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty for the rich or the eunuchs and celebrities. It is a fusion of court cuisine and Zhuangguan cuisine, and in the capital is a banquet based on Lu cuisine. The dishes in this banquet set the rare animals of mountain treasures and seafood as ingredients, and the Cooking Techniques of Man han are combined, with rich varieties and complicated tastes, so it is known as "Manchu Han Full Table", mostly based on birthday banquets. The full table can last for three consecutive days, and each day is divided into three banquets: morning tea banquet, luncheon (main banquet) and dinner party (lamp evening), which is grand in scale and costs thousands of dollars.
Soup yellow croaker
It has been nearly a hundred years since the emergence of such banquets, and the culinary skills, etiquette culture and quality of the banquets are so fine and cumbersome that they can still be used as an example of banquet production in today's culinary world. However, because this kind of feast is taken from the rare beast Hai Wrong Mountain Treasure, most of them have been included in the list of carefully protected animals and plants by humans; coupled with the unprovoked variety of feast dishes, hundreds of waste, in the new era should have long been dead. However, in the decades of training chefs, the author has personally experienced the excellent quality and rich cooking techniques of the traditional Manchu and Han chinese full-table dishes, which should be regarded as treasures worth learning and preserving in the history of Chinese cuisine. Therefore, in the spirit of taking its essence and removing its dross, we can clarify the historical process and true face of the Manchu and Han Dynasties.
The Manchu Han dynasty is rumored to be false in legend
Mentioning "full of Han People", once made people stunned and amazed. That kind of whimsy, that kind of nothingness, that kind of bell ringing, that kind of extraordinary, is simply a heavenly court feast that does not eat fireworks in the world. The admiration of many experts, the quotation of scholars, the preaching of the inheritors, and the re-demonstration of the ability of the catering industry have confirmed the authenticity and reliability of such "feasts". However, in fact, the current publicity and proliferation of the Manchu han seat is already full of errors and gangs. In fact, many of the models of such a historical excellent banquet are made up out of thin air or pieced together by Zhang Guanli Dai and East and West.
It is necessary to take seriously all kinds of skills and cultural heritage of our country, rather than relying on hearsay and cloud mountain fog cover to achieve it, otherwise, a good inheritance will not only be hopeless, but also create a lot of "random bombs" with false heads and brains. A big country that can't hold a table of banquets will definitely be laughed at by the world.
The Manchu han seat is almost universally known in China. It is difficult for people who have really eaten the "Manchu Han Full Seat" in the early years to find it, but today's culinary circles have produced many Manchu Han Full Seat masters, some of whom have been employed in the Inner House Imperial Dining Room, some who have been employed in a certain imperial palace or a royal courtyard of a foreign province, some of which have been handed down from the ancestors to the present, some of which are the preaching of masters, and so on. In particular, the film and television about "Full Seat of Man Han" shocked people's eyes and ears, and it turned out that "Full Seat of Man Han" was so mysterious.
As a result, various "versions" of the Manchu Han full seat were reported on the Internet, and even the court banquet made for the emperor by the Imperial Dining Room of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was also falsely rumored to be the "Manchu Han Full Seat". For example, the "Mongolian Outer Domain Banquet" of the Bohol Hall, the "Banquet of the Courtiers" on the sixteenth day of the first month, the "Banquet of a Thousand Sorrows" of the Qianqing Palace, as well as the "Nine White Feasts", "Longevity Banquets", "Feasts of The Seasons", etc., all belong to the banquets within the Palace, and each banquet has a special name, and there is never a "Manchu Han Full Seat".
Chrysanthemum sauerkraut stove meat hot pot
In particular, in the Feast of a Thousand Sorrows, hundreds of dishes are listed. In fact, because of the thousands of people who went to the banquet at a time, it was impossible to entertain with hundreds of dishes. Some people have calculated that the feast of a thousand people is a table for every four people, and if there are a hundred dishes on a table, more than 100,000 dishes will be made, which is really a fantasy. In fact, the Feast of a Thousand Sorrows is just a kind of hot pot feast, just like today's "fast food".
The first-class noodle dishes at each table are: two hot pots, one plate each for pork slices and lamb slices, one plate for roasted deer tail and one plate for roasted lamb, four bowls of meat dishes, one plate for steamed food, one plate for stove food, two small dishes for screw box, two pairs of chopsticks, two bowls of shredded meat soup rice, and that's it. According to the hundreds of dishes that are now said by various "experts", the required chefs must have to hone their skills half a life before they have the opportunity to enter the imperial dining room to perform this heavy task.
Other experts directly prescribe meals, as if they were his own chef's feast. The dishes are varied, east, west, south and north, spicy and bitter, colorful, dazzling, and some even have "cashew chicken cubes" and "Cixi small nest heads". Needless to say how far away the Kangqian period was from Cixi, even during Cixi's reign, the imperial dining room did not dare to name The Little Nest Head after Cixi. There are also dragons and phoenixes in dishes, such as the "Phoenix Nest", an old hen that is cooked and stewed thoroughly in the food jar, waiting for the eater to take the entrance, presenting the empress dowager: phoenix nest. This was a big taboo at the time. In the imperial era of the Qing Dynasty, the names of the dishes eaten could be very vulgar, such as smorgasbord, knotty soup, stewed hangings, etc., which could be served to the emperor and the empress dowager to eat and drink, but they could not take the crowns of "Cixi" and "Dragon and Phoenix" on the dishes.
There are also those who refer to the famous large banquets in history as "Manchu and Han full banquets". Needless to say, before the clearance of customs, it is impossible to have a "full seat in Manchuria". At that time, the Manchus were a nomadic people living between the White Mountains and the Black Water, and their diet was much simpler than that of the han chinese in history. As early as the Zhou Dynasty, the Han people had a court feast. According to the Zhou Li Tianguan Shanfu, "Where the king's gift, eat six grains, eat six animals, drink six Qing, shame (same as "bread") with a hundred with twenty products, treasure with eight things, sauce with a hundred have twenty urns." "In the Sui and Tang dynasties and the Song Dynasty, the banquet was renovated, and the dishes were innumerable, except for the banquet that was combined with the full dish.
"Experts" can speak for themselves, but history will not go against the tide to let the rulers of the Qing Dynasty go to the Tang and Song dynasties to find a feast for the table. Even in the Qing Dynasty, I searched through the authentic historical materials, and I did not see any "Manchu Han full table" placed for the emperor in the internal affairs office and the imperial dining room. At that time, the Manchus were in power, and it was not allowed to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Han at the banquet. The Manchu cuisine is composed of the same table as the banquet, which is indeed not false, but there is no "Manchu Han full table" banquet title in the court.
Each banquet has customization and rules, unique history and reasons, are the needs of the royal or the ruler, so the unique name of the banquet, by no random call rumors. As for the long-term circulation of history, a certain chef or a celebrity said that the banquet has Manchu dishes or Manchu Chinese seats, this is idle talk, not history. These street talks of "Full Han Seats" have nothing to do with the official title of the Ouchi Banquet.
There are also some legends that the Qing court or the banquet that receives Qing palace officials is "officially called" the "Manchu Han full seat". For example, the most frequently cited example in the legend is the "Qing Dynasty Yangzhou Manchu Han Feast".
This banquet was a large banquet prepared by Yangzhou for the "Six Divisions and Hundred Officials" led by the emperor when Qianlong descended the Jiangnan. Since there was no such large banquet venue in the local area, the major temples and temples before and after yangzhou trading street were temporarily converted into kitchen restaurants to receive officials for dinner. The dishes are naturally similar to the Manchu dishes and Chinese dishes contained in the official banquets of the Qing Dynasty, but they do not dare to call them "Manchu Han Full Seats" in front of the emperor, and are used to receive the emperor in the temple. At that time, the Qianlong Emperor had the emperor's "imperial dining room" in Yangzhou, which was managed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and there were special chefs in the local area to serve, and its selection, production, meal transmission, and cooking were not something that ordinary people could casually intervene in. Let the emperor and the hundred officials sit in the temple and eat "big pot rice" together, only a genius who is good at "creation" can think of it.
There are also experts who argue that the "Suiyuan Food Menu" written by the famous Qing Dynasty literary scholar Yuan Ming is the "Manchu Han Full Table Recipe". The "Suiyuan Food List" was published in 1792 (the fifty-seventh year of Qianlong). The book is divided into fourteen aspects, including instructions, abstinence lists, seafood lists, river fresh lists, special animal lists, miscellaneous vegetarian lists, small menus, dim sum lists, rice porridge lists and vegetable and wine lists, and also puts forward twenty cooking operation requirements and fourteen precautions, and uses a large number of pages to describe in detail the 326 kinds of northern and southern dishes and rice spots that were popular in China from the fourteenth century to the eighteenth century, and also introduces the famous wines and teas at that time. The Suiyuan Menu is a reference material for improving cooking techniques, studying traditional dishes and cooking methods, but it is by no means a Manchu recipe copied everywhere. In fact, Yuan Ming can only be said to be a gourmet, not a cook, and he himself does not know how to cook.
The origin of the Manchu Han dynasty
However, in history, there is indeed a "Manchu han full seat", which is also not false, appearing in the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Cixi passed away, Guangxu died, in 1909, Xuantong succeeded to the throne, the Qing Dynasty was already lingering, and it was not easy to take care of it; in 1912, Yuan Shikai became the president; in 1916, Yuan Shikai became emperor; by 1924, the Beijing coup was successful, and Puyi was expelled from the palace. The political situation before and after was turbulent, and the Manchu and Han dynasties appeared around this period.
Ghee eggplant dragon
In the late Qing Dynasty, the great powers swarmed to invade, the front was tight, and the rear was "tightly eaten". The Qing Dynasty was crumbling, but the imperial court was more and more exertive. Every day, more than 100 kinds of dishes left over from the imperial diet are given to the next person. The method was to send the "holy dishes" given by the emperor directly to the nearby zhuangguans, such as the Huixian Hall, etc., and sell them for silver, and the imperial dining room and the eunuchs were divided equally, each with extra money. The princes, the kings of the counties, the belles, the beetles, and the nobles of the capital were so happy that they could eat the imperial feast every day.
Puyi ran outside Tianjin, the big inside was empty, and the imperial dining room was naturally dissolved. Those "grandfathers" who can eat the imperial meal in the eight halls, the hundred-footed insect is dead and not stiff, and they still want to eat the imperial food delicacies. Therefore, the eight halls took this opportunity to launch a large meal that can relieve hunger, known as "full of Han people", the time is in the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic. At this time, no matter how real and luxurious the Manchu han seat was, it was not a palace banquet, because the court was gone.
At the beginning of the Republic of China, the Qing Palace Internal Affairs Office and the Imperial Dining Room were destroyed, and the major palaces in the capital became the highest halls for banquets. Eight halls began to take the lead: Qingfeng Hall, Tianshou Hall and Fushou Hall in Dongcheng, Juxian Hall and Tonghe Hall in Xicheng, Fuqing Hall outside Fucheng Gate, Qinghe Hall outside Di'an Gate, and Huixian Hall in Shichahai.
The courtyard of the eight halls is wide, the houses are tall, the furnishings are elegant, with a stage theater building, you can sing the church, suitable for large-scale high-end birthday banquets, wedding banquets, worship banquets, and tail-burning banquets. Since the chefs of the Eight Halls are all from Huangxian and Jiaozhou in Shandong, and are the same as the chefs in the Imperial Dining Room of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the banquet regulations and dishes can be comparable to the palace banquets. Although this kind of banquet is not strictly regulated, it has also developed into a luxurious banquet generally recognized by the public diners on the rich table with different specialties, commonly known as the "Manchu Han Full Table".
The truth about the "Full Seat of Manhan" is very simple, but the "rumors" and speculations in society distort the truth, and many "experts and scholars" have made unfounded arguments, while film and television works have used artistic exaggerations to artistically process the facts. Not to mention that many court cuisine chefs who suddenly emerged claimed to have the experience and ability to make a full table of Manchu Han, and after a variety of internet rumors, this simple fact was stirred into the storm and shadowed.
★ The above content is excerpted from the August 2018 issue of Chinese Cuisine, welcome to forward to your circle of friends. All content of this WeChat account is unauthorized, please refuse to reprint, infringement will be investigated. If you need to reprint, please communicate in advance and obtain authorization before reprinting. When reprinting, please indicate the source and author's signature in a prominent position.
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Editor| Miss Owl