ginseng
When learning about the history of the Ming Dynasty, it is very interesting to stumble upon ginseng, we all know that ginseng is produced in the Changbai Mountain area of northeast China, and Jurchen is up in the northeast, and the ginseng trade with the Ming Dynasty played a very important role in the process of destroying the Ming Dynasty, and we are ready to learn more about the "past" of ginseng. Talking about ginseng is no stranger, because the folk legend of ginseng is all kinds of legends about ginseng, that ginseng will become sperm after growing up for more years, and some say that wild ginseng will "run" and other magical sayings, it can be said that this will deify ginseng; even in terms of curing diseases, it is also believed that ginseng always cures all diseases. In fact, ginseng has today's "body value" is the historical reasons, cultural factors and ginseng itself and other factors have contributed to our understanding of ginseng today.
The scientific value of ginseng is not introduced here, focusing on the history of ginseng from an ordinary plant to an expensive tonic;
According to the relevant literature, the earliest records of ginseng are derived from some works similar to theology, "the stars are scattered and the ginseng is scattered, and the benefits of the people's waste mountain reading are not clear, and the ginseng is not born", which is from the book "Spring and Autumn Latitude", which is a group of works of the Weishu with ideas such as gasification theory, yin and yang five elements theory and heavenly induction theory, chiseling, attaching and deducing the Confucian classic "Spring and Autumn". The frequency of citations is very low; the description of ginseng is purely to see the ginseng form like a human association, that ginseng is the same as the elixir is a kind of "sacred herb"; the earliest record of ginseng's medicinal value is written in the Qin and Han Dynasties "Shennong Bencao Jing" (unfortunately the original book in the Tang Dynasty, now collected from other literature), the book believes that the role of ginseng is "the main life to respond to the heavens, non-toxic, take more long-term service does not hurt people, want to lighten the body and prolong life", its pharmacology is "the main to supplement the five viscera, calm the spirit, and fix the soul." , stop the throbbing, get rid of evil qi, blind, happy, puzzle". Translated into the vernacular, ginseng is something that can be eaten to prolong life, eat more is not a big problem, there is no disease can be eaten; this is basically similar to today's health care products. The book does not highlight ginseng, and it has a similar effect and says more than a hundred kinds of it; the Eastern Han Dynasty's "Treatise on Typhoid Fever" (according to Zhang Zhongjing's "Treatise on Typhoid Fever and Miscellaneous Diseases") explains the role of ginseng as "the main treatment of the heart is strong, the side treatment is not eating vomiting, etc."; the prescriptions recorded in the book also involve ginseng, and basically believe that ginseng has medicinal value. Later, like the Song Dynasty's "Zhujia Materia Medica" and the Yuan Dynasty's "Medicine Law", ginseng has medicinal value. But until the Ming Dynasty ginseng "value" is not high, mostly used as a gift to give people, just like today's goji berries, dandelions, both food, but also a certain medicinal value. Su Shi, the great poet of the Northern Song Dynasty, once juxtaposed ginseng with red dates, and also measured in pounds, which basically determined that ginseng is an ordinary gift, "only send more dried jujube ginseng for hope!" If there is no need to send people, how can we work hard to plant them? In the Ming Dynasty, especially in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the "value" of ginseng rose rapidly; it became a rare treasure. Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" (written in the Wanli years) has played a very important role in this regard, believing that ginseng can cure "fever and sweating, dizziness and headache", and "tuberculosis, slippery diarrhea for a long time", and even more powerful is that "ginseng cures all deficiency diseases of men and women", which directly pushes ginseng to the status of "panacea", a ginseng cures all diseases, ginseng is dug up in large quantities, the amount of human parameters is gradually scarce, and the value will naturally be high.
Ginseng leaves
Before the middle and late Ming Dynasty, ginseng was a very common plant and grew in a relatively wide area, but in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, because ginseng was considered to be a rare treasure, ginseng gradually became rare to the point of extinction, and wild ginseng could only be found in some inaccessible mountains. So much so that when ginseng is mentioned today, it is believed that it is produced in the Changbai Mountain area in the northeast.
In fact, the ginseng taken in ancient times is Shanxi's Shangdang ginseng (mainly in the present-day Shanxi Changzhi Taihang Mountain), although there are many ginseng, but there are also some fine products, there is a variety of Shangdang ginseng called purple ginseng, which is very valuable, "Mengxi Pen Talk" there is Wang Anshi who has asthma and needs purple ginseng into medicine, friends sent a few or two, but Wang Anshi resolutely did not accept, "there is no purple ginseng in life, but also live to today", at that time the purple ginseng should be more expensive; but for ginseng as a whole is still considered an ordinary plant; until the Ming Dynasty Jiajing years Ginseng is still a very low commodity, a pound of ginseng as long as silver one dollar and five cents. In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, with people's fanatical love for ginseng, the ginseng in the northeast was directly excreted, and the ginseng in the northeast was gradually valued; by the Wanli year, it was only one or twenty years, and one pound of ginseng rose to about three or two silver. According to the "Compendium of Materia Medica", the reason for the price increase is the decline of the Shangdang ginseng industry, and only ginseng from Liaodong is left on the market: "Shangdang, now Luzhou also." The people take ginseng as a local harm and do not take it again. All those who use it today are Liao ginseng. "By the time of Chongzhen, the price had reached 16 taels of silver per catty, which was one price a year. Therefore, there is a saying that the rise of Jurchen has a lot to do with the ginseng trade with the Han people, so that the ginseng trade between Jurchen and the Ming Dynasty is a major economic pillar; Jurchens have also had ginseng in tribute many times, and there were many ginseng in northeast China at that time. Wanli eleventh to Wanli twelfth year of a year, the Ming Dynasty government to buy ginseng to pay thirty thousand taels of silver, in order to reduce the price of ginseng, the Ming Dynasty closed the border trade channel with the Jurchens, Jurchen ginseng can not be exported resulting in a large number of rotten hands. When the Qing army officially entered the Central Plains to replace the Ming Dynasty, the ginseng trade was still firmly controlled in the hands of the Qing royal family, because the northeast was the "land of Longxing" of the Qing Dynasty, and ginseng was artificially deified, and there was a story in the legendary novel "Five Elements of Guangdong Ancient and Modern" of sui and Tang Zhiwei: "When Emperor Wen of Sui was in the party, he heard the cries of people every night after the house of the Shangdang, and he could not ask for it. Go to the house for a mile, see the ginseng branches and leaves abnormal, dig into the ground five feet, get ginseng, just like the human body, limbs are prepared, the cry is extinguished." This will basically be considered that ginseng is a symbol of the royal family, both produced in the northeast, ginseng itself has a beautiful meaning, the Qing Dynasty is bound to control the people to dig up the northeast ginseng and ginseng trade, which directly pushed up the price of ginseng to further rise; in the early Qing Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty in the northeast set up a special ginseng organization "livestock Ula general manager Yamen" to manage the northeast ginseng, if someone steals, indiscriminate mining directly arrested; to the Qianlong years also set up a "official participation bureau" to manage the ginseng industry, only with the official license can enter the mountains to collect ginseng. However, there are always people with extremely high profits of ginseng who risk going to Changbai Mountain to steal ginseng, and the amount of human parameters is getting less and less; this monopoly of ginseng collection and trade in the Qing Dynasty directly pushed up the price of ginseng on the market, and by the middle of Qianlong, the price of ginseng had reached 600 to 800 silver / jin; during the Jiaqing period, it broke through to 2000 two silver / jin. Most of the profits of ginseng went into the pockets of the Qing royal family, because ginseng was basically a monopoly operation. Ginseng is basically for the royal family and nobles and other people with status to eat, which has played a leading role in the people, when the general people eat ginseng that feels very good, this stuff is generally eaten by rich people, will definitely think so.
Also in the Qing Dynasty, China's fanatical love of ginseng eventually led to the export of foreign "American ginseng" to China, which seized the market share of ginseng, but the import of American ginseng is getting more and more every year, if the momentum of this development continues, it will not take many years for wild ginseng and wild American ginseng to become extinct, which will give birth to artificial breeding of various ginseng to meet market demand.
There is also a reason for the high price of ginseng, that is, the psychological effect of people; with the deification of ginseng, as long as the patient eats ginseng to cure the disease, he will not think that the doctor's medical skills are not home or prescribe the wrong medicine, but that his patient ginseng is not cured. This is the psychology of "good goods are not cheap, cheap goods are not good goods", and doctors are also happy to prescribe ginseng to patients. Qianlong once mentioned in the "Treatise on Ginseng" that the people were superstitious about the efficacy of ginseng because of the high price of ginseng, "The reason why the husband doctor uses it when he encounters a disease, and the death of the sick family without regret, why not?" Cover the hearts of fools, all of them are good medicines with high prices, and inferior drugs with low prices. ”
Ginseng's "counterattack life" is quite "inspirational", in the Song Dynasty it is also compared with red dates, and to this day it has been worth a lot, and the history of ginseng development has also left traces of the development history of the Chinese nation.