According to the New Book of Tang, Jingcheng County, Cangzhou, Hebei Province, Jiangling County, Jiangling Province, Shannan Province, and Guangling County, Yangzhou, Huainan Province, all have records of "Tugong" and "Sugar Crab", revealing the dietary preferences of Emperor Tang and his palace dependents. Song Huang Tingjian's poem "Ciyun Shi Hou Crab Eater": "I comment on the Yangzhou tribute, this thing is really wonderful", thinking that crab is a kind of food that "boasts about teeth and jin" and "tastes very pleasant", used for tribute, extraordinary, and there is nothing to reach.
In addition to eating sugar crabs, emperor Tang Xuanzong Li Longji also liked to eat boiled crabs, that is, he cooked and ate the fresh raw crabs offered from all over the country, and he and his palace relatives could not eat them and often gave them to the ministers, Du Fu's "Li Ren Xing" "Huangmen Fei Fei Did Not Move The Dust, and the Imperial Kitchen Sent Eight Treasures", the delicacies sent should include raw crabs, because his chancellor Li Linfu gave the minister a plate of raw crabs in the form of "chen Zhiyu's documents".
In particular, the story of the Gong Crab of Pingyuan County contained in Volume XVII of the Tang Duan Chengshi "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks":
Pingyuan County Gongtang crab, mined in the river boundary. Annual tribute. Ice, fire, hanging old dog meat is floating, because of it, one piece is worth a hundred gold. Bound to the stagecoach with felt, galloping to Beijing.
The magistrate of Pingyuan County paid tribute every year to the imperial chamber with fresh crabs in a pond, which was harvested in Hejian County between the Yellow river and the Yongding River in present-day Hebei Province. Early cold in the north, how to harvest it? Drive the people to chisel the ice, hold a fire at night, and hang the old dog meat in the water to induce the crab to float up, so a pond crab is worth hundreds of gold. For the sake of the freshness of the crabs, they are immediately wrapped in felt, driven to the horse, through the post road, fast horse and whip, day and night, and quickly transported to the capital Chang'an. Legend has it that Yang Guifei liked to eat lychees, lychees were easy to deteriorate and rot, Tang Xuanzong ordered people to quickly transport horses from afar from afar, "Chang'an looked back at the embroidery piles, the mountain top thousands of doors opened, a red dust concubine laughed, no one knew that it was a lychee coming" (Du Mu's "Passing Huaqing Palace"), in comparison, the lychees were good, the winter crabs were difficult to pick, but they collectively reflected the highest feudal rulers to satisfy their appetites, at all costs.