<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Han Dynasty warm wine bottles excavated from the ruins near Wuhua Shixiong Mountain, look at the aged wines of meizhou ancestors 2,000 years ago</h1>
From June to July 2011, in order to cooperate with the archaeological excavation of the Qinhancheng site in Wuhua Shixiong Mountain, the Guangdong Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology conducted an investigation and trial excavation of the area near the city site, and excavated a piece of warm wine bottle from the M1 Han Tomb on Hewu Mountain. Of course, the bottle is not a cooking vessel for burning warm wine, but a container, and the "warm wine" that is served is actually "mash wine" or "shochu wine", which is a kind of fine wine that is repeatedly re-brewed during the Qin and Han Dynasties, and follows the pace of the Qin and Han Dynasties to unify Lingnan, and has spread to the area of the city site where grains are abundant and rice and wheat are fragrant, and under the nourishment of the ancestors' own brewing and beautiful landscapes, it is mellow and sweet, full of wine aroma, and lasting fragrance. Such fine wine can not only be dedicated to the ancestral gods, to comfort the ancestors in the north, but also to soothe the lonely hearts of the wandering Lingnan in the city site area, and then inspire the ancestors of Meizhou to walk through the difficult spring, summer, autumn and winter together.
Start with the story of "Guan Yu WenJiu Chopping Huaxiong"
Weizhen Qiankun's first achievement, the Yuanmen painting drum sounded in winter and winter. Yun Chang stopped The valiant Shi was heroic, and the wine was still warm when Hua Xiong was chopped.
"Guan Yu WenJiu Chopping Huaxiong" is a classic plot in the fifth episode of the novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", and anyone who has read it should not forget the above poems inscribed by the author Luo Guanzhong, as well as the earth-shattering and moving story described.
It is said that in the last years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the world was in chaos. Cao Cao pretended to entrust the emperor with an edict and summoned the Eighteenth Route princes together with Yuan Shao to attack Dong Zhuo, but unexpectedly, Dong Zhuo's general Hua Xiong beheaded several generals in a row before the Shuishui Pass, which shows that whoever was sent to fight at that time would be sent to death in vain. At this time of extreme urgency and helplessness, Guan Yu responded with a voice, only to see that "his body is nine feet long, his hair is two feet long, His eyes are phoenix-eyed, his eyebrows are lying on his face, his face is like a heavy jujube, and his voice is like a giant bell." However, when Yuan Shao learned that the comer was a no-name pawn, only a horse archer under Liu Bei, he was almost driven out of the military tent, but fortunately Cao Cao saw the pearl and decided to let him try. Before going to battle, Cao Cao specially taught a cup of hot wine and drank with Guan Yu, but Guan Yu said: "If you pour the wine, you will come when you go." So he took out his knife and flew onto the horse. The princes heard the drums outside the guan and shouted loudly, such as the collapse of the heavens and the earth, the collapse of the mountains, and the panic of the people. Just as he was about to listen, the bell rang, the horse came to the army, Guan Yu Tihuaxiong's head, threw it on the ground, and "its wine is still warm."
The plot of "Its Wine Shangwen" is fictional, mainly to flatter Guan Yu's heroic style and magical killing skills, and to make the reader deeply impressed by Guan Yu who walked into the big scene for the first time, which actually has nothing to do with whether Guan Yu drinks or not, and has nothing to do with the temperature of wine. In addition, in the twenty-first episode of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the author also depicts the popular story of "Cao Cao cooking wine on heroes", which is also Cao Cao's gift of warm wine to people, but this time it is given to Liu Bei.
From this point of view, whether it is "warm wine chopping Huaxiong" or "cooking wine on heroes", in addition to the author Luo Guanzhong's intentional foreshadowing, there are also portrayals of traditional Chinese wine culture in the story, reflecting the ancient way of drinking. Of course, does this tell us that since the two Han Dynasties, Wei and Jin, people have to drink "warm wine" or "boiled wine", that is, there is a habit of hot wine and warm drinking? If this is really the case, then is the wine vessel excavated from the site near Wuhua Shixiong Mountain, named "Warm Wine Bottle" in the Han Dynasty, related to this drinking habit or fashion?
Han Dynasty Wenjiu bottles have been excavated from the ruins near Wuhua Lion Xiong mountain
From late June to mid-July 2011, in order to cooperate with the archaeological excavation work of the Qinhancheng site in WuhuaShixiong Mountain, and to find out the distribution of relevant sites in the surrounding areas of the city site, so as to clearly grasp the evolution of settlements and the changes in human-land relations in this area from the Neolithic period to the Qin and Han dynasties, the Guangdong Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology conducted a large-scale regional survey of the middle reaches of the Wuhua River where the city site is located, and carried out purposeful trial excavations of individual important sites found. Among them, the discovery and excavation of the HeWushan M1 Han Tomb (numbered HWM1) is the most important and valuable.
Hewushan M1 Han Tomb is located at the foot of the mountain on the northwest side of Hewu Mountain in Tagang Village, Huacheng Town, not far from the shixiongshan city site in the northwest, with a straight-line distance of about 400 meters. According to the "Chronicle of Changle County", Hewu Mountain, formerly known as Yueling Village, is a hill in a northeast-southwest direction, until the Qing Dynasty, there were still two pit waters originating from the northern mountains, flowing from the lowland between Shixiong Mountain and Hewu Mountain, and merging into the Wuhua River, that is to say, in the Qin and Han Dynasties, the city site was surrounded by a dense river network, and the east, west and south sides were surrounded by ancient Gaokeng water, ancient partridge pit water and Wuhua River. According to the analysis of the archaeological situation, the entire city site is planned and constructed according to the specifications of the ancient county town, Shixiong Mountain is separated by three trenches, which are obviously divided into three areas: the office, the workshop, and the grain storage area, while Hewu Mountain is the tomb area adjacent to the city site across the water.
Due to the influence of the villagers' construction of houses, the M1 Han Tomb of He Wushan before the excavation was seriously damaged, with a length of 4.6 meters and poor preservation. After cleaning, a total of 9 relics were excavated, namely pots, warm wine bottles, pot pots, urns, open bowls, cups, pottery mats, bronze staff heads, and iron tools. Judging from the tomb shape system and the relics excavated from the tomb, it is similar to the similar artifacts excavated from the Guangzhou Han Tombs M1007 and M1176, which belong to the medium-sized tombs, dating from the early Western Han Dynasty, and also have great similarities with the similar artifacts excavated from the adjacent Shixiong Mountain Qinhancheng site, and it can be determined that the two should be sites of the same period. Therefore, the He Wu Shan tomb area is an organic part of the site of Qin Han City on Shixiong Mountain, indicating that the entire site is not only the palace of the King of Nanyue "Changle Tai", but should be a complete city building in the Qin and Han Dynasties, where there are armies and fixed residents living and living for a long time. At the same time, the bronze staff head (or called the dove staff) excavated from the M1 Han Tomb of He Wushan is a symbol of status and power, generally awarded by the imperial court to the elderly staff, which also shows that the tomb is extraordinary, the owner of the tomb should be a local elder with prominent status, and the complete set of wine utensils in the tomb, such as pots, pots, warm wine bottles, cups, etc., highlights the good life of the tomb owner, should be an old nobleman. Of course, one of the wine vessels, the warm wine bottle, is particularly eye-catching, I believe many people want to understand clearly, since Luo Guanzhong in the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", there are many han and Wei period "warm wine" and "boiling wine" story description, then the unearthed this warm wine bottle may be used to warm wine.
From the record of the book "Wuhua Lion Xiongshan" compiled by Mr. Shang Jie of the Guangdong Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, it can be seen that the texture of the warm wine bottle is clay gray pottery, the surface of the vessel is glazed with brown glaze, the glaze layer is relatively thin, and it is made by wheeling and manual trimming. The upper part of the abdomen is a bird's beak-like and decorated with a circumferential pattern, while the middle of the abdomen is decorated with a zigzag grate dot pattern and an embossed zigzag pattern. The shape of the instrument is cylindrical, straight mouth, square lip, straight wall, flat bottom, no foot, caliber 15.6, bottom diameter 16, height 11.2 cm, similar to today's beer cup with handle. If it is excavated from the Mawangdui No. 3 Han Tomb in Changsha, Hunan Province, with a caliber of 13.8, a height of 15 centimeters, and a red lacquered book with a "seven liters" on the outsole, its volume is slightly smaller. According to research, in the Han Dynasty, the wine bucket was about 2000 ml today, and the Warm Wine Bottle unearthed in Wuhua could contain about the amount of wine between "six liters" and "seven liters" in Han, which was equivalent to the capacity between 1400 and 1500 ml today.
Two thousand years ago, the old wine of the ancestors of Meizhou - warm wine
The ancients have always liked warm wine, and judging from the many wine vessels unearthed by archaeological excavations, this is indeed the case. For example, bronzes in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, there are jue, horns, axes, cups, etc., the shape is deep abdomen, the abdomen is with three high pointed feet, combustible charcoal fire under the fire, used to cook wine warm drinks. For example, since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States period, bronze beast-shaped figures, copper or pottery pots with lifting beams, three-legged belt handles, and pots shaped like medicine pots can also be used to heat warm wine. In the Qin and Han dynasties, the use of wine to treat diseases was also very common, such as in the bamboo jane unearthed by the Qin and Han Dynasties, there are many medical records of warm wine as medicine. According to the Zhoujiatai Qin Jian No. 313 Jian Jian record: "Take the peach maple (beetle) ya (shit) less than half a liter in the first month, put it in the chun (alcohol) wine, warm, drink it, and make people not only (worried) sick." It means that in the first month, take the dung of the insects in the peach tree "less than half a liter", put it in the wine, and drink warm wine, you can ward off the plague. Although this epidemic prevention record seems to lack scientific basis today, the unexpected curative effect of warm wine as medicine has been mastered by the ancients. Because the wine itself is a sexual heat thing, after heating, it can play its own characteristics, when it enters the human body, it can accelerate blood circulation, improve the speed of metabolism, in order to facilitate the drug effect. It is no wonder that when the ancient artificial characters were made, they closely linked "wine" and "medicine", and the traditional character "medicine" of "medicine" was a "unitary" word below.
Of course, according to the above analysis and records, and from the literal sense of "warm wine bottle", it is easy to drink the wine after it is heated, which is understood as "warm wine", and the "warm wine bottle" is the instrument for warming or boiling wine. In fact, although most of the warm wine bottles currently unearthed have three legs, they are very short, and it is difficult to burn under them, and it is impossible to use them for warm wine. For example, in 1962, the Wenjiu Bottle excavated in Dachuan Village, Youyu County, Shanxi Province, has an inscription inscribed along the yin along its mouth: "Zhongling Hufu Copper Wenjiu Bottle, weighing 24 pounds, made in the third year of Heping (26 BC)", its foot is only 3 centimeters up and down, relatively low. Moreover, the similar artifacts unearthed in the Han Dynasty are often exquisitely crafted, or gilded with wrong silver, or inlaid with treasures and inlaid jade, and they cannot withstand the fumigation of charcoal fire. In addition, there are lacquerware warm wine bottles and flat bottomless pottery bottles, which are even more impossible to use for heating. Looking through the Han Dynasty portrait masonry, there is no pattern of fire at the bottom of the bottle. However, some experts believe that whether it will be warmed by boiling water, because the excavated warm wine bottle has found that there are many supporting circular instrument seats, called "bearing plate", or "bearing", just like a container with hot water or soup, which can be placed in the warm wine bottle, so that the whole bottle is heated and plays the role of warm wine. But the trays found so far are flattened, generally very shallow, and the opening is large, even if it is filled with hot water or soup, it will probably cool down soon, and it is completely impossible to warm the wine bottle on it, let alone the wine inside the warm bottle.
Therefore, Mr. Sun Ji, a famous cultural relics and archaeologist, believes that the warm wine bottle is not a thermostat, but a kind of exquisite wine holding vessel. The famous philologist and historian Mr. Tang Lan also has long had written research, believing that "wen" is the general falsehood of the word "mash", "warm wine" is "mash wine", and that mash wine is a kind of ancient "repeated rebreeling of many times", that is, the first brewed liquor is used as water, re-brewed with new fermentation lees, and constantly repeated brewing, so that the wine taste is more and more fragrant, the more brewed and more mellow. The reason why the ancients wanted to do this was to improve the purity (alcohol) of wine, because the wine in the pre-Qin period was a type of wine made of grain, the alcohol content was not high, and only by constantly rebreeding could it meet people's increasing drinking needs, so that the later colloquial saying "good things are resourceful, brewing and brewing", is borrowed from this. Because the wine is re-brewed with continuous feeding, the brewing time is long, the process is more complex, and the saccharification and wineization of the starch are also relatively sufficient, so the wine is clear, the wine taste is drunk, and the wine degree is also high, similar to today's Maotai and Wuliangye, such a high wine, in order to prevent the wine power from exerting too much, it is generally suitable for drinking at room temperature, or for frozen drinking. For example, Wang Yi's note "Chu Ci Da Zhao" is cloudy: "The wine of alcohol is clear and fragrant, and it is suitable for cold drinking." ”
This kind of warm wine was also known as "shochu" or "shochu" in the Han Dynasty. According to Han Xushen's "Explanation of The Interpretation of Texts", "酎, triple alcohol wine also." Qing Duan Yu's commentary: "It is said that the use of wine for water is also the wine of the heaviest, and the second time the wine of the heaviest is made of water, and it is the wine of the three folds." And zhang Yan's note in the "History of Filial Piety" is: "The first month of Dan is made of wine, and the month of August is formed, and the name is Yue." Pure words, pure also. In other words, "shochu" is a good wine that starts brewing in January and cannot be brewed until August, and is mainly used to worship the temple. For example, in the "Book of Han and The Chronicle of the Jing Emperor", Yan Shigu's ancient notes say: "Shochu, triple brewing, mellow wine, thick taste, so it is recommended for the Zong Temple." It is also recorded that such a re-brewed wine can even reach as many as nine times. For example, in the "Cao Cao Collection", there is the "Law of Playing the Nine Mash Wine", which says that in the first year of Jian'an (196 AD), After Cao Cao personally welcomed the Han Emperor to move the capital to Xuchang, he played the new winemaking method to the Han Emperor, and it should be said that this "Nine Mash Wine" must be a high-quality wine.
In fact, "酎" already appeared during the Spring and Autumn Warring States period. Because, since the Spring and Autumn Warring States, the ancients in the sacrifice of heaven and earth, sheji, zongmiao, there is a very important link, that is, drinking shochu, so the use of shosuke sacrifice has gradually become a ritual habit of sacrificing ancestral gods, which can not only highlight the dignity of the status of the son of heaven, but also from it to spy whether the princes are subordinate to the son of heaven, so it has been valued by successive monarchs. For example, during the reign of Emperor Wen of Han, it was stipulated that every August in the capital Chang'an, the temple of Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao, should be sacrificed, and all the princes and princes must go or send people to assist in the sacrifice, not only to offer shochu wine, but also to offer gold according to the number of people in the feudal state, and the "shochu gold" system was thus fixed. And whenever the princes came in to offer gold, the emperor also had to personally receive the gold, and if the gold offered was not good or the pounds were insufficient, the king immediately cut the county and the hou was exempted from the country. For example, during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, he once borrowed the tribute of gold to violate the "Golden Law", and deprived 106 marquises of their titles at one time, in order to weaken and attack the power of the princes and princes. This also shows that "shochu" or "shochu" must have been very important and indispensable in the minds of the Han Dynasty.
From this point of view, the Han Dynasty Wenjiu bottle excavated from the Wuhua Shixiongshan site is not necessarily related to the kind of warmed wine described by the author of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Perhaps Luo Guanzhong, who lived in the Ming Dynasty, is too far away from the Han Dynasty, and the content of wine culture described in his works refers to the warm wine habit of "Zhuzi Wen Bowl", which is made of gold, silver, copper or porcelain, that is, Zhuzi (wine pot) and warm bowl to warm wine. When used, the note is filled with wine, the warm bowl is filled with hot water, and the note can be put into the warm bowl to play the role of warm wine. In order to maintain the heat, the water in the warm bowl should be replaced at any time, and someone must constantly change the water during the feast, or "changing the soup", no wonder the "Water Margin" written at the end of the Yuan and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty is also "carrying a bucket of hot soup" Warm wine to entertain guests. This method of heating the injector or wine jug in hot water is also known as "hot wine" in the folk and has been passed down to this day.
The Han Dynasty wenjiu bottle excavated from the Wuhua Shixiongshan site is actually a high-grade wine container, and the warm wine or shochu wine contained in it is mainly used for sacrifice or banqueting. This kind of aged wine was originally popular in the Central Plains, but with the war of the Qin army to pacify Lingnan, and the many large-scale migration activities after the unification of Lingnan by the Qin and Han Dynasties, its brewing technology also spread to the Wuhua Shixiongshan area with abundant grains and fragrant rice and wheat, and under the nourishment of the ancestors' personal brewing and beautiful landscapes, it was mellow and sweet, full of wine and fragrant for a long time. Such fine wine can not only be dedicated to the ancestral gods, to comfort the ancestors in the north, but also to soothe the lonely hearts of the wandering Lingnan in the city site area, and then inspire the ancestors of Meizhou to walk through the difficult spring, summer, autumn and winter together.
Source: Meizhou Daily (The author is a professor in the Department of History, School of Political Science and Law, Jiaying University)
Related reading links: Wuhua Lion Xiongshan Qinhancheng site unearthed: the history of Wuhua stuffed tofu