Taihu lake perch is the most famous, and these poems about food and nostalgia are quite allusive

Taihu Lake is the most famous perch, when the Western Jin Dynasty Jiangsu Wujiang people Zhang Han in Luoyang as an official, when the autumn wind blows, he remembered the lettuce, lettuce soup, perch people are enjoying the lettuce, perch, he said to his friend: "Life is precious in the right zhi, how can you be bound for thousands of miles to be famous!" He returned home. This is the grand statement of the resignation letter, and some people in later generations speculate that the political situation in the Western Jin Dynasty was unpredictable at that time, and Zhang Han was hurriedly away from the land of right and wrong under the pretext of missing his hometown. Sure enough, this was followed by the "Rebellion of the Eight Kings", with infighting among the magnates, tribal conflicts ensuing, and turmoil in the Central Plains for several years.

<h4>Author Zhou Wenhan</h4>

This story is not only about food and nostalgia, but also makes people so impressed that there are only a few people like Zhang Han after all, and more ancient literati and scholars are running on the road to becoming officials, which is rare to be so free. Zhang Han's move made "The Thought of the Perch" an allusion to homesickness, and later a good person impersonated a "Song of the Autumn Wind":

When the autumn wind rises,

Wujiang water perch fat.

Three thousand miles of home has not returned,

Hate is hard to look up to heaven and sorrow.

Zhang Han's hometown of Wujiang is named after the Wusong River, which originates from Taihu Lake, which was a large river about 20 miles long before the Yuan Dynasty, and the east plunged into the sea, and since Zhang Han, Wujiang has been famous for producing sea bass. Later, the Southern Dynasty Fan Ye wrote the "Book of Later Han And The Biography of Zuo Ci" recorded that at the end of the Han Dynasty, there was a Taoist monk named Zuo Ci who was proficient in magic tricks, and it is said that one day when Cao Cao feasted on the guests, "Today's group of sages, the mountains and treasures of the sea are generally complete, but it is a pity that there are few fish made of sea bass in the Song River in Wuguo", Zuo Ci said that this is easy to do, he wanted someone to take a copper plate filled with water, and put bait on the plate with a bamboo rod to fish, and in a moment he actually caught a perch, which surprised everyone, Cao Cao said that one fish was not enough, and Zuo Ci fished and fished another. They were all more than three feet long, jumping around alive, and Cao Cao personally went forward to make it into a fish powder and gave it to everyone at the banquet to eat. This is obviously a new legend and story during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and the admiration for the Songjiang perch should have begun from the "World Speaking New Language" to record Zhang Han's remarks.

Songjiang perch is a kind of breeding and hatching in seawater, growing and fattening in fresh water, inhabiting the coastal sea, spawning in the brackish and freshwater junction estuaries in early spring, and then migrating to the Songjiang River in the Huangpu River, feeding on fish, shrimp, etc., some can grow to half a meter long, at this time delicious and tight meat, the most delicious. Its body is spindle-shaped, with a wide and thin mouth, a large and flat head, and it looks like four gills (actually two gills), so it is also called "four-cheeked perch" in later generations. The "Chronicle of Nan County" said that when the Sui Dynasty Emperor went down to Jiangnan, the Wu people once offered the Songjiang Four Gills perch, and the Emperor praised after tasting: "Golden Bass Jade, Southeast Jiawei also", and later generations also had local officials make small perch at the time of the frost in August and September into the imperial palace, it is said that the flesh of the perch after frost is as white as snow and has no fishy taste.

"Zhang Han's golden sentence, five hundred years of wind and current!" Li Bai, a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, was familiar with the allusions of the sea bass, and when he traveled to Wudi, he specially stated that "this trip is not for the sea bass, and he loves the famous mountain into the middle of the mountain", he went to the famous mountain Dachuan monastery to find immortals instead of eating and drinking, and Bai Juyi of the idle ya lotte did not hide his tongue hobby: "There are still sea bass lettuce and vegetables, coming to spring or planning to go to Jiangdong.".

The allusion of "The Thoughts of the Perch" also spread abroad, and the Japanese monarch Saga Emperor Saga in the middle of the Tang Dynasty simulated Zhang Zhihe's "Fisherman's Words" wrote:

Hanjiang Spring Dawn Piece Cloud Qing,

Flowers on both sides of the strait fly brighter at night.

Perch, lettuce soup,

Dinner strike song with the moon line.

The admiration for sea bass reached a peak in the Song Dynasty, when the Song Dynasty literati took the world as their responsibility, made a name for themselves with poetry, and liked to trace the traces of celebrities everywhere, they not only continued to write poetry, but also began to shape Wujiang into a "cultural attraction". During the Northern Song Dynasty, the county seat of Wujiang was separated by the Wusong River, the water surface was quite wide, and at first it could only be traveled by ferry, and later in the eighth year of the Qing Calendar (1048), the local gentry raised funds to build a wooden "long bridge", because "shaped like a half moon, long as a weeping rainbow", also known as the Weeping Rainbow Bridge, the bridge deck was built with a weeping rainbow pavilion, which was later rebuilt into a 62-hole stone bridge with arches in the Yuan Dynasty. At that time, the Wusong River was a big river, and some poets described it as "five hundred steps of the rainbow, thirty thousand acres of Taihu Lake." Except for the Yueyang Tower, there is no such scene in the world. ”

During the Song and Yuan dynasties, many poets made a special trip to Wujiang because of the allusions of the thoughts of the perch. In addition to tasting perch and drinking fine wine, it is even more necessary to climb the Weeping Rainbow Bridge to enjoy the autumn colors, such as the famous calligrapher and painter of the Northern Song Dynasty, Mi Fu, who once wrote a poem:

Broken clouds a cave garden sail,

Jade broken perch cream broken orange.

Good new poems follow the mulberry,

The autumn color of the weeping rainbow fills the southeast.

Chen Yaozuo, a scholar of the Northern Song Dynasty Longtuge, also took a boat tour of the Wu River in autumn, leaving a poem "Flat boats can't bear to go to the shore, and the autumn wind is oblique to the perch town." During the Song Dynasty, Lin Zhao, wujiangzhi county, therefore built a cultural project on the river outside the east gate of the county seat, and built a "perch pavilion" as a scenic spot. The stone stele next to the pavilion is carved with portraits of Fan Li, Zhang Han of the Jin Dynasty, and Tortoise Meng of the Tang Dynasty in the Spring and Autumn Period, and Su Shi also wrote a poem of "Portrait of Wu Jiang Sanxian in the Drama Book" here, and later some good people also gave statues to three celebrities, calling this pavilion "Three High Pavilions".

In the Southern Song Dynasty, the restaurant in the capital Lin'an sold dishes such as perch and perch soup, so that the literati could experience the delicious taste of sea bass without going to Taihu Lake.

Unfortunately, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Huze River port around the Wujiang Long Bridge was mostly filled in and turned into land farmland, and the Wusong River in other areas was seriously silted, coupled with factors such as the treatment of waterways, the Wusong River became a small river with a fine flow, and most of the Perch in the Songjiang River could not migrate. Therefore, Chen Jian, a Ming Dynasty man, recorded that at that time, songjiang only had a kind of "cauliflower perch, only four inches long and four gills", and the half-meter-long "Songjiang perch" seen by the Song Dynasty people has disappeared. Since the 1970s, even the Komatsu River perch has been on the verge of extinction in the Wusong River and the nearby water system, and has only reappeared on people's tables after artificial breeding in the 21st century.

In addition to Songjiang "four-gilt perch", there are now several kinds of fish are also called "perch" by many people: the most common perch in the northern supermarket is actually scientifically called largemouth bass, also known as California perch, which is a freshwater fish native to the United States and Mexico, which has been widely farmed after being introduced to China in the 1980s, and is a very mainstream freshwater farmed fish, the price is relatively cheap, and the identification sign is a black horizontal stripe in the middle of each side of the body, from the head to the tail fin, Because the fry escape this fish now has wild populations in the rivers and lakes of the north and south.

When I traveled to Spain and Italy, I ate local dishes such as fried sea bass, and they mainly ate river bass and European tongue bass. It is native to northern Eurasia and is also found in rivers in Xinjiang, China. River bass are a common freshwater fish in Italy, produced in lakes in the north-central region, and are usually sliced and fried in flour, but also stewed, grilled and fried. Southern Europeans also often eat European tongue-toothed perch, which is a kind of delicate and delicious sea fish, which can be salted and baked to eat, can also be fried, boiled, steamed, some places in Italy also pay special attention to eating its liver, the main fishing in the wild from the Mediterranean sea and the Black Sea. Because of the high demand, after World War II, it became the first non-salmonid marine fish to be commercially farmed in Europe, and is currently mainly farmed in southern Europe and Turkey.

(Original title: Sea bass: Food and nostalgia)

<h4>Source: Beijing Evening News</h4>

Process Editor: tf008