Spring Festival is the most important festival of the year in Chinese, and many families will begin to prepare New Year goods at the beginning of the Waxing Moon. Among them, melon seeds must be indispensable. When watching the Spring Festival Gala waiting for the bell at midnight, the "click" sound of melon seeds is like a clock reading seconds, when there are guests at home, bumping melon seeds can pull up the home, but also can hide the embarrassment of having nothing to say... So, watermelon seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, which melon seeds are the standard for your family's New Year?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > sunflower seeds turned out to be newcomers? </h1>
Many of our current families are equipped with sunflower seeds as standard for the New Year, but sunflower seeds are actually new to the melon seed family. Of course, pumpkin seeds are also, but pumpkin seeds can be regarded as its brother compared to the history of sunflower seeds. Pumpkin and sunflowers, both food from the Americas, were introduced to China in the first half of the 16th century. However, pumpkin seeds became popular earlier than sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds probably became popular from the late Qing Dynasty, and sunflower seeds probably became popular from the Republic of China period.
The earliest record of the widespread popularity of pumpkin seeds is recorded in the Guizhou "Xingyi Fu Zhi", Xingyi Province is rich in pumpkins, during the Xianfeng period, there were people who "filled vegetables with melons, harvested their seeds and fried food, instead of watermelon seeds." ”
Sunflower seeds are recorded as widespread, much later. In 1930, Heilongjiang's "Chronicle of Hulan County" recorded: "Sunflowers, edible seeds, there are people who talk about mu of seeds." "At the beginning, sunflower seeds were used as oil crops, the first snack to eat is actually Russians, with the opening of the Middle East Railway connecting China and Russia in the early 20th century, the atmosphere of sunflower seeds was brought into the northeast, and China had the habit of taking sunflower seeds as snacks."
However, the day when Sunflower Seeds really stood on the first seat of the melon family was actually in the late 1970s. Sunflowers are very salt-tolerant and suitable for planting in the north, and sunflowers can be planted to fertilize the field, and their stems are burned to ashes and boiled with water to dry and can be used as soap. As a result, in the 1970s, the treasure-filled sunflower was included in the national oilseed planting plan, and under the high-density technical training, the area under sunflower cultivation began to surge.
The planting area of sunflower seeds has expanded, the production has expanded, and people have paid more attention to it, studying a variety of ways to eat, raw, cooked, fried, boiled, sweet, salty, all kinds of sunflower seeds began to appear in the streets and alleys of non-staple food stores, mobile stalls. In the 1980s, many people can remember the scene of one or two sunflower seeds that sold for a few cents to a dime, wrapped in a triangle made of scrap newspaper. However, if compared with history, watermelon seeds are the real big brothers.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > watermelon seeds: you are all brothers</h1>
According to the Taiping Huanyu Record in the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, people began to eat watermelon seeds from the Song Dynasty; according to the description in the book, at that time, there was a local product called "melon seeds" in Youzhou, Hebei Province, which was very famous and paid tribute to the imperial court. The reason why there are melon seeds is because Youzhou is rich in a variant of watermelon - melon, also known as seed melon. This melon looks very similar to a watermelon, the skin is light green, there are flower strips, but it is slightly smaller than the watermelon, and the melon is yellow and white. The melon is named for its eating and seed content, and its seeds are black and red. The black melon seeds are black and shiny, the red melon seeds are rosy in color, and both kinds of melon seeds are thin and thick-skinned, and the crisp and oily are smooth, and after processing, they become a popular local snack. At that time, Youzhou was now Beijing, Hebei, and Liaoning, so Beijing and its surrounding areas were the hometown of watermelon seeds, and the habit of eating melon seeds Chinese spread throughout China from Beijing.
The custom of snorting melon seeds is unified from top to bottom in China, and everyone loves melon seeds. The Wanli Emperor "used fresh watermelon seeds to slightly add salt and bake them for use"; Pan Jinlian appeared on the scene to snort melon seeds "The woman sent Wu Da out every day, only under the curtain to taste melon seeds (the first time in "Golden Plum Bottle")," Lin Daiyu sniffed melon seeds while sniffing melon seeds, while smiling, and Baoyu's servants were playing Go or smearing cards while "sniffing melon seeds on the ground". According to a 1751 Jinzhou Customs report, "the tax situation in Jinzhou Haikou is all about melon seeds every year, and the sea ships are carried to the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, fujian and Fujian to sell, and their taxes and silver are about 12,000 or 10,000 taels per year, or even 20,000 taels."
Southerners sniff melon seeds, and northerners also snort melon seeds. In the south, the "Song of the Years", which is widely circulated in the Wuyue region, says: "Eat melon seeds in the first month, release harriers in February, plant underground seedlings in March, burn ingots on the grave in April..." In the north, during the Qianlong period, Pan Rongxi's "Jisheng in the Age of Emperor Jing" also recorded: "Selling melon seeds to relieve boredom, selling jiangmi liquor to hit the ice cup... With the sound of firecrackers, it is good to hear. ”
So, the long-established watermelon seeds, the sunflower seeds that came later, the maverick pumpkin seeds, which melon seeds are the standard for your family's New Year?