Locusts, taxonomically belong to the locust family, orthoptera insects, commonly known as "grasshoppers", known in Taiwanese as "grass borers", there are many species, there are more than 10,000 species in the world, distributed in tropical, temperate grasslands and desert areas around the world. The body is clearly divided into three parts: head, chest, and abdomen, and the body is usually green, brown, or black. The large head, short antennae, and tooth-like gray-brown hard mouthparts are suitable for chewing the leaves of harder grasses, making them notorious agricultural pests. The dorsal plate of the forebreast is hard, the forewings are narrow and tough, covered on the thin hindwings, capable of flying, the well-developed hind limbs make it a master of jumping, the exoskeleton is hard, and the sharp sawbarbs on the tibia can be used as an effective defensive weapon. Its breeding method is achieved by two locust males and females. Locusts have a bursting personality, will bounce when frightened, and often feed on a grass root and young leaves, laying eggs in holes and living for about 6 months.
It has a longer history than humans and is closely related to human agricultural life. The shadow of locusts resounds like people's agricultural cultivation, and this has become an indispensable theme of literature, and people's descriptions of locusts appear in poems, such as "go to its borers, and their stingers" mentioned in the "Book of Poetry", "Descend this stingray, crop itch", writing about the harm of locusts to agriculture, expressing the disgust of hard-working farmers for it. With the development of the times, locusts as a natural disaster, people's understanding of it is constantly changing, from the early days of China's ancient nature worship represented by "witch culture", to the Confucian culture that considers whether the ruler's politics is clear or not, to the outbreak of peasant uprisings due to class oppression, and then to the ecological culture of harmonious coexistence, locusts are closely related to human social and economic development, and gradually formed a unique "locust culture".
Although a worm dies and a hundred worms come, it will doom manpower to natural disasters
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >1, the mysterious "witch culture"</h1>
Because the level of early understanding of nature was not high enough, human beings were often oppressed by nature, so they explained the sorcerer gods. People have developed a cult of the sun, moon, mountains, and rivers, believing that everything is spiritual, and believing that locusts are under the control of the locust god.
For the severe locust plague in ancient China, the ancients thought of various methods for this purpose, and the most important method was to sacrifice the locust god. The locust god refers to different theories, one refers to the famous Tang Dynasty general Fei Du, and the other refers to General Liu Meng. At that time, people were obsessed with the discussion of the locust god, in addition to setting up a temple for sacrifice and even setting up an altar for sacrifice, they were full of admiration and fear for such a god, which painted a color full of ghosts and mysteries to the early locust culture.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >2, the Confucian culture of heaven and man induction</h1>
Confucian thinkers such as Zi Si and Mencius advocated the idea of "the unity of heaven and man", and put forward the concept of the unity of heaven and humanity for the political cultivation of the monarch, that is, man should conform to nature. Dong Zhongshu of the Western Han Dynasty even specifically developed it into the theory of "heaven and man induction", associating various natural phenomena with the monarch's personal cultivation, believing that natural disasters such as earthquakes and eclipses, including locust plagues, and abnormal celestial phenomena were heaven's dissatisfaction and warning against the actions of the Son of Heaven. It can be seen that people regard the abundance of grain and the smooth flow of wind and rain as the result of the emperor's cultivation. Bai Juyi also described in the poem "Catching Locusts" an intellectual who was a first-class official who was at a loss in the face of the problem of locust hunting, lamenting that manpower did not work in the face of locust plagues. On the contrary, they believe that "good officials have good governance, and the government tends to locusts out of the country."
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >3, the political culture of the government forcing the people to rebel</h1>
As a result of the brutal political oppression and economic exploitation of the peasant class by the rulers in feudal society, the fruits of the peasants' labor were ruthlessly deprived, thus being forced to a dead end, which led to the outbreak of peasant uprisings. In fact, there is another important reason, that is, natural disasters. The locust plague is more seriously damaged by natural disasters than floods and droughts, and the locust plagues have caused agricultural harvest failures and peasants have fled their homes and places. At this time, if the ruler did not provide relief and appeasement to the people, but instead expropriated and violently, which inevitably led to sharp class contradictions and the outbreak of peasant uprisings.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >4, a harmonious coexistence of ecological culture</h1>
When the number of locusts increases, the ecological balance between humans and locusts is broken, and people have to exterminate locusts in order to survive. In the Tang Dynasty, some people began to eat locusts, and Bai Juyi mentioned in "Locust Hunting" that the hungry victims abandoned the feudal ideology of eating locusts in order to survive. At the same time, there are records that people have learned to use the natural enemies of locusts to kill locusts, and use flocks of finches to eat the larvae of locusts to avoid future troubles. To this day, with the progress of science and technology, people use the experience of locust extermination summarized in the past to make people and locusts coexist harmoniously in nature.
A pair of 100 dollars is best when the new taste is new
Today, locusts are a delicacy on our table, and people wash and fry them and eat them with wine. Commonly eaten species are the Chinese rice locust and the East Asian flying locust. This is not only true in our country, but also in the world as a food. The meat of locusts is soft and delicious like shrimp, and is often fried by major hotels and restaurants. Mexico has published a booklet in recent years called "Eating Insects," which concludes with a list of more than 40 insect dishes, including the delicious dish of sautéed locusts with green onions as bread sandwiches. Locusts are rich in nutritional value, rich in protein and a variety of vitamins, fatty acids and rich in trace elements. In addition, it also has valuable medicinal value for the treatment of tetanus, frostbite, and pediatric convulsions.
With the progress of social history, locusts have been given different meanings along with human social culture, and the green figures flying in the fields are now difficult to make farmers panic, but record stories of getting along with humans, conveying delicious messages, condensed into drug symbols in medical books, and evolving into part of human social culture.