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Recently, some cross-over novels and anime often have such a bridge section - the male protagonist gets rich by raising pigs and then changes people's eating habits. The reason why there is this bridge section is because there is a saying circulating on the Internet: before the Ming and Qing dynasties, pork was all cheap meat, and no one ate it. Then in the Ming Dynasty, people began to eat pork, and after the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, the Manchurian Group spread the habit of eating pork to the whole country because of the influence of living habits.
Therefore, many novelists have come to the conclusion that ancient China did not eat pork.
But did ancient China really not eat pork? wrong! First of all Chinese pig breeding history is very early, and a large number of pig bones have been found in the Neolithic sites in Wuyang, Henan. These pig bones belong to the domesticated domestic pigs, the Jiahu site cultural layer is 9000-7000 years old, so the history of pig breeding in China has a long history, and in Zhejiang Hemudu site and Liangzhu site have also found a large number of pig bones, the form has been different from wild boar. In the Liangzhu cultural site, the bones of the whole domestic pig used for sacrifice have also been found, and it can be said that the domestic pig was a very important livestock at that time. Judging from some sites of the Liangzhu culture, the more large settlements of the core level, the more pig bones there are, and the more marginal small settlements, the fewer pig bones.
▲Liangzhu culture pig bone
▲ JiaHu ruins pig mandible
Pork was still popular during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and in the Zhou Dynasty literary works, the Book of Poetry contained the words: "There are white and white, and the stones are involved in the waves" ("Xiao Ya Gradual Stone"),and there are also words such as "Clinging to the Prison, Using the Dagger at Discretion, Eating and Drinking, and The Emperor of the Emperor". It mentions raising pigs for food and sacrifice.
As for why pigs should be sacrificed, the Huainanzi Feng Commentary says: "For those who are animals, they can be virtuous to wild beasts and elk." And the gods are alone, why not? It is thought that the family of the wanderer is a common animal, and the things that are readily available are also".
▲ Pigs
This suggests that pigs were common domestic animals at the time and were important animals for sacrifice. In the past, pigs, cattle and sheep were collectively called the three animals.
In the Han Dynasty, the famous "Xiang Pig Sutra" taught people how to choose pigs. The Yi Da Animal Liu Wu Jie Ci has a record of the Tooth Ji of the Feng Feng. In the "Sayings" there are 豮, 羠豕也. From the jackal, the voice. Translated into today's words, it means castrated pigs. So the technique of castrating pigs has been around for a long time, and one of the reasons is to get the pigs fattening up quickly. In the Han Dynasty, Zhujian also had many records of pork transactions. The Juyan Han Jian records that during the period from the third year of Emperor Wu's reign to the sixth year of Jianwu in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the local pork price was 700 yuan (five baht) for 100 catties of meat. In the Han Dynasty, a pound was only equivalent to half a catty today, and the price of the domestic helper at that time was between 400-1200 yuan per month, so pork was not cheap, nor was it the so-called sacrifice that no one ate.
▲Nguyen Nationality
Eating pork was particularly common during the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and Ruan Zhi liked to eat steamed porpoises, and there were also some practices of steamed porpoises in the Qi Min Zhi Shu:
A good fat porpoise, clean the dirt, cook it half-cooked, and stain it with soy sauce. A liter of raw forest rice, do not let it near the water, thick soy sauce stained rice, make yellow, cook rice, and sprinkle it with soy sauce. Finely cut ginger, orange peel 1 liter each, green onion white (three inches) 4 liters, orange leaves 1 liter, co-authored, densely covered, steamed two or three cooked for a long time. Compound with three liters of pork paste, one liter of soy sauce, and cook it.
Judging from this practice, it is certainly not eaten by ordinary civilians, and Northern Qi is not far from the Tang Dynasty, so it is impossible for the Tang Dynasty nobles not to eat pork.
▲ The ancients killed pigs
In the Tang Dynasty, the prince went down to the Erpin official and supplied twenty sheep and sixty catties of pork every month. There is also a verse in the Quan Tang Poems that reads, "Steamed Porpoise and Garlic Sauce.". In the Tang Dynasty, there are also records of steamed pork shoulders in the Tang Dynasty.
During the Sui and Tang dynasties, it was influenced by nomadic herding, which led to the popularity of mutton among the nobles in the late Tang Dynasty, and the Song Dynasty imperial palace only used mutton. As a result, many people concluded that people did not eat pork at that time based on the fact that the Song Dynasty Imperial Palace only used mutton, but from the notes written by the Song Dynasty people at that time, "every flock of tens of thousands" of pigs poured into the city to "kill pigs in alleys" and "fangxiangqiao city, there were meat cases." Pig farming was still common at that time.
In the fourth year of Chunhua (993), The Gyeonggi people Mu Hui struck the Dengwen drum and claimed that the domestic slave had lost 1 of his boars, "the edict gave a thousand dollars to pay for his straight, which shows that the price of pigs was not low at that time."
▲ Dongpo meat
"Huangzhou good pork, the price is as cheap as dirt." The nobles refuse to eat, and the poor do not cook." Su Shi said that the price of pork is very low, the rich are not willing to eat, the poor are not willing to cook, mainly because the population of Huangzhou was relatively small at that time, for the rich pork is naturally not as good as mutton to show identity, while the poor pork is still somewhat expensive. Although Su Shi degraded officials, but the good gangsters had savings that were not comparable to ordinary civilians, it was naturally difficult to fully understand ordinary civilians from his point of view.
In general, as a domestic animal that has been raised for more than 8,000 years, it does not make sense that the ancient Chinese did not eat pork. Some authors of marketing numbers and through novels quote passages without making inquiries, and when they really do not learn and have no skills, Huo Guangchuan must not read them.
This article is the most beautiful original manuscript in history. Editor-in-chief Gun Jun, author of two-tailed cat. Some of the image sources are online, if you have copyright questions, please contact us.