Chapter 34 Lecture 54

"Whoever dominates the world eats the world." The emperor ruled the world and ate delicacies from mountains and seas, fresh and rare food all over the world.The institutions that manage court meals are mainly Shangshanjian and other institutions in Ming Dynasty.The headquarters of the Qing Dynasty is the imperial tea dining room, which is located in the east of Jianting.There are three main sources of food for the imperial court: tribute, buying, and planting. One said tribute.Ming Shanglin Garden was an important supplier of court food.In the early Ming Dynasty, fragrant rice, ginseng, rice wine, etc. were tributed from various places, and yellow cattle, molasses, fruit, preserved bean curd, ghee, tea buds, japonica glutinous rice, and corn were tributed near Nanjing. ("History of the Ming Dynasty Shihuo VI" Volume 82) The staple food of the imperial diet of the Qing emperors - whole grains include: sticky sorghum rice noodles from Northeast China, Feiluo white noodles from Shanxi, purple wheat from Shaanxi, jade wheat from Baoji, Lanzhou, Xi'an Dried noodles from Shandong, stretched noodles and Bofen from Shandong, Gexianmi from Guangxi, Yumai noodles from Henan, buns with Fushou characters from Hebei, Geng cakes from Shandong, and green cakes from Anhui.In Beijing, only yellow, white, and purple old rice from Yuquan Mountain, Fengze Garden, and Tangquan are used.In terms of non-staple food, there are suckling pigs, suckling sheep, chickens, pheasants, and ducks from Zhili, yellow croaker from Chongwenmen every spring, whitebait from autumn, asparagus from Baodezhou in Zhili in winter, and unicorns from Shandong. Vegetables, kelp, seaweed, auspicious vegetables, shark's fin, air-dried pork, bad goose eggs, bad duck eggs from Lianghuai, dried whitebait and dried shrimp from Huguang, dried venison from Mongolia from Outer Fan, pigs from Changlu Yanzheng, Sheep, chicken, duck, fish, etc.In terms of side dishes, there are lentils and anchovies from Shandong, pickles from Zhejiang, side dishes from Jiangsu, minjiang from Fujian, etc.

Tribute fresh fish such as Jiangsu Zhenjiang tribute shad.Shad is a special product in Nanjing and Zhenjiang today.Every spring, it goes up the river, and in early summer, it migrates and throws seeds.Shad is scarce, delicious and tender, and expensive. It was a tribute in Ming Dynasty and followed by the Qing court.Every year, the first net of shad is sent to the emperor for a taste.When the peach blossoms were in full bloom, the court held a "Shadfish Banquet", and the emperor gave the important officials of the court to taste it together.After the shad is caught, ice boats and fast horses are used to divide the water and dry roads. Ice cellars and fish farms are set up along the way to keep fresh. The journey is three thousand miles and the delivery is limited to three days.Cook the anchovies as soon as they arrive.The folk song says: "It takes less than three days for a journey of three thousand miles to know how many people and horses will be killed. It is nothing to say that horses hurt people and die, but only good fish are presented to the Holy Lord."

Gong Xian Guo In the eighth year of Tianshun (1464) in the Ming Dynasty, the materials of Guanglu fruit were more than 1,268,000 catties. (Volume 82 of "History of Ming Dynasty Shihuo VI") the later figures are roughly similar.The number of Qing Dynasty is also very large.There are exceptions for the queen mother, concubine, prince, princess, etc.For example, the queen has two baskets of fresh fruit every day, ten sweet peaches, apples, autumn pears, red pears, and Tang pears each, three catties of grapes, two taels of stuffed peach kernels, and three taels of black dates.Orchards and local officials from all over the country pay the fruit.For example, General Shengjing sent 1,000 fragrant pears, and the admiral of Gansu sent 60 cantaloupes, etc.

During the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, Suzhou weaving Li Xu and others paid tribute according to seasons: in spring, they paid tribute to Biluochun tea; in early summer, they paid tribute to Suzhou loquat fruit;In October of the thirty-seventh year of Kangxi (1698), Li Xu submitted to the Qing Palace: "Two barrels of bergamot, two barrels of citron, two barrels of litchi, two barrels of longan, two barrels of lily, and two barrels of green fruit. Two barrels of papaya, one box of sweet-scented osmanthus dew, one box of rose dew, one box of rose dew, and one jar of spring wine."

The second is to buy.For some things, the government pays for it, and the shops buy it, but they often pay on credit. "Bought from a shop in the capital, the price is paid from time to time, and the market is burdened." ("History of Ming Dynasty Shihuo Six" Volume 82) There are two short stories about the cost of palace purchases. Emperor Longqing of the Ming Dynasty wanted to eat flan one day, and spent 50 taels of silver on the next day for making pasta, peeling dried fruit, and making sugar in the imperial dining room, which was close to a year's salary of a county magistrate.Emperor Longqing said with a smile: "You can buy a large box at the gate of Donghua with only five cents of silver." It turned out that when he was a prince, he already knew the price of flan in the market. ("Two Kinds of Autumn Rain Essay")

One day Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty summoned Wang Youdun, a senior scholar, and asked: "Qing Mei is so happy to go to court, have you ever used dim sum at home?" Wang replied: "My family is poor, and I only eat a few chickens every morning." "One chicken costs ten gold, and four chickens cost forty gold. I don't dare to be so indulgent, but you say you are poor?" Wang Youdun didn't dare to speak bluntly, so he replied cleverly: The chickens sold in the market are all Broken ones, I bought them cheaply, only a few pennies each. ("Spring Ice Murano Ride") things are not unique.Emperor Guangxu had to eat four eggs a day, and the price offered by the imperial dining room was thirty taels of silver. ("Nanting Notes")

Three kinds.Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty farmed in Xiyuan (now Zhongnanhai), and Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty also farmed in Xiyuan.He set up a paddy field in Xiyuan Fengze Garden, planted rice, and harvested it every year.He also has fields to grow crops in the summer resort.tell a story.One day in June, Emperor Kangxi was walking by the rice field in Xiyuan, when the rice had just started earing, he suddenly saw a tall rice plant with full grains, he plucked off the ears of rice and brought them back to the palace.Sow next year, this kind of first ripening.So the ears of rice were cut off and replanted.Year after year, life is endless.This kind of rice is reddish in color and long in grain, fragrant and delicious. It is cooked twice at one year old and is called "Royal Rice". (Xuanye's "Jixiagewubian·Royal rice") Emperor Kangxi said: "For more than forty years, all the food in the house has been this rice." .The Qing Dynasty opened up paddy fields in Yuquan Mountain and planted imperial rice.This is the origin of "Jingxi Rice".Later, Emperor Kangxi ordered officials to promote it in Tianjin and improve the alkaline land, which was successful.This is the source of "Xiaozhan Rice" in Tianjin.Of course, rice planting in the royal garden is just a symbol.

Tableware.As the saying goes: "Gourmet food is not as good as beautiful utensils." Palace utensils are extremely exquisite, expensive, and have a wide variety, such as gold, silver, copper, tin, porcelain, lacquer, jade, horns and other utensils, as well as enamel, ivory, jadeite, agate, etc. , glass and other materials.Among them, there are 307,000 Ming palace meal utensils made by the Ministry of Industry in Nanjing, golden dragon and phoenix white porcelain made in Raozhou, Jiangxi Province, and vermilion meal boxes made in the inner court. (Volume 82 of "Ming History·Shihuo VI") such as golden pots, gold cups, gold plates, emerald bowls, agate bowls, etc. used by the emperor.There are also five-piece tableware sets: (1) gold-plated copper body and cloisonné enamel Wanshou Wujiang bowl, (2) gold spoon with sapphire handle, (3) chopsticks (chopsticks) inlaid with sapphire and gold, (4) fruit fork with gold inlaid red sandalwood, ( 5) Qianlong style sheath knife with gold body and enamel handle. ("Qing Palace Life Illustrated") The above-mentioned tableware can be seen.

Royal chef.There were more than 6,300 cooks in the Ming Palace in Hongxi and nearly 8,000 in Chenghua. (Volume 82 of "History of Ming Dynasty Shihuo VI") reached more than 9,400 people at most.Chefs of the Qing palace were less than those of the Ming Dynasty.Chef rules, very strict.For example, in the Ming Dynasty: "When making imperial meals and violating the food prohibition by mistake, the cook will receive one hundred sticks; if the food is unclean, the staff will be given eighty sticks; The Great Ming Huidian, Volume 129) The court chefs of the Qing Dynasty came from four aspects: one is the Manchurian chefs brought in from "Entering the Pass from the Dragon".The second is the Shandong chef who followed the Ming Palace.The third is the southern chefs from Huaiyang, Suzhou and Hangzhou brought back during the Kanggan Southern Tour.Later, Emperor Qianlong asked someone to cook a certain meal.The fourth is the chef selected by the emperor and empress according to their food preferences.For example, Emperor Qianlong's Uighur Xiangfei specially recruited Hui chefs to cook Muslim meals for her.Among the more than a dozen chefs in the Puyi Imperial Dining Room at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Zheng Dashui, the culinary chef, and Zheng Enfu, the staple food chef, were recruited from famous restaurants in Beijing.