Chapter 203 The allusion of steamed buns

According to legend, during the Three Kingdoms period, Meng Huo, the leader of the ethnic minorities in the southern part of the Shu Kingdom and the leader of the Nanman Cave, always came to attack and harass him. Zhuge Liang personally led troops to "deep into the barren" land to conquer Meng Huo.They "crossed Lu in May", and there were very few people in the Lushui area, the miasma was very heavy, and the most deadly thing was that the Lushui was poisonous.When Kong Ming subdued Meng Huo and his troops returned home, Meng Huo led the chiefs of Xiaodong to send them off. When they arrived at Lushui, it was the weather in September.All of a sudden, the clouds covered and the wind picked up suddenly, and the soldiers couldn't cross Lushui at all.

Zhuge Liang asked Meng Huo what was going on, and Meng Huo said, "The gods in this water have caused disasters, and those who come and go must sacrifice to them." Zhuge Liang asked, "What do you use as a sacrifice?" Meng Huo said: "In the old days, because of rampant gods in the middle of the country, seven to forty-nine human heads and black cattle and white sheep were sacrificed to them. Naturally, the weather was calm and the sea was calm, and it was also rich and prosperous year after year." Of course Zhuge Liang refused to really kill people, so he was called "Xingchu", that is, the cook in the army, who used the flour and flour paste brought by the army to make it look like a human head and steamed it, treating it as a "barbaric" person. "Head" sacrifice.

Since then, this kind of pasta has been handed down and spread to the north.But the name "mantou" was too scary, so people replaced the word "man" with the word "man" and wrote it as "mantou". Over time, mantou became the staple food of northerners. This story is recorded in the book, and its authenticity remains to be studied, but as a kind of folklore, it is undoubtedly the most influential one about the origin of steamed buns.