? Lotus leaf rice, as the name suggests, is steamed with rice and meat stuffing wrapped in lotus leaves. It originated in Nanjing City and has now developed into a traditional snack in Guangdong. There is an unknown history behind the peculiar shape, fragrant and refreshing lotus leaf rice - let us go back in time to the Southern Dynasties more than a thousand years ago to find the answer.
"You can pick lotus flowers in the south of the Yangtze River, and there are fields of lotus leaves and lotus leaves." In summer, on the shores of Xuanwu Lake, there are fields of lotus leaves, and green covers the entire lakeshore.
In 556 AD, Chen Baxian, who had just entered Jiankang, was facing the most severe test since his troops left Lingnan. Because Chen Baxian made Xiao Fangzhi, the king of Jin'an, the emperor, the Northern Qi Dynasty organized a hundred thousand troops led by Xiao Gui, marched south to invade Liang, and claimed to recall Xiao Yuanming, the Duke of Jian'an. As luck would have it, the deposed pseudo-emperor Xiao Yuanming developed gangrene on his back and died soon after. Chen Baxian had no choice but to bite the bullet and deploy internal and external arrangements to fight the Qi army. A war that will determine the fate of the Southern Dynasties and the entire history of China is about to begin.
? Xiao Gui, the commander-in-chief of Qi, led the front army and joined Liang Jiang generals Xu Sihui and Ren Yue to attack Liang. The Qi army was invincible and invincible. They rushed to Liangshan, entered Wuhu, entered Danyang, and reached Moling. They seemed to be destroying everything. People were massacred along the way, and corpses of people lay everywhere in the fields, and there was no smoke for thousands of miles.
At that time, due to the rebellion of the three Wu states, Chen Baxian had no troops to mobilize, but he sent generals Zhou Wenyu, Du Leng and others out of Tunfang Mountain and Mamu key passes as a defense strategy. Who would have thought that the Qi army would build bridges across the Huaihe River, set up fences to cross the troops, march straight from Fangshan to Nitang, ride suddenly to the capital, and suffer a great earthquake in Jiankang...
? The plum rain in the south of the Yangtze River blocks the sky and the sun. , continuously. The officers and soldiers of Qi were all from the north and were not used to the rainy weather in the south. After struggling to attack Stone City to no avail, their morale began to decline. But it happened that it had rained heavily for days and days without stopping, and the water on the plains was more than ten feet deep. The Qi army stood in the mud day and night, with rotten toes and hanging cauldrons to cook. Chen Baxian had planned in advance to sneak into Shogunate Mountain at night a few days earlier and divide his troops to station at Zhongshan and Fuzhoushan North to cut off the enemy's key points. He also sent general Qian Ming to lead the boat division to intercept the Qi army's grain ship. At this point, the Qi army was a lamb waiting to be slaughtered, a turtle in a urn.
? "Everything is ready, all we need is the east wind." Due to the continuous rain and the failure of food transportation, Liang Jun was hungry and could not join the army. The soldiers' complaints could be heard far and near.
? "If we lure hungry troops down the mountain to fight, we may die for our country like Xie Yan of Jin Dynasty." Chen Baxian spoke first in the Chinese military tent. "But if we don't attack the enemy at this time and miss the opportunity to fight, we may not be able to protect the Stone City!" Zhou Wenyu admonished, "If the stone is lost, Taicheng will be in danger!" "If the Qi army engages in a trapped beast, our army will collapse at the first touch. What should we do?" Xiao Mohe put it bluntly. Chen Baxian was at his wits' end and did not answer. There was silence in the tent, and the only sound was the raindrops outside the tent, which seemed to say that time waits for no one. As he was sitting on the Hu bed, stroking his head and sighing in the air, the sound of horse hooves treading water came from a distance, approaching from far away. Before Chen Baxian could react, the scout had dismounted and ran to the tent: "Forty miles away to the southwest, there is an army marching towards the camp under the banner of Daliang..." "Explore again!" Chen Baxian ordered before the scout could finish. The scout received the military order and had to change his horse to explore again. Before Chen Ba could speak first, Hou Andu stepped forward to speak: "Could it be that the Qi people used the banner of our army to cover up others' eyes and take advantage of the fog to attack our army?" Chen Baxian ignored Hou Andu and fell into deep thought. The generals talked a lot. Not long after, the scout came into the account again: "Chen...General Chen is supervising the army to transport food to the camp and will arrive soon..." It seemed that he could not finish his words before he finished speaking. Chen Ba first hurriedly asked people to deliver water and food, and the scouts thanked him and left the tent.
? Chen Baxian was overjoyed when he arrived. He jumped up from the bed and raised his eyes to look at the generals. His face was full of red light everywhere. Then with an order, they all went out to meet Qian.
? Chen Qian sent three thousand dendrobiums of rice and a thousand ducks. Qian arrived at Liangying and met her uncle. Chen Baxian burst into tears of joy and said to this nephew whom he had not seen for many years: "I will become my hegemon, sir!" Then he ordered each camp to cook rice and duck, but he suffered from the lack of equipment to hold the rice. Then she came up with a trick and ordered Chen Qian to lead her troops into Xuanwu Lake to cut lotus leaves. The rice was wrapped in lotus leaves and served with freshly fragrant duck meat. The soldiers ate happily - this is the origin of lotus leaf rice.
At dawn the next day, that is, the morning of June 11, the sky cleared after the rain. After a full day of meals, Liang Jun's morale was greatly boosted. Chen Ba went out to swear an oath first and launched an encirclement against Qi Jun.
? The Qi army who was sleeping in the rain did not know it. Suddenly they heard that the enemy troops were approaching. They were all walking north of the river without wearing armor. The rest of the army had no boats to cross, so everyone tied up their dichi and crossed north, drowning in the middle of the river. In the water, nothing can be done. Xu and Ren had already escaped first. Governor Xiao in the Gaozhen camp was unable to fly. As soon as he opened his eyes in the morning, he was captured by Liang Jun. He was really like a "dumb eating yellow lotus - unable to tell the story of his sufferings." The south bank of the Huaihe River is red for hundreds of miles, filled with corpses and blocked by abandoned weapons.
? This battle ended with a complete victory for the Southern Dynasty, and was known in history as the "Battle of Northern Qi to Attack Liang".
? It can be seen that the little lotus leaf rice was actually a hero of the Liang Dynasty and half of the founding father of the Chen Dynasty.
? Eating delicious food and gaining knowledge is not a waste of money.
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