The "Yuanyang Hotpot" of Liu Fei's Tomb in the Han Dynasty is divided into compartments (picture from the Internet)
How did people in ancient China eat hot pot? What kind of hot pot did they like to eat? During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, we ate "small hot pot" and found "dog meat hot pot" in the tombs of the Warring States Period. If we investigate the source of hot pot, we should start with the bronze tripod in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. Ding was the most commonly used cooker for cooking and offering sacrifices in Shang and Zhou Dynasties-today's pot. The difference between a tripod and a pot is that it has three legs and can be placed directly on the ground without setting a stove. When cooking, you can burn firewood under your abdomen. After many pots are unearthed, there are traces of smoky fire under their bellies, which is the heating characteristic of hot pot. This tripod is actually a kind of hot pot, which combines the cooker and the container into one.
20 10, 1010/0, a tomb of the Qin dynasty of the warring States period dating back more than 2,400 years was excavated at the second phase archaeological site of Xianyang airport in Xi, Shaanxi province. A bronze tripod, a bronze bell and a lacquer ware were found in the tomb niche. The tripod is 20 cm high and 24.5 cm in diameter. It has a cover. To the surprise of archaeologists, there is even bone soup in the tripod. The bone was identified as a dog bone and proved to be a pot of dog broth, which was called "dog meat hot pot" in the circle. This shows that people in China like to eat dog meat hotpot in ancient and modern times. This discovery caused a sensation after being disclosed by the media. In the earlier Western Zhou Dynasty, even in the earlier tombs of Shang Dynasty, hot pot was unearthed.
During the period of 1974- 1975, two tombs of the Western Zhou Dynasty were excavated in Rujiazhuang, Baoji City, Shaanxi Province, and one of them was unearthed in Tomb No.2, with the words "Bai Zhajing Ding" engraved on it. This tripod has a strange shape, with only one foot. The upper part is a round tripod with an eardrum, and the center of the bottom is a cylindrical tripod, which stands on a tripod. After analysis, this is not an ordinary cooking tripod, but a hot pot at that time. The bottom plate can be heated by charcoal fire, which is convenient to bring the fire source and vegetables to the table together. Judging from its capacity, it is only enough for one person to eat, and then it is speculated that it is used in the case of separate meals. Everyone eats a "small hot pot".
People in the Han dynasty had already eaten "Yuanyang hot pot", and people in the Han and Wei dynasties ate hot pot after the seasoning was heated by the dyeing furnace. According to archaeological findings, there are all kinds of hot pots at this time, and the material of hot pots is not limited to bronze, but also iron hot pots and pottery hot pots. In addition to eating "small hot pot" in the form of separate meals, people also ate Yuanyang hot pot which can put different soups and cook different flavors.
Eastern Han griddle (picture from network)
The tripod is divided into different cooking spaces to avoid cross-seasoning of different flavors of soup. Its eating principle is modern Yuanyang hot pot, which is convenient for diners with different eating habits such as sour, spicy, hemp and salty. The tripod is divided into five squares, and the middle circle is divided into four squares. Pork, dog meat, mutton, beef, chicken and other meats can be placed in different compartments, so that you can eat five different flavors of hot pot. Good at eating hot pot, two sets of "dyeing devices" were unearthed next to the tripod. The so-called dyeing device is the plate used to season when eating hot pot. Judging from these archaeological discoveries in the coming year, some dyeing devices are disc-shaped and some are cup-shaped. If there is a heating device, it is called "dyeing furnace". From the analysis of the unearthed dyeing furnace, the way people eat hot pot in Han Dynasty is slightly different from that of modern people. After heating the seasoning, they dipped it in water.
At the beginning of 2007, a ceramic chafing dish was found at the site of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project and Shangbaogai in Yunxian County, Hubei Province, with the same design as the modern Yuanyang chafing dish. After identification, this hot pot was a cooker in the Western Han Dynasty, indicating that people in western Hubei also ate hot pot at that time. A similar ceramic chafing dish was found in a Han tomb in Yunyang, Chongqing, 2000 years ago. This is a glazed pottery cauldron, which is equivalent to today's hot pot. It should be a funerary vessel made according to the objects in the tomb owner's life before his death. It can be seen that Chongqing people, who are famous for eating hot pot, ate well before 2000.