Cixi was the actual ruler in the late Qing Dynasty, and both Tongzhi and Guangxu were Cao Meng before her. Cixi eats 108 food, which is rare and delicious. It is extravagant and wasteful to the extreme, but is this really the case? Bian Xiao tells you that this idea may be somewhat unreliable. Since the Qing army entered the customs, it has maintained the traditional custom of living in the northeast. Therefore, the roe deer rabbit in the northeast is welcomed by Manchu nobles, and with the constant tribute of special products from all over the country, different dishes can be made every day. With so many rich ingredients, Empress Dowager Cixi must talk about ostentation and extravagance when eating. The simplest lunch usually has at least 108 dishes. This table of dishes is to get "Lu" and let him take a bite of everything, so he can eat it. What's more, Empress Dowager Cixi is still an old lady. This is a waste, really a waste.
The place where Empress Dowager Cixi cooks is called the Imperial Chef. There are 100 stoves in it. Each stove is equipped with three cooks, one for cooking, one for cutting vegetables and one for handyman. All food processing processes, whether picking vegetables, washing vegetables, cutting vegetables or cooking, need special personnel to supervise and inspect the whole process and keep records at any time. To cook one dish, the procedure must be so complicated. What is this for? On the one hand, it is necessary to maintain the absolute hygiene of food and put an end to "shoddy". On the other hand, I am afraid that someone will poison it and harm the Cixi Lafayette. Of course, this is only the first step of antivirus. All the cooked dishes need eunuchs to insert silver needles one by one to test the poison. Once the silver needle turns black, they will immediately arrest the "suspect" who poisoned according to the number.
After the dishes are served in turn, Cixi will not move chopsticks immediately, but will use her eyes to signal several eunuchs next to her. First of all, she will taste every dish to make sure that several eunuchs are not poisoned by mouth and nose bleeding. Lafayette can eat with silver chopsticks. Everyone wants to know, which dish does Cixi like best in 108? To tell the truth, historians don't know, even the great eunuch Li around Cixi doesn't know. There is a simple reason. Cixi eats one dish, and each dish has at most two servings. If she eats the third bite, the eunuch will immediately withdraw the plate as a "punishment." Cixi herself could do nothing about this rule, because every emperor in the Qing Dynasty did the same. This is the family law left by our ancestors, and no one can shake it.
Is this "family law" wonderful? As the head of a country, don't you even have the right to eat your favorite food? In fact, I really don't blame my ancestors for being heartless, but for their painstaking efforts. Born in the royal family, it is inevitable that people with ulterior motives will poison the emperor in the dark and want to murder him. If the emperor likes a certain dish, he will unconsciously eat more, so the poisoned person will be targeted, but he can only eat two bites of each dish. It's estimated that after a long time, they don't know what they like to eat. The poisoner can only poison one dish. Under such close monitoring, it is impossible to poison every dish, and the chance of poisoning is even less, so the risk of Cixi being assassinated is greatly reduced. It can be seen that the rulers of the Qing Dynasty seemed to be high above them, but in fact they still felt insecure. In our mind, 108 seems rich and attractive, but we don't know that under this rich dish, Cixi has a history of increasing the number of dishes and reducing the risk of poisoning for her own safety, thus wasting people's money and extravagance.