This inevitably makes people wonder, what did the poor people eat in the past? After seeing the menu, you may not last three days. Let's have a look!
Before the Song Dynasty, millet and beans became the most common crops, and rice was only found in the south. Due to the low productivity, especially the limited fields of the poor, the staple food at that time was mainly rice, millet, millet, wheat, glutinous rice and other crops. Some crops should be given to the government for tax reduction.
Therefore, porridge made of crops is easier to fill the stomach than rice, but it lacks nutrition. In addition, wild vegetables will be added to the porridge. The Book of Songs mentions 65,438+032 kinds of crops, including sunflower, hawthorn (young leaves of beans), radish, leek and turnip, which are the most primitive dishes of Chinese civilization.
Of course, this phenomenon is limited to bumper harvest and peacetime, and it is even more tragic in troubled times and the outbreak of drought and flood disasters.
As an omnivore, the bark of grass roots has become a substitute for temporary rescue. 109 1 year, Su Shi, a local official, mentioned the famine in this area in his memorial: "There are famines in Shandong, Hao, Shou and other States this autumn, and now farmers are cooking with fried elm bark and bran mixed with purslane." When Wang Yan mentioned the famine, he also recorded: "People by the river dug up the roots of Polygonum cuspidatum and ate them."
But the bark of the grass roots will be eaten up one day, as Hong Mai wrote in his poem, "Sometimes picking roses is exhausted, and it can save a long hunger." Many poor people turn to grass seeds and locusts. But because grass seeds are difficult to digest, you have to drink a lot of water to eat. As a result, some victims died because of drinking too much raw cold water. Su Shi also mentioned: "There are many people eating in rural areas, eating bran celery, but there are also accumulated water, and wages are hard to come by. They can't eat or drink cold water, or even swell to death. "
In fact, this kind of famine is not far from modern times. For example, in 1942 and 1960s, due to various reasons such as natural disasters, many people chewed bark. On one occasion, a reporter filmed a miserable scene in rural Henan at 1942. Rows of trees were stripped of their bark, revealing white trunks.
In the bark, what you can eat is the tender part that has just grown. After repeated cooking, dry and grind into fine powder, and eat with wild vegetables.
If the bark still contains a little nutrition, Guanyin soil is just for satiety. When the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom attacked Hangzhou in the late Qing Dynasty, people in the city "moved Guanyin soil for lack of food and cooked it with oil sauce, which was delicious". Guanyin soil, also called swelling rock, as a clay mineral, can swell and feel full, but it is difficult to digest, and many people are swollen to death by it.
After the Ming and Qing Dynasties, with the introduction of sweet potato and other crops into the Central Plains, it further became the main course of the poor, which further increased the population of the Qing Dynasty. However, for people who eat sweet potatoes three times a day, this taste is not good, and it is more difficult to achieve a balanced nutrition. This also leads us to look at the photos of the Qing dynasty in the past, and always feel that the people lack a kind of vitality and a delicious face. That's the reason.
In our opinion, this kind of life is really unacceptable, and sticking to it for three days will become a problem. I hope everyone can cherish the hard-won life now.
References:
Diet history of China