China is an aggregate of diverse civilizations.

From a macro perspective, from mountains to rivers, from deserts to oceans, the rich landforms bring together diverse nationalities, religions and customs, which, under the tandem of national identity, have made all the historical memories of * * *.

From the microscopic point of view, the so-called China diet is also a magnificent masterpiece named "Chinese food" by various cooking methods and ingredients adapted to local conditions under the same language framework.

wonton, a typical example. No.1

In Chinese food, wonton is probably the most commonly called food. Wonton, wonton, covered noodles, clear soup, flat meat, flat food, meat swallow and even jiaozi are all different names for wonton.

why does a simple snack develop completely different tastes and diversified expressions in different cultural contexts?

In fact, the dough made of wheat flour is naturally suitable for making food wrapped with stuffing. It has a solid taste and vivid wheat flavor, and is a staple food suitable for cooking, frying and baking; At the same time, the dough is waterproof and oil-proof, which can keep the original flavor of the filling; More importantly, the dough has slow heat conduction and large heat storage, which can make the stuffing heat more evenly and slowly.

China people are not alone in discovering these advantages. In English, there are words such as ravioli and dumplings. The fillings that people all over the world like to eat are ever-changing, such as meat and poultry, fish and shrimp, vegetables, herbs, cheese and even fruit jam.

a world food.

But China people have given this food an interesting Chinese name: Chaos. This is an adjective in ancient oriental legends that people were in a vague state before they opened up the world.

Because the food wrapped in dough and stuffing seems to the ancients to have no eyes, no mouth and no seven orifices, it is appropriate to describe it as chaos. According to the Chinese character-making method, replacing the radicals related to food has become a well-known wonton today.

an intriguing detail is a sentence recorded in "Family Instructions of Yan Family": "Today's wonton is shaped like a crescent moon, and the world is full of food". This sentence reveals two messages: at the latest in the Northern and Southern Dynasties, wonton was already a widely popular food in Han society; In order to save raw materials, most of the dough at that time was rolled into a circle and folded to wrap the stuffing, which became a semi-circular "crescent moon".

yes, it's jiaozi.

Today, in many places in northern Jiangsu, western Henan, eastern Shandong and northern Hubei, the half-moon jiaozi stuffed with pork is called "wonton" and the ingot-shaped wonton is called "dumpling". The confusion of this appellation stems from the dietary changes of the same thing in wonton jiaozi. No.2

The most intuitive sign of social and economic development in food is to distinguish between "regular food" for filling the stomach and "leisure food" for recreation.

in the song dynasty, when the economy and culture were unprecedentedly developed, a snack called jiaozi appeared on the streets of Kaifeng. People use vegetable oil to fry very small wonton, or add taro powder to make it translucent and sell it as a snack.

in order to taste better, the dough is rolled as thin as possible, and the stuffing is added as much as possible. From the appearance, it is not much different from today's pot stickers with thin skin and rich stuffing and overflowing soup, or small and lovely taro dumplings.

In Huaiyang area, when people eat morning tea, there is a snack "dumpling noodles" that they must order blindly. As the name implies, this food is a mixture of jiaozi and noodles, but when it is served, people who eat it for the first time are often very surprised: this is not jiaozi, but it is obviously wonton with translucent dough.

In fact, this is the Yangzhou style with strong literary popularity and paying attention to "not eating enough snacks", which is a continuation of the leisure food culture of "Jiaozi" in the Song Dynasty.

In Guangdong, more than 1,5 kilometers away, people call Wonton Noodles, a kind of food in Cantonese morning tea that is very similar to Huaiyang's "dumpling noodles". The word "Wonton" looks quite poetic. In fact, if you read it in Cantonese, the pronunciation of Wonton is exactly the same as that of Wonton in Wu dialect.

Today's Cantonese wonton is one of the most important types in China wonton pedigree. Add taro starch to present translucent dough, wrap it and chop it vigorously, strictly follow the meat stuffing with three fertilizers and seven thin materials, and then add fried sesame seeds and earth fish meal to taste. All of them are full of the "idle food" style handed down from the Fu Song Dynasty and the atmosphere of being insatiable for food in the open areas of the south.

Why do Cantonese people change "jiaozi" into "wonton" again? The reason for this confusion is not available today. It may be that Lingnan area is far away from the Central Plains, and it is misunderstood by word of mouth; Or it may be the result of fighting against the large-scale popularity of jiaozi in the north, and the adherents of the Southern Dynasties adhering to the Han rites and adhering to the ancient teachings. No.3

The demise of the Southern Song Dynasty and Meng Yuan's entry into China not only resulted in assimilation and integration of politics and nationalities, but also had a profound impact on culture. Chinese food terms such as mushroom (moog) and steamed dumplings (uncooked snack) were originally transliterated from Mongolian.

but "wonton" is very special. "Chaos", which originated from the concept of China's classical philosophy, cannot be translated literally in Mongolian with thin cultural tradition. However, the "corner" that represents the idle food of civilians can be translated into "bansh".

This linguistic chance has directly produced two results: "Jiao Zi" and its homonym "jiaozi" have become popular in the areas with great influence of nomadic people in northern China, and even replaced the title of "Wonton" before the Song Dynasty.

At the same time, there is another nickname for wonton: "flat food".

In today's Luoyang and Nanyang in Henan, Jinzhong and Linfen in Shanxi, people still call jiaozi "flat food", which is a simple transliteration of the Mongolian word "bansh".

In Fuzhou, the local people call wonton a "flat food". Fujian people like to "knock on the meat" and beat the minced meat by physical means. After the glue is released, it becomes the minced meat with elastic teeth. In addition to making meatballs, this kind of minced meat is also suitable for flat food and has a strong meat flavor. Therefore, Fujian people also call flat food "flat meat".

At the same time, there is another snack "Yan Pi" in Fuzhou, which mostly mixes fish, pork, or two kinds of meat, adds sweet potato starch, beats it into thin slices and then dries it. To some extent, swallow skin is an evolutionary version of lunch meat, but because it is dried and pounded tightly, its texture is much more tough and chewy than lunch meat. The local people are full of imagination about how to eat swallow skin. Add green leaves and boil. It is swallow skin soup. Shredded and rolled on the surface of meatballs for steaming, which is shredded meatballs; Deep-fried and eaten with Chili sauce and tomato sauce, it is a fried swallow skin similar to a crispy rice crust.

Of course, the most important use of swallow skin is to wrap flat meat-this is a unique masterpiece of "meat wrapped with meat" in China wonton pedigree, Rouyan.