"salty in the south and sweet in the north"
Unexpectedly, contrary to today, in the Song Dynasty, northerners actually liked sweets, while southerners preferred salty incense. Shen Kuo, the minister of the Northern Song Dynasty, recorded it in Meng Qian's Bi Tan.
"Northerners are sweet, and fish and crabs add molasses to facilitate northern customs."
For example, many northerners like to eat "cloud shadow noodles" in the Song Dynasty. Their routine practice is to add slightly sweet auxiliary materials such as lotus root, water bamboo and buckwheat to noodles, but not only that, they also like to add sugar and honey to steamed noodles, mash them after steaming, and finally cool them as cold noodles (Yutian Jun felt a little tired when writing this).
On the contrary, many southerners like to eat pickled products when eating. Because the lakes in the southern coastal waters are conducive to fishing aquatic products, Su Shi once said that "Guangdong women's market is fickle ... fish and shrimp are sold everywhere", but the aquatic products are good but the conditions at that time are difficult to preserve for a long time, so "salted fish" has become the main meat of many southerners.
Moreover, due to its proximity to the offshore and low salt price, many southerners have formed a food production method that "all meat can be preserved" in order to ensure that they can eat meat all year round. In the Lingnan (Guangdong) area of the Song Dynasty, the technique of marinating fish was the best. Even the fish could be marinated for ten years and still be eaten. For a long time, most southerners eat salty food, especially in the vast rural areas in the south. There is no salted fish at home and they are embarrassed to receive guests.
The main reason for more sugar in the north and south lies in the amount of sugar produced.
Although sugar cane, honey and other sugar-making raw materials were also produced in the south, sugar cane was widely promoted as a vast cash crop, and honey was a high-end luxury in ancient times after the Ming Dynasty. In the north, on the other hand, in the Song Dynasty, sugar was not made from beets as it is today, but from malt, and the yield of wheat itself was also high, so it was still the main sugar-making base in the Song Dynasty. This resulted in the "salty south and sweet north" in the diet of the North and the South in the Song Dynasty.
Dietary contempt
Just as many people like to make fun of the diet between the North and the South, there is also a contempt chain between the North and the South in the diet process of the Song Dynasty.
Northerners reject rice: this phenomenon also exists in some cities in the north. Although the conditions of water transportation in Song Dynasty were developed, and a large amount of rice was transported to the capital of song dynasty every year, northerners still turned a deaf ear to rice. They like cakes best, especially Song Renzong, because his "steamed cake" was changed to "boiled cake" (that is, the same one in Wu Dalang).
Southerners, "hate wheat": In the Song Dynasty, southerners didn't like to use "wheat" products as a counterattack against northerners who didn't eat rice, although winter wheat was planted in the South on a large scale in the Northern Song Dynasty. "History of the Song Dynasty" records:
"Ren Yin ordered the transportation departments of Huaihe River and Huaihe River to plant wheat for the citizens of each state ... Fuzhou Ruimaisheng"
But southerners are naturally resistant to wheat. In the south, they don't eat rice all year round, and sometimes they add some buckwheat. But he despised wheat. Even in Yazhou (Hainan Island), where Su Shi was exiled, when rice production was reduced, residents there chose to eat sweet potatoes and taro instead of planting wheat.
Even wheat-derived pasta is very resistant, and there are many jokes derived.
The reason why southerners didn't eat pasta in Song Dynasty was that it was poisonous (which seems incredible today). Legend has it that when the founder of Dharma came to the south in the Five Dynasties, when he saw someone eating noodles, he immediately went up and knocked them over, saying that the noodles were poisonous. This speculation has also been echoed by people in the Northern Song Dynasty. Medical books record that "wheat is a common food in the world. However, if it is cooked with fire, it is hot and active, which is a test. " Even in order to refute the question that "northerners don't get sick, southerners are poisoned", it is specially added that the heat toxicity of wheat can be neutralized by frost and snow because of the snowy weather in the north, while it is rainy in the south, plus the weather itself is hotter than the north, so it will be poisoned in the south.
The tradition of southerners not eating noodles was not changed until the change of Jingkang and the migration of a large number of northerners. As northerners moved south, they also brought large-scale noodle eating and cooking techniques to the south. Lin 'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, is also lined with noodle restaurants, and all kinds of noodle restaurants are lined up. In this way, Renye Fang gradually accepted the habit of eating wheat and noodles.
In addition to the "incompatibility" of staple food, there are also regional differences in "drinking" between the north and the south.
Tea is produced in the south, so drinking tea in the south has become a standing drink for some ordinary people. However, due to the prevalence of tea-drinking culture among literati, the Song Dynasty, with its political center in the north, did not allow more tea-drinking culture in the south. Besides drinking tea, Koreans also like to drink high-end drinks such as milk and goat's milk, because it is close to Qidan and Xixia. Wine culture, needless to say, Shuihu has told you how the northern Liangshan heroes drink.
However, the only thing that people from North and South can love together should be "meat".
Of course, there are 369 kinds of meat, and first-class beef and mutton was also a rare product in the Song Dynasty. Especially mutton, the imperial dining hall in the Southern Song Dynasty even cooked only one sheep every day, which made the emperor's whole family unable to get enough. Of course, unlike today, pork was the worst "meat" in the Song Dynasty, and it became popular food because of its low price. Large farmers in the capital of song dynasty raised hundreds to thousands of pigsty. People in the Northern Song Dynasty who could eat pork brought their potential into full play. Dongpo Meat and Ham Meat were invented in Song Dynasty. Lin 'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, even has a special slaughter lane, which specializes in selling pork. Nearly 100 pigs are slaughtered every day and can be sold out every day.
Yutian Jun said:
By describing the diet in Song Dynasty and the differences between North and South in detail, it is not difficult to see that the market culture in Northern Song Dynasty is extremely diverse and complicated. The difference in diet between the North and the South is also an integral part of the North-South culture and the inclusive culture of the Song Dynasty. However, the originally developed Song Dynasty was destroyed by Jin Meng, because it only knew pleasure and didn't make progress. The food culture that Song people were proud of also came to an abrupt end.
refer to
Road protection in the Great Song Dynasty on the tip of her tongue
History-proven Emergency Herbal Tang Shenwei