It's noon on a hot day. A peasant woman was working hard when she suddenly sighed, "Empress really doesn't know how happy she is. At this time, it is no longer a nap in bed. I woke up and shouted,' eunuch, bring a persimmon!' "

Poverty really limits our imagination.

However, today we are going to discuss a serious question: what does the queen eat? Because the information before the Ming Dynasty is not perfect, we only discuss the diet of the Qing Empress.

During the Qing Dynasty, the palace logistics system was relatively complete. The food, clothing, housing and transportation of the emperor and the concubines in the harem are all solved by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. By the way, because emperor Qianlong was so good at eating, drinking and having fun, he once made the interior office make ends meet. It was not until Xiao Shenyang became the head of the Ministry of the Interior that the fiscal deficit was filled. According to the rules in the palace now, the queen's food standard is the highest (lower than that of the emperor and empress dowager, of course). What appears in front of us is a long list of materials:

Slab pork 16 kg, mutton 1 plate, 2 small animals, new japonica rice 1 l 8, yellow rice 1 l 3+5 spoons, Korean rice 1 l 5, japonica rice 1 l 8 Liang. 8 Liang of wheat flour, 3 Liang of peas and vegetables, 4 Liang of sugar 1 kg, 4 Liang of canned sugar, 4 Liang of honey, 2 Liang of walnut kernel, 2 Liang of pine nuts 1 money, 2 Liang of medlar, 5 Liang of sun-dried jujube, 9 Jin of pork, 9 Jin of lard 1 kg of sesame oil 1 kg of eggs. Sweet sauce 1 kg is 625 yuan, green sauce 1 yuan, vinegar is 225 yuan, fresh vegetables 15 yuan, eggplant is 20, wax gourd is 20, white wax 1, white wax is 4 1.25 yuan, yellow wax is 4/kl.

This list includes all kinds of meat, rice flour, dried fruits, vegetables, spices and so on. And candles and firewood. It's just a small grocery store. Many people can see at a glance that Niangniang used 25 Jin of pork every day, almost taking away half a pig (the meat yield of ancient pigs was not high). Empress doesn't have to do anything else all day. As soon as she got up, she began to eat braised elbows and ate them before going to bed at night. She can't eat so much pork, can she?

In fact, these food supplies are not only provided to the queen (although nominally hers), but also to the maids and eunuchs who serve the queen. The number of these ladies-in-waiting and eunuchs is quite large, about 24, almost a platoon's strength. It is not a luxury to distribute more than 20 kilograms of meat every day.

Under the queen, there are concubines, imperial concubines, concubines, concubines, nobles, constancy, infinity and so on. Their food standards are gradually declining. The pork supply of imperial concubine decreased to 12 Jin, that of imperial concubine decreased to 9.8 Jin, and that of concubines was only 9 Jin and 6.8 Jin respectively. The lowest commitment and the simplest food standard are: pork 1.8 kg, nine boxes of polished rice, 2 kg of fresh vegetables at any time, yellow wax 1, sheep oil wax 1, 5 kg of black charcoal in summer, and 10 kg in winter.

You see, in addition to ordinary things such as pork, rice and vegetables, the promised food supply does not even provide eggs that ordinary people often eat, and there is no dried fruit. The food standard is not as good as that of the landlord's daughter. Only by promising to give birth to a prince or princess can you get 50 taels of silver at the full moon, so as to improve your embarrassed life.

Generally speaking, including the empress, the main food of concubines in the imperial harem of the Qing Dynasty is rice and flour, and the meat is only pork and mutton. There are some dried fruits and vegetables. Compared with the dazzling array of goods in the modern farmers' market, it is still much worse. Chicken? No. Fish? No. Duck? No. Beef? That is a luxury that Empress Dowager Cixi did not dare to think about, and it does not exist.

So, after reading this article, are you still willing to travel back to the Qing Dynasty to be a harem concubine?