As the most absurd section in China's modern history, the Qing Dynasty can find out many dangers of standing still, but how much happiness did the perfection recorded by historians give the people? As the saying goes, food is the most important thing for the people, so we use the simplest food to define the national conditions of the Qing Dynasty!
Cixi (1835165438+1October 29th-1908 65438+1October 15) is the queen, Ye La, the concubine of Emperor Xianfeng.
What did the officials of the Qing dynasty eat in the record?
Man-Han banquet? Can you eat 108 dishes in three days and three nights?
No, let's see what Cixi ate during her escape, so as to set off the absurd feudal era! Empress Dowager Cixi's train experience was Yu Deling, who claimed to be a princess. This writer has written many books about ouchi in the Qing dynasty, including a book called "Cloud of the Royal Family", which is about what Empress Dowager Cixi ate on the way to Fengtian by train! (Excerpts quoted below)
There are four carriages in the kitchen, one section of the vegetable cutter, and there are about 20 people. It is said that the vegetable cutter will also deliver bean sprouts in the car. The carriage is specially used to put the stove. These stoves are made of all-white ceramics. They are arranged in two rows one after another in the carriage, using coal balls, which means a bit like a modern cassette furnace. Each stove is "controlled" by three chefs, one is only responsible for lighting, and the other two are the chef and the second chef, who are responsible for cooking. This kitchen is really lively. Every meal is "as neat as a drill in the army."
/kloc-what is the level of train meals cooked by 0/50 people? In the Qing Palace, the Empress Dowager had two meals a day, and so did the trains. The number of meals is the same as that in the palace, which is 100. It is said that Empress Dowager Cixi's favorite train meal is Beijing Roast Duck. This dish is first put in a ceramic casserole and then steamed in a sealed steamer for 3 days. In this way, steamed ducks don't need to be cut with a knife ... The Queen Mother sometimes eats duck heads, but most of the time she eats duck skins. "Cixi seems to love ducks very much. In addition to steaming ducks, she also likes to eat stewed duck tongues. " About 30 at a time, with duck meat substrate below and duck tongue on top. The queen mother also likes to eat salted duck feet, of which only the duck webbed parts are delicious. Duck gizzards and duck livers also have various cooking methods. The Queen Mother likes ducks so much that she can't bear to throw anything away except her quack. "
In addition to ducks, a lot of pork appeared in Cixi's train package. My favorite is fried pigskin, followed by "cherry meat", which is said to be made by dicing pork and slowly stewing cherries. Cixi likes mushrooms, followed by peas. There are even amaranth, lettuce and daylily in Cixi train. Most of the ingredients are prepared in the palace. Because of the limited space, the chefs on the train also invented many new foods, such as sausages made of chicken mixed with soy sauce and spices, and casings made of duck intestines-probably to cater to the queen mother's hobby of eating ducks. There are also fresh ingredients donated by local officials. For example, when you arrive in Fengtai, you will present Baihe crucian carp locally. Cixi "took a piece and tasted it, indicating that she was very satisfied, and ordered people to send it back to the kitchen. She also went to the fishbone, chopped the fish, and added a proper amount of tofu to cook it together." Cixi, who had eaten crucian carp, even used the fan-shaped cartilage under her cheeks for divination. It's said that good luck comes when a bone stands up. Lafayette threw it several times without success and was disappointed.
When the queen mother is eating, the train must stop; When cooking, the train can run, but it runs slowly. At that time, there was probably no such thing as speeding up. De Ling recalled that she was surprised by the appetite of Empress Dowager Cixi. On the train, she often felt hungry, so she ordered to stop and prepare meals: "Fifty first-class chefs called fifty third-class chefs to light the stove, while the Queen Mother looked out the window alone ... Then 50 second-class chefs began to pass raw materials and spices to the first-class chefs. Then a large group of eunuchs sent food plates to the queen mother. "
After all this trouble, the archer girl who belongs to the sheep is not hungry again!
And what about the people outside the train at this time? It's no exaggeration to describe corpses everywhere!
For more than 60 years during the reign of Kangxi, the Qing government rewarded reclamation, attached importance to building water conservancy projects, and reduced taxes many times, so that the economy gradually resumed development. Yong Zhengdi followed in his father's footsteps, and the social economy continued to develop. By the Qianlong period, the social economy was prosperous. Historically, this period was called the so-called "prosperous time of Kanggan".
During the early Qing Dynasty 100, the cultivated land area increased by more than 40%, and the population rapidly increased to 360 million. The Qing government advocated that all provinces should adjust measures to local conditions and adopt various planting methods, which greatly increased the grain output. The cultivation of high-yield crop sweet potato has been extended from Fujian, Zhejiang and other provinces to the Yangtze River basin and the Yellow River basin. Cash crops such as mulberry, tea, cotton, sugarcane and tobacco were planted in the expanded area, and they had become commodities at that time.
It can be seen that the rapid population growth in the Qing Dynasty only promoted agricultural and sideline products and some small handicrafts, but unified the whole Qing Dynasty, and only a few light industries and heavy industries in a country were in a mess!
After the population growth, Emperor Kangxi once extended the cultivation of double-cropping rice to parts of Jiangbei. During the Qianlong period, the Qing government advocated the reform of farming methods and vigorously promoted multiple cropping. After harvesting early rice in some areas of Guangdong, insert late rice; After harvesting late rice, plant rape or sweet potato three times a year. Jiangxi's soil is thin, so it is impossible to plant late rice after early rice harvest, so buckwheat is planted and harvested twice a year. Due to the popularization of multiple cropping in South China, the grain output can be increased by more than 6 billion kilograms every year.
However, the rulers at that time made full use of the hard work of farmers, and there were more farmers specializing in vegetable production at that time. At that time, vegetable farmers in the suburbs of Beijing used equipment such as "fire room" and "cellar" to cultivate fresh vegetables such as leeks and cucumbers in winter and sell them in the market.
During the Qianlong period, cotton was planted in some areas in Hebei Province where cotton was not planted. In the early Qing Dynasty, sugar cane was planted in the southeast coastal provinces. Sugarcane planted in some places in Guangdong is often a row of thousands of hectares, which looks like reeds from a distance.
During the Qing Dynasty, the large increase in population was mainly due to the popularity of American plants such as corn, sweet potatoes and potatoes. Corn, sweet potatoes, potatoes and other crops have been imported from America through Nanyang since the Ming Dynasty. Agricultural Administration Book describes the planting, storage and processing methods of sweet potato in detail. Talking about the techniques of sweet potato seedling overwintering, stem cutting and seed classification, cutting, cellar storage and dry storage is the first book to systematically introduce the cultivation methods of sweet potato. Since then, North Korean scholar Chen Shiyuan has written Biography of Golden Potato, which describes cold bed seedling raising, and Bao's Four Techniques describes vine turning technology, and sweet potato planting technology has gradually improved. However, high-yield crops such as sweet potato also have their weaknesses: low and single nutrition, poor taste and low deep processing value. As a temporary emergency, long-term staple food will inevitably lead to malnutrition and a sharp decline in physical fitness, which will inevitably affect people's normal intellectual development. After more than 0/00 years of prosperity from the early Qing Dynasty to the middle Qing Dynasty, the "Sweet Potato Prosperity" finally came to an end.
So in the 100 years of the Qing Dynasty, ordinary people not only worked hard as imperial laborers, but also were thoroughly punished for several generations in eating and drinking!
As we all know, some things can really fill the stomach, but the harm it brings can't be changed for generations. After the decline of the late Qing Dynasty and the famine caused by years of war, the people had to eat bran-swallowed vegetables (wild vegetables) and even gnaw bark, grass roots and "fairy rice" (white mountain mud) to satisfy their hunger.
When a country doesn't even have enough food for its own people, it can still do so. Empress Dowager Cixi is really the best in the world!