Turning to the eighth volume of Tokyo Dream China, there is a sentence: "There is no wine at home at noon, and the children are dragged down." "Noon is from noon to noon, that is, from 1 1 to 3 pm. Wang Zi is a flag planted in front of the restaurant. Take down this flag to show that it is closed and no longer open.
Nowadays, the period from 1 1 to 3: 00 pm is just lunch time, and public and private dinners are usually held at this time. The business of large and small restaurants is booming, which is a good time to make money. But why didn't restaurants in the Song Dynasty sell lunches and close when business was at its best?
The reason is simple: most people in Song Dynasty didn't have the habit of inviting guests to dinner at noon.
From the Eastern Zhou Dynasty to the Sui and Tang Dynasties, China people continued an ancient tradition: they only ate two meals a day, one breakfast and one dinner. I don't eat breakfast early, but I usually eat it around 9 am. It's not too late to have dinner, usually washing dishes around four in the afternoon. What about lunch? No, most people don't.
From the middle and late Tang Dynasty, the old tradition of two meals a day was slowly broken, and foreigners and a few China nobles who settled in Chang 'an began to have lunch. However, they are non-mainstream, and most China residents still adhere to the eating habit of two meals a day.
In the Song Dynasty, more people had lunch. It can be said that more than half of the city residents began to have lunch. For example, in the Water Margin, Song Wu worked in the county government, got up early every day to go to the yamen to be on duty, and didn't go home until eight or nine o'clock. His sister-in-law Pan Jinlian will definitely make breakfast for him. One day, Song Wu came back late, "I won't return until Japan and China." When he got home, Pan Jinlian asked him, "I got up early. Why didn't my uncle come back for breakfast?" Song Wu said, "It's just that an acquaintance in my office invited me to have breakfast." Pan Jinlian quickly made another lunch for Song Wu.
Later, Song Wu killed Pan Jinlian and exiled him to Mengzhou. He was warmly treated by "Jin Yanbiao" in the prison camp: "Get up at dawn and bring a big bowl of broth and a big bowl of rice; After sitting in Japan and China, I sent four kinds of fruits, a cooked chicken, many steamed rolls and a note of wine. Eat more at night. " "Water Margin" is a work in the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, but this description is very close to the custom of the Song Dynasty-some citizens in the Song Dynasty have already started to have lunch, from two meals a day to three meals a day.
Fan Chengda, a good friend of Lu You, a famous poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, once invited a guest. The invitation said, "I was lucky to have dinner at noon on the 22nd, but he was late, so I'm going to present it. The doctor recommended Fan Chengda Zazi in Cave of the Clouds. I want to arrange a dinner at noon on the 22nd, so please don't be a stranger and come. It can be seen that in the Song Dynasty, people had invited guests to dinner at noon, just like us modern people.
However, the power of tradition is too strong. Song dynasty ruled for more than 300 years. During this period, the group that changed from two meals a day to three meals a day was always confined to nobles, wealthy businessmen and some citizens. In the vast rural areas, small and medium-sized cities, low-paid grass-roots officialdom, and even in the imperial court, the old rule of two meals a day is still retained.
Fang Hui, a scholar in the Southern Song Dynasty, summed up the eating habits of ordinary people at that time in one sentence: "People often eat lily fights, and one meal for five people is enough. Don't eat two more meals. Careless in the afternoon. " "Together, it is a unit of capacity. The Song Dynasty is equivalent to 60 milliliters now, which can hold one or two meters of rice. Fang Hui means that the average family only eats two meals a day, one in the morning and one in the evening, and each person eats about five or two meters of rice per meal. If they are really hungry at noon, they can eat some snacks to satisfy their hunger.
The word "dim sum" was very popular in the Song Dynasty, and its meaning is very different from now. Snacks mentioned by modern people mainly refer to biscuits, candy, chocolate and other snacks, while snacks mentioned by Song people mainly refer to dinner. Why do you want to add meals? Because you only eat two meals in the morning and evening, you will be hungry in the middle. You need to give your hungry stomach some food. In fact, dim sum is not a noun originally, but a verb-object phrase: point is a verb, meaning comfort, and heart is an object, meaning stomach (the Song people called the stomach "the mouth of the heart and bones", which is still used in the Central Plains). Together, dim sum is to soothe a hungry stomach with some informal meals.
In the Song Dynasty, the word dim sum contained too much food. I didn't finish cooking a pot of rice porridge in the morning, so I came to a bowl when I was hungry at noon. This bowl of leftover porridge is a snack. I didn't finish steaming a carp at night, and I felt hungry after working overtime at night. I ate the remaining half of the fish, which was a snack. Passengers on foot missed the traditional meal time of 9: 00 a.m. and 4: 00 p.m. and were hungry in the middle. They rested in a restaurant on the roadside, and the proprietress brought out a plate of meat buns, which also belonged to snacks. In a word, all foods eaten except breakfast and dinner can be called snacks.
After talking about the origin of dim sum, let's talk about the eating habits of people in Song Dynasty.
As mentioned earlier, many people in the Song Dynasty only ate two meals a day, morning and evening, instead of lunch. In fact, so do some officials. In the Song Dynasty, middle and senior cadres received salary bonuses, food subsidies, clothing subsidies, office subsidies and post subsidies, and their income level exceeded that of any previous dynasty. But this kind of high salary and welfare benefits can only be enjoyed by middle and senior cadres. If grassroots officials are not corrupt, their income level is "not enough to replace farming", even worse than farmers. Since the income of grass-roots officials is too low, they must tighten their belts. In order to save fuel, they never make a fire to cook at noon, just like many ordinary people, they have two meals in the morning and evening.
Jane Yizhi, a collection of short stories in the Southern Song Dynasty, mentioned a mayor of Sanya Town, Lushan County, southern Henan Province. He said that "the salary can't be given to his wife and children" and his salary is not enough to support his wife and children. He wrote a poem complaining: "Two years in Sanya, no rice and no money, how to support the family?" There are only lotus roots for two meals a day. Look at the lotus roots in your mouth. I have been the mayor for two years, so poor that I only eat two meals a day, and both of them are vegetarian. I don't want to buy a meat or two, which is more difficult than the monks in the temple.
The mayor is forced to eat two meals a day, and some people choose not to eat lunch. For example, Zhang Tianjue, a good friend of Su Dongpo, "read four or five volumes of Buddhist books every day, and eat one liter of rice and five sides in the morning and evening" in order to preserve his health in his later years (Volume 2 of Rongzhai Four strokes and Zhang Tianjue Jane). Reading Buddhist scriptures every day, eating once in the morning and once in the evening, adds up to only one liter of rice and five noodles.
Song Gaozong, the capitulator emperor who framed Yue Fei, said that he only ate two meals a day after he ascended the throne. He said to the ministers, "I don't like women's colors very much, and I eat frugally." Eat a sesame seed cake every morning, a bowl of noodles at night, and don't eat at noon. If you are hungry, practice calligraphy, and I will endure it. " I don't know whether what Song Gaozong said is true or not. If it is true, I think friends who want to lose weight can learn from him, but don't skip lunch. They should skip the evening meal, eat well in the morning, eat well at noon, and eat nothing at night.
Maybe many friends will think that Song Gaozong's words are too false. As an emperor, how can he skip lunch like many grassroots officials and the poor? However, I think Song Gaozong probably didn't tell a lie, because there was a rule in the Song Dynasty court: the imperial dining hall could only prepare breakfast and dinner every day, and lunch was not allowed unless the emperor specifically ordered it. (See "Song Yaohui Collection Draft" for square domain 47)
Why is there such a rule? The reason is temporarily unknown. I guess one reason is that the Emperor of the Song Dynasty kept to the old ways and didn't want to change the eating habits that lasted for one or two thousand years. Another reason is to save money-the Imperial Dining Hall doesn't cook lunch, at least it can make fewer fires and save fuel and labor. In other words, the emperor is rich all over the world and has whatever he wants. Why did he save money? Besides, what's the use of saving so little money? Please note that every move of the ancient monarch is an example for all subjects in the world, and the emperor takes the lead in frugality, which is conducive to the whole society to develop a fine style of hard work and plain living.
In fact, it was not only the Song Dynasty emperors who only asked chefs to cook two meals a day, but also the Qing Dynasty emperors. According to the textual research of Mr. Zhang Naiwei's Story of the Qing Palace, the imperial kitchen in the Qing Dynasty only served one breakfast and one lunch every day. Breakfast is prepared in the second quarter of the morning, that is, at 6: 30 in the morning, and lunch is prepared in the second quarter of the afternoon, that is, at noon 12: 30. What about dinner? There's no need to do this. According to "Qing Chao/Diet", Kangxi once said to the minister, "I have three meals a day and drink at night. I have two meals a day, and when I leave the Great Wall, I eat one meal at a time. It means that ordinary people used to eat three meals a day at that time, but as an emperor, he only ate two meals a day, even when he sent troops to fight.
At first glance, it seems that the emperors of Song Dynasty and Qing Dynasty were industrious and simple, but they were not. No matter in Song Dynasty or Qing Dynasty, most rulers ate several meals a day. For example, Empress Dowager Cixi ate at least five meals a day, while Emperor Xuan Tong had a bad stomach and sometimes ate six meals a day. The emperor of the Song Dynasty nominally had two meals a day, but in fact he had to eat other things besides two main meals in the morning and evening. The Emperor of the Song Dynasty called breakfast and dinner "dinner", lunch "dim sum" and meals eaten at other times "pansuo".
For example, one meal in the morning and another at four or five in the afternoon are two meals. If you don't eat at noon, you will feel hungry, and Song Like Gaozong doesn't want to fight hunger by practicing calligraphy, so he ordered eunuchs to go to the street to buy some snacks as snacks (Song Zhenzong, Song Renzong and Song Xiaozong all prefer snacks outside the palace). If you work overtime and sleep late at night, you will still feel hungry, and then order the eunuch or concubine to open a small stove and make a bowl of supper. It's called a cable. Dinner, snacks and ropes add up to five or even six meals a day! So don't think that the chef only cooks two meals a day and the emperor only eats two meals. That's all for outsiders to see.