In the history of more than 200 years in the Ming Dynasty, many people wrote books to study the consumption of wild vegetables, all in order to save the famine.
Due to frequent natural disasters in the Ming Dynasty, people often had to dig wild vegetables to make a living.
Many Zhu family members of the Ming Dynasty royal family had some unusual hobbies. Some people like to be carpenters, others like alchemy ... This one also has a unique hobby-growing wild vegetables. In addition, based on my own research on wild vegetables, I wrote a botanical book-herbs to save famine.
Zhu, the fifth son of Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming emperor, is Ming Taizu's younger brother. The luxury of the royal prince should not be a problem. It is easy to understand that this prince grows wild vegetables, which is really incredible. Why does the prince grow wild vegetables?
Zhu and His Times In history, the Ming Dynasty was a dynasty with frequent natural disasters, which can be said to be unprecedented. According to Ming History and Ming Zhi, the main disasters in Ming Dynasty are floods, droughts, earthquakes, hailstorms, locusts, sandstorms, epidemics and frost and snow. The total number of these eight natural disasters is 6 199, and some of them involve two or more provinces and regions. If the number of repeated disasters is deducted, the number of these eight disasters in the Ming Dynasty is not less than 577. In the 276-year history of the Ming Dynasty, floods, droughts and earthquakes all exceeded 1000 times, and there were as many as 2,000 floods, with an average of 7 times a year.
China in the Ming Dynasty was a traditional agricultural society, and agriculture was the main industry of the national economy. Natural disasters undoubtedly directly destroyed the development of agriculture. Farmland was washed away, crops were flooded, and people lost their crops because of locust plague. According to records, floods, droughts and locusts in the Yellow River Basin were very serious during Hongwu and Yongle periods in Ming Dynasty. According to records, in the eighth year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty, the Yellow River was flooded, affecting more than 4,000 households/kloc-0, and nearly 200,000 livestock were washed away by the current, and more than 7,500 mu of land was washed away. Fields were destroyed, livestock disappeared, houses were washed away and people were displaced.
In the Yuan Dynasty before the Ming Dynasty, ethnic oppression was extremely serious and wars were frequent, so people could not live a stable life. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the war had just stopped, and the people had not been recuperated. Life was bitter, but natural disasters were frequent. Therefore, "the seedlings are exhausted, the skin and wheat are not harvested, and the people are extremely poor ... people pick grass to satisfy their hunger." This kind of sentence is often used in the memorials of Ming emperors. Zhu Jisheng lived in such an era.
The prince's palace is full of weeds. It was not until his father Zhu Yuanzhang established Nanjing as the capital and became Emperor Daming that Zhu was born as a prince. He was made king at the age of eight. Zhu Yuanzhang didn't like his sons around, for fear that they would rebel, so he sealed a place for each of them, sent them everywhere as vassals, and stipulated that they were not allowed to leave the fief without authorization. Zhu's fief is in Kaifeng, Henan Province, which is also a region with severe drought and flood disasters. When Zhu was twenty-eight, he left the fief privately and went to Fengyang, Anhui. His father knew about it, cured him and sent him to Yunnan.
In the Ming Dynasty, Yunnan was a wild place. Zhu saw that the living environment of local residents is not good, many people are sick, and the situation of lack of medical care and medicine is very serious. Zhu organized doctors in the yamen to compile a convenient and practical book, Pocket Prescription, which feels like a pocket reference book now, so that everyone can consult it when they are sick. Zhu witnessed the pain brought by wars and natural disasters since he was a child, and he was very interested in medicine. He believes that medicine can save lives and prolong them.
After living in Yunnan for two years, Zhu was forgiven by his father and was recalled to the fief.
Because Zhu's territory, Kaifengfu, is a famous Huangfan District, people here often fill their stomachs with wild edible plants, and people who eat by mistake are also common.
Seeing this situation, Zhu decided to specialize in wild plants. He personally took people around Guo Feng's "Shan Ye Plain" and "visiting wild old Fu Tian", collected physical specimens and screened out more than 400 kinds of plants that could be used to satisfy hunger. In order to further observe the growth of these plants, he pondered to carve out a piece of land in the palace and plant those wild plants growing in the wilderness on the hillside into the garden of the palace. He observes, studies and records the growth of these wild plants every day. From a modern point of view, he is a qualified botanist.
Zhu planted these wild vegetables and wild fruits not only for viewing. He planted them to find out which of these wild vegetables and wild fruits can be eaten, so that he can tell the victims what to eat and what not to eat in famine years. In order to distinguish whether a plant is poisonous or not, Zhu Du must taste it himself before processing it into food. Finally, Zhu compiled 465,438+04 kinds of edible plants in drought. He also specially asked the painter to paint the leaves, flowers, fruits and branches of plants and attach them to the introduction of each plant. He compiled his research into a book called "Herbs for Disaster Relief", which recorded the name, producing environment, shape, taste and cooking method of each plant in detail, which can be described as a guide to wild vegetables. Some species in the book, which we regard as ornamental plants today, were edible wild vegetables in famine years, such as carnation and day lily, but the leaves of day lily were still edible at that time, and its flowers were not included in the edible range. In "Herbal Medicine for Saving the Famine", most weeds are treated with boiled water to remove bitterness and cold food with oil and salt.
The Ming people studied wild vegetables to save the famine, in fact, there have been herbal books on plants since ancient times. Shennong tasted a hundred herbs and wrote Shennong's herbal classics. Meng Ao's Compendium of Materia Medica in Tang Dynasty, Su Song's Compendium of Materia Medica and Tang Shenwei's Compendium of Materia Medica after Song Dynasty. But these books are not specially used to "save the famine". However, in the Ming Dynasty, there were several books specially edited for famine relief, including Zhu's Herbal Medicine for Famine Relief, Wang Pan's Wild Cookbook, Zhou's Confucianism (four volumes) and Baoshan's Wild Vegetables. The reason why so many people pay special attention to eating wild vegetables and fruits in famine years also shows the harsh natural conditions in Ming Dynasty.
Undoubtedly, Zhu is the first botanist in China who pays attention to famine relief and studies wild vegetables based on people's livelihood. Decades after Zhu, another man named Wang Pan began to look for edible wild vegetables. His potherb cookbook recorded 60 kinds of potherb, which not only had explanations, but also compiled poems and illustrations.
Less than a hundred years after Wang Pan, another man named Zhou also began to study wild vegetables, also to save the famine. He wrote a Record of Wild Vegetables. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Xu Guangqi compiled the Encyclopedia of Agricultural Administration, which included Zhu's Herbal Medicine for Famine Relief. He himself said, "I have never forgotten my land. I visit it every morning and evening and ask about it in detail." On the basis of summing up the experience of my ancestors, I got more than 60 kinds of wild vegetables. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Baoshan, a native of Wuyuan, went deep into Huangshan to build a house. He spent seven years writing records of wild vegetables.
The study of wild vegetables for famine relief can be said to run through the whole history of Ming Dynasty. With the influence of these studies on people's lives, the wild vegetables that are usually ignored and will come forward when encountering difficulties have been widely promoted, and almost every family has mastered the collection and consumption of several wild vegetables.
Link Du Fu loved purslane and wild vegetables until he resigned. I'm afraid there is only Hans Zhang of the Jin Dynasty in history. This man was an official in Luoyang, but he missed his hometown water shield thousands of miles away, so he simply resigned and went back to his hometown to eat water shield. Hans Zhang is an anomaly in China's history who resigned for the sake of appetite, which is the allusion of "condescending thinking".
Su Dongpo is not only a writer, but also a gourmet. He knows the beauty of every kind of food. As a parent, he is self-reliant and cooks for himself. Su Dongpo likes Artemisia selengensis (also known as Artemisia selengensis and Artemisia selengensis) in spring best. 1084, Su Dongpo was sent to work in Ruzhou by Song Shenzong. He specially tasted Artemisia selengensis through Nanjing today. Later, when the poets of Su Da passed Nanjing many times, they would eat Artemisia selengensis whenever they had the chance. He is very appreciative of this fragrant and tender wild vegetable with the efficacy of clearing away fire and removing blood stasis. He once wrote a poem: "When you first smell the beauty of Artemisia, you will see new buds." Su Dongpo is also obsessed with Artemisia selengensis in Hui Chong Riverside Night Scene. The poem says: "There are three or two peach blossoms outside the bamboo, and the riverside is a duck prophet. Artemisia sphaerocephala has short reed buds all over the ground, which is the time for puffer fish to go up. "
In the Tang Dynasty, eating wild vegetables was regarded as a kind of interest, and poets also expressed their attitude towards life through poems describing wild vegetables. Bai Juyi, Lu You and Li Bai all wrote poems about wild vegetables. Both Bai Juyi and Routing like to eat shepherd's purse in spring, while Li Bai prefers bracken. The poet Du Fu's favorite wild vegetable is purslane. Du Fu expressed his love for Portulaca oleracea in "Garden Official Delivers Vegetables": "Chicory needles are like thorns, and horseteeth leaves are already numerous. Green, buried in the central garden. "
The ancients ate wild vegetables, not only for ordinary people, but also for emperors, ministers and dignitaries. Li Shimin, Zhu Yuanzhang and Yong Zhengdi in Qing Dynasty all ate wild vegetables, but most of them flaunted their love for the people and frugality by eating wild vegetables. There are many early adopters. According to folklore, Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty had a whim and asked the chef to cook a purslane dish for him in the palace.
In the final analysis, most celebrities in ancient times ate wild vegetables not for eating, but for taste and interest.