Chinese medicine regards sweet potato as a good medicine, which is recorded in Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica in the Ming Dynasty? Sweet potato tonic, spleen appetizer, strong kidney yin? He also said that people in the sea had eaten for a long time.
Sweet potato is widely planted in today's area, covering almost all dialect areas, so there are many aliases mentioned above. However, sweet potato is not native to China, and its planting history in China is only a few hundred years.
Sweet potato originated in America and was discovered by Columbus at the end of 15. Later, sweet potato was also well known by Europeans, and it was first introduced to Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and China with the footprints of colonists.
According to academic research, sweet potato was introduced to China in the middle of Ming Dynasty. It was introduced from the Philippines, Annan (Vietnam) and Ryukyu Islands.
In the Ming Dynasty, Su Yan wrote in Zhu Shufu: Between Shen Jia and Yiyou, at the junction of Zhangzhou and Chaoshan, there is an island called Nan 'ao. Wenling introduced it and brought its species to Wudu, Jinjiang. The township is called Lingshui, the garden of species. During the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Wenling was hungry and cold, and its grain was expensive, but the potato was the only one, and the villagers lived with the potato seven or eight times. ?
It can be seen that sweet potato was first introduced into Guangdong. According to the Records of Dongguan County written during Xuan Tong's period, in the eighth year of Wanli (1580), a Dongguan maritime merchant named Chen Yi introduced sweet potatoes to China.
Unfortunately, although sweet potato was introduced to China as early as the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, people did not realize its important survival value as a food ration.
Therefore, at first, sweet potatoes were only circulated in Fujian and Guangdong.
In fact, sweet potato has low requirements for soil, fertilizer and rain, which is very suitable for large-scale promotion in the country. Suppose that the government organized a large-scale promotion of sweet potato cultivation in the late Ming Dynasty to help people in Shaanxi and other places survive the Little Ice Age of ten years and nine droughts, would there still be the Zhang Zhi Rebellion in Li Zicheng? Unfortunately, history cannot be assumed.
The real large-scale popularization of sweet potatoes was in the Qing Dynasty.
According to "clearing money? Plant records:? During the reign of Kangxi, the sage ordered the cultivation of teaching arts for food in Zhongzhou and other places. Since then, it has been widely planted in Zhili, Jiangsu and Shandong. ? At that time, in many southern provinces, sweet potato cultivation had become more common and became an important part of poor people's rations.
In the third year of Yongzheng (1725), Fujian Governor Huang said in his memorial:? Check the coast of Huian, Tongan and Jinmen, all of which belong to Quanzhou Prefecture. Last winter, the sweet potato harvest was not good, and this spring, rice is expensive, and the poor in the offshore area are not without suffering. ? . In addition, in the sixth year of Yongzheng (1728), Kong Zhuo, the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, said: check the original varieties of Chaozhou sweet potatoes to replace rice grains, and now they all get a lot of money. They sell seven pence per tendon, which is about one person's daily food, but only one or two pence. ?
It can be seen that in Yongzheng period, sweet potato has become the daily food of the lower class, especially in the years of flood and drought, and it is also the savior to save the hungry people from famine.
At that time, many far-sighted local officials gradually realized the importance of sweet potato. For example, in the 12th year of Qianlong (1747), Pan Simiao, the governor of Anhui Province, asked the whole province to plant sweet potatoes. Ji Zheng, county magistrate of Fengtai County? After walking around the building, I found that there are indeed many incurable moraines in the sand. I teach people to grow yam and help hulled wheat, so there is no land to cultivate. ? Is Wu Huancai, the county magistrate of Fanxian County, Shandong Province, local? Teach sweet potatoes, and people's difficulties will be lifted? .
Lu Xun wrote in "Mr. Fujino": Probably things are rare. Beijing cabbage was shipped to Zhejiang, tied with red rope and hung upside down at the door of the fruit shop. what do you think? Gum vegetables? ; Fujian wild aloe vera, please enter the greenhouse as soon as you arrive in Beijing, euphemistically called? Tequila? .
The sweet potato in Qianlong period is still a new thing for many northerners, and it also enjoys the advanced treatment mentioned by Mr. Lu Xun. For example, "Yanjing Years" records that after Qianlong, Beijing, rich or poor, ate boiled sweet potatoes.
Compared with the traditional crops such as wheat and rice in China, sweet potato does not compete with the main food crops, and its planting technology is relatively simple, with low requirements for climate and rain. It can be said that sweet potato played an important role in feeding hundreds of millions of lower class people in Qing Dynasty.
According to records, the registered population reached 67 million during the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty, and the large-scale war at the end of the Ming Dynasty led to a sharp decline in population. In the six years of Qianlong (174 1 year), the total registered population of China exceeded 1 billion for the first time in history, and exceeded 200 million and 300 million respectively in the twenty-seventh year of Qianlong (1762) and the fifty-fifth year of Qianlong (1790). In the 14th year of Daoguang (1834), the total population exceeded 400 million. In the first year of Xianfeng (185 1), the population reached more than 4.3 1 100 million.
From less than 1 billion to more than 400 million, the time is less than 200 years. Among them, it is inseparable from the credit of sweet potatoes.