When it comes to eating, the Empress Dowager Cixi's royal meals are really jaw-dropping. Today we will talk about the deep scheming behind the 108 dishes that the Empress Dowager Cixi "eats and drinks" every meal.

Cixi was the actual person in power in the late Qing Dynasty. Emperor Tongzhi and Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty were just little grasshoppers in front of her.

Cixi's meal consisted of 108 dishes with all kinds of delicacies from both mountains and seas. It was extremely extravagant and wasteful, but is this really the case?

The editor tells you that this idea is somewhat unreliable.

Since the Qing army entered the customs, they have retained the traditional customs of living in the Northeast. Therefore, the roe deer, deer and rabbits in the Northeast were welcomed by the Manchu nobles. In addition, there was a steady stream of specialties from all over the country, and they could be cooked in different styles every day.

vegetable.

With so many rich ingredients, the Empress Dowager Cixi must be very grand when dining. The simplest lunch usually has at least 108 dishes. For this table of dishes, she invited "Lu Zhishen" to eat every dish.

One bite can fill you up and burp again and again, not to mention that Cixi is still an old lady, so waste is really a waste.

The place where Empress Dowager Cixi cooks is called the Imperial Kitchen. There are more than a hundred cooking stoves in it. There are three chefs beside each stove, one is responsible for cooking, one is responsible for chopping vegetables, and one is responsible for doing chores.

All vegetable processing processes, whether picking vegetables, washing vegetables, chopping vegetables or stir-frying, require specialized personnel to supervise and inspect the entire process and keep records at all times.

Just to make a dish, why does the program need to be so complicated?

On the one hand, it is necessary to maintain absolute hygiene of food and to prevent "shoddy production". On the other hand, it is afraid that someone will poison and harm Cixi Lafayette.

Of course, this is only the first step in preventing poisoning. All dishes made need to be inserted by eunuchs one by one with silver needles to test for poison. Once the silver needles turn black, the poisoning "suspect" will be arrested according to the number.

After the dishes were brought to the table, Cixi would not use her chopsticks immediately. Instead, she would use her eyes to signal the eunuchs beside her to take a bite of each dish to make sure that the eunuchs were not poisoned, bleeding from their mouths and noses, or falling to the ground.

, only Lafayette can eat with silver chopsticks.

Everyone wants to know, which dish did Cixi like the most among these 108 dishes?

To tell you the truth, historians don't know, not even Li Lianying, the eunuch next to Cixi.

The reason is simple. When Cixi eats, she can take no more than two bites of each dish. If she takes a third bite, the eunuch will immediately remove the dish as a "punishment."

Cixi herself had no idea what to do about this rule, because every emperor of the Qing Dynasty came here like this. This is the family law left by the ancestors, and no one can shake it.

Isn’t this “family law” weird?

As the head of a country, don’t you even have the right to eat the food you like?

In fact, it is really not the fault of the ancestors for being cruel, but rather the painstaking efforts of the ancestors.

Born in an emperor's family, it is inevitable that there will be people with ulterior motives who secretly poison the emperor and want to kill him.

If the emperors like a certain dish, they will eat a few more bites unconsciously. Then the poisoner will be targeted. But if they only eat two bites of each dish, they probably won’t know what they like to eat after a long time.

Yes, the poisoner can only put the poison in one dish. Under such strict surveillance, it is impossible for every dish to be mixed with poison, and the chance of poisoning is even slimmer. In this way, the risk of Cixi being assassinated is also very small.

Greatly reduced.

From this, we can see that the Manchu rulers seemed to be aloof, but in fact they still felt insecure in their hearts.

When we think about it, the 108 dishes seem rich and tempting, but we don't know that under these rich dishes, Cixi increased the number of dishes for her own safety to reduce the risk of poisoning, thereby wasting people and money, and engaging in extravagance.

A piece of history.