I'm longing for the one you said!

but there is no such good thing!

there is no such thing as a professional gourmet!

if a person eats too much, he will find fault, so he is a gourmet!

The gourmets described by writer Lu Wenfu are like this, and they know the local delicacies like the back of their hands. Where there is new food, they are bound to arrive quickly; Their comments on the food are just right. First of all, it should be explained that the "gourmets" we are talking about here are gourmets who are aimed at the broad masses of food, that is, the material objects of food in the sense of "diet", rather than professionals who are limited to "food"-narrow dishes and pasta, cakes and so on. Unlike gourmets whose job is to fill their stomachs and gastrologists who aim to explain the esophagus and the theory of food, gourmets are people who appreciate food artistically and aesthetically with a happy attitude towards life and engage in the exploration of ideal food. The main purpose of gluttons is to pursue and satisfy material desires, while gastrologists focus on understanding and theoretical induction. Gourmets not only have rich and vivid food practice and material enjoyment, but also have profound and unique experience and artistic consciousness. They are the explorers and creators of the beauty of eating life in harmony with material and spirit, physiology and psychology. There are countless gourmets in the history of China-most of them belong to this category, and there are also many gourmets, but there are very few people who can really be called gourmets. "People don't know how to taste unless they eat" (Book of Rites, The Doctrine of the Mean, Volume 31, No.52), which is really true. Of course, this doesn't mean how successful a food grower is, nor does it mean how unattainable a gourmet's job or business is. The fact is very simple: "The knower goes too far, but the fool doesn't have it"; Or "those who go up and down to the seashore" have passed it, and those who are unscrupulous are not as good as them. " (Book of Rites, The Doctrine of the Mean, Volume 52) Those who have high wisdom and interest are not here, and they despise it! In an era when Confucius and Mencius' thought of restraining food dominates the social concept, and the upper class's food behavior often deviates from its food speech, how can we expect those "knowledgeable" and "wise" to take care of this matter? By the same token, those "fools" and "unworthy" are of course incapable because of economic poverty or poor culture, and once they are expected to surpass the boundary of "only knowing above and being foolish below" set by saints or social obstacles (volume XVII of The Analects of Yang Huo), they will rise to the status of "knowing" and "sage" without exception. The historical fact is that only after entering the Tang Dynasty (618 ~ 97), when spiritual freedom, ideological democracy and cultural prosperity were far greater than any previous historical era, and the historical results of science and technology and economic social reserves (mainly referring to food production and food life) made new progress and development, did individual "learned" and "sages" in the intellectual circle begin to pay attention to food practice and exploration with a healthy and normal attitude; In other words, the social conditions for producing gourmets are only initially available. Before that, those who were famous for their food could only be called gourmets at most, or they still belonged to the category of gluttons. From the mid-Tang Dynasty to the mid-Qing Dynasty (the historical peak of the development of China's ancient food culture), the appearance of gourmets and the number of them as historical and cultural expressions gradually increased in the horizontal direction, while in the vertical direction, their thoughts deepened and their aesthetic taste gradually improved. From the perspective of practical field and aesthetic object, it is generally manifested in the logical order of first tea drinking, second wine drinking and finally eating for dishes. This is because, from the establishment of the norms of tea affairs after the middle Tang Dynasty to the exquisiteness of tea tasting in the later period, Chinese tea art has been vividly demonstrated; Although the wine affair has a long history, the drinking of distilled liquor, as one of the important varieties, became a social habit until the Yuan Dynasty, mainly because of the preference of the bitter nobles, so the time process of fully displaying the wine cultural form was later than that of the tea affair. As for the food eating culture, which focuses on traditional hand-operated dishes, its content is relatively complicated, which involves the full development of raw materials, the corresponding development of tools and techniques, the expansion of finished products, and the comprehensive culture of banquet activities. It was fully released after the prosperity of the middle Tang Dynasty, the prosperity of the Song Dynasty and the heyday of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Therefore, although the eating activity of delicious food, which takes intake of calories and basic nutrition as its main function (according to the historical development process) occurred the earliest and was the most important in life, the full development of its nutritional examination did not begin until the middle of Qing Dynasty. The mature order of the above three is the historical logic of the operation of food culture, regardless of grade.