Taotie, the fifth son of the dragon in ancient Chinese myths and legends, is a mysterious monster that exists in legends and imaginations. The ancient book "Shan Hai Jing" introduces its characteristics as follows: its shape is like a sheep body and a human face, its eyes are under the armpits, tiger teeth and human claws, and its voice is like a baby. Today, the word "taotie" is often associated with food. People like to use "gluttonous feast" or "gluttonous feast" to describe delicious food. However, this is not the original meaning of "taotie". The original meaning of "Taotie" is a gluttonous monster, which, like Longfeng, is completely out of people's imagination. Just like the dragon was designed to be multi-faced to exaggerate its ability to fly, in order to exaggerate the gluttonous function of the gluttonous dragon, the ancestors designed it to have a grotesque appearance with only a big internal bag and a big mouth. This kind of glutton is born to eat and drink. He eats whatever he sees and eventually dies of overeating. According to various classics, the word "taotie" first appeared in "Zuo Zhuan". According to records in "Zuo Zhuan: The Eighteenth Year of Wen Gong", Ji Sun Xingwen once sent someone to tell a story to Lu Wen Gong. When describing someone who was greedy for good goods and plundered and amassed money, he compared it to gluttony. It can be seen that gluttony was already connected with food at that time, and it was also deduced that it can be further compared to the greed for money. According to "Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals", Taotie was already an evil beast in the early Zhou Dynasty that "eats people without swallowing them, causing harm to the whole body". However, it is difficult to say whether the early Zhou Dynasty was the beginning of the popularity of the Taotie story, because archeology shows that the Taotie pattern appeared as a decoration on the jade objects of the Liangzhu Culture in the Yangtze River region 5,000 years ago. Our country has produced a splendid agricultural civilization very early. China's ancestors realized very early that agriculture is an industry that depends on the sky for harvesting seeds, and the abundance of food largely determines the gifts of nature. "Yi Zhou Shu·Wen Zhuan" points out that villains, officials and even the country "have no food for the whole year", so when establishing a country or a family, it is necessary to prepare food reserves to prepare for disaster years. Under such circumstances, anyone who eats excessively and is extravagant and wasteful will incur the wrath of humans and gods. If a king loses his throne, his crime must be one of overeating. Legend has it that Xia Jie was such a tyrant who drank "without rest". In order to satisfy the desire of the tyrant, he built a wine pool that can be used by boats, and three thousand people can drink it at once." In the eyes of the people, it was his long-term corruption and indulgence that ultimately led to the country's downfall. Not only Xia Jie, but also Shang Jiu The loss of position can also be attributed to eating. "Historical Records" records that Shang Zhou "used wine as a pond and county (hanging) meat as a forest, so that men and women kept each other (naked) chasing each other for a long night of drinking. "It can be seen that under the backward and low productivity, people have realized the great significance of food reserves in preserving themselves and realizing the reproduction of life out of survival instinct. In their view, there is nothing more hateful than gluttony and gluttony. . In this case, a monster called "Taotie" appeared. The ancestors used Taotie to warn people that eating more and drinking more would burst their stomachs and even kill them. It is precisely because the Taotie itself was used to persuade people to eat less. After the ancestors designed this kind of monster, they immediately attributed it to great evil and ugliness and put it to death.

Taotie patterns appear in large numbers on eating utensils, also to achieve the purpose of admonishment, and even enhance the meaning of admonition. Its purpose is nothing more than this