Martial arts dramas often have such a scene, in which a hero who exudes heroic temperament walks into a restaurant and shouts loudly, "Xiao Er, two Jin of beef, a fine altar of daughter-in-law". What impresses me most is that Qiao Feng always appears like this.

It is often described in Water Margin that Liangshan heroes drink and eat meat like this before going up the mountain, and even drink a lot of wine every day when they go to Liangshan.

We know that even today, beef and mutton are much more expensive than pork and chicken (of course, it's generally said that pork prices have soared since last year, which is almost as expensive as beef). So, did ordinary people in ancient times really get a few pounds of beef casually as in TV dramas?

to discuss the situation of ancient people eating meat, we must first talk about which dynasty the so-called ancient times were.

because of different dynasties, people's quality of life will be different, and people in every region of each dynasty have different quality of life because of their different living habits.

Take the earliest Shang and Zhou Dynasties as an example. The rulers of the country attached great importance to classes, and strictly stipulated what people of each class should and should not do, both politically and in daily life. In the "Zhou Li", it is recorded that people of every class should strictly follow the regulations, otherwise there will be corresponding punishment.

Zhou Yu, a book in Mandarin, records that the son of heaven eats too fast, which means beef, mutton and pork. Governors can only eat beef, while Qing can only eat mutton, and so on. When it comes to ordinary people, it is stipulated that they can only eat vegetables, but not meat.

This is still stipulated under the condition that materials are relatively sufficient. In the era of lack of materials, even governors and scholars can't eat meat casually, and ordinary people can't eat it.

In the Zhou Dynasty, meat was still scarce, and it was also a material that the upper class could enjoy. The living conditions of the people at the bottom were really hard, and they couldn't even eat a bite of meat.

In the Spring and Autumn Period, beef, mutton and pork were still exclusive to nobles, but ordinary people still couldn't eat them. However, compared with the stipulation that ordinary people could only eat vegetables in Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the Spring and Autumn Period was a little looser, and people were not strictly forbidden to eat meat. People turned their attention to dog meat, and eating dog meat was popular among the people for a time.

because dog meat is in great demand among the people, it is still on the rise? Dog slaughter? Nie Zheng, an assassin in the Spring and Autumn Period, took killing dogs as his profession in order to escape and chase. Before Fan Kuai made his fortune, he also took killing dogs as his profession. Is there another folk saying? Every dog slayer? It can be seen that dog meat once played an important role in the people.

In the Northern Song Dynasty, the economy developed rapidly, reaching unprecedented prosperity. The upper class was riddled with paper and riddles, and ordinary people lived well. Ordinary people could eat pork, and even ordinary people had pork on every meal table.

This statement is also well-founded. It is recorded in Dream of China in Tokyo that pigs in Sichuan are transported to Tokyo, that is, Kyoto in the Northern Song Dynasty, every day, and the people in Beijing can be said to have a very moist life.

Su Shi, a great poet in the Northern Song Dynasty, was also a gourmet. He invented a unique way to eat pork for Dongpo meat, which was widely circulated in the Northern Song Dynasty. It can be seen that pork was still relatively common at that time.

The writing background of Water Margin is in the late Yuan Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty, but the story in the book is in the Song Dynasty. In the Song Dynasty, people used oxen to pull carts to plow land, so oxen were the main productive forces of society at that time, and the government also stipulated that oxen in cultivated land should not be slaughtered at will to eat meat, and they could only eat it when they died. So we watch the description of eating beef in TV series. Even if the restaurant serves beef, it won't be killed beef now.

It is worth mentioning that in ancient times, because the government did not prohibit people from eating wild animals, game was the main source of meat at that time, and people had to catch whatever they wanted, so there were many occupations of hunters in ancient times, but now we can't eat wild animals casually.