There used to be a joke. When a beggar answered the question of what to do after becoming an emperor, he replied bluntly: After becoming an emperor, he ate white-flour steamed bread every day. This is a joke, but what does the emperor eat? Food and seafood? Or-the following is a recipe of the Qing emperor, from which we may feel that the emperor is so much. This is the menu of Emperor Qianlong's banquet on the first day of October in the twelfth year of Qianlong (AD 1747). The menu is like this: "The bird's nest, shredded chicken, mushrooms and cabbage are smoked with fire, followed by the Eight Immortals (smoked slices of bird's nest and duck, mushrooms with chicken wings), fat chicken and cabbage, preserved duck, rotten duck, shredded pheasant with sauerkraut, roasted venison, shredded chicken and dried mutton, which saves a dish. A product of honey, a product of Lala, a product of side dishes, a product of southern vegetables, a product of spinach, a product of sweet-scented osmanthus radish, a bowl of glutinous rice, a product of mutton egg powder soup, a product of radish soup and a product of wild chicken soup. " (Xu Qixian: Dining for the Emperors in Qing Dynasty, word Jincheng,No. 10) Today, the emperor spends about 20 taels of silver on a very ordinary meal, while the living standard and price level at that time were that a family of five spent about 30 taels of silver a year. From the above menu, we can see that Emperor Qianlong's dinner (at that time, the emperor's dinner was two meals a day, that is, breakfast and dinner, so this dinner was dinner) had more than 20 kinds of dishes and soups. In other words, at present, we ordinary people often (some even go to the table) eat those things, such as chicken, duck, cabbage, radish, spinach, sauerkraut, mushrooms, japonica rice and so on. And venison is precious, but this venison is basically raised in the emperor's own home, so the price of this ordinary meal is not cheap. Naturally, the oil and water entered the hands of those who catered to the emperor, that is, officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, large and small.