According to Shan Hai Jing Bei Shan Jing, as early as 4000 years ago, people in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River tasted puffer fish and knew it was poisonous. More than 2,000 years ago, the lower reaches of the Yangtze River belonged to wuyue during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. The custom of people tasting puffer fish is even worse than that of Japanese today. Especially when tasting puffer fish testis, they think it is as white as milk, fat and delicious, and its population is changing rapidly, which is wonderful. I don't know how to describe it. Some people associated it with Beauty Yue, so it spread among the people.
In the fifth year of Song Dynasty (AD 1038), the famous poet Mei was at Fan Zhongyan's dinner table. When his colleagues described the puffer fish vividly, he couldn't help improvising a poem: "Buds are born in Chunzhou, and poplars fly on the spring shore." In the season of puffer fish, there are countless fish and shrimps ... "Li Shizhen also mentioned that Yan Youyi, a poet in the Song Dynasty, said in" Yi Yuan orpiment ":"Puffer fish, the strange taste of the aquarium, has been passed down from generation to generation to kill people, and the rest are raised in Danyang and Xuancheng, and the original households eat it. However, no one was found dead when cooking with leeks, Artemisia argyi and Zizania latifolia. "
Li Shizhen (1518-1593), a medical scientist in the Ming Dynasty, spent 30 years searching for more than 600 famous works from ancient Yan Huangdi to the Ming Dynasty, and comprehensively summarized the achievements of China's pharmacology from the 2nd century BC to the 6th century BC. In his magnum opus Compendium of Materia Medica, he said: "According to the ancient book Shan Hai Jing Bei, which was first written in Dayu, completed in summer and perfected in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the puffer fish is called cerium dioxide, and Wu people say that its blood is toxic, so if the liver eats it, the tongue will be numb, and if the roe eats it, the stomach will swell and the eyes will be blind. Ma Zhi, a native of Song Dynasty (about 968), said in "Kaibao Materia Medica" that there are puffer fish in the Yangtze River, Huaihe River, Yellow River and the sea.
Throughout the ages, with the changes of ecological environment, the rivers of Tuihe River and Yellow River and the people's estuary have changed many times, and the old course of the Yellow River still remains in Lianshui, Jiangsu Province. Now Hongze, Huaiyin, Huai 'an, Jinhu and Funing in Jiangsu are all in the lower reaches of the Huaihe River, but people have never seen puffer fish in the Yellow River or Huaihe River. According to the author's investigation, people on both sides of the Yellow River basin and Huaihe River, including northern Jiangsu, don't know puffer fish at all and won't eat puffer fish. People in Yangzhong, South Jiangsu, in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River generally know about puffer fish and are addicted to it. The puffer fish diet culture passed down to this day is completely in tune with Su Dongpo's and Mei's descriptions. From the ancient descriptions of the distribution, ecological habits, external morphology and behavior of puffer fish, the puffer fish in "Desperately Eating Puffer Fish" should refer to fugu obscurus, which entered the Yangtze River from the ocean for reproductive migration in spring.