During the Qin and Western Han Dynasties, Sichuan's food culture did not have regional characteristics: during the 300-odd years from the Qin Dynasty's destruction of Shu to the end of the Western Han Dynasty, due to the economic development of Shu after the first immigration, the prosperity of Chengdu led to the richness of products and the prosperity of the catering industry. This is what Yang Xiong said in Shu Du Fu: "The five flavors of the husband are mixed with sweetness, the soup of peony, the abalone in Jiangdong and the cattle and sheep in Longxi" and the introduction of rare wild animals. From these short sentences, we can infer that the classical Sichuan cuisine had begun to take shape in the late Western Han Dynasty, and the spirit of the Central Plains cooking culture-"harmony of five flavors" has become the keynote of the diet of at least the upper class in Sichuan; Then there is "Jiangdong mackerel, Longxi cattle and sheep", which shows that Sichuan cooking materials are not simply selected locally, but obtained from the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the west of the Qinling Mountains through land and water transportation. However, we should note that the above description implies that at least the upper-class diet did not have regional characteristics during this period, and if it did, it was also the unhealthy and uncivilized habit of "Yizhou Deer (Bad Committee)" inherited by the lower-class people before the Warring States Period. Before this, it can be inferred from the record of "Wen Jun as a servant" in Historical Records that the catering industry in Sichuan has also appeared. Generally speaking, just as Sichuan rarely showed the legacy of ancient Shu culture after Qin and Han Dynasties, Sichuan food culture in this period was basically completely assimilated by the advanced culture of Qin and Han Dynasties, and has not yet formed its own regional characteristics.

Sichuan cuisine in late Han, Wei and Jin dynasties

The distinction between classical Sichuan and Sichuan cuisine and Central Plains and Jiangnan cuisine appeared in the late Eastern Han Dynasty and Wei and Jin Dynasties;

After the establishment of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Sichuan's economy and culture continued to develop, and its cooking culture began to show its own characteristics. The "kitchen figurines" in the tombs of the Eastern Han Dynasty in Zhongxian County introduced in the second section illustrate the mature scene of Sichuan and Sichuan cooking, in which the appearance of dumplings should attract our attention in particular. Dumpling should be understood as a variant of wonton. In the Han Dynasty, wonton was called "Zuihun", which was a kind of cake, or soup cake. "Steamed cakes, soup cakes, scorpion cakes, pith cakes, golden cakes and soggy cakes" have been mentioned in Liu Xi's Interpretation of Names in the Eastern Han Dynasty, but we can't accurately understand the meaning of soup cakes. We only know that wonton or dumplings should be made from wheat bran-removed flour, which requires high quality flour processing. Therefore, we can speculate that the agricultural processing technology in Sichuan is the same as that in the Central Plains at the latest in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Steamed bread, or "mantou", as a kind of instant pasta, should be one of the so-called "steamed cakes" in the above-mentioned sentence of Interpretation of Names. It appeared at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, but why was it attributed to Zhuge Liang's invention in Shu Han? In addition to the celebrity effect, it may also be because Mantou, a man in Sichuan, pioneered the addition of meat stuffing, and it is slightly like a human head in shape, which is different from Liu Xishi's steamed cakes. Wei Wu's Four Seasons Food System, written by a person who may be named Cao Cao in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, talked about the cooking in Sichuan and Sichuan at that time, saying: "Pixian fish, with yellow scales and red tails, can be used as sauce when it comes out of rice fields"; It is said that the yellow croaker "has a large number and a hundred kilograms, and its bones are soft and edible." Also mentioned "steamed catfish", it can be seen that steamed catfish dishes were already available in Sichuan and Sichuan. In any case, it shows that the cooking level in Sichuan-Sichuan region has been improved considerably in the late Eastern Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms Period, and it was known to the Central Plains as "enjoying the honey", and later in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, it was determined by Chang Qu's "respecting the taste and good spicy flavor" again.

During the Three Kingdoms period, Chengdu, as the capital of one of the three countries, stepped onto the political stage of China. The second immigration movement promoted the continued development of Sichuan and Sichuan's economy and culture. During this period, Liu Chan, the late ruler, made great efforts to "broaden the vocal music", which was correspondingly reflected in the high-level food level. At this time, Chengdu has become "both beautiful and worshipful", "the outside is well-connected, and the inside is opposite, which is more connected than the house." A prosperous national metropolis. In the Western Jin Dynasty, Zuo Si praised Shu Du Fu, which was written by people in Shu Zhong in Luoyang according to documents and inquiries. The so-called "konjac cornus, melon and taro area, sugarcane and ginger, sunny and fragrant." Therefore, there is a banquet in Chengdu with "four dishes, four dishes, and a clear ticket". Zhang Zai, a poet in the Western Jin Dynasty, also talked about the richness of food in the capital of Shu in his poem "Dengcheng Baitulou": "Ding Shi can enter at any time. Hundreds of harmony are wonderful and different. " What deserves our attention is that the cooking style of "respecting taste and good spicy flavor" conflicts with the spirit of "adjusting husband and five flavors". From this, we conclude that the classical Sichuan cuisine in Wei and Jin Dynasties has different characteristics from that in the Western Han Dynasty, so we think that the distinction between classical Sichuan cuisine and other cuisines in the whole country should be at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty and Wei and Jin Dynasties, not at the time of Qin and Han Dynasties.

Sichuan cuisine Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties

The Prosperity of Sichuan and Shu Food Culture in Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties;

The war in Sichuan and Sichuan at the end of the Western Jin Dynasty led to the eastward migration of a large number of people in Sichuan and Sichuan, which destroyed the economy and culture to a certain extent. By the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the establishment of a unified empire had restored production and achieved unprecedented economic development. The great economic recovery and cultural enrichment under the affluent life began after the Sui Dynasty occupied Sichuan and Shu areas. Yang Xiu, the King of Yue, who moved to Chengdu in the Sui Dynasty, built large-scale buildings in Chengdu and expanded the walls of Chengdu, indicating that the population of Shu areas increased when China was unified by the Sui Dynasty, and the urban area of Chengdu was no longer large enough to live in during the Shu and Han Dynasties. Yang Xiu's "gradual luxury" has played an exemplary role in Chengdu's diet leisure culture. Later, since the Anshi Rebellion, Shu became the backyard of the Tang Dynasty, and Chengdu was renamed as "Nanjing" for a short time. Later, in the middle and late Tang Dynasties, Chengdu expanded its city twice through Wei Gao and Gao Pian, becoming a large city of considerable scale. During the turmoil in the middle and late Tang Dynasty, Sichuan has always been a place where aristocratic families and famous literati took refuge, which created conditions for cultural exchanges, including the improvement of food standards.

At this time, the dietary level of Sichuan and Sichuan reached a new height, which was reflected in the poems of the Tang Dynasty. For example, when Du Fu was in Kuifu, Sichuan Province, he wrote a poem "Cold Amoy of Sophora japonica leaves": "Green and high Sophora japonica leaves, picking up Chinese cooking. New noodles come near the market, and the juice is mixed with me. If you are over-cooked, you will have no worries about adding food. Everything is fresh and fresh, and the fragrant rice is also a reed. " "Cold Tao" is a kind of cold noodles, which had its embryonic form as early as the Northern and Southern Dynasties. It became the seasonal diet of court banquets in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, and Du Fu was able to eat cold Tao in Kuifu, indicating that the delicacies in the banquet of the capital had spread to Sichuan folk. Du Fu once appreciated the cooking technique of "the scorpion wields a frost knife left and right, and the squid is golden and the snow is high" in Mianzhou, Sichuan. The prosperous Sichuan-Sichuan economy and the exchange of commodities have given full support to the regional food culture. In Chengdu Qu, Zhang Ji described that "there are many restaurants near the bridge in Wan Li, and the tourists love to stay at their home" and Yong Tao described that "it is more like Chang 'an to cook wine since Chengdu." Li Shangyin's sentence that "fine wine can be sent to the old in Chengdu, but the furnace is still Zhuo Wenjun" describes the richness of Sichuan's diet at that time.

Especially in the Five Dynasties after the third migration, the economy and culture of Shu reached another climax. This is because the number of people with high cultural quality who migrated to Sichuan exceeded the previous two times, making Sichuan and Sichuan one of the two areas where the people of the Central Plains took refuge at that time.

"Qing Yi Lu" contains: "Meng Shu still eats, holds a hundred volumes of" Food Canon ",and has given Fei sheep. Its method: use red yeast cook the meat, tightly roll the stone town, go deep into the wine bone, and cut it as thin as paper. " From Qi Min Yao Shu, we can see that only steamed pigs are used to cook meat directly with wine. The method of making Fei sheep seems to carry forward this method, and modern Dongpo meat also inherits this method, and pork is treated with wine. From Mrs. Hua Rui's palace poems, we know that there were various ways of catering at that time, and there was a "boat banquet". With a volume of up to 100 volumes, The Book of Food should be the most extensive cookbook from the Sui and Tang Dynasties to the Five Dynasties. Although it only reflects the cooking skills of the royal chef, it can spy out the colorful cooking culture of Bashu in the Five Dynasties. Today, we don't know the specific content of the lost Edible Canon of Meng Shu. We can only spy out the novelty of the banquet types and the exquisiteness and originality of the eating style of senior people in Sichuan at that time from Mrs. Hua Rui's palace words.

Sichuan cuisine in Song, Yuan and Ming Dynasties

During the Song Dynasty, classical Sichuan cuisine became an independent cuisine in China;

Sichuan continued to maintain economic and cultural prosperity in the Song Dynasty. During the Northern Song Dynasty, the feast in Chengdu was very popular. During Renzong's reign in the Northern Song Dynasty, Song Qi knew about Chengdu, and even more colorful banquet activities were carried out. Song Qi is the first person to introduce the exotic local products and some cooking skills in Sichuan in detail to areas outside Sichuan. Later, Su Shi was the first to creatively carry forward Sichuan cooking to the Central Plains, Jiangnan and Lingnan regions. We can find out about Su Shi's cooking practice from many of his poems, ci poems and notes of Song people.

An amateur cooking enthusiast, Lu You, a native of Zhejiang Province, has been an official in Sichuan for a long time and has a strong interest in Sichuan cuisine. Tang 'an's glutinous rice, Xinjin's leek yellow, Pengshan's roasted turtle, Chengdu's steamed chicken and Xindu's vegetables all left an unforgettable impression on him, and he still remembers it after many years away from Shu. In his later years, he sang an emotional poem "Give back the taste of Wu" in the play of vegetable food (note 44). In the poem "Play after a meal", he said: "Buy bones at the east gate, and add some orange sauce. Steamed chicken is the most famous, and the beauty is not counted. " "Bo" means "pig" and "Bo bone" is pork chop. Pork ribs are cooked or dipped in sour sauce mixed with spices such as orange sauce. In addition, the poem praised Sichuan chives, zongzi, turtle soup and other foods. There are more than 50 poems about Sichuan cuisine in Lu You's "Jian Nan Poetry Draft", and his works let us observe the splendor of folk food in Sichuan from another angle.

The great achievement of Sichuan cuisine in the Song Dynasty was that its cooking began to be sent abroad, so that overseas Sichuanese and ordinary people who were not Sichuanese could eat local flavor food in special restaurants. This was the first time that Sichuan cuisine became an independent cooking system. This is the so-called "Sichuan rice" in the Northern Song Dynasty. These Sichuan restaurants mainly sell "noodles with meat, large noodles with meat, large and small dishes with meat, fried meat with meat, mixed fried events, and cooked rice." "Sichuan rice divides tea" in the Southern Song Dynasty. From the contents of the above two books, it can be found that Sichuan cuisine mainly deals with popular diets, especially pasta, which is the main component of noodles, with some fast food meat. Today's noodles in Shanghai and Hangzhou are probably the remains of Sichuan rice noodles, because we can't find the second place where noodles are recorded in Dream of Tokyo. According to Capital Jisheng Food Shop, the southern food shop and Sichuan rice tea distribution shop after Nandu actually became synonymous with pasta shops, so Kaifeng Sichuan Hotel in the Northern Song Dynasty. As we know, modern noodles are very different from modern Sichuan noodles. The specific seasoning characteristics of these dishes are not found, and their thick taste and spicy flavor are not found. From the explanation of Menglianglu, we know that the reason for the appearance of Sichuan rice is that in the Northern Song Dynasty, in order to take care of the tastes of the scholar-officials living in Bianjing, "it was said that it was inconvenient for them to eat in the north." One hundred and fifty years after Nandu, these Sichuan restaurants opened in Lin 'an with Nandu have "no distinction between north and south", which shows that these Sichuan-style pasta dishes were quite different from those cooked in the Central Plains.

In other words, only in the Northern Song Dynasty did Sichuan cuisine become an influential cuisine in China. We can conclude that the classical Sichuan cuisine began at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the turn of Wei and Jin Dynasties, and the finalization reached its peak at the same time in the Northern Song Dynasty. The finalization process took almost a thousand years.

The food culture in Sichuan in the Ming Dynasty was a period of great development. The most famous Sichuan Sichuan Sichuan Sichuan Cuisine and many famous wines appeared or improved in the Ming Dynasty, and the modern Sichuan Cuisine was shaped in the Ming Dynasty. In the Ming Dynasty, Sichuan paid special attention to food, and the famous Guojiao 1573 wine, LU ZHOU LAO JIAO CO.,LTD, Wenqu wine and Wuliangye appeared in the Ming Dynasty, and "ice powder", nine-footed duck and "great chicken" were also invented in the Ming Dynasty. The famous "hemp seed" rattan pepper oil was produced in the late Ming Dynasty before the Qing Dynasty ruled Sichuan. In the Ming Dynasty, Sichuan produced a kind of delicious food called "Fried Pig", which was improved from the fried pork in the Song Dynasty. The fried pork was a reliable prototype of Sichuan style pork, and it was renamed Sichuan style pork after the Qing Dynasty.

The birth of modern Sichuan cuisine (186 1- 1905);

During the Qianlong period of Qing Dynasty, Li Huanan, a native of Luojiang, Sichuan Province, who traveled to Zhejiang as an official, paid attention to collecting the cooking experience of chefs and housewives in his spare time. Later, his son, Li Diaoyuan, sorted out the cooking experience he had collected and engraved it as a book of food classics, Awakening the Garden Record. Awakening Garden Record is an important food book in the Qing Dynasty, which is different from the synopsis of similar books in the Qing Dynasty at the same time and before. It records the selection of cooking raw materials and cooking operation procedures in detail, which is of great help to the improvement of the skills of chefs and housewives in the future. We know that from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Song Dynasty, China's cooking practitioners mainly came from two aspects: 1) palace chefs; 2) Home cooking, only after the Song Dynasty did the catering industry get involved in the development of cooking on a large scale, but until the late Qing Dynasty, the catering industry still failed to dominate the food trend in China. In the above two types of cooking division, the role of home chef in cooking development should far exceed that of palace chef. Kitchen can be divided into two categories: 1) specialized chefs or concubines employed or enslaved by wealthy people; 2) Middle feed, which means ordinary people, also includes some kitchen dishes run by mothers and wives in the families of thrifty officials and intellectuals. It should be said that China's cooking culture is a flower that grows on the fertile soil of daily activities of thousands of families, and the specialized chef is just a master after the professionalization of Chinese cooking. Since the catering industry flourished in the Song Dynasty, the cooking experience of the catering industry has always been inherited from mentoring, which determines that their loss rate is large and their influence is not great. From this height, we can understand the significance of ancient food classics, including the food classics and Qi Min Yao Shu, which were recorded by Ho Choi in the Northern Wei Dynasty. Therefore, the significance of Wake Up Garden Record in promoting cooking in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Sichuan is extraordinary.

At this time, Sichuan's economy was still on the eve of its take-off, and its cooking skills were simple and crude. It was influenced by the lower-class diet style brought into Sichuan by immigrants from Huguang, Jiangxi and Shaanxi. In fact, it was a mixture of flavors from all over the world, and its refined people were represented by "eight bowls of meat" and "nine bowls". The so-called eight bowls and nine bowls of meat refer to: hodgepodge, braised pork, ginger chicken, stewed crisp meat, roasted bamboo shoots, steamed pork with rice flour, salted boiled pork with sand and steamed elbows. Among these nine dishes, what we see is mainly the style influenced by Shandong cuisine, which is actually the simplification of Manchu-Han banquet among the people, while the characteristics of classical Sichuan cuisine are only maintained in ginger chicken and meat with sand. The former makes full use of the spicy flavor of Sichuan ginger, while the latter highlights the sweetness, and the hemp taste in classical Sichuan cuisine is at least no longer prominent. This is the reason why Meng Wentong, a historian, believed that the early days of modern Sichuan cuisine were greatly influenced by Shandong cuisine. In Speaking of Funeral, Li Jieren, a native writer in Sichuan, provided readers with several lists of his ancestors' sacrifices. A food purchase list in the twenty-first year of Daoguang (1829) listed all the food raw materials and seasonings purchased in funeral sacrifices and banquets, none of which were peppers or pepper products. Another banquet in the first year of Tongzhi (1862) listed the dishes in detail, and there was no spicy dish. Among them, the "Jingpin"-Dazaban was listed in front, which was the Beijing cuisine developed under the influence of Shandong cuisine, but in fact, they were the simplified version of the Manchu-Han banquet among the people. The Manchu-Han banquet was brought into Sichuan by the flag-bearer stationed in the garrison and Manchu officials, but soon it declined and disappeared because it did not conform to the direction of the rise of modern Sichuan cuisine from the lower level.

In Wake Up the Garden Record, 38 cooking methods of Jiangsu and Zhejiang chefs and Chinese-fed dishes are systematically collected, such as stir-frying, sliding, frying, stir-frying, boiling, frying, boiling, baking, pasting, brewing, rolling, steaming, roasting, stewing and spreading. Because these various cooking methods are closely related to the middle and lower levels of cooking, they obviously played a great role in promoting the modern Sichuan cuisine that rose later. Awakening Garden Record has influenced modern Sichuan cuisine from Jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisines in the middle and lower levels.

Generally speaking, the brewing period of modern Sichuan cuisine can be determined as 186 1- 1905, which began in Xianfeng and Tongzhi periods in Qing Dynasty. By this time, the high tide of migration to Sichuan had ended, and the population of Sichuan had surpassed that of the mid-Southern Song Dynasty, reaching more than 44 million. After the Qing government put down the Li Lan Uprising, in the peaceful environment of the next 50 years, Sichuan experienced a general prosperity because it was far from the coast and was less impacted by the western capitalist economy, which once attracted the attention of German geographer Richthofen who was visiting China. Richthofen wrote in his communication collection: "Under normal circumstances, Sichuan seems to be full of satisfaction and happiness for living materials, which is not common in other provinces in China." During this period, at first, because of the war in the southeast, Xiajiang agriculture was ruined, and Sichuan replaced Hunan and Hubei for the first time, becoming the largest grain-rich province of the Qing government. Therefore, the Qing government began to attach importance to Sichuan and sent influential officials to Sichuan, such as Ding Baozhen, Zhang Zhidong, Qin Chunxuan, Xi Liang and others. They started the initial Westernization Movement and the New Deal in Sichuan, which made the academic and cultural activities in Sichuan appear since the Southern Song Dynasty. It is precisely because of the advocacy of officials from northern Sichuan and Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces who came to Sichuan in the late Qing Dynasty and the opening of southern Sichuan in Chengdu and Chongqing that the evolution of modern upper-class Sichuan cuisine was strengthened.

In short, the birth of modern Sichuan cuisine is inseparable from the take-off of Sichuan culture in the late Qing Dynasty. It was mainly developed by the mixture of immigrant cooking cultures and encouraged by the upper demonstration culture, including the influence of culinary experts. From the flavor of Sichuan cuisine before the mid-Qing Dynasty, we will see through the analysis in the next paragraph that it was rarely influenced by classical Sichuan cuisine.

3. The first prosperity of modern Sichuan cuisine (1906- 1937);

As mentioned in the above paragraph, the upper level of modern Sichuan cuisine is greatly influenced by Shandong cuisine and Jiangsu and Zhejiang cuisine, which can be roughly attributed to the exquisite dishes that do not contain spicy and spicy flavor in Sichuan cuisine, accounting for about two-thirds of modern Sichuan cuisine. However, the stereotype of modern Sichuan cuisine is more strongly influenced by the diet of immigrants from several provinces. The most interesting thing is that while modern Sichuan cuisine is brewing, peppers imported from America in the late Ming Dynasty are taking root in the lower diet in Sichuan for about 100 years, and they are also attached to it, which makes it bring the distinctive personality of today's Sichuan cuisine.

The shaping period of modern Sichuan cuisine is from 1906 to 1937, that is, from the New Deal period in the late Qing Dynasty to the eve of the outbreak of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. From the brewing period (186 1- 1905) to the shaping period (1906- 1937), the shaping of modern Sichuan cuisine is realized through the development of three roads, which encourage and promote each other, making it in a short period of 70 years.

By the end of the Qing Dynasty, according to Xu Ke's "Clear Barn-like Banknotes: Dishes with Provincial Characteristics", "Dishes have their own characteristics, such as Jingshi, Shandong, Sichuan, Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangning, Suzhou, Zhenjiang, Yangzhou and Huai' an." It shows that modern Sichuan cuisine has established its position in the national diet at the initial stage of stereotypes. In the General Survey of Chengdu compiled by Fu Chongju, which was published in the first year of Xuantong (1909), there were as many as 1328 kinds of dishes in Chengdu at that time, from the end of Xianfeng (186 1) to the end of Guangxu (1909). In addition to the classification in the world, it has also formed a classification by region, including schools in Chengdu, Zigong, Neijiang, Luzhou, Yibin and Leshan, and there are countless famous dishes and snacks in various counties. 1959 The Manchu-Han Banquet in Sichuan, reviewed by Blu-ray, dictated by Kong Daosheng and Zhang Songyun, contains 65 kinds of Manchu-Han Banquet menus in Chengdu. 1960 "China's Famous Cookbook (No.7)" published by China Light Industry Publishing House is an album of Sichuan cuisine.