Before the Han Dynasty, the date of the Spring Festival was not unified. It was not until Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty that the Spring Festival was fixed on the first day of the first lunar month, and it has been used to this day. The formal formation of the custom of "New Year's Eve dinner" also began. Nowadays, the ingredients and dishes on the New Year's Eve dinner table

There are all kinds of styles, but do you want to know what was on the New Year’s Eve dinner table in the Han Dynasty two thousand years ago?

Chinese people are accustomed to eating grains as staple foods, including rice, cakes, noodles, steamed buns, and dumplings. These are the common staple foods on our New Year’s Eve dinner tables now, and these were already available in the Han Dynasty.

In the Han Dynasty, there was a theory of "six grains". Compared with the "five grains" we often talk about (rice, millet, millet, wheat, and bean sprouts), the extra grain was called "苽". In the Han Dynasty, the "six grains" were also called "苽".

"Diaohu", "Diaohu" grows in water, "Diaohu" rice can be used as food, and "Diaohu" stems can be used as vegetables. You may not know about "苽" or "Diaohu", but when it comes to its name in the Song Dynasty, you may

You will suddenly realize it. The carved bamboo stems were also called "wild rice" in the Song Dynasty. It is also a food that we often eat today. These grains were mainly cooked into rice or soup at that time.

The Han Dynasty also began to process grains into more refined staple foods, which became the beginning of the diversity of food culture in later generations. Zhang Dai said in "Night Sailing Ship": "The Emperor Gaozu of the Han Dynasty made Han cakes, and Jin Rixi made Hu cakes."

Han cakes and Hu cakes were popular staple foods in the Han Dynasty. Han cakes are sesame cakes, and Hu cakes were introduced when Jin Rixi entered the Han Dynasty. Simply put, Hu cakes are sesame cakes sprinkled with sesame seeds.

Noodles have already appeared in the Eastern Han Dynasty. The original noodles should be called "soup cakes", which are slightly different in shape from the noodles we eat now. The soup cakes at that time were made by boiling noodles in soup. Later, they were cooked in soup.

"So-cake" was developed, and the shape of So-cake is relatively close to the current noodles.

Steamed buns appeared relatively late. During the late Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period, Zhuge Liang used steamed buns instead of human heads as sacrifices. Later, they would appear on the New Year’s Eve dinner table. Speaking of the staple food of the New Year’s Eve dinner, dumplings must be mentioned.

It is still possible for people living in the Eastern Han Dynasty to eat dumplings. It is said that the dumplings invented by Zhang Zhongjing, the "medical sage" of the Eastern Han Dynasty, were originally used as a medicinal food to treat diseases, and it was later that they became a delicacy on the dining tables of ordinary people.

It's a matter of time.

"Meat eaters" was a term for people living in the upper class in ancient times. For most people, they often only had the opportunity to eat meat during festivals or celebrations. Cows, sheep, pigs, dogs, chickens and fish

It constituted the main part of meat at that time. Cattle were an important labor force for plowing fields at that time. The laws of Qin and Han Dynasties prohibited people from slaughtering cattle privately. Generally, people could only eat beef when the cattle died of illness or old age or during New Year sacrifices.

It is not illegal to eat mutton, but mutton was a meat that only the upper class could afford. Pigs, dogs, and chickens were commonly raised livestock at that time and were not easily slaughtered. But it was different during the Spring Festival.

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At that time, the most common meat that people ate in their daily lives was fish. If you had excellent fishing skills, it was not difficult to have a meal of fish from time to time. No matter how difficult it was, you could buy it in the market. In addition,

If you can hunt, there will be a lot of meat on the table, such as hare, wild boar, pheasant, snake, deer, leopard, etc. There is nothing you can't imagine.

The most common vegetable eaten by people in the Han Dynasty was mallow, known as "the first of a hundred vegetables". Mallow has a wide planting area and has a sweet and smooth taste. It is the favorite of people in the Han Dynasty. Taro and leeks have been around for a long time before the Han Dynasty.

By the Han Dynasty, very mature cultivation methods had been developed.

In addition, there are more than 30 kinds of vegetables such as radish, cucumber, gourd and so on, which can be seen in the Han Dynasty. Emperor An of the Eastern Han Dynasty once issued an edict: "Any recommendation of new flavors is mostly out of season, or it is too late to be mature.

Or the sprouts are dug through, and the taste is lost and the growth is premature." This means that many fruits and vegetables grown in local tributes are grown out of season and have wrong taste. And this edict proves from another aspect that it has already been done in the Han Dynasty.

Nowadays, the technology of greenhouse cultivation of off-season fruits and vegetables has emerged. In addition to the daily storage of fruits and vegetables, folk in the Han Dynasty also had greenhouse cultivation technology, so don’t be too surprised if some non-seasonal fruits and vegetables appear on the New Year’s Eve dinner table at that time.

The variety of fruits during the Han Dynasty was already very rich. From the Tomb No. 1 of Mawangdui and Luobowan in Changsha, water chestnuts, dates, oranges, oranges, persimmons, pears, plums, bayberry, plums, olives, etc. were unearthed.

Papaya, watermelon, etc.

This was only a common fruit in the south at that time. The fruit-rich Lingnan area also had lychees, longans, bananas, citrus, grapefruit, sugar cane, coconuts, etc. The most shocking thing is that it was unearthed in the Fenghuang Mountain Han Tomb in Chengdu in recent years.

Tomato seeds, after being buried underground for more than two thousand years, can still produce tomato fruits through artificial cultivation, proving that tomatoes are not introduced from foreign countries, but are native berries in China.

Next, we will introduce the indispensable "beverage" in the New Year's Eve dinner in the Han Dynasty. Jiaobai wine is the collective name of pepper wine and cypress wine, which is clearly recorded in the "Four People's Monthly Order" of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Jiao is Zanthoxylum bungeanum, which the ancients believed

Pepper is the essence of the Yuheng star, and taking it can make you light and prolong life; cypress is the leaf of cypress, and taking it can prevent you from all kinds of diseases. Pepper and cypress can be made into wine separately, or they can be combined to make pepper and cypress wine. On the first day of the first lunar month,

One day, each family used pepper and cypress wine to offer sacrifices to their ancestors and parents, hoping to ward off evil spirits and eliminate filth.

The eating habits of the Han Dynasty people are roughly the same as those of modern people. They are all accustomed to eating cooked food, using cereals as the staple food, paying attention to the combination of meat and vegetables, and the blending of five flavors. Affected by the natural conditions in various places, people have different taste requirements for food. At that time,

People living in the Yellow River Basin like pickled food, while people in the Yangtze River Basin prefer "bitter, salty, sour, pungent and sweet".

It should be mentioned in particular that unlike today's New Year's Eve dinner where a large family gathers around a round table, the "separated meal system" was popular in the Han Dynasty, that is, each person has a set of tableware and eats in portions. The meal sharing system in the Han Dynasty is an ancient etiquette

It is a manifestation of traditional Chinese culture. At that time, there were no tall round tables and high chairs. People sat on the floor with a small table in front of each person. When eating, each person had a portion and ate separately.

Although the food culture of the Han Dynasty is not as colorful as that of later generations, it is an important period of formation and development of Chinese food culture. On the New Year's Eve dinner table of the Han Dynasty, we can find many foods that are now common on the table. They were originally two thousand years old.

The ancients lived the same Spring Festival and ate the same New Year’s Eve dinner as we do.

The Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD) was a unified dynasty after the Qin Dynasty. It was divided into the Western Han Dynasty and the Eastern Han Dynasty. It had 29 emperors and lived for 407 years. At the end of the Qin Dynasty, peasants rebelled and Liu Bang overthrew the Qin Dynasty.
Chapter completed!