Sixth Century BCE to Seventeenth Century

by Ying-shih Yü

  lamb fl ank, beef chuck, deer chuck, pork shoulder, beef stomach, lamb stom-

  ach, beef lips, beef tongue, beef lungs, and dog liver. Slip number 98 lists a

  pottery vessel of horse meat sauce. No remains of horse have been found, how-

  ever,9 although it is well known from literary sources that horse meat was a fa-

  vorite dish in Han China. The only part of the horse that was inedible in Han

  times was the liver. Emperor Jing (reigned 156–141 b.c.e.), a con temporary of

  the owner of Han Tomb No. 1 at Mawangdui, once said, “No one accuses a man

  f o od in c h ine s e c ul t ur e 95

  of lacking good taste in food because he eats other meats but refrains from eat-

  ing horse liver.”10 Emperor Wu (reigned 140–87 b.c.e.) also told the court necro-

  mancer Luan Da that Shaoweng, Luan’s pre de ces sor, had died, not because he

  was executed on an imperial order, but because “he happened to eat some horse

  liver” ( Shiji [Rec ords of the Grand Historian], 1.1390; hereafter SJ, with refer-

  ence given in parentheses in text).11 True or false, in Han times, it was generally

  believed that horse liver was deadly poisonous. The absence of horse liver in the

  extensive food lists from the tombs helps confi rm that this was a popu lar belief.

  According to a preliminary report on the two other Han tombs at Mawang-

  dui, similar food remains and food lists have also been found in Tomb No. 3.

  Grains and meats are essentially the same as those of Tomb No. 1. However,

  some additional fruits have been identifi ed, such as orange, persimmon, and

  water caltrops.12 It must be emphasized that to date, the excavation of these Han

  tombs at Mawangdui is the single most impor tant archaeological contribution

  to the study of food and eating in Han China.

  What makes the Mawangdui discovery doubly in ter est ing is the amazing

  degree to which the food list from Tomb No. 1 agrees with the list given in the

  “Neize”

  (Internal [ Family] Regulations) chapter of the Classic of Rites. Vir-

  tually all the foodstuff s and prepared dishes listed above can be found in that

  chapter.13 For well over twenty centuries, however, the food list in the “Internal

  [ Family] Regulations” chapter had remained a regulation on paper, which, like

  a drawing of a cake, as the Chinese proverb goes, can hardly satisfy our hunger.

  It was the archaeological fi nds at Mawangdui that fi nally transformed the regu-

  lation into a real ity.

  Recent archaeology adds still another impor tant dimension to the study of

  food and eating in Han China. By this I refer particularly to the discovery of

  many kitchen and feast scenes in mural paintings and stone reliefs in Han

  tombs. Han lit er a ture, especially poetry and fu

  (prose- poetry) often contains

  descriptions of kitchen and feast scenes, but none of them can compare in viv-

  idness and vitality with the scenes shown in the murals and reliefs. In this sec-

  tion and the next, I shall discuss such scenes in paintings and stone reliefs

  from several Han tombs, while, at the same time, introducing additional ar-

  chaeological and literary evidence to supplement my discussion.

  A very elaborate kitchen scene has been found among the mural stone re-

  liefs of a Han tomb at Dahu Ting in Mi xian

  (county), Henan, excavated

  from 1960–1961.14 The scene shows ten people working in the kitchen. In the

  upper middle of the picture, one man is stirring meat that is cooking in a huge

  ding

  (cauldron). On the other side of the ding, a man is carry ing fi rewood

  toward the stove in the upper right- hand corner. Another man to the side of

  the stove seems to be cooking something over the stove. Left of the center of the

  picture, two people appear to be walking out of the kitchen, the one in front hold-

  ing a dish of fi sh, the other carry ing a round tray with drinking cups and other

  food- serving vessels on it. In the lower left- hand corner stands a large- sized fu

  96 f o od in c h ine s e c ul t ur e

  (pot) in which it looks as if geng is being made since the man to the side of the

  fu is using a long- handled ladle, possibly to spoon the geng out of the fu. Facing

  him, toward the lower center of the picture, is another man in a squatting posi-

  tion washing or mixing something in a basin with his left hand while he ges-

  tures with his right hand. It looks as if the squatting man is showing the man

  with the ladle where to put the geng. Behind the squatting man and to the right,

  a man is working with both hands in a big container. Fi nally, to the lower

  right, there is a well with a wooden frame over it, from which a well bucket sus-

  pends. Between the well and a large jar to the right stands a man who is drawing

  water from the well, and on the other side of the jar, a man holding a basin is

  coming to fi ll it with water.

  In addition to the activities described above, this lively tableau also reveals

  other things about a Han kitchen. For instance, it gives us a picture of the vari-

  ous types of Han food vessels and utensils, which are scattered throughout the

  picture, and their uses. What is even more in ter est ing are the two meat racks,

  from which diff er ent kinds of meat are hanging, in the upper left corner. Al-

  though the meats are not readily identifi able, they defi nitely range from birds to

  animals. Right beneath the two racks, however, we can clearly see an ox head

  and an ox leg lying on the ground.

  Another impor tant kitchen scene comes from a mural- painted tomb of late

  Later Han date, situated in Bangtaizi in the northwestern suburbs of the city of

  Liaoyang (in southern Manchuria). This tomb was fi rst discovered by villa gers

  in the autumn of 1944, but no detailed account of it was given until 1955.15 In

  the summer of 1945, the tomb and its mural paintings became known to a

  group of Japa nese who were skilled copiers in Liaoyang but nevertheless named

  it the Dongwayaozi tomb. The Japa nese group had made copies of the paint-

  ings, but unfortunately, they were not able to make the fruits of their long

  months of labor known to the scholarly world as they left Manchuria empty-

  handed after the end of World War II.16 Thus far, no copy of the kitchen scene

  from the Bangtaizi tomb has been produced. The following discussion is based

  entirely on Li Wenxin’s report and line drawings.

  The cooking operation in this kitchen scene is on a scale that is even larger

  than that of the Dahu Ting tomb described just above. Altogether, twenty- two

  people are shown working in the kitchen. Unlike the scene from the Dahu Ting

  tomb in which the cooks and helpers are all men, the pres ent scene includes at

  least four women. The women’s jobs look less strenuous, however, compared

  with the activities of the eigh teen men in the kitchen. For instance, one woman

  is about to take a vessel from the stove while another takes one from a cabinet.

  The other two are sitting on the ground apparently doing some kind of light

  work. By contrast, the men’s jobs, such as meat roasting, food mixing, or pound-

  ing some sort of food into pulp, require either skill or greater physical strength.

  The range of diff er ent tasks here is also much wider than in the
scene from

  f o od in c h ine s e c ul t ur e 97

  Dahu Ting. The chores vary from butchering an ox or a pig to removing duck’s

  feathers.

  Like the Dahu Ting scene, meats are also shown hanging from a wooden

  rack in the kitchen. In this case, however, the vari ous meats are so well painted

  that most of them are recognizable. According to Li Wenxin, they are, from left

  to right, turtle, animal head, goose, pheasants, birds (of unknown kind), mon-

  key, animal heart and lungs, suckling pig, dried fi sh, and fresh fi sh. Each is

  hung on an iron hook that seems fi rmly nailed to the rack. This kind of meat

  rack, it may be noted, must have been very common in Han kitchens since at

  least fi ve iron meat hooks have recently been found in a Han tomb in Henan.17

  There is another kind of meat holder in this kitchen scene from the Bangtaizi

  tomb that has not yet been found in other Han mural paintings. It is a high pole

  with two horizontal rods near the top. On these rods are hung meat strips, intes-

  tines (possibly sausages), stomachs, and so on. The rods are up so high that a

  man is shown using a long- handled hook to reach the food. Meats were placed

  this high, understandably, to prevent land creatures, such as dogs, from getting

  them. To illustrate this point, right below the pole we fi nd a dog, undoubtedly

  with watering mouth, depicted gazing up at the meats on the rods.

  Similar kitchen scenes have been discovered in other mural- painted Han

  tombs, especially in Liaoyang, such as Sandaohao clay pits No. 2 and No. 4, and

  Sandaohao Tomb No. 1.18 In the famous Han stone reliefs of Wu Liang Ci and

  the Yinan tomb (both in Shandong), kitchen scenes are also pres ent.19 Particu-

  larly worth mentioning are two such scenes found in Inner Mongolia. In May

  1956, a Han tomb rich with mural paintings was excavated in Duoketuo xian,

  Inner Mongolia, the fi rst of its kind ever found in that region. A kitchen scene

  is painted on the rear, left, and front walls of the left chamber. Illustrated in the

  scene are containers, a stove, a black pig, a yellow dog, two chickens, and a meat

  rack, on which are hung a pair of pheasants, a piece of meat, a pair of fi sh, a

  pair of chickens, and a piece of beef.20 Recently, in 1972, another impor tant

  mural- painted Han tomb was found in Helin- ge-er (Suiyuan). The kitchen

  scene there shows people cooking and drawing water, as well as a meat rack on

  which hang such foodstuff s as an animal head, intestines, fi sh, meat, pheasant,

  and hare.21 The two scenes described here are almost identical with those found

  in Liaoyang, Henan, and Shandong. One is very tempted to say that in Han

  China, the upper- class kitchen setup was more or less standardized, whether in

  inland China, such as Henan and Shandong, or in the frontier region, such as

  Manchuria and Inner Mongolia.

  Hanging meats on a wooden rack or beam, for instance, was a universal

  practice in Han times. A painted brick from Sichuan and a newly discovered

  mural painting from Jiayu Guan, Gansu, both show cooking scenes in which a

  meat rack is in a dominant position.22 It was the sight of meats hanging from

  a rack that gave rise to the descriptive term “meat forest” ( roulin

  , Hanshu

  98 f o od in c h ine s e c ul t ur e

  [History of the Former Han Dynasty], 61.76; hereafter HS, with reference given

  in parentheses in text). This practice apparently had a pre- Han origin, however,

  for Sima Qian already spoke of Zhou, the last king of Shang, as having “hung

  meats to make a forest” ( xuanrou wei lin

  ; SJ, 2, 3.11a). On the whole,

  from Han mural paintings discovered in vari ous places, one can hardly detect

  any regional diff erences in terms of foodstuff s and cooking utensils. It is par-

  ticularly in ter est ing to note that animal meats of the three major categories

  (land, air, and water) that are shown hung on the racks basically tally with the

  list of meats found in Mawangdui Tomb No. 1.

  There is, however, one in ter est ing feature of the Han kitchen that has not yet

  been found in kitchen scenes in mural paintings, namely, an ice chamber, which

  had been in use since antiquity.23 According to Wang Chong, Han Chinese broke

  ice in winter to make an “ice chamber” ( bingshi

  ) for food storage. How to

  keep food, especially meat, cold so that it would not spoil must have been a

  prob lem that bothered Han Chinese constantly. Wang Chong further reports

  that some imaginative scholars even dreamed up a kind of “meat fan” in the

  kitchen, which would automatically make wind to keep food cool.24

  H A N F E A S T S I N P A I N T I N G A N D I N R E A L I T Y

  Feast scenes are even more numerous in Han mural paintings than kitchen

  scenes. For con ve nience, we again begin our discussion with a scene from the

  Dahu Ting tomb and then will bring in other archaeological and historical

  evidence to amplify it.

  The scene unfolds from the middle with a man sitting on a very low, rectan-

  gular, presumably wooden couch ( ta

  ), which has screens both to the back

  and to the sitter’s right.25 In all likelihood, the man on the couch is the host. To

  his right, we see a seated guest looking in the direction of the host; on the

  host’s left- hand side, two guests sit together and are apparently engaged in po-

  lite conversation. The guests are sitting on mats instead of couches. At the right

  end of the scene behind the host, a servant is ushering in two more guests. In

  addition, four manservants are represented serving drinks and food.

  In front of the host’s couch, there is a low, rectangular serving table, known

  as an in Han times. On the table are placed wine cups and dishes. This kind of

  long table seems to have been specially made to match the size of the wooden

  couch. Two identical screened couches with tables of matching size can be

  found in mural paintings from Sandaohao Tomb No. 4. It is very in ter est ing to

  note that a writing brush is clearly shown to be sticking into one of the Sandao-

  hao tables.26 It seems safe to conclude that a table matching a screened couch

  was not made exclusively for serving food and drink. It was also used as a sort

  of writing desk. Ordinary food- serving tables are much smaller in size, such as

  the ones placed before the guests in this feast scene. This explains why the vir-

  f o od in c h ine s e c ul t ur e 99

  tuous Lady Meng Guang was able “to raise the table as high as her eyebrows”

  each time she served a meal to her husband, Liang Hong ( Hou Hanshu [History

  of the Later Han Dynasty], 83.14a; hereafter HHS, with reference given in paren-

  theses in text). Generally speaking, Han food- serving tables are of two shapes:

  round and rectangular (sometimes square). When not being used, they are

  piled up in the kitchen, as shown in the kitchen scene from Bangtaizi and by

  earthenware tables found stacked in this manner at Shaogou, Luoyang.27 If the

  table was round, it was called a qiong.28

  We do not know what the occasion was for this feast in the Dahu Ting scene.

  The owner of the tomb has been tentatively identifi ed as Zhang Boya, governor

  of Hongnong in Henan during the Later Han
dynasty. Possibly the scene shows

  one of the feasts he gave to his subordinates in the governor’s mansion. At any

  rate, the host in this scene occupies a central position, perhaps the seat of honor.

  Such a seating arrangement was quite logical for a governor and his subordinates

  in Han China. A similar seating arrangement is also discernible in feast scenes

  in stone reliefs from the famous Han shrine at Xiaotang Shan, Shandong.29

  The Dahu Ting scene shows only the beginning of a feast. Thus, in the paint-

  ing, only drinks are being served and no food is vis i ble. We must therefore turn

  to some of the recorded historical feasts for more concrete knowledge as to what

  constituted a “feast” in Han times. The best- known feast during this period is

  “The Banquet at Hong Men,” which took place in 206 b.c.e. Before coming to that

  great historical event, however, let us fi rst introduce a Han mural painting that

  has been identifi ed by Guo Moruo as the artistic repre sen ta tion of the Banquet

  at Hong Men. The painting, which is done in vermilion, green, blue, yellow,

  and brown, comes from an Earlier Han tomb excavated at Luoyang in 1957. The

  tomb has been dated from between 48 and 7 b.c.e. Since all the mural- painted

  Han tombs we know are of Later Han date, this one can surely claim to be the

  oldest tomb with mural paintings ever found in China.30

  A synopsis of Guo Moruo’s explanation of the painting is as follows: The

  back wall of the chamber is decorated with scenes depicting the story of the

  Banquet at Hong Men. On the right side of the design, a man is shown broiling

  a joint of beef over a stove, while another man with a staff stands by watching.

  The wall behind the people is hung with joints of beef and an ox head. To the

  left of the stove, two men are shown seated on the fl oor, drinking. The one

  holding a drinking horn prob ably represents Xiang Yu, while the other, who is

  more elegant in appearance, represents Liu Bang. The man standing by the

  side of Liu Bang represents Xiang Bo. A huge seated tiger to the left of Liu Bang

  is actually a design painted on a door. Two men standing with folded hands to

  the left of the tiger design represent Zhang Liang and Fan Zeng. A fi erce-

  looking man with a sword in his hand who is about to stab Liu Bang represents