Sixth Century BCE to Seventeenth Century

by Ying-shih Yü

  were most likely to be on the food list of the impoverished. I must hasten to

  add, however, that scallions could sometimes be very expensive during the Han

  Period depending on who ate them. In 33 b.c.e., Shao Xinchen obtained the

  approval of Emperor Yuan to close down an imperial “green house” for the cul-

  tivation of out- of- season vegetables, among which were scallions and leeks. As

  a result, the court saved several tens of millions (of coins) a year ( HS, 89.15a).89

  Nevertheless, generally speaking, scallions, garlic, and leeks appeared to be

  quite common in Han times. Their cultivation has been reported in vari ous

  sources ( HS, 89.13a; HHS, 51.b).90

  Another kind of vegetable easily within the means of the common people

  was taro or yam. Under the reign of Emperor Cheng (32 to 7 b.c.e.), the prime

  minister Zhai Fangjin (whose courtesy name was Ziwei) had caused the break-

  down of a major irrigation dam in Runan commandery (in Henan). Agriculture

  in the whole region was therefore seriously aff ected. To register their complaint

  against Zhai, the people of Runan created a song that reads:

  It was Zhai Ziwei who destroyed our dam,

  Now all we have for food is soybeans and yam.

  As the commentary by Yan Shigu makes clear, the second line means that the

  people cooked soybeans as grain food ( fan

  ) and yam as geng ( HS, 84.22a).

  That yam or taro was a staple vegetable in Han China is fully testifi ed to by Fan

  Shengzhi’s agriculturist book in which detailed instructions on planting and

  cultivating it are given.91

  In the everyday life of the Han Chinese there is yet another category of food

  to mention, namely, dried grain food known as bei

  , hou

  , or qiu

  . It is

  diffi

  cult to distinguish clearly the three kinds of dried provisions from one an-

  other except that both bei and hou are said to be dried boiled grain ( ganfan

  ),

  whereas qiu is sometimes described as being made from pulverized grain.

  Moreover, qiu is also believed to be dried by fi re such as by baking or roasting.

  Rice, wheat, barley, millet, and beans could all be transformed into dried grain

  food.92 Dried grain food had prob ably already been extensively used by soldiers

  f o od in c h ine s e c ul t ur e 111

  and travelers as early as the Zhou Period.93 However, it was under the Han that

  this kind of food came to play a role of vital importance in the daily lives of

  millions of Chinese.

  First, it was the main food for all Han travelers irrespective of status. Wang

  Mang, for example, ordered his imperial attendant to prepare dried grain food

  and dried meat for his tour of inspection in c.e. 14 ( HS, 99B.26b). Empress

  Deng, wife of Emperor He (89–105 c.e.), also had large quantities of dried grain

  food stored in her royal residence ( HHS, 10A.28b). In fact, there was an offi

  cial

  in the court whose duty was to select grain for making dried provisions for im-

  perial use ( HHS, “Zhi” section, 26.2b). Second, repeated large- scale military

  campaigns against the Xiongnu in the north caused Han warriors to rely en-

  tirely on dried grain food for survival. According to Yan You (fi rst century c.e.),

  the Chinese soldiers, once sent to fi ght the Xiongnu in the desert, lived on

  dried provisions and water in all seasons. In Yan’s estimation, for an expedition

  of three hundred days, each soldier would need eigh teen hu of bei. This put a

  man’s consumption of bei at exactly 0.6 sheng

  per day ( HS, 94B.24a, 25a). In

  99 b.c.e., when Li Ling’s army was surrounded by the Xiongnu in the neigh-

  borhood of Dunhuang, he gave each of his fi ghting men two sheng of bei and a

  piece of ice to get out of the encircled area one by one and later reassemble in

  a Han fort ( HS, 54.12b). Obviously, the fort must have been within a three- day

  journey from the battlefi eld. Third, the Han government always kept large

  quantities of dried grain food in store for uses besides military ones. Thus,

  in 51 b.c.e., some thirty- four thousand hu of bei were sent to the Xiongnu by the

  Han court as a reward for their recent submission: this was the largest single

  amount of dried provisions ever recorded in Han history ( HS, 94.4b). Last, but

  not least, dried grain food was also consumed by men working in the fi eld. As

  Ying Shao pointed out, both warriors and farmers carried hou with them.94 Cui

  Shi’s Simin Yueling

  (Monthly Ordinances for the Four Classes [Schol-

  ars, Farmers, Artisans, and Merchants]) advises that people make as much bei

  as pos si ble out of the newly harvested wheat.95 Indeed, we can surely say that in

  Han China, hardly a day passed without some people eating dried grain food.

  Before I bring this section to a close, I wish to say a word about food vessels

  in Han China. The subject of food vessels is so impor tant and complicated that

  an extensive treatment would defi nitely involve at least another chapter. In the

  following I will therefore merely point out a few salient features of Han food

  vessels, with special reference to the distinction between vessels shown in

  kitchen scenes in mural paintings and those actually used by the common

  people in their everyday lives.

  One safe generalization scholars have been making from time to time is that

  in Han times, the upper classes used mainly lacquerware while the common

  people relied entirely on earthenware for cooking, eating, and drinking.96 Pre-

  viously, in speaking of Han lacquerware, people always turned to the two

  impor tant archaeological discoveries in Luolang and Noin- Ula for illustration.97

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

  Now Luolang and Noin- Ula have both been dwarfed in this re spect by Mawang-

  dui Tombs No. 1 and No. 3.98 It is certainly no exaggeration to say that the Mawa-

  ngdui fi nds “represent the largest and best preserved group of Western [Earlier]

  Han lacquer ware, as well as the most diversifi ed in vessel types, ever unearthed

  in China.”99 Lacquerware found in Mawangdui Tombs No. 1 and No. 3 consists

  mostly of food and drink vessels.

  In ancient China, there had been a fundamental contrast between eating

  and drinking.100 That the same contrast persisted during the Han Period is

  fully attested to by many of the examples given above. Lacquerware from the

  two Mawangdui tombs reveals that the contrast is also refl ected in the vessels. It

  is very in ter est ing to note that food vessels and drink vessels are clearly distin-

  guished from each other by the two contrasting inscriptions Jun jin shi

  (“Please eat food, sir”) and Jun jin jiu

  (“Please drink wine, sir”). Another

  in ter est ing point to observe is that vessels for food and those for drink seem

  to have come in separate sets.

  On the basis of the two contrasting inscriptions, then, we can easily distin-

  guish the set of drink vessels from that of food vessels. The former includes

  fang vases, Zhong

  vases, yi

  pitchers, zhi

  cups, shao

  and

  ladles,

  and winged wine cups; the latter includes ding tripods, cake boxes,
lian

  food

  boxes, plates, and winged food cups. Some of the food and drink vessels still

  contained remains at the time of their excavation, and their actual functions

  were therefore unmistakably indicated. Moreover, cups and plates came in dif-

  fer ent sizes. For instance, wine cups have a capacity of 4 sheng, 2 sheng, 1.5

  sheng, or 1 sheng.101 Scholars who actually examined the fi nds already have indi-

  cated that some of the vessels can be better understood if taken in sets rather

  than in individual pieces.102 It may be additionally noted that among the lac-

  querware pieces, the zhi cups, winged cups, and yi pitchers were the most com-

  mon types of vessels for drink used by the Han Chinese, and the food cup bei

  was a vessel for geng. None of them was the mono poly of the upper classes.103

  Needless to say, although the common people used the same types of vessels,

  the materials from which theirs were made— earth or wood— were much infe-

  rior in quality. Archaeological fi nds show, however, that pottery vessels in Han

  China sometimes were also made in sets, perhaps in imitation of lacquer-

  ware.104 As we know, the price of lacquerware in Han times was much higher

  than not only earthenware or woodenware but bronze as well. Lao Gan is cer-

  tainly right in saying that, under the Han, lacquer food vessels basically replaced

  ancient bronze ones.105

  The Han Chinese were status conscious as far as the material of their ves-

  sels for food and drink was concerned. Toward the end of the Earlier Han dy-

  nasty, a ranking offi

  cial, Tang Zun, was accused of hy poc risy because he used

  earthenware vessels ( HS, 72.30a). Under Emperor Guangwu’s reign, Huan

  Tan, in a memorial essay for the monarch, attacked some of the hypocritical

  court offi

  cials in ministerial positions who sought to achieve reputations for

  f o od in c h ine s e c ul t ur e 113

  frugality by using plain wooden cups for eating and drinking.106 It is in ter est-

  ing to note that Liu Xiang (77–6 b.c.e.) also has a disciple of Confucius making

  comments that clearly imply that earthen food vessels and boiled food ( zhushi

  ) befi t only the poor.107 Boiled food was considered inferior, presumably

  because the poor always cooked their wheat, beans, and bean leaves by boiling.

  Fi nally, what were the most essential cooking utensils for the Han Chinese?

  The answer can be given without the slightest hesitation: fu and zeng. These

  two utensils were basic to every Han Chinese kitchen, rich and poor alike. The

  fu

  (cauldron) was used mainly for cooking geng and the zeng

  (steamer)

  primarily for steaming or boiling grain food. In actual cooking, the zeng was

  always placed on top of the fu. Archaeologically, therefore, the two are always

  found together as if they were an inseparable pair. Most of the fu and zeng were

  made of clay, such as those found at Mawangdui, Youceng in Shandong, Can-

  ton, and Shaogou.108 Metal fu were also made, however. An iron fu was found at

  Shaogou, and seven bronze ones with a lot of fi sh bones in them were discov-

  ered in tombs in Canton.109 From Han tombs at Lizhu, Shaoxing (in Zhejiang)

  a number of fu of all three materials— pottery, bronze, and iron— were unearthed

  in 1955, but the number of iron fu was greater than the other two kinds.110 In his-

  torical writings, we also often fi nd mention of the fu accompanied by the zeng ( SJ,

  2, 7.10a; HS, 31.14a; HHS, 81.28b). It is prob ably safe to conclude that since geng

  (stew) and fan (grain food) were the two most basic kinds of food for the Han

  Chinese, the pairing of fu with zeng simply refl ects this fundamental dietary real-

  ity in Han China.

  T O W A R D A C U L I N A R Y R E V O L U T I O N

  Thus far in this study, no special reference has been made regarding what was

  signifi cantly new in Han culinary history. Now, by way of conclusion, I wish to

  point out emphatically that Han Chinese were as innovative as they were tradi-

  tional in matters pertaining to food and eating. In the following, I shall fi rst list

  a few impor tant exotic edibles that were brought to China for the fi rst time, and

  then proceed to discuss two major Han contributions to the art of cooking that,

  in my biased view, produced far- reaching revolutionary consequences in Chi-

  nese culinary history.

  The Han dynasty is marked, among other things, by expansion, and expan-

  sion inevitably opened China to things non- Chinese, including foods. Post- Han

  literary works credit Zhang Qian, the greatest traveler of early Han times, with

  the introduction of almost all the exotic edibles from the western regions. The

  list includes, for instance, grape, alfalfa, pomegranate, walnut, sesame, onion,

  caraway seeds, peas, coriander from Bactria, and cucumber. In fact, however,

  as Kuwabara Jitsuzo has convincingly shown, none of these plants was intro-

  duced to China by Zhang Qian himself.111 Nevertheless, there can be little

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

  doubt that some of the foreign foods listed above were brought to the Han soon

  after Zhang Qian. Grape and alfalfa seeds were brought back to China by Han

  envoys from Ferghana around 100 b.c.e. ( SJ, 2.280). Grape is further men-

  tioned in a Later Han literary piece.112 Grape wine imported from the western

  regions was greatly prized as late as the end of the second century c.e.113 Kong

  Rong wrote a thank- you note to a friend for a gift of walnuts.114 In Monthly Ordi-

  nances for the Four Classes, we fi nd alfalfa, sesame, peas, and onion.115 Sesame

  seems to have been particularly impor tant, for it alone appears three times in

  the text. The kind of “barbarian grain food” ( hufan

  ) enjoyed by Emperor

  Ling (168–188 c.e.) was, in all likelihood, grain food cooked with the fl avorful

  sesame ( HHS, “Zhi” section, 13.8b).

  Mention may also be made of the renowned longyan

  and lizhi

  (lychee, Litchi chinensis), which, though coming from the tropical southern bor-

  der of the Han, were still considered more or less new and exotic throughout this

  period. Both fruits were sent to the court by special fast horses from Guangdong

  ( HHS, 4.25a– b). During Emperor Shun’s reign (126–144 c.e.), Wang Yi, in his fu

  on the lychee ( lizhi), praised it as the leading tributary fruit.116 At the end of the

  Han, Zhongchang Tong still criticized his contemporaries for having overin-

  dulged in the taste of lychee.117

  Earlier we have seen that both soybeans and wheat were primarily foods for

  the common people. It was due to soybeans and wheat, however, that a quiet

  culinary revolution began in Han China. By this I refer particularly to the man-

  ufacturing of shi (salted, darkened beans) and the making of wheat fl our. As

  Shi Shenghan pointed out:

  Shi is very popu lar in a vast area of China, especially among the rustic

  population leading a very simple life. . . . It was almost the only relish

  they could aff ord to enjoy. The date of shi is not yet well traced, but Sima

  Qian mentioned it in the Rec ords of the Grand Historian as one of the

  products in cities, so it must already have been produced in large
quanti-

  ties in his time. The Qimin Yaoshu (Im por tant Arts of the People) gives

  the fi rst known instructions for its preparation.118

  In the learned opinions of Kong Yingda of the Tang and Zhou Mi of the Song,

  however, shi was in ven ted sometime around 200 b.c.e.119 It had already become

  a basic condiment in the early Han, and it was on a very short list of food sup-

  plies that Prince Liu Chang received from the government after his revolution-

  ary plot had been discovered ( SJ, 1, 2.364). The name shi even found its way into

  an elementary Han textbook, the Jijiu pian (Handy Primer or Dictionary for

  Quick Use)— a clear indication of its great popularity.120 Now, with the excava-

  tion of Mawangdui Tomb No. 1, shi remains have become a concrete archaeo-

  logical fact for the fi rst time.121 The earliest bean curd is also reported to have

  f o od in c h ine s e c ul t ur e 115

  been made during the Han Period, but the textual evidence is too weak to sup-

  port such a claim.122

  However, what we today call mian

  (noodles) was clearly a unique contri-

  bution by the Han to Chinese culinary art. In Han times, “noodle food,” in a

  broad sense, was known as bing

  (cakes), while the character for mian was

  defi ned as wheat fl our in the standard dictionary Shuowen jiezi

  (Ex-

  plaining Wen and Analyzing Zi).123 That noodle foods came into existence dur-

  ing the Han Period but not earlier may be explained by the simple fact that the

  techniques required for large- scale fl our grinding were not available to the Chi-

  nese until the Han. Such techniques were prob ably introduced to China from

  the West in the latter part of the Earlier Han dynasty as a result of the Han ex-

  pansion.124 For instance, the fl our mill is suspected to have been adopted from

  another culture rather than an indigenous Chinese invention.125 Three stone

  mills have been found in Shaogou tombs datable to the end of the Earlier Han

  and beginning of the Later Han.126 We can therefore assume that the Han Chi-

  nese made wheat fl our around the second half of the fi rst century b.c.e. at the

  latest. The word cuo

  was specifi cally coined for wheat grinding.127

  Under the Later Han, a great variety of noodle foods were cooked, including

  boiled noodles, steamed buns (modern mantou