by Coe, Andrew
In ancient times the people ate plants and drank from rivers, and they picked fruit from trees and ate the flesh of crickets. At that time there was much suffering due to illness and injury from poisoning. So the Farmer God taught the people for the first time how to sow the five grains and about the quality of soil. . . . He tasted the flavor of every single plant and determined which rivers and springs were sweet or brackish and he let the people know how to avoid certain things. At that time he himself suffered from poisoning seventy times in one day.8
Even at this early stage, it was clear that cooking was considered one of the most important arts. The most famous of the mythological kings, Huang Di, the “Yellow Emperor,” was credited with teaching dozens of essential skills, from leadership to medicine to cooking, including steaming grain and boiling grain to produce gruel or congee, called zhou or mi fan in Mandarin or jook in Cantonese. In fact, mastery of the art of cooking was considered one of the dividing lines between barbarism and civilization. The Book of Rites, attributed to Confucius (551–479 BCE), discusses this crucial difference:
Formerly the ancient kings had no houses. In winter they lived in caves which they had excavated, and in summer in nests which they had framed. They knew not yet the transforming power of fire, but ate the fruits of plants and trees, and the flesh of birds and beasts, drinking their blood, and swallowing (also) the hair and feathers. . . . The later sages then arose, and men (learned) to take advantage of the benefits of fire. They moulded metals and fashioned clay, so as to rear towers with structures on them, and houses with windows and doors. They toasted, grilled, boiled, and roasted.9
In 1554 BCE, a ruler named King T’ang overthrew the Xia Dynasty and founded the Shang Dynasty, which lasted over five hundred years. The Shang were masters of bronze casting; the most impressive artifacts from that era are hundreds of elaborate bronze vessels that were used as receptacles for food—mainly cooked millet and stews—and various kinds of liquor. As the Shang rulers were considered earthly representatives of the celestials, these comestibles were used both as ritual offerings and as food for the aristocratic courts. Later court annals even record the history of Yi Yin, a Shang Dynasty cook who rose to become a regional governor under King T’ang. Yi Yin is most famous for his discourse on the culinary arts in which he says that the cook’s principle role is to overcome the offensive odor of raw meats. This is done by properly blending the five flavors—salty, bitter, sour, hot, and sweet—and using fire and water:
The transformations in the cauldron are so utterly marvelous and of such subtle delicacy, the mouth cannot put them into words, and the mind cannot comprehend them. They are like the subtlety of archery and charioteering, the transformations of the yin and the yang, and the cycle of the four seasons. Thus, the food is cooked for a long time but is not ruined, well-done but not over-done, sweet but not sugary, sour but not bitter, salty but not briny, hot but not biting, bland but not insipid, fat but not lardy.10
The raw materials that go into Yi Yin’s massive bronze cooking vessels were far more diverse than such Shang staples as millet, pork, and dog meat. He lists all the delicacies found both within the realm of Shang and outside its borders, including orangutan lips and yak tails, and such fantastic foods as phoenix eggs and the six-legged vermilion turtle with pearls on its feet. The moral of his discourse is that the art of cooking is similar to the art of governing. In fact, the bronze cauldron, or ting, is the main symbol of state power. If King T’ang applies the different powers of a ruler as a chef blends flavors, and he follows the way of Heaven, he will then enjoy all those rare and wondrous foods. This list of food shows that the Chinese from the earliest era had a fascination for the broadest range of possible foods—everything edible that could be grown, traded for, or gathered from the wild.
During the Zhou Dynasty, from 1100 to 256 BCE, the food of China began to take on a form we would recognize today. The first Zhou rulers condemned their Shang predecessors for their decadence and overindulgence in fermented beverages. This asceticism eventually gave way to more hedonistic habits as the central government weakened under a succession of ineffectual emperors. In the Zhou court, it is estimated, 2,300 people worked in cooking and food preparation. During the latter half of Zhou rule, the troubled times known as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period were eras of cultural ferment and creativity. Confucius and Laozi, the founder of Daoism, lived during these centuries, and the first great annals and compendia of ritual behavior were written. A theme in many of these writings is food—its proper preparation, consumption, and ritual use. Confucius wrote: “with coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and with a bent arm for a pillow, there is still joy. Wealth and honor achieved through unrighteousness are but floating clouds to me.”11
Figure 3.1. Bronze cooking vessel from the Shang Dynasty, c. 1600–1046 BCE. Used for both rituals and banquets, these vessels symbolized state power.
Both ancient literature and archaeological excavations tell us that in North China the five staple grains were panicum millet, setaria millet, wheat (originally from the Near East), soybean (actually a legume), and rice. Rice alone clearly dominated south of the Yangzi River. After the hulls (or soybean pods) were removed, these staples probably were boiled or steamed until soft and fluffy or until they turned into runny porridge like modern-day congee. These grains were also mixed with water and flavorings and fermented to produce a wide variety of beer-like alcoholic drinks that commoners and rulers alike enjoyed. The technology of milling flour was in its infancy, so noodles, breads, and dumplings were almost unknown. In the Zhou Dynasty ritual literature, the high-status grain is clearly millet, nutty in flavor and rich in protein and vitamins, as is indicated by the name of the dynasty’s founder, Hou Ji, or “Lord Millet,” who brought this crop to his people:
He sent down cereals truly blessed,
Both black millet and double-kernel millet;
Pink-sprouting millet and white;
Black and double-kernel millet spread all over,
And he reaped many an acre.
Pink-sprouting and white millet spread all over,
Carried on his back, carried over his shoulder.
He brought them home and inaugurated the sacrifice.12
From the dawn of Chinese civilization, it was a primary task of kings and emperors to make sacrifices to ensure the continued harmony of the universe. The invisible forces of the universe—gods, spirits, and ancestors—needed to be fed. These rites continued through the nineteenth century, when the Qing emperors annually made the Grand Sacrifice at the Altar of Heaven. Spotless oxen, sheep, and deer were ritually slaughtered, while the palace chefs prepared the rarest rice and millet, crystalline soups, cooked meats, tempting pickled vegetables, and fragrant grain wines to be placed on the altar in the hope that the God of Heaven would accept the offering. If he did, then the emperor’s divine mandate was renewed, and the universe would continue on its correct course for another year. People also offered prepared foods, fruit, wines, and liquor at their household altars, at temples on festival days, and at rituals marking major life events like weddings and funerals, to ensure luck, longevity, wealth, and progeny. After some ceremonies, the people ate the food—the spirits’ sustenance was the sights and smells of the offering; after others, the food was ritually burned or simply discarded. Just before Chinese New Year, it was (and still is) customary to place sweet offerings before the image of the Kitchen God, one of the main household deities, and smear his lips with honey so he won’t tell Heaven of any sins the family has committed. In the nineteenth century in California, Chinese people covered the graves of the dead with treats like roast pig, fruit, and bread; after local (non-Chinese) drunkards and urchins began to raid cemeteries for a free meal, the Chinese buried the spirit food with the dead. Today, most Chinese Americans who perform these funerary rituals bring the food home afterward for consumption.
The Chinese also treated food as medicine. Meals were structured so
as to maximize the health benefits (beyond simple nutrition) to all parts of the human body. The Chinese saw the universe as a series of microcosms and macrocosms, each reflecting and responding to the others. As the legendary Yellow Emperor wrote, “Heaven is covered with constellations, earth with waterways, man with channels.”13 Illness was understood to be the result of one’s being out of balance with the basic forces of the universe. Food therapy was one of the ways of returning the body to harmony with these forces. The Yellow Emperor again: “The five grains act as nourishment; the five fruits from the trees serve to augment; the five domestic animals provide the benefit; the five vegetables serve to complete the nourishment. Their flavors, tastes and smells unite and conform to each other in order to supply the beneficial essence of (life).”14 After the doctor made his diagnosis—usually by taking the patient’s pulse—he prescribed a specific culinary regimen. Each food and flavor was classified according to how it affected the organs, which depended on the balance of yin and yang and a complicated system of energy flows. Today, the highly refined system of Chinese food therapy is often used in conjunction with Western medicine. This therapy also forms the basis of the Chinese meal’s primary organizing principle: the careful balance of flavors and ingredients.
In imperial mythology, South Chinese rice was long considered a second-class grain. The rice-growing regions from the Yangzi watershed south to Guangdong were subjugated during a series of military campaigns by the Qin and Han Dynasty emperors beginning in 221 BCE. The imperial officials who took control of this area did their best to erase all southern religious cults centered on rice; southerners were instructed to make offerings not to Lord Rice but Lord Millet when observing fertility rites. Southern rice farmers supported a huge population using much less land than did millet and other northern crops. These farmers had developed a highly sophisticated growing system based on advanced irrigation networks (complete with water pumps), diked fields, and crop rotation, planting rice in summer and wheat in winter. With the introduction of quick-growing Champa rice from Vietnam in 1012 CE, this system became even more productive; farmers could then produce two rice crops a year. When the Jurchen tribesmen captured most of North China in 1126 CE, these rice fields also fed millions of fleeing northerners. The imperial capital was relocated to Hangzhou, well south of the Yangzi, where officials realized how much they owed to rice. The trade in rice became one of China’s most important; from then on, rice was inextricably connected with the qualities of what might be called “Chinese-ness.” With official approval, artists and poets created works praising the virtues of rice farming that were widely circulated.
Confucius didn’t restrict himself to cooked grains, or fan. All but the poorest Chinese supplemented their fan with cai—a word that encompasses any meat, vegetables, or aquatic creatures that are eaten with grain. In fact, the fan-cai combination became the most basic building block of Chinese cuisine—without both grain and a little protein or vegetable for a topping, one did not have a meal. In Shanghai, fan-cai could mean a bowl of rice topped with pickled mustard greens and mixed pork; in Beijing, it could include spicy wheat noodles cooked with Chinese cabbage. The most common cai, especially for rural peasants, was (and still is) a vast array of vegetables. The highly nutritious plants of the Brassica genus—that is, hundreds of types of Chinese cabbage, radish, turnip, and mustard, are still found in nearly every kitchen across China, where cooks find a use for nearly every part, from root to flower. Americans who visited the Middle Kingdom in the nineteenth century noticed the preponderance of Allium, the onion genus, which also includes leeks, scallions, and garlic, and its “pervasive” smell in Chinese cooking. The most common native root or tuber plants were lotus (whose seed was also used), water chestnuts, and taro (generally deemed a famine food). The tender shoots of various varieties of bamboo have been considered delicacies fit for the most aristocratic tables going back millennia. Soybeans, on the other hand, were most often cooked for peasant gruels until the technology to produce tofu was developed—probably during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). The other important bean—the red bean (known as the azuki in the United States)—was used as a fermented seasoning and in sweet desserts. Varieties of the muskmelon (Cucumis melo), with their sweet meat and their seeds, were treated more as a fruit. Winter melons (Benincasa hispida), also known as wax gourds, were used to make the savory soups and stews that frequently appear at Chinese banquets. While not strictly speaking vegetables, an immense variety of mushrooms and other fungi were put to similar use in Chinese kitchens. Finally, edible seaweeds were often used to season soup, particularly along the South China coast. Today, the typical fare in South China is a bowl of rice topped with some kind of cooked Brassica and tofu.
Although a meal with meat as the primary food, as in an American steak dinner, is unthinkable in traditional Chinese cuisine, the Chinese do season their grain foods with cooked meat when circumstances permit. In Zhang and Zhou Dynasty China, the six principal livestock were chickens, cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs, and, less frequently, horses. Cattle and oxen were used as draft animals and were eaten by humans and gods alike; as these were the most important sacrificial animals in ancient imperial rites, beef was likely the high-status meat at this time and certainly during the Han Dynasty that followed. Sheep, first domesticated in the Near East, were the other main pasture animal in North China, where mutton and lamb remain popular meats today. Domestic pigs, which need far less land to survive and were typically housed in the farmstead’s garbage pit, were probably the principal meat source across China since early Neolithic times. From nose to tail, pork remains the most popular meat by far. The other early domesticated animal, the dog, was eaten by both emperor and commoner in ancient times, and special breeds of dog are still raised for their meat today, but the dishes are expensive and now mostly reserved for gourmets. The only fowl on this list, chicken, may have been first domesticated in China around 5500 BCE; by the Zhou era, even the poorest farms across China had them. Beyond the farmyard, anything that flies, creeps, or walks has been cooked on Chinese stoves, from ducks and geese to insect larvae, from snakes and lizards to the rarest of wild game, including monkeys, bears, and the elusive (and now nearly extinct) South China tiger.
The omnivorous Chinese also turned to their rivers, lakes, and seashores for the cai that supplemented their grain food. Remains of fishing nets made from twisted fibers and bone fish hooks have been found at sites tens of thousands of years old. Carp, the most important freshwater protein source, came to symbolize good fortune and abundance; the colorful varieties known as koi and goldfish were often also kept for ornamental display. For the emperor, the choice fish was the sturgeon, which was reared at the imperial fish farms. Indeed, the Chinese were probably pioneers of aquaculture; they developed sophisticated techniques to trap, breed, and harvest many types of freshwater fish. Along the coast, particularly in the South, the variety of saltwater fish was staggering; in the nineteenth century, Europeans said that in Macau you could eat a different fish every day of the year. The most popular amphibians were frogs, and among the aquatic reptiles, softshell turtles (another symbol of longevity), which were often served in elegant soups at imperial banquets. Archaeological evidence also shows that from a very early date, the Chinese considered many types of crustacean and mollusk, and probably jellyfish, suitable for their tables.
Native fruits have always had an important place in Chinese culinary culture. The Chinese people long associated succulent peaches with longevity, believing that they were the main sustenance of the Celestial Immortals, including the supreme Jade Emperor himself. While the Japanese often add pickled and salted fruits to their rice bowls, the Chinese are more likely to eat fruit as a snack, as dessert, or at the beginning or end of a formal banquet. Peaches have been part of the East Asian diet for at least seven thousand years, and peach trees, fruits, and blossoms are common subjects in Chinese painting. Their close relations plums, Chinese apricots (Prunus mume), and apricots
(Prunus armeniaca) also have an ancient history in China. During the Zhou Dynasty, Chinese apricots were added to soups and stews to provide both thickening and tartness. Apricots were also the source for pickles, plum wine, and the plum sauce that was used as a condiment. Jujubes (Chinese dates), a sweet native fruit grown widely in the North, were eaten as snacks, made into tea, and cooked in a number of sweet dishes, including the Eight Treasure Rice served at Chinese New Year. The crisp, juicy Asian pear (Pyrus pyrifolia) and the Chinese persimmon (Diospyros kaki) have long been popular. Today, the most common fruit offering is probably the mandarin orange, often served in South China because its Cantonese pronunciation sounds like gum, the Cantonese word for “gold.” Many other kinds of citrus are native to South China, including kumquats, pomelos, perhaps even both sweet and sour oranges. This area is also home to such succulent tropical and subtropical fruit as longans, loquats, and lychees, which the imperial concubine Yang Guifei (719–756 CE) loved so much that she had them shipped by speedy messengers to her palace in North China.