Short video spoiler history: The beginning of modern warfare

Chapter 150 Why were novels so popular in the Ming Dynasty?

[Would the common people in ancient times rebel if they were only fed instant noodles? Let me put it this way, if you feed the common people modern instant noodles for three months, they would have to be careful when they go to bed at night, because you never know if they will find themselves wearing a yellow robe in the morning.]

[In history, the staple food of ordinary people was basically two or three kinds of wild vegetables plus unhulled wheat grains. The vegetables were wild vegetables grown in the fields, and you might not even see a drop of oil. For meat, forget it.]

[In years of disaster, all the wild vegetables, weeds, tree barks and roots that were slightly green were eaten up. Even if the imperial court distributed grain for disaster relief, officials at all levels would pluck it out, leaving only a few grains of rice in a bowl of porridge.]

[At this time, a big guy offers braised beef noodles, which is closer than your own father. If you are used to eating all kinds of delicacies and all kinds of meat, you will drool at the thought of the fragrance after not eating it for a long time. From this perspective, you can see how delicious it is.]

[If you traveled to the end of the Yuan Dynasty to build the Yellow River embankment, your ability would be to provide unlimited instant noodles. ]

[On the first day, we cooked braised beef noodles. It was the first time for the laborers to eat such high-fat food. Each of them moved 10 more bricks. On the second day, we cooked seafood fish noodles. The laborers thought that you couldn't improve the food for no reason. This labor service might end here.]

[On the third day, the instant noodles were replaced with pickled cabbage beef noodles. The workload did not increase, but a piece of starch sausage was added to the bowl. The civilians thought that they had never met such a kind-hearted dog official. Could he be sent by God to save us?]

[In the following month, you added several flavors to the instant noodles: chopped pepper pork ribs noodles, curry chicken noodles, and mushroom stewed chicken noodles. The workers often discussed which instant noodles tasted better after get off work, and they all thought they should do something for you.]

[In the second month, the number of laborers under you seems to have doubled. Anyway, who can work and eat the instant noodles if they can't finish them? Everyone can't help but talk about your family background while eating your instant noodles. Your accent sounds like someone from Beijing, and you are very elegant. You are clearly an old immortal with a kind face.]

[In the third month, the common people secretly built a stone tablet for you while repairing the river bank. Because your good reputation spread far and wide, refugees from various northern provinces came to you. Many families are still alive today, thanks to the great philanthropist Fat Noodles.]

[We think instant noodles are junk food because they have a single nutritional value and are bad for the human body if eaten frequently. However, for disaster victims and civilians in troubled times, instant noodles can provide important nutrients needed by the human body, such as fine white flour, fine salt, oil, and vegetable packets. More importantly, the seasoning packets in them, including pepper salt, pepper, MSG and other spices, were extremely expensive in ancient times.]

In front of Fengtian Hall.

“How delicious must it be to make these arrogant young people drool just thinking about it?” Zhu Biao and others were made hungry by what they heard. They only regretted that the skylight could only transmit sounds and images but not smells.

If you haven't experienced it, you naturally can't imagine what it tastes like. The best you can imagine is the best spring bamboo shoots braised duck, roast beef, mushroom stewed chicken, and braised pig's trotters that you have ever eaten.
"A small instant noodle dish has braised beef, seafood fish cake, pickled beef, chopped pepper ribs, curry chicken, and mushroom stewed chicken. So many varieties?" Many people couldn't help swallowing their saliva, and then felt a little embarrassed.
The screen did not show the differences between different instant noodles one by one, but judging from the finished noodles, not only are they made of fine white flour, they also contain enough fat, and they are said to contain seasoning packets mixed with salt and various spices.
“The main sources of aroma are oil, meat and various spices. As long as there is enough of these ingredients, it will taste good no matter how you mix them.” Hu Weiyong has done some research on food.

"On the contrary, if you replace the meat with vegetables or melons, you will find that the aroma is simply not there."

"How luxurious." Everyone knew that Hu Xiang was right. It would be the same even if they replaced the dish with mushrooms with a specific aroma. It was not the kind of dish that would make people salivate as soon as they smelled it, and it was very appetizing.

Moreover, their brains freeze just by hearing the word "spice". Such luxurious and expensive seasoning is put in what they think is junk food as if it is free.

So even if they don't know what it smells like, they can roughly guess that the smell of oil and spices is relatively strong.

Hexing Tea and Snack Shop.

"Although our conditions are not that good, we can't be bribed by just a bowl of instant noodles, right?" One man was not convinced, but after listening carefully to his words, he seemed to be not very confident.

Because they could eat refined salt at such a low price after Tianmu taught them the method of drying salt and refining refined salt last year. And the price of coarse salt has also been dragged down.

"Gulp~" One man's stomach started to growl before he could finish his words, so he could only blush and say, "With so many spices added, it must be very expensive!"

"No, have you forgotten that they only sell refined salt for 2 yuan a bag? Spices and other things may not be that expensive either." I have seen these prices in that supermarket before. Such a big bag is enough to eat for a long time, and it is actually cheaper than a kilogram of rice.

The diners in the restaurant all nodded, this was indeed exaggerated.

For example, the pepper mentioned above. Now the imperial court has tacitly relaxed the control, and many caravans have brought some back from the West, and the price is sky-high.

Others such as galangal, borneol, sandalwood, rose water, ambergris, sophora japonica, cardamom, etc., were snapped up as soon as they were launched on the market.

"The last emperor was full of praise for the instant noodles his wife sent back from childhood, and the thing he wanted to eat most before he died was a mouthful of instant noodles."

"Guess how Master Kong was founded? After the reform and opening up, a poor Taiwanese businessman failed in his investment in the mainland. On the train on his way back, he ate Taiwanese instant noodles. The noodles were so delicious that everyone on the train came to watch. So the Taiwanese businessman smelled a business opportunity, raised money everywhere, and joined forces with a few brothers to establish Master Kong. "

[The Ming Dynasty was an era of rapid development of market culture, especially novels, which reached the peak of all dynasties.]

[Among the four great classical novels in China, Journey to the West, Water Margin, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms were all completed in the Ming Dynasty. Together with another novel, Jin Ping Mei, they are known as the Four Great Wonders, which was also completed in the Ming Dynasty. In addition, there are a large number of short stories such as Sanyan Liangpai and fantasy picture books. ]

【In terms of subject matter, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin popularized historical novels, such as Romance of Sui and Tang Dynasties, The Legend of Yue Fei, Generals of the Yang Family, Travels in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, etc. Later, novels about public cases became popular, such as Bao Gong An, one of the three major public case novels in ancient times, but it was called Longtu Gong An at the time, and Huangming Zhusi Lianming Gong An, and some with Hai Rui as the protagonist. 】

[Next came the supernatural novels popularized by Journey to the West, such as Journey to the North, Journey to the South, Journey to the East (Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea), and New Talks by the Lantern Festival. The most widely circulated of these novels was Investiture of the Gods. ] [Finally, there were novels with realistic themes such as Three Words and Two Shots, which either satirized reality or encouraged people to be good.]

【Then we can't help but ask, why were novels so prosperous in the Ming Dynasty? 】

[During the Ming Dynasty, the prosperous society and developed industry and commerce broadened the horizons of the people at that time and made their thoughts more novel and developed. Imagine if a person didn't even have food to eat, he would naturally not have the leisure to write those romantic novels to spice up his life.]

[As people's lives became more affluent, they began to pursue spiritual nourishment. At the same time, under the constraints of the eight-legged essay in the imperial examination, scholars and students in society were more eager for freedom and release. So they expressed their long-confined souls through novels, sorting out traditional picture books left over from the Song and Yuan dynasties, adding their own unique insights, using the past to illustrate the present, and alluding to social reality.]

[This is a humanistic factor that led to the unprecedented development of novels in the Ming Dynasty, and ordinary people also liked novels as a form of literature. After all, compared to the boring and incomprehensible classics, novels are very easy to understand, and their rich storytelling makes people love them.]

【Therefore, in the nearly 300 years of the Ming Dynasty, there were a large number of novels, many authors, and many famous works handed down from generation to generation. These are all precious cultural heritage of our country. 】

Hexing Tea and Snack Shop.

Everyone listened with great interest. Novels that have been passed down for hundreds of years and are still talked about by later generations are obviously rare masterpieces.

"Unfortunately, most people have never heard of it."

"Many of them may not have been published yet." Mr. Su interjected. In fact, if Tianmu had not intervened, according to the etiquette and laws of our dynasty, these idle books would have been banned except for the Four Books and Five Classics.

Your Majesty is frugal and loves the people. The country has only been established for a few years, and the country is not strong and the people are not rich. How can you allow the people to indulge in pleasure like this?

Especially for scholars, reading these idle books would be regarded as "degenerate".

These "ancestral laws" are difficult to loosen without dozens or even hundreds of years. The impact of the sky curtain is far-reaching. It seems to have changed your majesty's mind, and the court seems to have relaxed some control.

Nowadays, influenced by Tianmu, novels are mostly divided into three categories: historical romance, fantasy, and cool novels.

Mentioning the types of public cases and realistic themes at this time undoubtedly expands the novelist's new ideas.

"Bao Gong's case!" Many people's eyes lit up. Bao Gong was a famous judge in the Song Dynasty. It was rumored that he had a charcoal-black face and a crescent moon on his forehead. He was very capable and was said to be able to judge the yin and yang during the day and at night.

Bao Gongshang was a man of integrity and honesty. He was discerning in trials, strict in enforcing the law, not afraid of the powerful, not partial to personal feelings, and always enforced orders. He was known as "Judge Bao" and was a household name for an honest official.

There were stories, novels and operas with Bao Zheng as the theme during the Southern Song and Jin dynasties, and there were a large number of Bao Zheng plays in Yuan dramas, but no one had compiled and re-created them into novels.

Nowadays, the demand for novels is strong, and the folk creation craze is in full swing, but the quality of the finished products varies greatly. Many bookstores cannot get novels that meet their needs, so the shopkeepers have to write novels themselves. Now that a new category has been opened, it is estimated that the market will be busy again.

However, for Manager Wan and others, this is still something worth looking forward to.

In front of Fengtian Hall.

Zhu Yuanzhang sighed secretly, it is really not easy to get praise from future generations.

The appearance of the sky curtain did change many of his concepts, and no one knew this better than him.

The Confucian classics he had previously admired became a thing that imprisoned thought and hindered development in later generations, and were abandoned by the times; the idle books he despised became classics handed down from generation to generation and deeply loved by people. He tried every possible way to make everything run according to his design, including the household registration system, etiquette and rules, in order to make the Ming Dynasty last forever.

It was just that Tianmu appeared out of nowhere, pointed out a path to prosperity, and told him loudly that nothing serious would happen if the people lived a better life, were a little more "luxurious", and told the truth.

Therefore, there was a series of defaults, including the default of going to Southeast Asia to do business and the default of the existence of novels.

He didn't know whether this was the right thing to do, but he just wanted to give it a try. With the ability of the court, even if there were some minor problems, they could still be suppressed. Fortunately, there were no problems.

"Is the literacy rate in the Ming Dynasty so exaggerated?"

"Have you seen Yixiang Chunzhi?"

(End of this chapter)