Tang Dynasty Crossing Guide: Chang'an and People's Life Manual

Chapter 7 How to be a qualified foodie in the Tang Dynasty (2)
In addition, the content of the chat is rich and the atmosphere is relaxed, which does not mean that the etiquette requirements are not strict. After all, dine-in for political affairs is a kind of political treatment, which is quite different from going out to a restaurant to drink and eat skewers with friends.

The most basic etiquette requirements: First of all, you can’t just enter the political affairs hall to eat and eat, you must have the qualifications of the prime minister before you can go to the table; secondly, you can’t leave the table casually, if someone leaves in the middle of the meeting, the other prime ministers must stop. The chopsticks are waiting, and we will continue to eat after the people are complete.

Once, when the prime ministers were having dinner in the political affairs hall, a certain powerful minister called one of his party prime ministers out to discuss matters, and after the discussion, the two of them made some food together.The prime ministers who were waiting to continue eating in the political affairs hall heard about this. Two veteran ministers threw their chopsticks on the spot. All goodness. ①Look at how serious this messy eating accident is.

What food is in this meal, you ask?That's too much, I will save the details for the next time, anyway, as long as you know that the annual expenditure of this political affairs cook is quite a large sum, even some prime ministers feel pain when they see it.More than one prime minister has raised it more than once, saying that the country's finances are very difficult. We always eat and drink so much, and the impact is too bad. Why don't we cut the budget for this area?

①The allusion comes from Biography No.90 of "New Book of Tang"
Guess what?The other prime ministers objected, and one of them, surnamed Zhang, said something very representative, and everyone was convinced after hearing it.This passage translates into modern vernacular to the effect that:
The reason why the emperor allocated so much public money to us to eat and drink is to give preferential treatment to talents, and hope that we will work hard after eating and govern the country well. ①Mr., if you have a guilty conscience and feel that your work results are not worthy of this delicious meal, then you should stand aside and step aside, so that others can eat and do well.You don't worry about national affairs, you just gossip about this kind of small details, what is it if you are not trying to get fame?What's more, saving the money for this meal will do nothing to solve the country's financial problems. If you work hard and accomplish a major event, you can benefit the people of the country, so eating a good meal is not too much.

If modern officials who eat and drink with public funds use this kind of fallacy to justify it, it would be no wonder that they were not beaten to death by netizens, but people in the Tang Dynasty (especially literati) actually agreed with this statement, so the luxurious lunch in Zhengshitang continued.

The above is the lunch of the prime ministers. After all, there are very few officials who can reach the level of prime ministers.So how do ordinary officials who are not prime ministers eat lunch?
The working meal supply system of the prime ministers is called "tangchu" because they eat in the political affairs hall.The working meal supply system for other officials is called "public kitchen".They don't have a centralized office hall like the prime minister, so many departments have to build another canteen next to the main office hall, which can accommodate all the officials who go to work to eat at the same time.

①The allusion comes from Volume 53 of "Tang Huiyao".

The construction specifications of this canteen also have certain standards, roughly within the financial resources of each department, and strive to be grand and orderly, and it is not enough to just build a thatched shed to make do.The interior decoration of the cafeteria also needs to be thoughtful. Some of them offer statues of Manjushri Bodhisattva, and officials worship Bodhisattva before eating: "Thank you Bodhisattva for blessing me and cooking with stew..." Some of them write work-related articles and admonitions on the wall , Hadith, etc.: "Scientific development, brilliant achievements..."

Seriously speaking, the Dali Temple, which is in charge of judicial sentencing, is most like a state organ.The walls of the cafeteria are covered with common legal provisions.I tell you judges not to read books and not to study business.As long as you eat, you can honestly read "Yonghui Lushu"①.

The meal time is mostly at noon, and the officials gather in the cafeteria (you don’t need to take the rice bowl, I still have money for tableware for the officials in Tang Dynasty), and they also sit on the ground or on the bed according to the rules, waiting for the miscellaneous food. The servants set up meals on the food table.

As for the dining rituals, the strictness of management, and whether people are allowed to talk and laugh during meals, each department has its own rules.The most stringent control may be Yushitai, which is roughly equivalent to the current discipline inspection and supervision department.

Yushitai was a fat department envied by everyone in the Tang Dynasty. If you entered Yushitai at the age of 40 or [-], you should endure the poker face of the chief officer for a few years!You said that eating like this will cause intestinal obstruction?Then let's go around and ask for release to become an official in a state or county?Unless they catch up with an assassin who is like the living king of Hades, the official atmosphere of foreign officials will be more relaxed than that of Beijing officials.

If you go to relatively wealthy states and counties, such as Yangzhou and Hangzhou in the south of the Yangtze River, or Shu County and Yizhou, then the income of officials of the same level is much higher than that of Beijing officials.This is reflected in working meals. The cost of working meals in prefectures and counties outside Beijing is budgeted by the local finance. Sometimes the finance directly pays for all expenditures, and sometimes the finance pays a part of the money as capital, and the relevant management departments take the capital to do it. Business, lending usury, and paying for the consumption of the "public kitchen" with interest income.

The "public kitchen" budgets of various departments in the capital are almost all paid by the capital granted by the imperial court, and each department conducts its own operations to earn profits.In other words, the state finance allocated 200 million yuan to this department at one time, but the 200 million yuan cannot be spent. Instead, some "money catchers" are found, and the 200 million is divided into several parts and lent to these "money catchers" , Tell them to take the capital to do business, and pay interest to the department on a monthly or annual basis, and the department uses the interest to buy food and vegetables to cook and supply "public kitchens".

① "Yonghui Law Shu", later known as "Tang Law Shu Yi", is a compilation of Tang Dynasty laws and their interpretations completed during the Yonghui period of Emperor Gaozong of Tang Dynasty. It is also the oldest and most complete feudal code in China.

Not all "money catchers" can succeed in business, and whether they can repay the interest is completely uncertain, so various departments in central Beijing complain from time to time, and the capital of the "public kitchen" is gone!If the imperial court does not give any subsidy, everyone will have nothing to eat!If there is no food to eat, civil servants will not go to work!If you don't go to work, no one will work, and the state machinery will be paralyzed...

Don't you believe it?Alas, after the Anshi Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty, the country’s political and financial revenues were in a mess. There was really no money to provide officials with public funds to eat and drink every day. , The next day you rest at home and solve the food problem by yourself, so as to save money.

Therefore, the quality of the official working meals is closely related to the country's economic situation and fiscal revenue.If you unfortunately traveled to the late Tang Dynasty by mistake and worked as a middle-level and low-level official in a yamen with little money, then if you ate a piece of meat at lunch in the cafeteria, you would probably be able to tell each other with tears in your eyes.

Of course, if your own family is rich and you don’t want to eat brown rice and pickles with your colleagues at noon, then you can find an excuse and sneak out of the government to go to a restaurant.

References & in-depth understanding recommendations for this article:
Bai Genxing. Corridor Food and Public Kitchen in the Tang Dynasty. Zhejiang Academic Journal, 1996 (2)

Huang Zhengjian. Research on the Clothing, Food, Housing and Transportation of the Tang Dynasty. Beijing: Capital Normal University Publishing, 1998
Wu Yugui. General History of Chinese Customs: Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties Volumes. Shanghai: Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 2001
"I haven't seen it before, it's called Japanese-style sashimi!" "Isn't it just cut carp..."

meat
Traveling back to the Tang Dynasty and becoming a small Beijing official, you took off your official uniform with your friends and colleagues during your vacations and went to the East Market and West Market together.Tired of shopping and hungry, I walked into a nearby restaurant called "Zhangjialou" to experience the service quality of the catering industry in the capital of Datang.

Choose a food table near the entrance to sit down, what is the first sentence you want to say when you open your mouth?
Who is the treat?It is still so stingy to dress up as an official of the Tang Dynasty, you might as well pass through as a strict supervisor.

Pour a pot of tea?Probably not, please turn to the chapter on drinking tea later in the book.

Bring the menu?Thank you, until the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, there were no paper menus in restaurants. At most, there was a water sign on the cabinet stating today's special offer.What kind of dish you want to order depends entirely on the name of the dish in the mouth of the waiter. The art of cross talk comes from life.

Xiao Er!Serve five catties of beef and ten bowls of good wine!
Two burly men come here, let’s look at your looks first—not familiar faces, and then look at the peacefulness of the people on the street outside the shop, it seems that you don’t look like a Liangshan hero in ambush, nod at each other, and stretch out a cattail fan Big hand, grab your collar, I throw—

Staggering out of the store, are you confused again?Are you afraid of a big belly man when you open a restaurant?Even if something is wrong, just come and correct it, why are you kicking people so casually?Were people in the Tang Dynasty so careless about making money in harmony when doing business?
Alas, it is true that people in the Tang Dynasty were more cruel and individual, but under normal circumstances, businessmen would not offend customers like this.The reason why you were expelled was that you said something that was taboo at the time, and the owner of the restaurant was afraid of being phished for law enforcement.

What words are taboo?
"Tang Law Volume [-] Stables": "The owner who commits suicide with horses and cattle will be punished for one year." If the owner kills his own horse or cattle, he will have to serve a year of hard labor, which means that the state prohibits the killing of these two large livestock. , Of course, it is even more forbidden to eat beef.Your phrase "five catties of beef" will send the owner of the restaurant to hard labor if you are not careful.

Therefore, after you travel to the Tang Dynasty, you don’t need to expect to see boiled beef, Hangjiao beef tenderloin, Dengying beef, spicy beef, roasted beef brisket with tomatoes, dry shredded beef, potato stewed beef, fillet steak... ...all are not available.

What?You said that you grew up eating Big Macs, you are not happy with cows, and you can’t live without beef?These are all habitual problems.Well, if you want to eat beef even if you risk your life, the people of Tang are not without alternatives.

The easiest way is to go to the countryside to buy some beef privately, or raise a few cows at home, kill them secretly in the dark, cook them and eat them behind closed doors, and don’t let others see them.Even if a neighbor smells something wrong, pushes the door open and walks in, and catches you eating beef, you can argue forcefully: "I killed the cow right, but it was manslaughter! Manslaughter! It was just a momentary miss!"

The law of the Tang Dynasty clearly stipulates that killing one's own cattle and horses for one year, but "manslaughter, do not sit."As for how to prove that it was manslaughter, not intentional killing, if you quickly put a plate of cooked beef and gave it to your neighbor, then it must be manslaughter...

If your culinary skills are similar to the author's deer, then it is not recommended to cook beef at home. You will probably ruin this hard-won treasure and poison yourself by the way.Take it out and leave it to a familiar restaurant to clean it up!Note that you must be familiar with the shopkeeper and have a good friendship with the shopkeeper, otherwise they may report you to the government.

In ordinary restaurants, the way to prepare beef is probably to boil it in water and add some condiments such as scallion and ginger sauce.To be a little more advanced, build a fire in the yard, roast (called broiling at the time) the beef until it is half-ripe, and after the burnt smell comes out, sprinkle some pepper, it is a rare delicacy.

To talk about the famous beef dish of the Tang Dynasty, I would like to recommend a "Niu Tou Bao" to you.

This famous dish is mainly popular in the southern region, where the sky is high and the emperor is far away, and places beyond Chang'an's control have room for the famous beef dish.The production process is as follows:
Take the calf head with smooth skin and tender meat, first burn it on the fire to remove the hair, then scald it with boiling water to remove the hair roots.Put wine, fermented soy beans, green onion, ginger in the pot, cook the beef head, peel off the meat and cut it into palm-sized pieces, season it with ghee, pepper, sour orange, etc., stuff it into a jar, and seal it with mud Hold the mouth of the urn.Finally, bury the meat urn in the firepit, and slowly heat it with weak firepower to bake out the flavor.

This kind of dish was called "Bao" in the Tang Dynasty, and I don't know if it has anything to do with the claypot rice in the Lingnan area.In short, it was very difficult for people in the Tang Dynasty to eat beef, so mad cow disease could not be spread.

So, what kind of meat did Tang Dynasty people eat most often?

Wrong, it's not pork, it's mutton.

I can't help but envy and hate the royal relatives, relatives, high-ranking officials and nobles. As long as these guys reach the fifth rank or above as officials, the public will give out a lot of meat for free every month.From the prince down to the second-rank officials, [-] sheep and [-] catties of pork are provided every month, the third-rank officials only provide twelve sheep every month, and the fourth-rank and fifth-rank officials give nine sheep every month, but no pork. Mutton is much more popular than pork.

Do you think mutton has a strong smell?It doesn't matter, let's pay more attention to the cooking method and strive for perfection. A master can make mutton delicious.

I won’t say much about the broiled mutton, steamed mutton head, and mutton noodles that ordinary people in the Tang Dynasty ate.Just say that one day your colleague invited you to dinner at home, and said that the main course of the banquet was "Guotang sheep". This is a famous delicacy in the world, so don't miss this opportunity.

When it’s the day of the banquet, you and other invited guests gather in the lobby of the host’s house. After some concessions, the respected host and guest sit on the table near the entrance of the hall.

The main halls of people in the Tang Dynasty often had no walls on the south side, and only a few pillars were used to support the eaves.When the south side needs to be protected from the wind, it can be surrounded by screens and barriers, and it can be simply withdrawn in summer. It is a semi-open-air building.People sitting in the hall can directly see the scene in the courtyard outside the hall.

The honored guests sit at the entrance of the hall, on the one hand, it is convenient to respect him first when the food is served; on the other hand, it is also convenient to watch the singing and dancing-at that time, when a formal banquet is held, there will probably be singing and dancing programs in the lower courtyard of the hall to accompany the meal.

After drinking for three rounds, several dishes were presented, the singing and dancing came to an end, and the main course was about to be played.

I saw a cook leading a live sheep to the front steps of the hall. After saluting to the hall, he raised a gleaming sharp knife and skillfully inserted it into the neck of the live sheep. He killed the sheep, let the blood out, and peeled the flesh.

At this time, the host invited all the guests to come down to the hall, and also came to the fat sheep that had just been slaughtered. The guests looked around to see which piece of mutton was good, and cut it off with a knife.The servants serving at the side offered brocades of different colors, wrapped up the mutton of choice, and sent it to be steamed.

When the time is up, the steamed mutton will be sent back piece by piece.You have to look for the piece of colorful brocade you chose, take it and open it, put the mutton into your own food utensils, cut it into pieces with the bamboo knife provided by the host, then sprinkle pepper and pour apricot jam on it, let's eat !

① Paoren, the ancient name for a chef.

It is precisely because mutton is the most commonly eaten meat by people in the Tang Dynasty, and mutton has a strong smell, so the pepper that can remove the smell is particularly valued.This thing is imported from the Western Regions and South Asia, and it is very expensive to sell. Don’t be surprised if you hear that when the prime minister of the dynasty was convicted and ransacked his home, 800 shi (6.4 kilograms) of pepper was confiscated from his home. ①
Over there, another customer said that I don't like to eat beef and mutton with a strong smell, and I want to eat pork. If I don't supply pork, I will complain to you for slaughtering customers.Alas, as for the matter, don't get excited, who said there was no pork in the Tang Dynasty.Although it is not as expensive as beef, nor as popular as mutton, pork is also one of the common meats for people, and there will be no shortage of supplies.

People in the Tang Dynasty ate pork, and the most common way was to steam it. In "Journey to the West", there is a big steamer to serve the master and the second senior brother at every turn, which has a basis for life.

Beef and mutton should be sprinkled with pepper, while pork must be served with garlic.You eat it as a guest at someone’s house, and the host brings up a plate of hot steamed pork. You smash the meat slices, pour garlic sauce and mashed garlic, and some bean paste, and wrap it with freshly baked golden dough rolls. , take a bite in your mouth, and the oil will flow along the side, not to mention how delicious it is.

In addition to pigs, sheep and cattle, people in the Tang Dynasty also ate donkey meat, dog meat, and some wild animal meat from time to time.At that time, the natural environment was good, the population was small, and there were mountains, forests and wild swamps everywhere. People in the Tang Dynasty liked to hunt, so meat such as rabbit, wild boar, bear, and even snake and civet meat had entered the diet of Tang people.What kind of animal meat is the most common in these wild game, you ask?I didn't tell you it was venison!

①The allusion comes from Biography No.70 of "New Book of Tang".

But here’s another problem. For example, you go out hunting with a few friends. After working for a long time, you bring down a big wild boar, find firewood to make a fire, peel and cut the meat, barbecue in the field, and your friends have a delicious meal. There is still a lot of pork left!Even if you ask the servants to carry it home, you can't finish a meal. What if it is broken?Violent waste is to be struck by lightning.

(End of this chapter)