Xi people build their own huts to live in, and Qidan cleans cars by water springs.

Camels and sheep were scattered in the valley, and grass and water were moved away at once.

……

This is the poem "Out of the Mountain" written by Su Zhe when he went to Liao in the Northern Song Dynasty. What a distant and desolate scene the poet saw! Indeed, as far as the territory of the Liao Dynasty is concerned, "there are many mountains and forests, and there is no roof." "You see animal husbandry, with horses and cattle, especially green salt yellow tapirs. There are also car tents, hunting by water plants, eating elk porridge and glutinous rice. Such an ecological environment, the level of its material products can be imagined, from the list of gifts that Liao paid tribute to the Song Dynasty, we can see one thing:

20 pots of steeping liquor, 10 bunches of densely dried Alpinia oxyphylla, 10 bunches of honey soaked Alpinia oxyphylla, 4 bunches of martyr pears and persimmon pears, 30 boxes of chestnuts, pine nuts, dark plums, black plums, jujube, Broussonetia papyrifera and canned Li Tang, and 10 bowls of glutinous rice and white salt.

From the above items, it is not difficult to see the diet and living conditions of Liao country.

No wonder Cheng Dachang's Fan Yanlu took pains to record the fishing and hunting of Liao master in winter and spring: when the first month was frozen, Liao master first sent people up and down the Dalu River for ten miles to intercept the fish with wool nets, so that they could not escape. So as to drive it away, so that the fish are concentrated on the ice in front of the tent of Liao Lord and his mother. Because four ice holes named "Ice Eye" were dug in Master Liao's residence in advance, the middle ice eye is permeable, and the other three "Ice Eyes" are impermeable, but transparent and thin. The reason why the fish is chiseled like this is that although it is a thing in the water, if it stays in the ice for a long time, once it comes out of the water, it must stretch its head and exhale, so it can catch the fish with permeable eyes, and the thin impermeable ice eyes are just to see if the fish has come. When the fish comes, the observer at the thin ice eye will report to Master Liao, who will throw the rope hook into the chiseled ice eye. You can take the bait in an instant. Once hooked, the rope will loosen and let it go with the fish. After a while, the fish will get tired, and then pull the rope out of the "ice eye". This is the "head fish". When the head fish was caught, Master Liao stepped out of the ice tent and gave a banquet in the tent, which was called "Head Fish Banquet".

Another great event of Liao people is hunting. Ye Longli's Notes on the Kingdom of Qidan: Sometimes the master of Liao led a knight to the lake, beating drums while circling the lake, making the wild ducks and geese living here jump up and shoot at them. After killing wild ducks and geese, pluck off feathers and put them on your body, then take the drum as a seat and drink heartily. Sometimes they beat rabbits with copper or stones as mallets. In autumn, they wear brown fur and call for deer to shoot them. In the minds of Liao people, this is the greatest happiness.

Liao people have an endless history of fishing and hunting. They often hunt in the mountains and get thousands of animals to feed the army. Sometimes they hunt more than 600 miles and eat fresh meat every day. Sometimes they hook fish in the river, sometimes catch geese in the lake, stay up all night and have a picnic. In order to catch the emu, Liao people chose the gathering place of the emu, planted barnyard grass in spring, lured the emu with barnyard grass, and arrested it if a fat emu was found. Some Liao masters drove people down the lake to catch geese regardless of the storm, and drowned more than 60 people at once. This is really eating geese unscrupulously. It is precisely because of the insatiable hunting that Liao let his men be disturbed and killed by squire Xingu and others in Goose River.

However, fishing and hunting did not stop. For Liao people, "nature is bow and arrow". "Head Fish Banquet" and "Head Goose Banquet" were handed down as "Lu Dadian" and influenced the Jin people. Emperor Youzuo of the Liao Dynasty was fishing in the Huntongjiang River, and "female zhikui" from thousands of miles away came to worship in succession, dancing to add to the fun when the "head fish banquet" was full of wine and ears. Like Liao people, Jin people's fishing and hunting in four seasons has become a custom. The reason is that, as Li Youtang said in Qing Dynasty, there is very little wheat and flour after passing Binhai, Chenzhou and north of Tokyo. Every morning and evening, they eat the animals they shoot. Especially in the winter hunting map of Jin people in the Ming version of Conan Dream, the hunting grounds of Jin people are all surrounded by pro-army, which is called "paddock". When foxes, rabbits, pigs and deer are scattered in the center of the paddock, the gold owner will shoot an arrow first, or release falcons to chase foxes, rabbits, pigs and deer in the paddock before allowing others to catch them. This kind of hunting, when it comes out, is a full moon, with great mobility, no fixed place to live, and food will enter everywhere. This is really:

Are you satisfied with cooking snow in spring? Kill rabbits, shoot deer and praise strong men.

After the ceremony, today's roll account, fishing and shooting geese.

Although this is Su Zhe's description of Liao country's dietary customs, isn't it a portrayal of Jin people's dietary customs? Desert wilderness, mountains, lakes and rivers determine the degree of food and shelter of Liao and people. However, it can't be said that their diet life is all-inclusive, and the people of Liao and Jin still created unique diet customs by using the beauty of nature. Note in Daikin Guozhi: White peony flowers grew everywhere in the Jin Dynasty, picked by good families and served as vegetarian dishes with fried noodles for guests to enjoy. Because this kind of Bai Mudan tastes crisp and delicious, and it can be preserved for a long time, Jin people cherish it very much and regard it as a "different product". Only when valuable friends arrive, they cut it into pieces and put it on a plate, which is generally not casually placed.

This is like the "yellow mouse" mentioned in Liu Ji's Snow Record. "Blame is the gift of jade food, and people can't take it." In fact, the vast desert in the north is suitable for burrowing animals such as weasels to thrive. It is a kind of fat mouse. It tastes like a pig, but it is more brittle than a pig. The reason why it became a "delicacy" for giving gifts to distinguished guests or paying tribute to the Song Dynasty was related to the fact that the Liao and Jin people caught squirrels and "often fed them with goat's milk" recorded in Wang Bizhi's Notes on Swallows in Lushui.

However, judging from the overall dietary standards of a nation, the dietary standards of Liao and Jin are still poor. As far as the meat they can't live without for a moment is concerned, "it's normal for stocks to be cooked and the rest of the meat and vegetables to be eroded in the mortar." Even if the meat porridge is given to people with status, it is "cooked with meat and rice" and "the meat is broken". The half-life meal you eat on weekdays should be "stained with dog blood and garlic." It is generally believed that "goose powder is the most important" and "raw onions, garlic and leeks are often placed on the table". For this reason, when celebrating the birthday of Wang, envoys from various countries listed "rice cakes, oil cakes and jujube towers as dishes, followed by fruits", while envoys from Liao added "only sheep, chickens, geese, bones and cooked meat as dishes, all tied with small ropes, and leeks, garlic and vinegar as dishes". This is obviously due to the Song Dynasty's respect for Liao people's dietary customs.

Liao country showed different faces in dealing with the envoys of Song Dynasty. Zhu Yu's Zhou Pingke Tan said that Liao people provided a bowl of milk porridge to the envoys of Song Dynasty every day, because milk porridge was a very precious food in Liao country. However, Liao people added "Wozhi oil" to the milk porridge, which made the turquoise unable to swallow. The envoys of the Song Dynasty put forward the idea of "removing oil" to them, but Liao people also ignored it. It was not until the envoys of Song Dynasty proposed to store raw oil in other utensils for their own use when drinking milk porridge that Liao people nodded in agreement. In Liao people's view, crude oil is the best tonic, and even the queen of Liao was required to "take half a cup of crisp apricot oil" when she gave birth to a child.

It can be seen that the food that Liao people think is delicious may not be acceptable to Song people. When Huidi and Qin Shihuang were imprisoned in the State of Jin, it happened to be Di Chin's birthday. Jin people gave them wine and food from Di Chin, but they all vomited after eating. Later, I learned that it was "honey-stained sheep intestines", that is, a kind of food cooked with horse intestines, which was not eaten by ordinary prisoners and was "delicious" in the State of Jin. However, this kind of food is far from the popular cooking flavors such as frying, steaming, stewing and stewing in the Central Plains, and it is also different from elegant, light, novel and nourishing court meals. How can this not cause the Song people to feel that the smell is sour and thin and inedible?

Liao and Jin also realized that their diet was backward and tried their best to learn from the food culture of the Central Plains. For example, during the Spring Festival in Liao and Jin Dynasties, there were great traces of sinicization, but they were still stuck in their diet customs. For example, on the Double Ninth Festival on September 9, the custom in China is often to get together for a banquet, drink chrysanthemum wine, or put cakes on children's heads to "make everything high". Liao people follow suit. They also set up tents on high places and drank chrysanthemum wine, but only if they held a "tiger hunt" and lost the "Chongyang Banquet". The banquet is nothing more than taking out the rabbit's liver, cutting it raw and mixing it with deer tongue sauce. Liao people don't want to eat better meat than this, but they lack delicious food. They especially envy the pork in the Central Plains, so the envoys of the Liao Dynasty ask the Song Dynasty for pork every year, or "stomach belongs to stomach". According to Han Yuanji's "Tongyin Old Ci", even the post office riders in the Song Dynasty tried their best to collect it, without adding "Chuchu" every day.

If this is to satisfy the appetite of Liao people, it is better to say that this is a concrete example of Liao people's admiration for the food culture of the Central Plains. The reason why Liao people's fishing became a "big gift" was not that its original intention was to imitate the eating customs of Central Plains emperors who often held flower viewing, fishing and feasting. Lu You's "Old Home News" records that when the ancestor Lu Dian went to Liao, he gave him an inedible pomegranate because he saw that one of his servants was conscientious, but the servant was reluctant to eat it and wanted to leave it to his parents.

A small pomegranate in the Central Plains will also make Liao people offer it as a good product, and tea is more thirsty. Zhang Shunmin's "Picture Record" said that in Song Dynasty, a son went to Liao country and brought many "group teas" because in Liao country, two "group teas" can be exchanged for two "Fan Luo". "You don't need to mix cheese to quench your thirst. Ice has just entered a small group of tea." A Qing poet Lu Changchun is by no means groundless, but has sufficient factual basis.

With the trade of tea, "tea food" also penetrated into the daily life of Liao and Jin nationalities. At the important wedding ceremony in life, Jin people always regard "tea" as a kind of etiquette. The so-called "tea food" is nothing more than the advanced "cold food" that Han people often eat, that is, food with soft fat such as fried dough sticks and a plate of "honey cake". Only when the whole banquet is over and all the guests who come to the wedding are entertained will "Jianming Tea" be served. Tea has become a drink that only the rich can sip, while the rough can only drink cheese.

With the frequent contacts between Song Dynasty and Liao and Jin Dynasties, Liao and Jin Dynasties gradually learned a set of "tea and food" methods in Song Dynasty. When the envoys of the Song Dynasty came to the State of Jin, Jin people always received them with "soup before tea", which was quite typical of the Han family. After arranging the accommodation, Jin people "put a tea banquet first" at dinner. The "Tea Banquet" consists of Huaron, cinnamon, chicken intestines, silver collars, cake bait and other snacks. Among them, one kind of tea is made of honey flour and fried, and its shape is called "Xi Shi Tongue", which is the most popular among Jin people. There is no doubt that this kind of soft tea, just like human tongue, is taken from the Central Plains, and it is really the food of Han people, and then returned to the hands of Han people. Before the "tea banquet" was over, the Jin people served steamed bread, blood soup, belly soup, scalded sheep cakes, porridge meat, noodles and bone plates. ...

The snacks served in the morning have new tricks: lung stuffing, oil cake, jujube cake, noodle porridge ... which is similar to the diet in the Central Plains. Guanfei, oil cake and jujube cake are all popular foods in cities in Song Dynasty. In Tokyo, "Bufei" is sold everywhere as "breakfast" for people who enter the market at dawn. In Lin 'an, "pouring golden gate into the lungs" has become a famous market food. Restaurants specializing in "oil cakes" abound in Tokyo and Lin 'an. Jujube cake is a snack that ordinary citizens take their children to play with.

Even though Liao and Jin started "city life", it was still difficult for Liao and Jin to get rid of the taste of "luring food" for a while. The Song Dynasty sent Lu Zhen to Liao country, and Liao country was the guest of honor. The king of Lanling County, a surnamed Xu, gave a banquet. Jiang's "A Record of the Song Dynasty Gardens" recorded such a scene:

Let's recommend Milo first, in terms of ladle. The meat of Bear Fat Sheep, Dolphin, Pheasant and Rabbit is bacon, while the meat of Niu Lu, Goose and Bear Raccoon is bacon, cut into squares and mixed in a big plate. Erhu wears fresh and clean clothes, holds towels, knives and daggers, and cuts pork for the convenience of Han people.

This way of eating with a dagger can't help but remind people of the poem "A Brave Man at the Border eats Meat" written by Song people to Liao people, but it has taken a big step forward compared with eating alive.

In the middle of Liao Dynasty, five Kyoto cities were built, namely, Shanghai, East, South, West and Central. When Su Song walked out of Xishan Road and entered the boundary of China, he saw many shops, houses and people along the way, and wooden bamboo flags hung in front of the dining hall, which made Su Song happily recite the sentences of "Zhu Ji carved flags in the village to eat" and "things are vaguely admired". Liao people are so keen on Central Plains food culture.

In fact, as early as 943 AD, Emperor Taizong of Liao sent envoys to pay tribute to the Southern Tang Dynasty, holding 30,000 sheep and 200 horses for sale. One of its purposes is to buy "tea medicine" which can best represent the dietary culture level of the Han nationality. In order to achieve the goal of obtaining the food civilization in the Central Plains, Liao and Jin nationalities spared no expense, and sometimes took advantage of the war to seize it. In the first year of Jingkang (1 126), when the Jin people attacked Bianliang, they demanded "50 people to brew wine and 3,000 bottles of wine" from the Song government. Later, when Hui Zhou went to the State of Jin, he drank a good wine named Jin Lan. Although it is brewed with Jinlan water in the State of Jin, it has to be said that it is related to the wine exported by the Han nationality and the winemaker, because in the long history of the State of Jin, there is only a record of "brewing more mash wine". Of course, a large number of food and beverage sundries are still obtained through normal trade channels. During the Liao and Jin Dynasties, a commodity market was specially set up. From the articles in the History of Jin Dynasty provided by Sizhou Market in this year, we can see that:

There are 500 Jin of fresh tea, 500 Jin of litchi, 500 Jin of round eyes, 6000 Jin of kumquat, 500 Jin of olives, 300 Jin of dried banana, 1000 Jin of sappan wood, 7,000 warm oranges, 8,000 oranges, 300 Jin of sugar, 600 Jin of ginger and 90 Jin of gardenia.

It is precisely because of this extensive food trade that the food structure of Liao and Jin nationalities who drink blood has been changed. "Liao History" records that among the courtiers of the exiled princes of Liao country, there are also "seven clever and three winemaking". When entertaining Shi Xia, the gold master also assumed the posture of a gourmet country, including "a gourmet officer, a kitchen supervisor, a meat weigher", "a gourmet director, a soup director, five cooks, a drinking director, 80 dish gatherers and 40 market cooks". These phenomena are by no means isolated, but a reflection of the overall diet level of a nation. If there are not many delicacies, why are there so many skilled chefs? If there is no good wine and good food, how can there be official positions such as serving straight drinks and overeating? Although they all have royal colors, they are different from the pattern of "people like milk" and "fishing and hunting for a living" in the early Liao and Jin nationalities. Needless to say, in the late Liao and Jin Dynasties, a diet system dominated by China people gradually formed. During his stay in the State of Jin in the Southern Song Dynasty, Hong Gang recorded the food provided by the gold owners to the messengers in the Southern Song Dynasty, leaving us with a series of shocking evidence:

Give 20 Jin of fine wine, 8 Jin of canned mutton, 500 fruits, 500 miscellaneous money, 3 Jin of white flour, half a catty of oil, 2 liters of vinegar, half a catty of salt, 1 catty of flour, 3 liters of fine cabbage, half a catty of batter and 3 bundles of firewood.

The above-mentioned "Japanese gifts" almost include seven life events that people have been talking about since the Song and Yuan Dynasties-rice, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar tea, which indicates that a brand-new light of diet and life has spread to the Liao and Jin nationalities.

At the same time, the change of dietary customs can not be separated from the prosperity of cities, especially cities. Only the growth of the city and the fruits of the development of commodity economy can make enjoying the kitchen a reality. Twenty-six scenes of Youzhou City in Liao Dynasty were recorded in "Travel Record". There is a market in the north of Nanjing, where land and water goods gather. "Fertility, such as vegetables, fruits and rice, is inexhaustible. Mulberry, Zhejiang, hemp, wheat, sheep, tapir, pheasant and rabbit don't ask." There are products from both Liao countries and Central Plains, and the two water exchanges have merged into a colorful food river.

The catering market in the Jin Dynasty is even more magnificent. The Qin Lou of Yanshan described in the Song version of Yang Siwen's Old Friend at the Yanshan Meeting is vast, "like Fan Lou in Tokyo, with sixty pavilions upstairs and seventy or eighty tables and stools downstairs". A restaurant of this scale is enough to explain the swallow of the Jin Dynasty.

Jindai hotel

The food market on the mountain consumes a lot of energy, which is at least comparable to the most famous Tokyo Fan Lou in the Northern Song Dynasty. The murals painted by Fan Shi at the northern foot of Wutai Mountain in Shanxi in the third year of Jin Dynasty (1 158) can also let us know that the restaurants and restaurants in Jin Dynasty are very developed, with magnificent pavilions, busy food vendors and busy dancers, which are not inferior to the bustling Central Plains.

However, only the Song Dynasty had an influence on the Liao and Jin Dynasties, and it cannot be said that the Liao and Jin Dynasties had no influence and contribution to the Song Dynasty. Since the Liao Dynasty, delicacies have been introduced into the Central Plains, filling the gap in the Central Plains diet. That is to say, in terms of fruits, there were no watermelons in the Central Plains before the Liao Dynasty. After the rise of the Liao Dynasty, it is said that when the Khitan broke Uighur, it got a kind of fruit seed and covered it with cow dung for cultivation. The cultivated watermelon is as big as the wax gourd in the Central Plains, tastes sweet and can be eaten raw. This is watermelon. Perhaps because of the geographical proximity, some people in the Jin Dynasty specially planted watermelons. Yuan Haowen recorded a farmer in Jin as a representative, who planted "a watermelon" and reached "12,300". With the development of trade, watermelons have also been introduced into the areas where the Han people live. On the streets of Lin 'an, the popular snack "watermelon kernel" is sold, which is obviously the rhyme of watermelon in Liao and Jin Dynasties.

There are melons in Zhaozhou, which are small and expensive, sweet and crisp. Every time the envoys of the Han Dynasty came, the Jin people sent a box of melons from Zhaozhou to the door where the envoys lived, and they ate them for free. Hui Zhou's "Clear Waves and Biezhi" records that he brought back several Zhaozhou melons during the Northern Expedition and gave them to Li Furen. Li is good at making sauces, so he learned how to pickle melons. Jin people appreciate Zhaozhou's method of pickling melons, and think it is "realistic" and has the flavor of Jin State. As a result, Mrs. Li resigned and made a living by selling "preserved melons in Zhaozhou". Shaoxing New Temple, Zhao Gou driving on the river, passing Wuxi. The little eunuch went to the market and bought "Zhaozhou Pickled Melon" for Zhao Gou. Zhao Gou was very satisfied after eating. He repeatedly declared that he sometimes "tasted the call until evening". As for other foods, such as cheese, a special food in Liao and Jin Dynasties, it also entered the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty. It is true that "the delicacy of cooking cheese" and the unique flavor of cheese have been welcomed by the public. In Tokyo, the "Cheese Zhang Family" is famous for specializing in cheese. Especially in Tomb-Sweeping Day, people who rush to the suburbs to go to the grave regard cheese as a kind of "diet". After Du Nan, cheese became one of the indispensable foods for citizens in Lin 'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty. It is precisely because people yearn for cheese that food vendors use their brains to change the unique flavor of this cheese and make it into "cheese noodles", such as the famous market food "noodles" in Lin' an. In Lin 'an, there is only one piece of "cheese noodles" from Hejia in Houjie, and the price is very expensive, "500 yuan a piece". However, because of the "northern cuisine", Lin 'an citizens have a hobby of shopping, and tend to go to famous houses to buy this "Gelsi cheese noodle" and eat it with two cakes of oil. Because it comes from Tokyo, Song Gaozong often tastes it and thinks his family is a citizen from Tokyo, so he will give it a generous reward. Cheese has won a place for "northern cuisine", and people seem to realize the loveliness and value of "northern cuisine" from cheese.

In Lin 'an, the "North Pavilion" is also called the "Sheep Pavilion", which is heavy and light, that is, it is divided into "getting full quickly" and "wanting to be late". Heavy as a big bone meal and soft as a sheep, light as a nanny's milk room. Other foods have also entered the diet history with their unique flavor, such as white sheep patties, mugwort cakes, rhubarb soup and so on. The classic "Complete Collection of Household Supplies" specifically records women's direct food, including cold sunflower soup, steamed sheep eyebrows, ducks that are not stabbed by towers, pheasants, persimmon cakes, Korean chestnut cakes and so on. Although not spectacular, there are both cold dishes and hot steamed dishes. They and other "northern foods", as a diet flower that never fades, exude charming fragrance in the Chinese nation's diet garden.