There are not many supporters of the former statement, and the latter statement has been circulating for a long time since the Song Dynasty. Zhu wrote in the poem "Tofu" in the Southern Song Dynasty: "Growing peas is exhausting. If you know Huainan, you will get spring cloth. " And self-note "handed down tofu was originally the king of Huainan."
Yang Wanli, a contemporary of Zhu Tong, wrote an article entitled "Doulu Rouzhuan" (4), subtitled "Tofu", and also mentioned that tofu existed in the Han Dynasty. Later, many people held this view, such as Li Shizhen, who also believed that "the method of tofu began with Liu An, the king of Huainan in Han Dynasty".
There is a sentence in Ye's Caomuzi: "Tofu began with the skill of the king of Huainan at the end of Han Dynasty", and Qi's Wuyuan also says that there is a record of "Liu An making tofu" in the ancient books of the Western Han Dynasty. It can be said that since the Song and Ming Dynasties, people have always believed that the invention of tofu began in the Western Han Dynasty.
Strangely, the existing Han and Tang documents, such as Huai Nan Zi, Qi Yaomin Shu, and even various literary works, have no record that tofu and tofu originated from Liu An, the king of Han Huai. Therefore, many scholars have questioned the theory of tofu in the early Han Dynasty and put forward some different views, such as the theory of tofu in the early Tang Dynasty by Japanese scholar Shinoda Tong and the theory of tofu in the early Five Dynasties by Yuan Hanqing. ?
It is believed that Taoist alchemy cultivated Dan Miao with soybean milk and unintentionally invented tofu. The legend of Liu An, the king of Huainan, making tofu is the most recorded in the literature, which is related to Liu An's practice of alchemy.
More pertinently, although many inventions come from the wisdom of the masses, people always want to find a recognized figure to worship as the original author. Such examples are not uncommon in ancient times.