In Meng Hua Lu, Xiao Qinyan held a birthday party at your house, and Gu Qianfan entered the birthday party. Xiao Qinyan was very happy when he saw it, and his eyes kept staring at Gu Qianfan, which made Xiao Wei very unhappy. Xiao Wei angrily returned to the hall and made a fire, and then continued to attend the birthday party to see how to deal with Gu Qianfan. Later, with the skill of sword dancing, Gu Qian Fan made a fish bowl at the birthday party.
the fish in Meng Hua Lu
At the birthday party, Xiao said that he seized the opportunity and proposed to let Gu Qian Fan dance with him, hoping to lower Gu Qianfan's status. Unexpectedly, Song Yinzhang stood up for Gu Qian Fan. Song Yinzhang borrowed Xiao Wei's words and insulted Xiao Wei by referring to the affairs of the previous dynasty, so that Gu Qianfan was not allowed to dance the sword for this purpose and solved Gu Qianfan's siege. After Song Yinzhang helped Gu Qianfan, he volunteered to perform a stunt to celebrate Xiao Qinyan's birthday and not embarrass Song Yinzhang. Gu Qianfan performed his own wonderful swordsmanship and sliced fish for everyone on the spot. He asked people to bring the Yellow River carp, pulled out his sword and cut it into sashimi. Another sword pierced the orange, dripping juice as seasoning, and the fish and sword were both unique, which surprised everyone.
Xiao Qinyan was overjoyed to taste the fish fillets, and casually recited a poem: "Purple flowers and green leaves are fragrant and fragrant, and the golden orange is broken.". The "meat" here means sashimi, that is, raw fish. In ancient times, sashimi was usually called fish or silver carp. Eating raw fish has become popular in the Song Dynasty.
in the pre-Qin period, the original meaning of "Yi" refers to finely cut raw meat. Biography of Dong Fangshuo: "Raw meat is delicious." Book of rites. Neize ":"The meat is fine. " Some meat loses its original flavor after cooking, and it is not fresh enough. Fresh fish is one of them.
China had a record of eating sashimi (fish fillet) as early as the Zhou Dynasty, which can be traced back to the fifth year of Zhou Xuanwang (823 BC). The inscription on the unearthed bronze ware "Xi Jia Pan" records that Zhou Shi met Peng Ya (now in Baishui County, Shaanxi Province) and returned home in triumph. General Yin Jifu gave a private banquet for Zhang Zhong and other friends. The main course was roasted turtle with raw carp slices.
the book of songs. Xiaoya. June recorded this event: "Drink royal friends, cannon turtles and carp", and "carp" means raw carp. In The Book of Rites, there is another description: "You should use onions in spring and mustard in autumn", and in The Analects of Confucius, there is also a description of foods such as "you should not eat them with sauce", so the raw fish in the pre-Qin period should be seasoned with sauce with onions and mustard.
During the Song, Liao, Jin, Yuan and Song Dynasties, edible fish fillets were still very common. There were 38 kinds of famous edible fish fillets in the literature, such as "fish bladder with two colors", "red silk crystal fillets", "fresh shrimp hoofs", "crucian carp fillets" and "sand". According to legend, there was a maid in Meisheng Yu's house in Yangzhou who was good at cooking raw fish. When Ouyang Xiu knew about it, he often brought fresh fish to the maid to cook raw fish for him.
The story background of Meng Hualu is that in the Song Dynasty, fish was popular in the Tang Dynasty, but it naturally did not decline in the Song Dynasty. Look at how Su Dongpo, a writer in the Song Dynasty who loved food, described the raw fish: "Wu Er's silver carp is thin and wants to fly, but he didn't talk about it first." The sashimi as thin as cicada's wings feels like it can be blown away by the wind, which is really unique. "The fish is delicious, and the porridge is muddy" is the "yearning life" of Lu You's version.
Moreover, after the Song Dynasty, people became wary of the consumption of glutinous rice, for example, adding more seasonings with bactericidal effect. But unlike Japanese, China is more freshwater fish with more parasites, and it is hard to be killed by those condiments. After the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the trend of eating "fish" gradually declined. However, in any case, Meng Hualu has made more people realize that our ancestors have already played modern and familiar things, such as pulling flowers, matcha and raw fish, and they are more elegant.