China Popular Itineraries |
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Where there are cereals, there are food. Because different cereals are grown in north and south China, different styles of food were accordingly shaped. Southern food, with rice as the principal food, is simple, while northern food, characterized by wheat flour, is rather complicated.
In ancient China, people used to boil or steam cereals, or they fried them into solid food, which was a must for outing or journey.
The habit of eating cooked wheaten food was approximately formed in the Warring States Period. Because flour could not be processed in large amount mainly with mortars and pestles, few people could eat wheaten food. Early cooked wheaten food had a general designation "pancake. " For it was made by pestling the wheat into flour, then by adding water and rolling it into cake-shaped pieces, finally by baking, roasting, steaming or cooking, hence its name pancake.
Rice flour-made food in south China is called ci, or ciba, actually it is cooked glutinous rice pounded into paste.
After pottery mill was invented in the Western Han dynasty, more and more people in north China began to eat cooked wheaten food. In the Wei and the Jin dynasties, there were various kinds of pancakes such as sesame seed cake, steamed dumpling, etc. But all were made with unleavened dough.
The earliest leavened food, called steamed or leavened pancakes, origi-nated in the Wei and the Jin dynasties. Actually they were steamed fermented dough called mantou (steamed bun) nowadays.
Another leavened food also appeared in the Wei and the Jin dynasties -- baozi (stuffed bun). But at that time it was called mantou, or steamed bun. It got its name when Zhuge Liang was on the punitive expedition to southern ab0riginals, he ordered the chefs to wrap the meat with dough, then make them head-shaped to replace real heads for sacrificial ceremony. According to Chapter 91 of The Romance of Three Kingdoms, Zhuge Liang ordered the chefs to slay oxen and horses, knead dough into head-shaped pieces and stuff them with beef and mutton, hence its name mantou (tou means head). It was not until the Song Dynasty that people began to call it baozi.
In ancient China, there was only wonton rather than dumpling. Today what we call wonton is actually ear-shaped dumpling in soup. Yet in ancient China, wonton was also called "pancake". In the Sui Dynasty, wonton was made into the shape of crescent moon, named jiaozi, the most common food in China. From then on, wonton has been very popular in the south while jiaozi has enjoyed great popularity in the north.
The predecessor of noodle was soup pancake, a special kind in the family1 of pancakes. It was different from baked or steamed pancakes, and boiled in water.
Soup pancake originated in the Han Dynasty, whose shape differed from that of today's noodle -- flat pieces rather than long and narrow pieces, simi-lar to jiaozi wrapper in shape.
Though still so called in the Jin Dynasty, soup pancake was made by stretching the dough with hands to certain length and boiling in hot water. Freezing winter was the best season for eating soup pancake, which could drive away people's coldness, as noodles do nowadays. But in summer eating soup pancake was quite another story.
In the Tang Dynasty, chopping board, knife and rolling pin were used instead of mere hands to roll dough and cut pieces. According to historical records, soup pancake had become the speciality of birthday banquets by then, conforming to the custom of eating noodles on birthdays in Shandong Province nowadays.
Soup pancake was still very popular in the Northern Song Dynasty, as mentioned in many poems and books of those days. Meanwhile, wet noodles cut into long and thin pieces have evolved on the basis of soup pancake. In the Yuan Dynasty, dried noodles appeared. In Chapter 45 of The Outlaws of the Marsh, Yang Xiong's wife Pan Qiaoyun invited monks to make sacrificial rites for the anniversary of her ex-husband' s death. One monk said to her fa-ther, "I have only few rare things to send you on the anniversary, that is some dried noodles and dates. " This indicated that dried noodles were scarce at that time.
"Soup pancake" continued to refer to noodles in the Qing Dynasty. From Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, we learnt that it was very complicated to make noodles. Therefore, in the early Qing Dynasty, noodles were not a daily food, but a luxury in entertaining guests or patients. In Fox Concubine of Strange Tails from a Lone@ Studio, Liu Dongjiu had the habit of eating noodles on birthday, completely consistent with the early reference of noodle-eating on birthdays in present Shandong Province.
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