China Popular Itineraries |
|
|
|
|
Dietetic culture, a culture centered on food, drink and dietetic manners in daily life, is also called dietetic custom.
Compared with dress and adornment culture, dietetic culture emerged later but it is more essential, especially in China, as Chinese people set great store by diet. As the sayings go "Hunger breeds discontentment" and "Desires for food and sex are basic human instincts. " Mencius once said, " Food and sex are the strongest desires of human beings. " All in all, dining and propaga-tion are regarded as two basic prerequisites for the existance and reproduction of human beings. In real life, people used to greet each other by asking, "Have you had your meal?" or "Eaten?" which reflect that ancient Chinese people put great emphasis on diet. In rural areas, "friends" used to mean those who had once dined together. For the nation, "Flavoring food for all tastes" has evolved into the synonym of managing state affairs. People dine whether they are happy (e. g. wedding) or sad (e. g. funeral) or on any for-mal occasions. In one word, diet is the top priority of Chinese people. How-ever, the dietetic culture, which the Chinese have been so proud of, has shown certain defects so far.
In the historical relics of Banpocun Culture of the Neolithic Age, a jar of carbonized millet was unearthed. This indicated that as far as five or six thou-sand years ago, millet was extensively grown in the Yellow River area in north China. Foxtail millet is the seed of millet and millet is called glutinous millet after it is shelled. In the historical relics of Hemudu Culture seven thousand years ago, traces of paddy rice cultivation were identified -- shelled paddy rice was called rice. The two discoveries manifest that six thousand years ago, eat-ing rice was customary in south China, while millet-eating was a routine in north China. Records about millets have also been found in literary works, such as Odes, Analects and Mencius.
In the Shang and the Zhou dynasties, there were five main cereals: gluti-nous millet, millet, oat, bean, and rice. Glutinous broomcorn, called gluti-nous millet, was slightly bigger than millet after being shelled. Glutinous mil-let, as indicated by its name, was glutinous, while millet was not glutinous. Shu (soyabeans), native to China, was already the main food in China 4,000 years ago. Around 1,790 A. D., it was introduced into Europe, but the Eu-ropeans treated it as ornamental plant, just as tomatoes were potted for embel-lishment when they newly arrived in China. Chinese soybeans were first ex-hibited in 1873 in Vienna International Expo and caused a stir; then in 1908, 2,000 tons of soybeans were exported to Britain. In the following years, soy-beans were widely planted in western countries. The pronunciation of "soy" in English, French, German, and Russian all sound like "Shu".
What's more, sorghum was planted long time ago. Traces of sorghums were identified in historical relics of the Neolithic Age and the Warring States Period. "Sorghum" in ancient Chinese meant fine seeds of millet; golden mil-let was a top-grade millet. So when we say "rice and millet", we mean deli-cate food; while "having golden millet" means sweet daydream.
In the Ming Dynasty, sweet potatoes, potatoes and corns were intro-duced into China from south America. The first two were soon spread over China and finally took the place of taro and Chinese yam. While corn was not popularized till the mid-Qing dynasty, it soon took the place of millet in north China.
|
|
