Nowadays, eating seafood is all the rage. If you go to any large and medium-sized city, seafood city and seafood restaurant will bloom everywhere. When hosting guests or having a happy event at home, it is often used to say: "Go eat seafood".
Seafood here is more broadly defined, where rivers, rivers, lakes, sea aquatic products are mostly included. In fact, there is a custom in China to call lakes "seas". For example, Qinghai, Zhongnanhai and Shichahai are all lakes. So to call aquatic products "seafood" is also true to the name.
China has a long history of eating seafood, and seafood is very particular, eating seafood culture, formed a lot of seafood legends and famous sentences. If you taste seafood in the seafood city, review the seafood culture, then your seafood will eat out of taste, eat out of charm.
In primitive society, Chinese people began to eat seafood. In the Paleolithic period, cavemen in Zhoukoudian, Beijing, left fossil remains of grass carp and carp. According to the Records of the Grand Historian and the Benji of Xia, Yu explored the whole country to control the flood and tasted many kinds of seafood. After the establishment of the Xia Dynasty, he designated the "pearl and fish" from the Huaihe River basin and the "Haidai" from the Shandong Peninsula as the four tributes. In the Book of Songs, the first collection of Chinese poems, there are also some descriptions of eating seafood, such as: "If it is a fish, it is a river gurnard; Its food fish, will be the river carp ".
In the pre-Qin period, apart from fish, aquatic products such as turtles, soft-shelled turtles, mussels, clams and snails were also served at the state banquet, which was recorded in the imperial court records of that time, Shang Shu. In order to keep these aquatic products fresh, the court of Xia, Shang and Zhou took ice and put it into the cellar in winter, and used it to freeze the fresh aquatic products in summer. This ice storage is called "Bingyin", and the people in charge of the ice storage are called "Ling Ren", and there are as many as 100 people.
Fan Li, who helped Goujian, king of Yue, win the world during the Warring States Period, lived in secluding himself to do business in the pottery land after his success. He liked to eat fish and built a fish farm with an area of hundreds of hectares. He also wrote the earliest book of Fish Farming in China, which was the first of artificial fish farming in China.
The Zhou Dynasty dictionary Erya says that "fish is called ester (zhi)", that is, raw fish is chopped and mixed with spices such as scallions, salt and vinegar before eating. In those days, raw fish was wrapped in rice balls and lightly fermented, including spring Onions and autumn mustard. This style of food became extremely popular in the Tang Dynasty, and the Japanese emissaries brought it back to Japan, where it developed into "raw fish sushi". The Japanese are also very fond of sashimi, which is sliced fresh fish and served with condiments. China also had this kind of food method for a long time, the Qing Dynasty "Nanqi Notes" recorded, "meticulous slices, red muscle white Li, light can be blown, thin as cicada wings, the entrance of ice melt." The sashimi was so thin that it could fly, and the knife skills of today's famous chefs could hardly match. At present, Guangzhou and Hong Kong still retain the tradition of eating sashimi. Slice fresh grass carp into thin slices and eat with scallion, chopped ginger and black bean oil.
Confucius said, "One never detest one's food." "Chowder" means food made from raw fish. Confucius liked fish very much, so Duke Zhao of Lu gave him carp, and Confucius named his son "carp". Mencius also liked fish very much. He was sorry that he could not have both fish and bear's PAWS, and regarded them as the most delicious things in the world. Indeed, the ancients believed that fish was the most delicious food in the world, so the word "fresh" with fish as the side. In the Western Jin Dynasty, Zhang Han went to Luoyang to serve as an official. Remembering the delicious "sea bass and the best" in his hometown, he exclaimed: "Life is very expensive. How can you keep an official for thousands of miles to seek the highest official position?" He abandoned his official posts and returned home, showing the charm of the fish slices. The Tang Dynasty was a prosperous time, when the food was very delicious, and the best fish was among them. Therefore, Du Fu, the master of poetry, had a famous phrase of "the best lovers come to the rocks and dig out into the river" to compare them with his lovers.
Pufferfish are migratory aquatic creatures between rivers and the sea. The Classic of Mountains and Seas, a famous work of the Warring States Period, records the eating of puffer fish and points out that puffer fish is poisonous and must be careful when eating. Han Dynasty philosopher Wang Chong made a special study on the consumption of puffer fish. After affirming the delicious taste of puffer fish, he also pointed out that the toxicity of puffer fish comes from the ovary and liver. Su Dongpo, a great poet in the Song Dynasty, was also a gourmet. He invented "Dongpo pork", "Buddha jumping over the wall" and other famous dishes. He was especially fond of the delicious puffer fish. He wrote a poem saying: "Spring river water warm duck prophet, it is the puffer to go on." He looked at the toxicity of puffer fish in this way: "If you can eat puffer fish, your life is not precious!" It shows not only the love for puffer fish, but also the bold and romantic great poet.
The Chinese have been eating crabs for three thousand years. The first monograph on crab eating appeared in the Tang Dynasty, in which crabs were called "containing yellow Bo". Ni Zan, one of the four great painters in the Yuan and Wei dynasties, was fond of eating crabs. He cooked ginger, Perilla, cinnamon, salt and crab together, which was delicious. He also summed up various ways to eat crab: boiled crab, steamed crab, fried crab, fried crab, drunk crab, choke crab, sauce crab, bad crab and so on. The great writer cao xueqin in the qing dynasty also very adept to eat crab, his masterpiece "a dream of red mansions" in the "xiaoxiang chief take chrysanthemum poems, Lin Xue Hengwu biting and crabs chorale" chapter, the whole chapter is eat crab poetry writing. Jia Baoyu poetry cloud: "holding ao more like cinnamon shade, pour vinegar to beat Jiang Xingxin crazy." It expresses the pleasure and excitement of eating crab. Lin Daiyu poetry cloud: "Ao feng tender jade both full, the shell convex red fat block incense." The vivid and delicate description of the color, fragrance and taste of the steamed crab is mouth-watering.
Abalone is a precious food. Abalone was very popular in the Han Dynasty. In The Book on Salt and Iron in the Western Han Dynasty, twenty fashionable foods were listed in Chang 'an, among which were "preserved Bao in clear soup" and "white burned abalone fillet". Yuan Mei, a famous writer in the Qing Dynasty, once wrote a seafood recipe, saying that abalone "is strong in nature, but it cannot be finished with teeth. After simmering abalone for three days, it will be torn apart." The recipe goes on to say that "shark fin can be cooked for two days before it becomes soft." "Sea cucumbers must be simmered a day before they rot." Sturgeon is also a rare fish, the Song Dynasty will sturgeon cut off the lip, the dish name "fish soul". Dividing a fish into several sections, one for braised fish, the other for sweet and sour fish, the head and tail for soup, one fish for three, is also an invention of the Song Dynasty. Eating drunken shrimp, which is popular today, was also very popular in the Song Dynasty.
Chinese civilization has a long history, which is also confirmed in seafood culture.