About the changes of food in ancient times

During the pre-Qin primitive society period, the level of agriculture was low, animal husbandry and horticulture were underdeveloped, and the variety of food was not considered rich. Taking the Zhou Dynasty as an example, the staple foods of the Zhou Dynasty were millet, millet, rice and beams, which were also tributes to the gods. Rice and beams were served at the banquets of the nobles, and wheat and hemp beans, which were familiar to people in later generations, were not yet popular. There were many kinds of poultry and game in the dishes, and eating meat was the privilege of the nobles. The vegetables and fruits of the Zhou Dynasty included radish, bitter gourd, gourd, jujube, peach, plum and so on. Wine was sweet wine brewed from grains.

During the Qin and Han Dynasties, not only were the families of nobles and eunuchs able to cook cattle and slaughter goats, but the average middle-class family could also eat meat and drink wine. In terms of staple food, the status of wheat was raised, and the commoners mainly ate rice cooked with wheat grains, while the nobler ones ate rice in soup. As for side dishes, according to the burial album excavated in Changsha's Mawangdui, meat foods include: cows, horses, dogs, pigs, rabbits, chickens, carp, and so on, which can be said to be all kinds of animals in the sky and on the ground. Cooking methods include frying, stir-frying, sizzling, steaming, deep-frying and so on. General civilians mainly eat onions, leeks, winter sunflower, taro, etc., meat is rarely available.

The Wei Jin and North and South Dynasties period of the staple foods are rice, cakes (steamed cakes, oil cakes, baked cakes, etc.), porridge and so on. The dishes that accompanied meals were side dishes, with fish, meat, poultry and eggs being the mainstay of the rich and noble families, and vegetables and salt and black beans being the mainstay of the poor. Tea drinking was mainly popular in the south during this period. Wine for this period of indispensable items, official folk brewing is very common, such as Jingchu chrysanthemum wine, Badong Baxiang wine.