Why do people in the south eat rice as their staple food, while people in the north prefer noodles?

This has to start from the cultivation habits of ancient Chinese agriculture. In primitive society, especially in the period of the origin of the civilizations of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, with the development of civilization, the development of people's productive forces gradually shifted from hunting and fishing to more stable farming. During this period, the representative crops of ancient China were millet, corn and rice, based on the principle of grain-feeding. Wheat, on the other hand, originated in West Asia and was later introduced to China, where it gradually replaced millet, both corn and millet, as the main crop of dry farming in northern China.

Southern planting rice, northern planting wheat, although the planting habits, but not absolute. Although wheat is slow to spread in Jiangnan, by the early Southern Song Dynasty, a large number of people from the north migrated to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and Fujian and Guangdong provinces. The northerners were accustomed to eating wheat, and the need for wheat suddenly increased, thus the price of wheat soared, stimulating the production of wheat. As a result, the cultivation of wheat rapidly

expanded. Zhuang Jiyu of the Southern Song Dynasty, in his writing "Chicken Ribs Editorial" (in the early twelfth century), said, "At this time, at a glance, the contiguous wheat fields, has been no less than in Huaibei." That is to say, it was already no less than in the north.

And in the north, like the three northeastern provinces, Hebei Xianghe, Tianjin Xiaoyuan, are all very excellent rice producing areas. Only, in ancient times, the table of the north of the rice is food in the top grade, "non-marriage and funeral festivals, constant not light use", the ancient north of the people eating rice is not much opportunity to eat rice often to eat rice is often the rich and noble class. Until the Qing Dynasty and modern times this situation remains so. Rice consumption in the Manchu royal family and dignitaries in the composition of the food has a large share. The Qianlong Emperor even "did not eat a day, no food is not rice". The status of rice in the royal ritual system is also higher than wheat and other crops. In the plowing ceremony, the Ministry of the Ministry of the first into the Lei, the next into the whip, the next into the emperor plowing plowing plowing rice seed box, the next into the king plowing plowing plowing wheat seed box, cereal seed box, the next into the nine ministers of plowing plowing bean seed box, corn seed box.