A Dream of Red Mansions and Food Culture

A Dream of Red Mansions and Food Culture

In daily study and work, when it comes to papers, everyone is certainly familiar with them. Thesis is a tool to describe academic research results for academic exchange. I believe many friends are very upset about writing papers. The following is my carefully arranged paper on a dream of red mansions and food culture. Welcome to reading. I hope you will like it.

The famous Dream of Red Mansions contains a lot of exquisite descriptions about "eating". From the first time to the eightieth time, there were nearly 70 banquets for the purpose of naming, accounting for about 85% of the total. Among them, the scenes focusing on banquets are listed in the table of contents: "Birthday Celebration, Ningfu Family Banquet", "Guo Rongfu's Return to the Province to Celebrate the Lantern Festival", "Shi Taijun's Grand View Garden's Two Banquets", "Guo Rongfu's Lantern Festival Banquet" and "Opening a Night Banquet with Different Signs of Sadness".

A Dream of Red Mansions is, after all, a literary work. The description of food, except the delicate description of eggplant, is mostly for shaping characters or promoting plots. A Dream of Red Mansions describes in detail the whole production process of "eggplant" through Wang Xifeng, the main character in the book, from materials, methods to preservation, writing dishes only for the sake of writing dishes, which makes many people puzzled.

On the forty-first occasion, Grandmother Jia hosted a banquet in Guo Rongfu for Granny Liu. Faced with a table full of delicious food, Jia decided to ask Wang Xifeng to feed Granny Liu some "eggplant". After granny Liu ate it, she couldn't believe that she was eating eggplant. Later, after getting a positive answer from everyone, Granny Liu took another bite and chewed it carefully for a long time. She smiled and said, "Although it tastes like eggplant, it's not like eggplant. Tell me what to do and I'll do it. " Feng said with a smile: "This is not difficult. You peel the fresh eggplant, just wash the meat, cut it into broken nails, stir-fry it with chicken oil, then cut the fragrant chicken breast, new bamboo shoots, mushrooms, spiced dried fruits and all kinds of dried fruits into nails, simmer it with chicken soup, put away the sesame oil, mix it with bad oil, seal it in a porcelain jar, and take it out when you want to eat it, and use the copied chicken feet. The side dish described by Xifeng really startled granny Liu in the village and said, "It's strange that there are more than a dozen chickens to match. "

Owl is a dialect of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. In Zhoushan Islands, Zhejiang Province, fishermen call dried fish "fish fish". The food in Ningbo is called "melon". Melon and eggplant are both block vegetables, and "eggplant" may have evolved from melon to Jinling near Zhejiang, so Cao Xueqin wrote this dish in A Dream of Red Mansions. Whether "eggplant" is a real dish is still inconclusive. However, this dish was included in the menu of the "Red Mansion Banquet". Someone did make an "eggplant" according to Wang Xifeng's teaching, but it was not the taste at all. Mr. Zhou, a famous red scientist, thinks: "The diet of A Dream of Red Mansions is not to imitate cats but to draw tigers-painting is also difficult;" Just to understand its essence, that is, the philosophy and aesthetics of China cooking. " The ingredient of "eggplant" is the most common food. Through exquisite collocation and reconciliation, as well as the storage and ingenious processing of utensils, it has become the "highest recipe" that Jia Fu can get, and it also hides the secret of China's highest recipe.

One of the secrets of China's food culture;

All the ingredients in the highest formula are not rare, neither dragon liver and phoenix marrow nor bear paw scarlet lips, but the most common and unusual things. These extremely common ingredients, because they have exhausted their thoughts, wisdom, means and skills in seasoning and practice, have become top-grade or even gourmet. The highest level of China's diet is to make the most common ingredients into the most unusual food. Although the recipe "eggplant" is the best food, all the ingredients are extremely common, and even the named "eggplant" is the cheapest food. The "foundation" of eggplant is that the poor can afford it. However, "eggplant" is the most diverse. The poor can eat by adding salt and boiling water, which can only meet the needs of the stomach. The eggplant made in this way is not delicious and even difficult to swallow; When rich people cook eggplant, adding some oil and seasoning will improve the taste a lot, but it is not the best in the end; Eggplant, as the best dish of Fugui family (Jiafu), is processed more fastidiously on this basis, thus becoming the best dish.

This mystery is also the embodiment of China people's unique concept of equality. China ancient society was a hierarchical society. People are doomed to unequal social status because of their family background, congenital conditions and growing environment. China's ethics designed so many "inequalities", but it also designed an ultimate road to equality, that is, the equality of personality. Personality equality means that everyone can have the opportunity to become a good moral person through their own efforts.

Cao Xueqin embodied this idea of "equality of personality" many times in A Dream of Red Mansions. The most obvious thing is that the prosperity of the whole Jia family is based on the loyalty and salvation of a servant. Jiao Da of Ningguo Mansion "followed my great-grandfather three or four times since I was a child, and took him out of the dead pile. I was hungry when I got my life, but I stole something for my master to eat;" There was no water for two days, so I got half a bowl of water for my master to drink, and he drowned himself. "It can be said that it is because of Jiao Da's efforts that he saved the great grandfather, and then the whole Jia family became prosperous. Cao Xueqin's design is also the embodiment of his thought of equality of personality.

On the Diet Culture of A Dream of Red Mansions from the Perspective of Eggplant

The second mystery of China's food culture;

Every common ingredient has participated in the production of delicious food and gained the status of entity. In the process of making eggplant, every humble and ordinary ingredient participated in the production process, such as eggplant, mushrooms, new bamboo shoots, mushrooms, rotten fruits with five spices, various dried fruits and so on. In "eggplant", every ingredient is equal. As long as it is carefully made, every ordinary dish can be turned into a delicate and delicate dish. Although at this time, each individual has drowned himself and only presented it in a holistic way, the initiative and responsibility to achieve perfection through practice are equal. Therefore, when Grandma Liu tasted "eggplant", she said, "Although it smells like eggplant, it just doesn't look like eggplant." Granny Liu is a wise village woman. Although her evaluation of this dish is vulgar and superficial, Cao Xueqin wants to tell the typical characteristics of China cuisine from Granny Liu, an ordinary rural old woman. The so-called cuisine is the best, that is, different ingredients, at the same time * * exists, adjust each other, and achieve overall harmony. The whole delicious food consists of many separate ingredients, including meat and vegetables, mushrooms, bean products and dried fruits, chicken soup, sesame oil and waste oil. Finally, "eggplant is not like eggplant", and every single item is involved.

Of course, "harmony" in the food culture of A Dream of Red Mansions not only refers to the collocation of various ingredients in taste, but also refers to the color collocation between dishes. For example, on Baoyu's birthday, the Liu family made a lunch in spite of their busy schedule. When Chun Yan came to open the lunch box, he saw "a bowl of shrimp ball and chicken skin soup, a bowl of steamed duck with wine, a bowl of rouge goose breast, a dish of four-cream pine ladle rolls and a bowl of hot green fragrant rice". Pink shrimp ball soup, red rouge goose breast, white steamed duck, yellow cream crisp and blue rice stem are just a unique oil painting.

"Harmony" is the ethical thinking of China people and the highest pursuit of political order and ideal life by sages. China's harmonious thought theory is well constructed, which takes care of daily life and permeates every China people's way of thinking and action. China's diet not only has a perfect material form, but also constructs a lofty spiritual form, which can be summarized by one word "harmony". To some extent, food inspired thinkers, and ancient thinkers summarized the philosophy of harmony on this basis. The harmony in China's diet corresponds to the fen in the western diet. Chinese food pays attention to the harmony of five flavors, heat and time, which embodies the main characteristics of slow culture in China agricultural society. However, western sandwiches are simply superimposed. Through "sandwich", bread, chicken nuggets and ham "form" a hamburger, but the taste of the original ingredients has not changed: bread or bread, chicken nuggets or chicken nuggets, ham or ham, sandwich is a typical atomic combination.

The third secret of China's food culture;

We should not only pay attention to the content of dishes, but also pay attention to their forms, and integrate the most secular diet with elegant aesthetics. Pay special attention to the shape requirements in Eggplant: eggplant is required to be cut into broken nails, and these broken nails cannot be loose, and it is required to be "fried with chicken". The shape also pays attention to collocation, piece by piece, piece by piece, diced and shredded. Therefore, the "shape" of "chicken breast mixed with fragrant mushrooms, new bamboo shoots, mushrooms, spiced dried fruits and dried fruits of various colors" is not only a shape, but also the shape of various ingredients. For example, all nails should be mixed with sesame oil, taken out when eating, and mixed with chicken feet. In "Eggplant", only the porcelain jar used to seal "Eggplant" is mentioned, which is an essential vessel for making "Eggplant". Although there is no mention of the vessel for holding "eggplant", the complicated and exquisite dish-holding vessel that Jia Mu likes can only be left to the reader's imagination. On the contrary, the thirty-fifth time, Jia Baoyu was beaten by his father. Both Jia Mu and Mrs. Wang were very upset and asked what they wanted to eat. Baoyu offered to eat lotus leaf soup. Lotus leaf soup is also a soup that Jia Yuanchun imperial concubine ate when she returned to her hometown. The production of lotus leaf soup is quite complicated. The "soup mold" of rice noodles should be made into various shapes with silverware and put in a small box. * * * four pairs, "are more than a foot long and an inch square, with beans, chrysanthemums, plums, lotus flowers and water chestnuts engraved on them. * * *. Even Aunt Xue, who has always been knowledgeable, said, "Your family is desperate, and eating a bowl of soup is still like this. "As far as the plot itself is concerned, it's really delicious. Here, Cao Xueqin wrote about his endless concern for cookers.

The dispute between "Tao" and "Qi" has always been the most classic debate in China traditional culture. Not only do Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism have their own opinions, but there are also different opinions within Confucianism. The Book of Changes says: "The metaphysical is the Tao, while the metaphysical is the device." In the Tang Dynasty, Confucius put forward that "Tao precedes the device" in the Book of Changes Justice: Tao is the name of no body, while form is the name of quality. Zhu transformed the relationship between Tao and utensil into the relationship of managing things, and put forward that "without the shaper, the ontology of the shaper is Tao;" In terms of shape, it is called a device. " From the perspective of humanism, Fu Zhi put forward "Governing the apparatus and showing the Tao". China's food culture has to participate in the dispute of "Tao", "utensil" and "form". People's judgment on food has both the same taste judgment and strong individual differences. Therefore, a wonderful diet is the field where Tao precedes tangible things. Vessels originally meant vegetables, "vegetables are also used for eating". The instrumentalization of eating utensils is an important feature of civilization, which is directly related to the formation of Ming Dow's traditional concept of "Tibetan utensils". China's cooking is very particular about the presentation of form, and Confucius has a saying that "food is not tired of essence, and food is not tired of detail". The diet culture in A Dream of Red Mansions well expounds the relationship between Tao, utensil and form, and provides the most convincing explanation for the dispute between Tao and utensil.

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