Many people may not know, what are the artifact wines that the ancients drank?

In the history of China, wine and tea have always been the favorite drinks of China people. In particular, the distiller's yeast produced by traditional methods is unique in style and elegant in appearance.

At that time, people drank roughly two kinds of wine: one was yellow rice wine with a long tradition. The other is distilled liquor, which has been gradually popularized since the Song Dynasty. During the period, there were fruit juice wines made of grapes and other fruits, and the proportion was very small. As for the fact that we often drink beer now, it happened at the beginning of last century.

Different types of wine determine different ways of drinking, so drinking utensils are also different.

During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, people generally used many wine vessels, but Zun (also known as Zun) and Jue were the most representative.

"Zun" is a container for holding wine in a big mouth, which is used to store wine and prepare to pour it. The material is mostly bronze, with a miniature neck, a bulging belly and a flat bottom. Most of them are square or round, with many shapes, often decorated with animal images, such as "sacrifice", "elephant", "dragon and tiger" and "Four Sheep Square". There is a cloud in Yanzi Chunqiu: "A husband knows thousands of miles away, and he is not embarrassed for a moment." The implication is that at the banquet, pushing a cup for a change and waving a hand can win the battle thousands of miles away and convince the enemy with strategy. The "post" here is a container for meat.

And "Jue" is another kind of wine vessel, which needs to be emphasized. This kind of wine container will impress people who often watch ancient TV dramas. It is also made of bronze, with a deep belly. There is a trough in front of it called Liu. There is a "column" at the junction of the trough and the mouth, and there are three feet at the bottom, which can be placed on the fire to warm the wine.

There is a saying in The Book of Songs Xiaoya: "Take care of Pi Kangjue to play with your time." Kang Jue is an empty Jue. These two sentences mean to pour the wine into the drunk "Jue" and present it to the person you respect at this time. As for the title of title, it also comes from the meaning of wine jue. The Book of Rites The Doctrine of the Mean: "The ceremony of the ancestral temple, so the order of the Zhao curtain (the rank of sacrificing the victims) is also the order of the Jue, so the argument is also expensive." This is the origin of the idiom "promoting to a higher position and making a fortune".

The shape of "Jue" is very strange and unnatural. It is unique to China and seems to be absent from other cultures.

The formation of utensils is generally influenced by the materials or specific uses. The shape of "Jue" is irregular, and it should not imitate the daily pottery shape formed by wheels. In other words, the creativity of "perception" is probably based on a special need, first modeling. The forming and casting of Jue is much more difficult than the regular cylindrical wine vessels such as Zun or Song. The external shape of "respect" or "easy" can be formed in only three pieces. A "Jue" without a column needs 89 yuan, and a "Jue" with a column needs two more fans. From the technical level of casting, "Jue" is a complex type of vessel, which requires very high technology.

Strictly speaking, it should be a type of wine vessel that developed late in the development process, but according to the results of current excavation, "Jue" can be said to be something that was cast immediately after it was able to make a three-dimensional wine vessel.

As a kind of wine vessel, the shape of "Jue" has almost no practical need in many places. It was cast in the shape of a long tail, obviously for its long-term balance, and it was not easy to pour out. However, there is no great need to make the process of wine injection so wide and long, or even unnecessary. Wine containers such as "wine bottles" and "wine bottles" do not flow. There are two columns on Jue Liu, which seems to have not considered too many actual needs, but it will increase a lot of trouble and casting costs. The column is a form that appears immediately after the "unique". This should not be a simple decoration. It may be that people at that time deliberately cast this deformed shape that is not seen in other cultures based on a certain totem belief. Another meaning of "Jue" is "bird".

Although it can be interpreted as homophonic, the image of "Jue" really looks like the "bird" explained in Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi. In Shang Dynasty, there was a myth that its ancestors were born to swallow the eggs of a mysterious bird. Bird totem is the same belief of the Oriental clan, and Shang also originated from the Oriental clan. There should be some connection between them.

There are traces of smoke in the abdomen of many Jue unearthed now, so it should be inferred that Jue is a wine warmer. "Jue" warm wine is not convenient to be taken out of the fire by hand after heating, so it is unknown that there are two pillars on the casting stream that are lifted by "raft" or cloth. Of course, this is all speculation, and the real reason will always be an unexplained mystery.

The capacity of "Jue" is stated in the notes of the Han Dynasty that it can hold one liter, which is less than one-fifth of today's one liter. We can understand it as just an integer. At least from the unearthed "Jue", the "Jue" in Shang Dynasty was not very large and its capacity was limited. I'm afraid the small one can't hold 100 ml, and the big one is only 200 ml. In Shang dynasty, the alcohol content of wine was generally low, and the wine contained in "Jue" could only be drunk once or twice. Not only is it not enough to warm wine, but it is also inconvenient to use as a wine glass. Therefore, "Jue" is probably just the need of etiquette. When the Shang nobles gave a banquet, they took out the "Jue" and only warmed a small amount of wine to show their salute. If you really want to drink as much as you want, I'm afraid "Jue" will be difficult to do.

"Cloud" is another popular wine container in Shang Dynasty and early Western Zhou Dynasty. Most of them are bronzes, similar in shape to Jue, but larger in size, with three legs, two rows and one pin (hand-held part), round mouth, flat bottom, no flow and no tail. Some are square, with four feet under them, covered, and some are graded in the abdomen, which looks like a table. "Cloud" has a large capacity, and some can hold seven or eight liters of wine. Drinking with this wine container should be far more enjoyable than "Jue".

Nowadays, people often use an idiom to describe the excitement of a banquet, which is called "flower-chip interweaving", in which "flower" is a kind of wine vessel popular from Shang Dynasty to the middle of Western Zhou Dynasty. It has different shapes, mostly made of bronze. The belly is bulging, there is a raft, there is a cover above, and there is a round seat below. There is a saying in The Book of Songs: "If you call him a man, it is eternal life." "Swallow" is carved with rhinoceros horn, which often appears in the Book of Songs, and the word "swallow" mentioned in later poems is synonymous with drinking utensils. Ouyang Xiu, a writer in the Northern Song Dynasty, wrote in the Preface to Drunk Pavilion: "Everyone who sits up and makes trouble is happy." As we all know, this wine container is loose.

Zi was also a vessel for holding wine in the early Western Zhou Dynasty. Its mouth is very big. It looks like "Zun", but it is smaller than "Zun". There are two kinds: round body and ellipsoid. The circle is generally small mouth, the abdomen is deep and bulging, the neck is slightly tied, there are round feet below, and the lower abdomen has ears. Ellipsoid has a wide and luxurious mouth, a deep and bulging abdomen, a neck or a wide diameter, a round foot and a cover. There is a saying in the Book of Rites: "When worshipping the ancestral temple, the honorable person raises the flag and the humble person raises the horn." It can be seen that this kind of wine vessel is also used by top talents.