When did pork become the main meat? In ancient times, mutton was the most important, and only inferior people ate pork.

In ancient China, the means of subsistence were scarce, and eating meat was basically the patent of the upper class. Ordinary people only have the opportunity to eat meat on holidays or birthdays. Moreover, in ancient times, cattle were very important agricultural means of production, and the social status of cattle was also attached great importance to by previous dynasties. In the worst case, you have to kill cattle with your life. Therefore, historically, China people have a strong desire to eat pork. An interesting historical phenomenon is that in the Ming Dynasty when killing pigs was forbidden, pork gradually occupied the dining table of China people until today.

The counterattack of pork

As early as the pre-Qin period, the theory of "Six Livestock" appeared in China. The so-called "six animals" include horses, cows, sheep, pigs, dogs and chickens. The "Six Livestock" consists of five kinds of horses that are basically not Chinese, used for riding, and fish that constitute the main part of ancient meat in China. Among them, cattle, sheep and You Zhu occupy a particularly important position.

The Book of Rites of the Zhou Dynasty called cattle, sheep and pigs "prisons", which are the best products that only monarchs and great doctors can enjoy. As for the people at the bottom, as the salt and iron theory of the Han Dynasty said, "people who don't drink in their hometown, eat fat, and sacrifice no wine and meat" can usually only enjoy it on holidays and celebrations.

Although beef is one of the "prisons", it was also used for sacrifice and eating in ancient times. However, since Tieli and Niu Geng appeared in the late Spring and Autumn Period, cattle have become an important labor tool. Successive dynasties have repeatedly banned the slaughter of cattle. As Tang Wuzong said, "Cattle are endowed with crops, and people are forbidden to slaughter them in China", which makes beef gradually fade out of the ranks of meat. As for the description of eating large pieces of beef in Water Margin, it is really a challenge to the ruling order by Liangshan heroes.

Except beef, mutton and pork, both of them are in the "prison" and once shared equally on the dining table of China people. In the Han Dynasty, there was a record that "there are thousands of pigs (250) in Zezhong, all of which are waiting for thousands of households", and there are also many people who own "thousands of sheep (250)", which shows that raising pigs and raising sheep are inseparable.

However, after the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the scale of pig raising began to shrink, and mutton became the main meat of China people for thousands of years. In the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Galand of Luoyang once said, "Sheep breeders are the best in the world". "Sheep wine" often appeared in the writings of the literati in the Tang Dynasty, but pork was rarely mentioned. This can be seen from the description of meat in the Tang Dynasty in Taiping Guangji that there are 105, 47 for mutton and only 12 for pork.

Even Buddhist laymen can't break mutton in Taiping Guang Ji. "Tang Yaodai, a native of Zizhou, often holds the Diamond Sutra", but someone around him killed sheep and asked them to eat together, so he couldn't help eating. This reflects from the side that eating mutton has become a normal state in people's lives.

After the rapid development of the Tang Dynasty, mutton diet became a social fashion in the Song Dynasty. The so-called "Su Wen cooked mutton"; Su Wensheng, eat vegetable soup. "In the Song Dynasty, the royal chef spent 430,000 Jin of mutton a year, and the pork was only 4 100 Jin." The royal chef stopped using mutton "even became the" ancestral law "of the royal family in Song Dynasty.

In the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols entered the Central Plains, and mutton was the most popular. Not only do Mongolians take this as their staple food, but it is also common for Han people to eat mutton. Even the popular Korean oral Chinese textbook Lao Qi Da talked about "cooking China rice", including sheep and chicken.

However, after the Ming Dynasty, the dominance of mutton changed, and pork turned over successfully. A royal menu left over from Yongle in the early Ming Dynasty shows that the ingredients include 5 kg of mutton and 6 kg of pork, and mutton is gradually declining. By the late Ming Dynasty, the number of court animals left by Guanglu Temple was 18900 pigs and 10750 sheep, and pork had come from behind. Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica simply wrote: "Pigs are beasts in the world."

By the Qing Dynasty, the trend of "strong pigs and weak sheep" was more obvious. Every Spring Festival, Beijing often slaughters nearly100000 pigs. After two thousand years, pork finally "counterattacked" successfully.