What did people in the Ming Dynasty (1368 -1644) eat? This depends on whether you ask the Chinese living in the early to mid-Ming, or those living in the late Ming. The former would go on and on about the lavish, exotic food that China had never had in previous dynasties; while the latter would simply answer, “Nothing.”
Let’s first explore the robust food scene in the mid-Ming Dynasty. It was a relatively peaceful era with sky-rocketing population growth. The economy of Ming China was the largest in the world in its time, and also saw a leap in agricultural technology. As a result, most commoners did not have to live with an empty stomach and enjoyed three meals a day. Ming people mostly had refined grain as their staple– a practice that has passed down till now. Northerners mostly ate noodles, while southerners rice. Vegetables, available in more than 50 types, were more common as side dishes than meat.
While food consumption was a daily, survival necessity, more people saw it as a pleasure and a social platform. According to both imperial records and popular literature, Ming was indeed a time when food culture thrived. Matteo Ricci, a prominent Italian Jesuit, observed that commoners were indulging in the pleasure of eating in Southern Ming, where the soil was very fertile, and the price of grains, fruits, and vegetables was low. He wrote that Ming Chinese was a wealthier society than Europe. Its affluence was especially noticeable among the rising middle class, who emerged from expanded markets and larger commercial plantations. Dining was a place where these wealthy gentries and merchants showed off their financial prowess. Ming literature recorded an instance when every guest got a whole chicken and goose, along with a tower of fruits in a gentry’s banquet for a local commander.
Along with the quantity, the quality of dishes also increased. Compared to the Song Dynasty, cooking techniques became more diversified and systemized in Ming. There were about a dozen methods of solely cooking eggs, as mentioned in Ming's popular romantic novel “Golden Lotus.” The intellectual class contributed to inventing exquisite dishes, as an escape from the wheeling and dealing in the government. Along with other types of lavish entertainment, indulgent dining symbolized the materialistic, consumerism culture in society.
They went to great lengths to find the best ingredients, recipes, restaurants, chefs, cooking wares. They experimented with unique, peculiar cooking methods. As one intellectual recorded a special way to cook goose feet, a luxury and popular dish, put the living goose’s feet into boiling oil, then throw the goose into a pool of water, and they would keep hopping from pain; Repeat the process, and the goose feet would be juicy and had a rich flavour.
Their fashionable dishes also benefited greatly from the imported ingredients from the New World. As marine trade and the coastal economy were on the rise during the Age of Discovery, many foreign goods began to enter and gain popularity in China, including tomatoes, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and corns… These food ingredients were merely a tiny fraction of a large variety of imported goods from the west, along with firearms, animals, silver, and more. While foreign high-yield crops were only ubiquitous nation-wide in Qing, imported spices were very popular both in the Imperial Court and among the populace. Chilli pepper entered China at this time and became the defining ingredient of Sichuan cuisine till now. A large amount of sugar imported also made delicate baked sweets more available. Interestingly, pepper, also an imported good, was used as pay officials and soldiers in Ming.
These imported goods were transported from coastal cities to the capital in the north and other cities, with the rapid development of nation-wide trade. For example, the consumption of luxury seafood like bêche-de-Mer and shark fin became institutionalized dishes as a part of banquets prepared for emperors.
The extravagant gastronomy in mid-Ming shows how prosperous China was in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Advancement in agriculture, commerce, marine trade, and the military created a stable and wealthy society. Food was a noticeable field of the increase of standard of living, the culture of enjoyment, and the rapid exchanges between China and the west. These pose interesting, yet tragic, questions: how did this thriving food scene disappear gradually in late Ming? How did the commoners descend from consuming three meals a day with a great variety of vegetables, to eating barks, roots, or even their fellow humans? Our next article in the series “Food and Famine” will offer some insights into these questions.