The Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet: History, Myth, and Development

Ming Qing Yanjiu 22 (2018) 93–111

brill.com/mqyj

Isaac Yue University of Hong Kong [email protected]

Abstract

In* terms of grandeur and extravagance, modern Chinese society tends to think of the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet 滿漢全席 as the pinnacle of China’s culinary heritage. Its allure is best illustrated by what happened in 1977, when the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) commissioned a Hong Kong restaurant named Kwok Bun 國賓酒樓 to recreate the banquet according to its “original” recipes. The preparation took over three months, involved more than one hundred and sixty chefs, and resulted in a meal that featured more than one hundred dishes.1 Since then, there has been no shortage of efforts made by different individuals, restaurants, and organizations to follow suit and recreate the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet in a contemporary setting. These different endeavours commonly claim that they follow the most authentic recipes. Little did they realise that there is no such thing as an authentic recipe. In fact, historians cannot even agree on which era saw the banquet begin, though the leading candidates all date to the Qing dynasty (1644–1911); these are the reign of the Emperor Kangxi (r. 1661–1722), the reign of the Emperor Qianlong (r. 1735–1796), and the dynasty’s last decades. This paper examines the accuracy of these claims by analyzing a sample menu for the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet recorded during Qianlong’s reign. This menu contains crucial information about the feast’s formative stages, information that

* My gratitude goes to Pio Kuo, Loretta Kim, and Tang Pui Ling for their invaluable assistance. I am also grateful to the Hsu Long-sing Research Fund for its financial support which enabled me to carry out this project. All translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated. 1 A brief documentation of this event accompanied by some rare photos can be found in Chen Zhihan’s 陳植漢 book on the subject entitled A Comprehensive Account of the Manchu–Han Banquet 滿漢全席大全. This event was parodied in the 1995 Hong Kong feature film of the same name (English title: The Chinese Feast), starring Leslie Cheung, Anita Yuen, Kenny Bee, and Law Kar-ying.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/24684791-12340022Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:39:20AM via free access 94 Yue has not yet been properly addressed by academics researching this topic. By drawing attention to the traditional dietary customs of ethnic Manchus and Han Chinese, understood in the context of contemporaneous Chinese gastronomy (to supplement the menu’s lack of contextual information), this paper provides a better understanding of the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet and of Chinese gastronomy in general, in terms of their history, development, and cultural significance.

Keywords

Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet – Kangxi – Qianlong – Yuan Mei – fusion cuisine

One of the most popular misconceptions surrounding the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet is the attribution of its invention to the Emperor Kangxi (1654–1722, r. 1661–1722). For example, in a recent interview about the banquet’s history in Hong Kong, Yang Weixiang 楊維湘, honorary president of the Association for Hong Kong Catering Services Management (HKCSM), who has published widely on the Hong Kong culinary scene since the 1970s (often under the pen name Lufu 魯夫), reiterates this belief by stating that Manchu–Han fusion cuisine owes its invention to Kangxi and the creative staff in his imperial kitchen (Zhonghua chuyi xueyuan 54). According to this myth, the Manchu emperor, troubled by the escalating tension between his Han and Manchu ministers which threatened to tear his empire apart, created the idea of a fusion meal that made equal use of Han and Manchu ingredients and cooking methods as a gesture to signal harmony between the two ethnicities. He ordered his kitchen staff to organize the banquet and then invited officials of both ethnicities into the Imperial city to take part in his celebration. The result was a meal so grand that it lasted three full days, and it became as much a display of the Emperor’s fairness and indiscrimination as it did a testimony to China’s culinary excellence. As captivating as this story may be, no contemporaneous document has ever been found to lend credibility to this claim. It seems highly improbable, if such a banquet occurred, that none of the people who participated—from the high ranking ministers to the thousands who helped to prepare it—left any kind of textual record. Notwithstanding, this story continues to be a favorite topic in Chinese popular culture, and is perpetually repeated in contemporary novels, films, and television programs. Although the tale has no historical basis, it is not difficult to see how Kangxi became its central figure. The term

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“Manchu–Han Meal” 滿漢飯 first appeared in the Annals 歷年記, which was published during Kangxi’s reign, albeit without “comprehensive” and using “meal” 飯 instead of “banquet” (Yao 11). In addition, Kangxi was keenly aware of the importance of food to Chinese society, and that understanding inspired him to stage elaborate banquets as a way to enhance his reputation and con- solidate power. For example, one of the first problems he faced after his ascen- sion to the throne in 1661 was the military threat posed by scattered Mongolian clans that continued to wreak havoc on border towns along the empire’s northern frontier. In order to pacify these nomadic warriors, Kangxi introduced the tradition of inviting Mongolian princes to attend an annual feast within the walls of the Forbidden City. According to the Classified Collection of Notes from the Qing Dynasty 清稗類鈔:

When the Mongolian princes came to the Capital City, they always brought some food back with them, saying that it will bring good for- tune back to their home. If they lack the proper vessels to carry the food, they would not hesitate to wrap the food in fine garments. They did not seem to mind the food and its juices soiling the elaborate stitches and the threads of their robes. Xu 13.6275

This practice, known among historians as the Mongolian Vassal Banquet 蒙古親藩宴, was maintained until the end of the Qing dynasty. Kangxi’s success at handling these Mongolian princes encouraged him to adopt similar strategies when dealing with the autonomous vassal clans of Outer Mongo- lia. For the Outer Jaseg princes, he organized another annual banquet, named by historians the Nine-White Banquet 九白宴 because each year these Outer Jaseg princes would bring with them one white camel and eight white horses to be presented to the Emperor as tribute.2 Historians such as Liao Yang 廖楊 believe that these banquets were instrumental to bringing peace to the northern regions, which allowed Kangxi to focus his attention elsewhere, bringing prosperity to the Qing empire.

2 Following the fall of the Northern Yuan regime of Inner Mongolia in 1635 and the crush- ing defeat of the Khalkha Mongolians of Outer Mongolia by the Zunghars in 1690, the Qing government assumed official rule over both regions (with boundaries extending beyond the border of present-day Mongolia to the Qalqa and Dörbed regions), a rule that lasted for the next two hundred years. To facilitate administration, the Qing government recognized the twenty-four tribes (forty-nine banners in total) based in Inner Mongolia as Inner Jaseg. The remaining tribes were designated as Outer Jaseg and allowed to retain their own lan- guage and culture, giving them a much higher degree of autonomy than the former.

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But perhaps nowhere was Kangxi’s fondness for staging grandiloquent banquets exhibited more prominently than in the third month of 1713, when he sent invitations to one thousand elderly persons, aged sixty or over, to gath- er at his imperial retreat for a grand feast to celebrate his sixty-first birthday. According to one report, more than three thousand elders attended this event as guests of honor, and the Emperor was so pleased that he spontaneously com- posed a poem that gave the celebration its name, the Feast of One Thousand Elders 千叟宴 (Lin and Wang 280). The event’s success caused the Emperor to host an even grander banquet in 1722 to celebrate his seventieth birthday. This gesture effectively turned the banquet into one of the longest-lasting culinary traditions of the Qing dynasty, which subsequent emperors practiced until the beginning of the Republican era. In Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives, Chang Kwang-chih famously proclaimed “That Chinese cuisine is the greatest in the world is highly debatable and is essentially irrelevant. But few can take exception to the statement that few other cultures are as food oriented as the Chinese” (11). Although it is unlikely that Chang wrote this passage with Kangxi in mind, his observation offers an apt description of the political vision of the Emperor, who saw food as a means to bring people together and achieve ef- fective governance. The fact that, in his regular diet, Kangxi actually preferred vegetables over meat and simplicity over extravagance further illustrates the extent to which he understood the importance of food to his subjects, and the conscious decision he made to draw upon it as a means of consolidating his legacy.3 Based on Kangxi’s apparent understanding of the unique role of food as a cultural symbol, and on his propensity to exploit that role for political gain, it is certainly not inconceivable that he concocted the idea of a fusion meal like the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet and used it as a political scheme to appease his subjects. Contemporaneous reports have validated the existence of comparable events, such as the Nine White Banquet and the Feast of One Thousand Elders. However, the lack of documents from this period linking the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet to Kangxi casts legitimate doubt on this story’s veracity. Moreover, until the 1698 publication of the Annals, which mentions something called the Manchu–Han Meal (but lacking the word “comprehensive” and any other details), there is simply no record of any

3 In Aphorisms and Lectures from the Court 庭訓格言, a text written by Kangxi in which he communicates his idea of virtues and morality to his children, he discloses his personal view regarding health and diet as follows: “Exercise restraint in eating, cautiousness in living. This is the recipe to good health” (8).

Ming QingDownloaded Yanjiu from 22 Brill.com09/26/2021 (2018) 93–111 05:39:20AM via free access The Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet 97 banquet of this nature to be found in any text published during the reign of Kangxi. Therefore, without new evidence, the attribution of the banquet’s invention to Kangxi remains highly questionable. Meanwhile, another popular school of thought dates the banquet to Qianlong’s reign, not Kangxi’s. Supporters of this theory have traditionally and comfortably based their hypothesis on Recipes from the Sui Garden 隨園食單 and Notes of the Yangzhou Pleasure Boat 揚州畫舫錄, both datable to Qianlong’s time and both mentioning something called the “Manchu–Han Banquet” 滿漢席. Historians such as Tao Wentai 陶文台 believe this to be an early form of the banquet before the standardization of its name, to which was added the term ‘comprehensive’ 全.4 For many years, this theory was believed to be unassailable, until it was challenged by Zhao Rongguang 趙榮光 in the early 2000s. Drawing attention to a text entitled Lotus Raft 蓮花筏, published between 1821 and 1850, Zhao and his supporters champion the notion that Lotus Raft not only mentions the Manchu–Han Banquet, but also elaborates on its nature as unmistakably fusion. This led to their conclusion that until Lotus Raft, any other mention of similar terms (including in Sui Garden and Pleasure Boat) provided only a name with little contextual information. Therefore, it is impossible to determine whether any banquet mentioned before Lotus Raft was in fact truly a fusion meal. To further our investigation, let us first take some time to contemplate Zhao’s theorisation, which I refer to as the late-Qing hypothesis. To begin, as mentioned above, the term “Manchu–Han Meal” first appeared in the late 1600s in a text known as the Annals, in which the author, a scholar named Yao Tinglin 姚廷遴 (1628–?), tried to record everything that he felt was noteworthy over the course of seventy years. Although the term in question actually reads “Manchu–Han Meal” rather than “Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet”, a number of historians have become sufficiently convinced of a con- nection between the two (at least seeing “Meal” as precursor to “Banquet”) to claim the late 1600s as the point in time when fusion cuisine first entered the Chinese culinary lexicon. According to the Annals, in the year 1694, a newly appointed official named Fan Chengxun 范成勛 (?–?) arrived in Jiangxi to take up a governmental position. Eager to gain his favor, the local gentry invited Fan to a celebration in honor of his arrival. We do not know how Fan

4 One of the earliest studies to trace the origin of the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet to Pleasure Boat is Tao Wentai’s 陶文台 influential history of Chinese culinary culture. Its impact could still be seen today as Wu Zhengge 吳正格, in his 2015 monograph on the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet, continues to argue for the relevance of Pleasure Boat in the developmental history of this banquet.

Ming Qing Yanjiu 22 (2018) 93–111 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:39:20AM via free access 98 Yue reacted to this gesture, but he was recorded to have received an extravagant “Manchu–Han Meal featuring silk curtains in five colors and red carpets” (Yao 126–27). Because of its namesake, this meal enjoyed by Fan Chengxun is commonly believed to have been an early form of the Comprehensive Manchu– Han Banquet and is seen as proof that fusion cuisine has been known in China since the 1600s. This view was challenged by Zhao Rongguang in his pioneering and exhaus- tive study of the subject. Zhao’s criticism is twofold. One, despite the similar terminology, Yao Tinglin’s account is brief and devoid of any useful contextual information. Therefore, no one can ascertain whether the meal he cites actually describes the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet, as it is understood today, or even a precursor. Two, classical Chinese texts do not use punctuation. As a consequence, it is entirely possible that Yao intended the expression to read “Manchu and Han meal” instead of “Manchu–Han Meal”, and that Fan was treated to two separate meals, one Manchu and the other Han in origin, rather than to a single fusion banquet. Following this logic, Zhao further discredits the evocation of similar terms in documents like Yuan Mei’s 袁枚 (1716–1797) Sui Garden and its contemporaneous Pleasure Boat (for which Yuan wrote a preface) as proof that fusion gastronomy was practiced in China since the reign of Qianlong. To further validate his view, Zhao cites the Imperially Endorsed, Collected Administrative Statutes, and Precedents of the Great Qing State 欽定大清會典則例 and the Documents of the Household of the Duke of Yansheng 衍聖公府檔案, which both mention separate Manchu and Han meals, as evidence that society was accustomed to viewing (and consuming) these two ethnic cuisines individually rather than as a single fusion meal. The first text was compiled under Kangxi’s imperial mandate and follows a convention for statutes estab- lished by the Collected Administrative Statutes and Precedents of the Great Ming State 大明會典. A section pertaining to running the imperial kitchen lists the “Manchu Banquet” and “Han Banquet” as two separate types of meals enjoyed by the Emperor. The latter text belongs to a collection of documents from the household of the Duke of Yansheng (a title conferred on a descendant of Confucius). It also mentions the Manchu and Han meals as regular but distinct features of the Duke’s table. These two texts demonstrate the extent to which gourmets of the time enjoyed the cuisines of both ethnic groups. More importantly, Zhao interprets the separate sources of these documents—which hap- pen to trace back to two of the most innovative kitchens of the time—and the separate listing of these meals as proof that fusion cuisine was not yet known in Chinese gastronomy.

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Before considering Zhao’s points, it is necessary for us to consider the two ethnic cuisines in question and their determining characteristics, their histo- ries, and some of the possible ways through which their distinctiveness could be merged into a fusion banquet. Since the two ethnic groups first came into contact with each other, Han Chinese inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom have developed a habit of describing Manchurians as “bow-drawers” 引弓之民 (Jin 2603). It is a direct reference to the nomadic lifestyle of these people of the steppe, who had to rely on their skill with the bow to hunt for food and subsist on a meat-based diet. However, as early as the Ming dynasty, when cross-border exchanges increased in frequency, Manchurian dietary patterns showed signs of a shift toward agriculture and an increased emphasis on plants and vegetables. For example, at least one of the authors of the Veritable Records of Emperor Yingzong of the Ming Dynasty 明英宗實錄 was in attendance when a delegate of the early Manchurians, who at the time the Chinese called the Jurchen tribe of Jianzhou 建州,5 visited China proper bearing gifts as tribute to the Ming Emperor. He observed that on their way back home, the delegate de- toured to visit some Chinese farmers from whom they purchased some cattle to sow their own fields in the northeast (Sun 300.6374). This indicates that the visitors were already practicing some forms of agriculture and had incorporated vegetables into their diet. Another example is found in a report written by a Ming official named Lu Qiong 盧瓊 (?–?), who was exiled to the northeastern region of the empire, where he was able to observe the lives of the Jianzhou Jurchens up close. He describes the diet of these early Manchurians as remark- ably “Chinese-like” (Mao 228.334). Although he does not offer any details regarding the actual content of their gastronomy, his words suggest a certain degree of deviation from the conventional conception of the Manchurian diet as strictly carnivorous, as might befit a name like “bow-drawer”. From these reports, it may be possible to deduce the Manchurian dietary preference as going through a transitional period during the Ming dynasty, when their lifestyle gradually evolved from nomadic to agricultural, with vegetables becom- ing a staple of their diet. This helps explain why, when Manchurian elites of the Eight Banners first settled within the borders of China proper during the early years of the Qing dynasty, they were able to quickly acclimate to local tastes and willingly incorporated them into their traditional ethnic diet.

5 The Jurchen of Jianzhou is a sub-clan of the Jurchen from the north-eastern regions and the direct ancestor of the Manchurian. In the year 1626, under Nurhaci 努爾哈赤 (1559–1626), they officially changed the name of their clan to Manchurian.

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Yet despite this change of lifestyle from nomadic to agricultural, the consumption of meat remained an integral part of Manchurian customs, to the point that it was seen as a founding component of Manchurian cultural iden- tity. For example, it has been documented that during festivities, Manchurian noblemen often ended their celebration with a carnivorous feast, known as a “meat gathering” 食肉之會. This practice continued until the end of the Qing dynasty and participation in the meal was ideologically used as a means to remember and celebrate their nomadic heritage. Below is a description of one such gathering according to the Unofficial History of the Qing Dynasty 清朝野史大觀:

Whenever the household of a nobleman engaged in a religious ritual, or had a cause for celebration, it would be accompanied by a meat gathering. Anybody could attend this gathering, regardless of whether they knew the host or not, as long as they understood the custom. There was no invitation; when the time came, the host would simply erect a reed stage in his courtyard—with the roof of the stage exceeding the highest point of his house. Inside, mats would be laid out on top of a red carpet for the guests to sit on. Circles of eight, nine, or ten would be formed, and when everybody became seated, the cook would present them with a slab of meat, weighting approximately ten catties, served in a bronze plate two feet in diameter. This would be followed by another bronze bowl filled with the juice from the meat along with a bronze ladle. In front of each guest, there would be a smaller bronze bowl eight to nine inches in size for the sauce. Wine would be served in a shared large bowl, from which the guests took turns to drink. The guests were expected to bring their own sauces, papers, and pocket knives for helping themselves to the meat. The more they cut and ate, the more joyful the host. Anyone who shouted “more meat” repeatedly would be greeted by immense gratitude. On the contrary, anyone who failed to finish at least one plate of meat would be met with contempt. The meat was cooked in plain hot water; there was no salt or condiment involved, but it still tasted extreme- ly fresh. The more skillful guests were the ones who could cut the meat into wafer thin slices, where the fat and the meat were evenly distributed. A Manchu with an enormous appetite would be able to consume up to ten catties of meat in this manner. The host did not join the guests in eating; instead, his role was to wander from one end of the stage to another, to make sure that everybody was well fed. According to tradition, guests who were done eating would simply get up and take leave. They must not

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thank the host or wipe their mouth, for thanking the host would mean disrespecting the gods, and wiping their mouths would mean distracting themselves from the act of eating. Xiaoheng Xiangshi Zhuren 2.29

Events like this offer a rare glimpse into the nature of Manchurian gastronomy prior to the founding of the Qing dynasty. Like the gastronomic cultures of nomadic peoples around the world, it places a heavy emphasis on meat and a simple cooking method (using only boiling water without the aid of salt or any other condiment). The extent to which Manchurian cooking differs from Han could not be greater, for the latter prides itself on flavouring food with a wide range of staple ingredients and a great variety of condiments. This approach is nicely encapsulated in the following scene from The Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢, when Wang Xifeng 王熙鳳 treats Granny Liu 劉姥姥 to a bowl of aubergines during her first visit to Grand View Garden 大觀園. Amazed by its taste, Liu asks Wang for the recipe and receives the following answer:

You pick the aubergines in the fourth or fifth month when they’re just ripe, skin them, remove the pulp and pips and cut into thread-fine stripes which you dry in the sun. Then you take the stock from one whole fat boiling-fowl, put the dried aubergine stripes into a steamer and steam them over the chicken stock until it’s nearly all boiled away. Then you take them out and dry them in the sun again. You do that, steaming and drying, steaming and drying by turns, altogether nine times. And it has to be dried until it’s quite brittle. Then you store in a tightly-sealed jar, and when you want to eat some, you take out about a saucerful and mix it with fried slivers of chicken leg-meat before serving. Cao 2.306–307

Despite the brevity of this account, it is important to note how even a basic vegetable like the aubergine demanded the use of all three culinary characteristics of Han culinary culture, in terms of ingredient, flavours, and cooking method. Although the lifestyle of the Jia 賈 family, as depicted here, was available only to the more affluent households, the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet was also developed for members of this very social stratum. Therefore, the style of gastronomy described here would most likely have served as a blue- print for the Han aspect of this fusion banquet. Such a reading is corroborated by Yuan Mei’s description of the Manchu– Han Banquet:

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In the gastronomic practice of today’s Court, one hears of a number of terminologies that reference different things. These include the sixteen dishes, eight vessels, and four appetizers, the Manchu–Han Banquet, the eight small delicacies, and the ten gourmet dishes. In truth, these are all bad practices of inferior chefs. Such frivolous displays are suitable only if new relatives are here to pay a visit, or when a superior officer walks in through the door. We may think of them as merely perfunctory acts of duty, or superficialities which decorate embroidered tables and chairs. Yuan 209

Regardless of whether the subject of Yuan’s description is one fusion cuisine or two separate meals, it is evidently seen as an extravagant form of enter- tainment, one that only the more affluent members of society can afford. This means that when fusion cuisine first emerged on the Qing culinary scene, its Han component was unlikely to deviate from the three characteristics dis- cussed above—which Yuan considers to be frivolous. In other words, in the context of Qing gastronomy, Manchu and Han cuisines were essentially at odds with each other; whereas the former prided itself on being simple, virile, and robust, the latter strived to improve in areas like splendor, novelty, and delicacy. This contrast is an important dynamic that helped to propel the gus- tatory uniqueness of the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet. Having considered the qualities that define Manchu and Han cuisines and how they could potentially fuse into a singular banquet, let us now turn our attention to the evocation of the term “Manchu–Han Banquet” in Pleasure Boat and the sample menu that is included in the text. According to Chang Jian- hua 常建華, this text constitutes one of the greatest extant resources on the social history of Yangshou during the Kangxi and Qianlong era (227). Little is known about its author, Li Dou 李斗 (?–?), but he was evidently a good friend of Yuan Mei, who wrote a preface for Pleasure Boat. Given their relationship and the fact that they both resided in Yangzhou, even though neither author provided sufficient contextual information to help readers deduce what they meant by “Manchu–Han Banquet”, they were probably referring to the same thing—whether it was one fusion cuisine, two separate meals, or something else entirely. Fortunately, the term’s appearance in Pleasure Boat is followed by a sample menu that gives some indication of the nature of the banquet in question. Because of the importance of this menu and the fact that it has never been made available in English, my full translation follows:

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The first serving contains five vessels and ten dishes: Shredded chicken soup with swallow’s nest 燕窩雞絲湯 Pork tendon with sea cucumber 海參燴豬筋 Razor clam bouillon with shredded turnip 鮮蟶蘿蔔絲羹 Kelp and hog’s maw soup 海帶豬肚絲羹 Abalone with moneywort 鮑魚燴珍珠菜 Mussel and shrimp roe soup 淡菜蝦子湯 Crab and shark’s fin soup 魚翅螃蟹羹 Braised chicken and mushroom 蘑菇煨雞 “Pulley mace” 轆轤錘6 Fish maw with Chinese ham 魚肚煨火腿 Shark skin and chicken bouillon 鯊魚皮雞汁羹 Bloody vermicelli soup 血粉湯7 Rice made with soup stock 一品級湯飯碗

The second serving contains five vessels and ten dishes: Braised bear paw with carp tongues 鯽魚舌燴熊掌 Gorilla lips (Venison) with rice dregs 米糟猩唇8

6 The original Chinese name for this dish contains three characters: Lulu chui 轆轤錘. The first two characters of lulu refer to a type of pulley system commonly used in Chinese wells to help draw water from the bottom. The last character means either a hammer or a mace and can be used as a noun (for the hammer or mace) or a verb (for the swinging action that powers the weapon). In addition, the term may also refer to the water bucket attached to the end of the lulu pulley system found in wells. In Chinese martial arts, the term Lulu chui can also signify a power move in which a fighter swings his entire arm above his head to attack an opponent, mimicking the attack of a hammer. However, it is unclear what this term means in a culinary context; perhaps it refers to a unique technique involved in the preparation of this dish or to the way it is presented at the table. 7 The three characters which make up this dish xuefen tang 血粉湯 respectively mean “bloody vermicelli soup”. Its name is reminiscent of a traditional dish from Xi’an called fentang yangx- ue 粉湯羊血, which is vermicelli served in a soup with lamb’s blood. It is unclear if the two names describe the same dish. An alternative interpretation of this dish understands the word fen as a reference to arrowroot, known as fenge 粉葛 in Chinese, which is a medicinal herb frequently used as a soup ingredient. 8 The consumption of gorilla lips is first recorded in Lü’s Spring and Autumn Annals 呂氏春秋, which lists it alongside grilled quanquan 獾獾 (a type of bird, not to be confused with quan 獾 which is the common name for badger in modern Chinese) as the two most delicious types of meat. However, according to The External Record of Heilongjiang 黑龍江外記, back in their nomadic days, the Manchurians were also known to favour dried vension meat which the Han liked to refer to as gorilla lips, apparently because of their resemblance to each other in colour and texture (Xi 251). It is unclear whether the dish in question here refers to venison or actual gorilla lips, as the practice of consuming actual gorilla lips remained very much alive, albeit rare, during the reigns of Kangxi and Qianlong. For example, in Random Notes

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Pig brain 豬腦 Imitated leopard fetus 假豹胎 Steamed camel hump 蒸駝峰 Steamed civet served with sliced pears 梨片拌蒸果子狸 Steamed sika tail 蒸鹿尾 Soup with wild chicken slices 野雞片湯 Dry-aged pork slices 風豬片子9 Dry-aged lamb slices 風羊片子 Rabbit breast with curd stripes 兔脯奶房簽10 Rice made with soup stock 一品級湯飯碗

The third serving contains ten small white bowls: Hog’s maw 豬肚 Imitation scallop 假江瑤 Duck’s tongue soup 鴨舌羹 Chicken and bamboo shoot congee 雞筍粥 Pig brain bouillon 豬腦羹 Smooth-scrambled egg 芙蓉蛋 Goose gizzard bouillon 鵝肫掌羹 Steamed shad with dregs 糟蒸鰣魚 Imitation grouper liver 假斑魚肝 Xi Shi curd 西施乳

at the Cottage of Close Scrutiny 閱微草堂筆記, Ji Yun 紀昀 (1724–1805) writes that although he had never tasted this dish in person, he has heard of incidents in which gorilla lips were presented to diners while still attached to the head of the gorilla. It was even possible for consumers to make out the facial features of the gorilla, including its nose, eyes, and eyebrows, before proceeding to consume its lips (366–367). 9 The only time this obscure dish is mentioned in literature is in the Gazette of the Libo County 荔波縣志 (Anon 25.397). This text was compiled during the early Republican era; the two earlier editions, dating from the Qing dynasty, make no mention of this dish. Therefore, it is unclear whether it is the same dish as referenced in the Pleasure Boat menu, and if so, how and when it was introduced to Yangzhou. But because of the lack of further textual evidence, I have decided to treat them as closely related food types. In Chinese, the name fengzhu 風豬 is translated literally as “wind pork”. Its name is derived from its preparation, which requires cutting up and drying the pork in arid conditions. This procedure is similar to the way modern chefs dry-age meat to enhance its flavor, hence the translation. 10 The original Chinese name of this dish contains the term naifang 奶房, a somewhat vulgar reference to the breast in modern Chinese. However, a Song dynasty recipe book entitled Wu’s Recipes 吳氏中饋錄 mentions another dish with this same terminology in its title. It is called naifang xuanzha 奶房旋鮓 and the author categorizes it under “curd” (77). This categorization indicates that this term is in fact a reference to a type of curd.

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Wen Si’s Tofu soup 文思豆腐羹 Soft-shelled turtle slices in soup 甲魚肉片子湯 Cocoon bouillon 繭兒羹 Rice made with soup stock 一品級湯飯碗

The fourth serving contains twenty meat platters (or platters of fur and blood 毛血盤): Grilled ape 貜炙 Halba (blade steak) 哈爾巴 Suckling pig 小豬子 Deep-fried pork and lamb 油炸豬羊肉 Suspended roast chicken, goose, and duck 掛爐走油雞鵝鴨 Minced pigeon 鴿臛 Pork innards 豬雜什 Lamb innards 羊雜什 Charred pork and lamb 燎毛豬羊肉 Boiled pork and lamb 白煮豬羊肉 Steamed suckling pig, suckling lamb, 白蒸小豬子、小羊子、 chicken, duck, and goose 雞、鴨、鵝 Steamed white rolls 白麵餑餑卷子 Mixed grill 什錦火燒 Plum blossom bun 梅花包子

The fifth serving contains twenty items served on plates decorated with foreign colors:11 Snacks served hot in twenty flavors 熱吃勸酒二十味 Twenty side dishes 小菜碟二十件 Dried fruits served on ten side tables 枯果十徹桌 Fresh fruits served on ten side tables 鮮果十徹桌

Note how different in style and content the dishes in the fourth serving are from the rest. Having considered the importance of meat to traditional Manchurian diet, and the simplicity of Manchurian cooking methods compared with those

11 The original term is yangdie 洋碟, short for yang caidie 洋彩碟, a type of ceramic arts which first came into fashion during the reign of Yongzheng 雍正 (1678–1735, r. 1722– 1735). A 1738 report commissioned by Qianlong on the latest developments and technolo- gies in ceramic art describes it as “a polished white vessel with multi-colored pictures in the style of Western paintings. It is hence given the name “foreign color” (Tang 4.1168).

Ming Qing Yanjiu 22 (2018) 93–111 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:39:20AM via free access 106 Yue of Han cuisine, I believe that the fourth menu is entirely Manchurian in origin and the rest are derived from Han culinary tradition. This assumption is further supported by the second item of the fourth serving, called haerba 哈爾巴, which recalls the Manchurian word halba for “shoulder”. The fact that this name appears in only one other place—a contemporaneous text called The Refinement of Taste within the Tripod 調鼎集, which names one of the dishes listed in a menu for a “Manchu Banquet” as “White Halba” 白哈爾巴— further testifies to the Manchurian origin of this dish and, by extension, of the fourth serving in the Pleasure Boat menu. As for the other four servings, their Han origin is equally apparent. In dishes listed in the first, second, and third servings, many rare ingredients are uti- lized, ranging from swallow’s nest to such seafood as razor clam, crab, and soft- shelled turtle. Most of these ingredients are unavailable in northern China and unknown to traditional Manchurian cuisine. They also draw upon a variety of cooking techniques that were not native to Manchurian cooking, including steaming and frying. However, by far the most convincing proof is found in the inclusion of a number of signature dishes which bespeak their Han origin. Below are two good examples:

Tofu soup in the style of Wen Si: Tofu is arguably one of the most repre- sentative and unique food types known to the ethnic Han. It is commonly believed that Liu An 劉安 (179–122 BCE), Prince of Huainan 淮南王,12 invented tofu; however, this alleged fact is not mentioned in the Writings of the Masters of Huainan 淮南子 or any other contemporaneous text (including the later comprehensive agricultural encyclopedia Essential Skills for the Daily Life of the People 齊民要術), an absence that casts doubt on the claim. The earliest reference to tofu is found in the late Five Dynasties period, when Tao Gu 陶穀 (903–970) mentioned it in his Records of the Unworldly and the Strange 清異錄 (1.31). Since then, it has become a fre- quent topic in literature—culinary oriented or otherwise—attesting to the immediate popularity of tofu among the Han consumers. As such, the more likely scenario is that tofu was invented during the Five Dynasties period and has been a stable diet of the Han since the Song dynasty. As for the name Wen Si 文思, it belongs to a monk of the Temple of Serene Heaven 天寧寺, who was active during the time of Qianlong.

12 Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200), for example, in his footnote to the poem entitled “A Tribute to Liu Xiu in Thirteen Poems on Vegetarianism: Tofu” 次劉秀野蔬食十三詩韻：豆腐, writes: “it is common knowledge that the Prince of Huinan invented the technique used to create tofu” (275).

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Although virtually nothing is known about this monk, separate entries in Pleasure Boat record that Wen Si was a skillful poet and a good judge of character; more importantly, he also made a delicious tofu soup (4.86). The late Qing scholar Yu Yue 俞樾 (1821–1907) also mentions that later replicates of Wen Si’s recipes became known as “tofu soup in the style of Wen Si” (21.441). In other words, this dish is distinctly Han both in terms of its ingredients and in its association with the eponymous Chinese Buddhist monk.

Cocoon Bouillon: The name of this dish first appears in Ancient Matters from the Wulin Garden 武林舊事, which describes it as one of the delicacies served by Zhang Jun 張俊 (1086–1154) to Song Emperor Gaozong 宋高宗 (1107–1187) in the twenty-first year of the Shaoxing 紹興 era (1131– 1162) (Zhou 9.202). Because the text does not elaborate on the nature of this dish, many researchers have taken the word “cocoon” 繭兒 literally and conceived of this dish as a bouillon made with the cocoons of silk- worm or other insects. What they have overlooked is that another Song dynasty text, entitled the Records of a Dream 夢粱錄, mentions a type of food with an almost identical name, “fish cocoon” 魚繭兒. The fact that Wulin and Dream are written by authors with comparable backgrounds, and that both deal with the same subject matter, means that they are likely referring to the same type of food when using the word “cocoon”. In the case of the second dish, the name “fish cocoon” suggests that fish features as a primary ingredient. Since Dream indicates that “cocoon bouillon” is a food commonly served with soup noodle, it is likely that the “cocoon” in question is either an early version of the modern-day fish ball 魚丸, which is also known as fish globe 魚圓 in Fujianese cuisine and fish egg 魚蛋 in Cantonese cuisine; or it is a type of fish roe.13

From the above examination of the content of this sample menu recorded in Pleasure Boat, we are able to deduce a number of important factors which indi- cate the menu’s fusion nature, ranging from the singularity of the menu to the difference in ingredients and cooking methods between servings. Armed with

13 The name “fish cocoon” is also mentioned by the Tang poets Han Yu (768–824) and Meng Jiao 孟郊 (751–814) in their joint poem “Joint Verse of the Southside” 城南聯句, which states: “At the end of the book and the fish cocoon / the music of the qin and zheng sounds” 書饒罄魚繭，紀盛播琴箏. According to Qian Zhonglian 錢仲聯, the “fish cocoon” in this poem does not refer to food but to a type of paper popular among literati of the Tang dynasty. Since organic material is not used in making Chinese paper, it is unclear in what sense the food and the paper are related, if at all (Han 618).

Ming Qing Yanjiu 22 (2018) 93–111 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:39:20AM via free access 108 Yue this knowledge, let us now return to the argument raised by Zhao. Aside from his attempts to disassociate this menu from the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet, Zhao also advocates interpreting this particular menu in the following context. Firstly, in order to substantiate his reading of the “Manchu–Han Banquet” in the Pleasure Boat menu as “Manchu and Han Banquet”, Zhao contends that each serving, written as fen 分 in the original Chinese text, refers to a complete meal, and that the recipe’s creator did not plan to offer all of these servings at any single banquet but instead intended to choose one of the five to prepare and serve. As such, that Pleasure Boat only lists one menu following its use of the term “Manchu–Han Banquet” does not really pose a problem at all; for according to Zhao, these are actually five menus instead of one. Secondly, when considered alongside Tripod, another important contemporaneous work that offers insights into the state of gastronomy at that time, Zhao points to the fact that Tripod does not mention anything resembling a fusion Manchu– Han Banquet but instead contains three sample menus under the respective headings “Han Banquet One”, “Han Banquet Two”, and “Manchu Banquet”. He contends that if Yuan Mei’s earlier criticism, which predates Tripod, is indeed levied at a fusion banquet, then given its apparent popularity among the early Qing elites, the sample menu in Tripod should logically feature this fusion menu instead of listing the Han and Manchu banquets under separate entries. For more than a decade, the above view advanced by Zhao has considerably influenced research on Chinese gastronomy, especially research produced in mainland China and Taiwan.14 His dismissal of the menu in Pleasure Boat is partly informed by his reading of Tripod; yet there are several facts in Tripod overlooked by Zhao in his discussion which may affect his hypothesis. To begin, regarding his interpretation of fen as “meal” (whereas “serving” is preferred in the present study), one should bear in mind that the third and fourth servings of the Pleasure Boat menu, which contain most of the menu items, feature no more than fourteen dishes, and that in the Tripod menus there are sixty-eight dishes listed in the first Han Banquet, one hundred and twenty- six dishes in the second Han Banquet, and twenty-five dishes in the Manchu Banquet. Assuming that the menus in Tripod offer an accurate reflection of the grandiosity of a contemporaneous grand banquet—one that the social elites of the time customarily enjoyed—then the Pleasure Boat menu simply does not possess the same sense of lavishness to elicit Yuan Mei’s condemnation,

14 This is observable in recent studies by Zhao Xudong 趙旭東, Wang Shasha 王莎莎, Feng Jiaxong 馮家松, and Ye Quanhong 葉泉宏, which all touch upon the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet but focus specifically on the late Qing period, without a single mention of Sui Garden, Pleasure Boat, and other early Qing texts.

Ming QingDownloaded Yanjiu from 22 Brill.com09/26/2021 (2018) 93–111 05:39:20AM via free access The Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet 109 unless it is taken as part of a whole. Although it is true that neither text offers any information pertaining to the size and volume of each dish (in theory, the dishes on the Pleasure Boat menu could be much larger and used to serve more people), the discrepancy in number is still too great for Zhao’s argument to overcome. As for the possibility that the dishes on the Tripod menu are listed for comprehensiveness and are not supposed to be served all at once (meaning a host is free to choose what to include or exclude), doubts also arise. Why does Tripod list two separate menus for the Han banquet rather than simply incor- porate everything into a single menu? Finally, there is also the fact that the fifth serving on the Pleasure Boat menu almost entirely comprises side dishes and confectionaries, which can hardly be considered a complete meal (let alone a banquet) according to Chinese customs. These factors allow us to establish that the five servings on the Pleasure Boat menu are intended to constitute one complete banquet, and the nature of this banquet is unmistakably an amalga- mation of traditional Han and Manchu cuisines. This project began with one simple question in mind: When did fusion cuisine, one which combines ethnic Han and Manchus culinary traditions to form what is known today as the Comprehensive Manchu–Han Banquet, first began? By focusing on the sample menu found in Pleasure Boat, which previous researchers have overlooked, we are able to answer this question by confirming the existence of this tradition, albeit in an early form, during the Qianlong era. In the process, we have also successfully refuted the popular late- Qing hypothesis which is considered by some to be orthodox. Moreover, in our attempt to learn more about the ethnic politics of food during the early Qing dynasty, our research has also made important new discoveries about the history and characteristics of ethnic cuisine in China, along with the conditions surrounding their consumptions. In the end, much has been learned about Chinese gastronomy as a unique cultural heritage and the nature of fusion din- ing in a historical setting.

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