No war in the Northern Song Dynasty

Chapter 8: Food, Champa Rice, and Newspapers

On the upper plate, square pieces of osmanthus porridge jelly are neatly stacked.

Porridge jelly is rice porridge that has naturally solidified into lumps after being cooled. When honey and osmanthus are added, it becomes a snack similar to jelly cake.

This is a famous snack in Bian Jing, and is served as an appetizer or dessert at almost all banquets. In order to support her husband's business, Zhang Chulan's mother studied the craft of making porridge jelly. When Zhang Daocheng was doing business in his early years, he often brought homemade porridge jelly as gifts to visit customers.

Su Ze picked up the chopsticks, picked up a piece of porridge jelly and put it into his mouth. It melted in his mouth as expected. The fragrance of osmanthus blended with the sweetness of honey flowed into his mouth. Zhang Chulan's mother's cooking skills were indeed not inferior to those of the chefs in the regular restaurants in Bianjing.

Su Ze opened the food box again, and the strong aroma of duck meat rushed out.

The roasted duck in Qionghua Tower is famous in Bianjing.

爊 means to simmer with fire.

The braised duck at Qionghualou is first fried in hot sesame oil until the surface is golden brown, then various seasonings are added and simmered over low heat. After it cools down, it is poured with sauce and served.

The braised duck was also full of fragrance when it was put into the mouth. The duck meat was stewed until it was very tender, with the aroma of a mixture of various spices. There was no fishy smell of duck at all. The taste was comparable to those Michelin restaurants that Su Ze had eaten in his previous life.

Su Ze was a little discouraged.

According to other time-travel novels, people can live a good life after traveling through time by relying on modern people's cooking skills.

But eating these two dishes completely shattered this possibility.

The city of Bianjing truly was a place where "all the exotic flavors of the world were gathered in the kitchen."

If you travel back to the Tang Dynasty, it would be almost the same. In the Tang Dynasty, cities had curfews and the commodity economy was not so prosperous.

You have to know that the city of Bianjing had developed to the point where "people in the market often only buy food from shops and do not buy vegetables at home." The common people in the city of Bianjing in the Song Dynasty ate out on a daily basis. With the level of cooking pig food I had in my previous life, how could I run a catering business in Bianjing, a place with so many great chefs?

Well, another way to make money has been cut off.

If you want to run a catering business, you probably need to build corresponding facilities in [Peach Blossom Spring] and recruit useful spiritual boys.

Don’t think about it for now, let’s just focus on farming first.

After Su Ze finished eating the delicious food, he gave some duck meat to Yan Zhixue, then closed the door and went to the nearby market.

In the Song Dynasty, people were allowed to "invade the streets", that is, to do business on the streets, but most of the shops on the streets were daily necessities and catering shops. For things like buying seeds, one had to go to a special trading area, which was also called a market.

Fortunately, Su Ze lived in the south of the city, not far from the canal port, and Jinmingfang, the largest market town in Bianjing, was not far away.

Walk across a wooden bridge and you will see the Bian Canal, the lifeline of Bianjing’s water transport.

Just like what is depicted in the Qingming Festival Along the River Tu, the boats on the Bian River are connected end to end, and the boatmen's calls rise and fall one after another, as if they are singing a duet on the river.

The more this happened, the more heartbroken Su Ze felt.

Eighty-three years later, the prosperous city of Bianjing became a vanity, completely destroyed by the iron hoofs of the Jin people marching south.

It is no wonder that the poets who moved south all missed the prosperous city of Bianliang in their dreams.

After walking across this wooden bridge, we finally arrived at Jinmingfang.

The market town was still bustling with people, and its prosperity reminded Su Ze of the retro old streets during the golden holiday in his previous life.

Don't you Song people work? Why are you shopping so late in the afternoon? The market town isn't just filled with shops. Peddlers carrying baskets and hawking their wares along the street all demonstrate the city's vitality.

Fortunately, the commodity competition in the Song Dynasty was already very fierce, and shops had begun to hang signs at their doors to indicate the goods they sold in order to attract customers.

Su Ze soon saw a shop selling good quality seeds, with a banner hanging on it that read "Good Quality Seeds for Sale".

When he walked in, Su Ze discovered that this was not a shop, but a government agency - the Life Insurance Bureau.

Unlike ordinary shops, no waiter came to greet Su Ze when he entered. Instead, the waiters sat at the back of the shop and chatted casually.

It was only at this time that Su Ze understood why the Public Health Bureau, a government agency, would sell seeds.

The Baosheng Bureau was an institution established by the late Emperor Song Zhenzong, responsible for disaster relief and protecting the people. It can be said to be the earliest institution in the feudal era that was specifically responsible for social security and welfare.

Since it is a government agency, it naturally won’t be as enthusiastic as a shop.

The reason why the Baosheng Bureau sold seeds was because Emperor Zhenzong of Song had vigorously promoted Champa rice.

In the fourth year of Dazhong Xiangfu during the reign of Emperor Zhenzong of Song Dynasty, Emperor Zhenzong sent envoys to Fujian to retrieve 30,000 hu of rice.

These rice grains were not the glutinous and japonica rice commonly grown in the Song Dynasty (called "white grain" in the Song Dynasty), but a kind of foreign rice from southern Vietnam, which was called Champa or Champa at the time, so it was named "Champa rice".

Champa rice is an early rice that matures early and produces grains quickly. It can be harvested two to three times a year, and its yield is much higher than that of japonica rice.

Moreover, Champa rice can be grown on any fertile or barren soil and can be harvested immediately after planting, so the planting area is much larger than that of japonica rice and glutinous rice.

After obtaining this rice seed, Song Zhenzong was very pleased and ordered the Health Protection Bureau to promote the rice seed and order farmers in Jianghuai and Liangzhe to plant it.

Now Song Zhenzong has been dead for a long time, and even the ruling Empress Dowager Liu E has been dead for many years, but the Baosheng Bureau is responsible for selling Champa rice seeds and has been preserved.

Of course, this is not the original rice seed.

Zhenzong liked Champa rice very much and ordered it to be planted in the Yuchen Hall of the imperial palace. He also designated an area in the imperial garden, ordered agricultural officials to continuously improve and breed it, and let the Bureau of Health and Welfare sell seeds at a fair price.

Of course, given the agricultural level of the Song Dynasty, the breeding effect was limited to this.

Although Champa rice is cold-resistant, high-yielding and ripens frequently, it was considered unpalatable by the Song people.

Because of its poor taste, it is called small rice grain, while the original rice seed is large rice grain.

The harvest of large grains is small and the price is high. Apart from paying tribute to the government, only the rich can eat them. The harvest of small grains is large and the price is low, so the poor can eat them.

The regular shops in Bianjing City did not supply Champa rice. Only foot shops and vendors sold rice and food made from Champa rice.

But Su Ze was very excited. He had the Peach Blossom Spring and Anong, the agricultural boy with breeding skills. If he could cultivate more productive and delicious rice seeds, wouldn't that benefit both himself and the people?
Su Ze took out some copper coins, bought some rice seeds, and took a walk around Jinmingfang.

Unfortunately, after buying the rice seeds, Su Ze was penniless. Looking at the dazzling array of goods, Su Ze could only sigh in despair.

Tomorrow he was going to attend a banquet at Wang Anshi's house, and it would not be nice to go empty-handed, so he bought a few small gifts. Su Ze was dazzled by the prosperous street scenes of the Northern Song Dynasty, and did not start his return journey until the lights came on.

On the way back, there were children holding pirated official newspapers with the ink still wet, selling them along the streets and alleys.

"Little Fan, I have been summoned to the capital, and the emperor has opened the Tianzhang Pavilion to question me!"

(End of this chapter)