What are the historical records of soybean's origin in China?

Liu An, the grandson of Emperor Gaozu Liu Bang, was made King of Huainan in 164 BC, with Shouchun as its capital. When he was making an alchemist, he once mistakenly put gypsum into Dan's mother liquor, that is, soybean milk, and the chemical change became tofu. Tofu came out.

Liu Anshan visited Zen and was good at making friends with monks. One day, he tasted the tofu made by the monk and found it very new. He decided to study the method and technology of making tofu in depth.

Set up a tofu production workshop to train professional tofu producers. In the process of production and operation, the production equipment and technology have been gradually improved, and the quality of tofu has been improved. At the same time, the technology of tofu making was passed on to others and gradually spread to other areas.

The production technology of tofu was introduced to Japan in the Tang Dynasty, and then to Southeast Asia and other countries and regions in the world.

The raw material of bean curd is soybean. Because China is the hometown of soybean, bean food was first created in China.

Soybean was an important grain and oil crop in ancient China. China is the origin of soybean and the first country to domesticate and grow soybean, with a cultivation history of at least 4,000 years.

Black beans are called black beans, which can be used as medicine, to satisfy hunger and to make fermented beans. Yellow can be made into tofu, oil or bean paste; Other colors can be used for fried cooked food.

Because of its high nutritional value, soybean is called "king of beans", "meat in the field" and "green milk", so it is the most respected among hundreds of natural foods.

Soybean originated in China, which can be proved by a large number of ancient documents in China. Sima Qian of the Han Dynasty wrote in Historical Records:

Emperor Yan wanted to invade the princes of the mausoleum, and the princes returned the Xuanyuan with salt. Xuanyuan is Xiu De's army, which commands five kinds of qi and bows, caresses all the people and celebrates all directions. Spread it on the lower bunk, which is glutinous rice.

It can be seen that Xuanyuan Huangdi has been planted. "Ear" is soybean.

According to research, the main crops in the Yin and Shang Dynasties, such as millet, millet, wheat, chaff, rice and rice, were once found in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. There was Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Shang Dynasty, and the records of crops were very limited. The words millet, millet, bean, wheat, rice and mulberry were determined, and they were the main crops that people relied on at that time.

The carbonized soybean unearthed in Wula Street, Jilin City, Jilin Province has a history of about 2,600 years. It is the physical object of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty and the earliest soybean unearthed at present.

In the Spring and Autumn Period, Zizania latifolia was listed as one of the five or nine cereals. The Warring States period is the period, and millet is also called the first of the nine grains. When bean leaves are used as vegetables, they are called "Tang Huo".

The position of soybean in grain supply is inseparable from its own characteristics. After Qin and Han Dynasties, dry farming techniques improved, and soybeans were relegated to a secondary position, but people still paid attention to it. "Fan Sheng Zhi Book" records: "Please count several kinds of soybeans in your family", emphasizing the importance of all kinds of soybeans.

In order to guard against famine in the south, the Song Dynasty popularized millet, wheat, millet and beans in Jiangnan, Jinghu, Lingnan and Fujian. Promote the further development of soybean planting. At the same time, the development of Northeast China is also very rapid.

According to the records of Daikin Guozhi, the jurchen at that time had "used beans as sauce" in her daily life. In the early Qing dynasty, a large number of immigrants moved to the northeast, making the northeast a major soybean producing area, producing and selling soybeans at home and abroad.

In the utilization of soybeans, before the Han Dynasty, soybeans were mainly used as food. From the Han dynasty, the records of making non-staple food with soybeans began to increase. Bean products mainly include douchi, sauce and vinegar.

Biographies of Historical Records of Huo Zhi pointed out that there were already merchants engaged in lobster sauce in Datong at that time, and their wealth was "more than a thousand times", indicating that salted lobster sauce made of soybeans was a common food.

Qi Yao Min Shu also quoted the method of "making soybean bitter wine for thousands of years" in Foodstuffs. Bitter wine is vinegar, which means that at the latest in the 6th century AD, soybeans have been used as raw materials for making vinegar.

Bean sprouts appeared in the Han dynasty, sometimes called "yellow rolls", and can be used as medicine. Later, fresh bean sprouts were used as vegetables. Liu An, King of Huainan in the Western Han Dynasty, also invented tofu.

The record of soybean oil pressing began in the Northern Song Dynasty. Bean cake and bean dregs are by-products of tofu and oil pressing, and they are important fertilizers and feeds. Bean cake has become an important commodity in the early Qing dynasty, and it has spread all over the country by the end of the Qing dynasty, and a considerable number of bean cakes have been exported.

Soybean is not only edible, but also an important green manure crop. In ancient China, soybean nodules were noticed long ago and reflected in hieroglyphics.

Shuo Wen Jie Zi records: "Ga, beans are like beans."

Wang Yun, a philologist in Qing Dynasty, further pointed out in Shuo Wen Jie Zi that the "one" in the middle of the word "ga" represents the ground, the "two" running up and down represents the soybean plant, the "one" represents the stem above, and the "one" represents the root below.

The figure of eight around the root is like a dot, which symbolizes the "potato" with many beans on the fine root, that is, the root nodule. At the same time, it also shows that "there are potatoes in the root of beans, which are strong in good years and weak in bad years", and it is recognized that the number of nodules is related to the abundance of soybeans.

It can be said that as early as 3000 years ago, when the word "Ga" was coined, people had observed that soybean had nodules.

In addition, "Fan Sheng Zhi Book" puts forward that "beans are born with cloth leaves, and beans have cream", knowing that soybeans are rich in nutrition at their seedling stage, but they are "incurable", that is, they should not be over-cultivated. In the Qing Dynasty, Qi Min's four techniques also said that beans "have their own cream and moisten", and in the intertillage, "only beans should be far away, and if they are near, they will hurt their roots and moisten".

These records clearly show that in ancient China, it was known that soybean itself was nutritious and closely related to bean roots.

The understanding of soybean nodule makes soybean rotate, intercrop, mix and interplant with other crops very early. According to the records in Qi Minzheng, it can be seen that at the latest in the 6th century, the common soybean-grain rotation system such as soybean and millet, wheat and millet already existed in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River.

Chen Fang's agricultural book also concluded that planting beans after rice in the south has the function of "fertilizing soil fertility" Since then, soybean rotation with other crops has become more common.

Rotation, intercropping, mixed cropping and interplanting of soybeans with other crops to promote grain with soybeans is a valuable experience in maintaining and improving soil fertility by combining land use and land cultivation in ancient China.