While I eat some water-boiled fish 水煮鱼 for brunch I'm going to do a thread here about some things I learned while researching Song dynasty food and women chefs. Yes I am making better decisions this time compared to read food descriptions at lunchtime lol. #LiteraryJianghu

Why I am using the #LiteraryJianghu hashtag? It's because this research was inspired by the character Huang Rong in Jin Yong's Condor Heroes. The story is set in the Song dynasty and she is a really talented woman chef, which made me intrigued about food in the Song dynasty...

When I was in a bookstore in Toronto last year I picked up this book called 金庸群侠生活志 (The Lives of the Many Xia in Jin Yong's Works) that basically tries to explain the historical setting of the jianghu world behind his stories.

It has a whole chapter titled "Would Huang Rong's cooking really be considered exceptional in the Song dynasty?" Wow, poor Huang Rong getting judged here

It sites an obscure book/records called 江行杂录 as stating in the Southern Song dynasty in Hangzhou, there was a "trend" of "重女轻男“ (valuing girls as more important than boys). Now I am still skeptical of how true this was in practice but its really interesting considering

if you're Chinese you'll definitely know that the culture has a stereotypical reputation of "重男轻女" (valuing boys more than girls). We have to be careful about generalizations but I think the idea of this view holding some influence at the time complicates this expectation.

(Also the language is super binary here obviously - queerness and gender-bending are really important topics to me and maybe I'll find out more about them in the future).

Here is a quote from the primary source “中都中下之户，不重生男，每生女则爱护如捧璧擎珠，甫长成，则随其姿质教以艺业." Basically, families in the middle and lower social classes preferred daughters over sons because when they grew up they could study various crafts and trades.

I am uncomfortable with this idea of seeing children (of any gender) as means of earning a living but you have to understand that this is one common belief in Chinese culture (that obviously many disagree with) about the obligations of children and also families' need to depend

on children for making a living. I find it interesting to think about the relative freedom women may have been able to gain as a result of this, especially considering I remember reading women could also only own property in the Song dynasty.

The chapter goes on to share stories about many talented women chefs in the Song dynasty who all sound very cool.

First there was a nun, Fan Zheng 梵正, who made her dishes look like landscape paintings. She is the ancient Song dynasty foodstagrammer

https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%A2%B5%E6%AD%A3

She is basically called the "grandma of food art/design" (sorry, I don't know my food vocab here, but like designing the visual appearance of food). One of her titles was "菜上有山水，盘中溢诗歌”。Literal translation: there were landscapes in her dishes and poetry in her plates.

宋陶谷的《清异录》载：“比丘尼梵正，庖制精巧，用炸、脍、脯、腌、酱、瓜、蔬、黄、赤杂色，斗成景物，若坐及二十人，则人装一景，合成辋川图小样。”

The quote describes how she created food that looked paintings through the use of deep frying, sliced meats, jerkey, smoked food, sauces, vegetables, etc. If she had twenty guests, she would give each person a scene, and they would combine to form this painting. So hardcore! Lol

Another renowned female chef was Madame Song 宋五嫂 who lived by the West Lake in Hangzhou and invented 宋嫂鱼羹 Madame Song's fish soup. Her dish became well-known because emperor Song Gaozong tried it one day and loved it.

Photo and recipe on Baidu: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%AE%8B%E5%AB%82%E9%B1%BC%E7%BE%B9

The chapter names some other women who served as chefs for the emperor/high officials because they charged so much that only rich folks could afford it. I remember reading a story where a woman chef asked for too much gold and the official who hired her let her go in a few weeks.

There is even a woman called Madame Wu who left behind a recipe book of Song dynasty dishes, although we don't anything about her life. For folks who can read Classical Chinese and want to look at it or even try cooking something themselves https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=150543&remap=gb

Some Chinese food bloggers even tried to test out the recipes lol... I wonder if any of them matches up well compared to Huang Rong's dishes?

https://www.eatravelife.com/Home/index/details/id/131

The author of the original book concludes Huang Rong's cooking is average considering all of this lol. Ouch!

Perhaps the real takeaway here is if you're writing a Song dynasty story, there is a clear precedent for many women doing various arts/trades and many Huang Rongs running around cooking delicious things! Don't assume that families only like sons as default!

I will end with a youtube clip of Huang Rong cooking for Hong Qigong in one of the wuxia drama adaptations. You can see for yourself that her cooking is still very impressive and imo unbeatable.

End thread.

If you liked this thread please feel free to share and check out more of my #LiteraryJianghu articles and threads: http://yilinwang.com/literaryjianghu/

Also if Chinese women chefs and culinary legends are your thing, I did a thread on the feminist legend of the two sister-in-laws who invented Mapo Tofu https://twitter.com/yilinwriter/status/1313519844759752707