Plant Foods

Millets and other grains serve as everyday staples. An ancient commentary lists the five grains as shu and ji millets, beans, wheat, and rice; rice has its own category. A transmitted account describes Hou Ji teaching people to cultivate the five grains, whose ripening sustained them; it presents an account of livelihoods in remote antiquity. Grain cultivation requires attention to the farming season, without delaying work in the fields. On the age of millet cultivation, a republished article says that charred millet from the Cishan site in Hebei once pushed the record of millet cultivation in the Yellow River region back to eight thousand years before the present. This is the article's account of an archaeological discovery.

The cultivation of fruit, melons, and vegetables also appears in accounts of livelihoods. Mandarin orchards in Shu, Han, and Jiangling, together with the cultivation of ginger and Chinese chives, are presented as examples of earning a living, with attention to the income planting could bring. The contents of Qimin Yaoshu list separate chapters on growing melons, mallow, garlic, and scallions, giving each its place in accounts of cultivation. Consumption and supply also involved seasonality: the presentation of hantao fruit in midsummer is one example recorded by season. A Tang account describes lychees carried by relay riders over several thousand li so that they would reach the capital fresh, before their flavor changed. Goods listed at a Song night market include walnuts, eli pears, and pomegranates, available even amid winter wind and snow. Accounts of Hangzhou markets list qingguo fruit, mandarins, ginger, water caltrops, and vegetables, while a separate list of restaurant offerings mentions vegetables throughout the four seasons. These are specific examples of urban supply.

An account of obtaining planting material overseas presents the arrival of sweet potatoes as hearsay: according to a local story, someone acquired sweet potato vines abroad and, because taking them away was forbidden there, twisted them into a rope used to draw water and carried them across the sea. They were then propagated and transplanted, reaching parts of Fujian and Guangdong. The account gives no year. Once ingredients reached the kitchen, the timing of their use still mattered. A food text from 1792 presents eating taro in the fourth month as an example of a food enjoyed somewhat later in its season, says that radishes become hollow at the center when past their season, and mentions eating winter-pickled vegetables during the hot summer period. These examples include fresh vegetables used in season and pickled vegetables kept for another season; they describe the particular circumstances of a few ingredients.