The recently popular costume drama " Meng Hua Lu " is based on the entrepreneurial story of tea house owner Zhao Pan'er, cook Sun Sanniang and pipa player Song Yinzhang in the capital of Northern Song Dynasty Kaifeng. While telling the ups and downs of running a tea house, the series uses a lot of lens language and subplots to present the rich business environment and life in cities such as Kaifeng, and also introduces many relevant knowledge points in the form of Easter eggs. Xinhuanet Sike curated the series "Things About Song Dynasty Culture". In this issue, Wang Shen, an assistant researcher at the Institute of Ancient History, Institute of Chinese History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was invited to interpret the commercial civilization of the Northern Song Dynasty.
's popular drama "Menghualu" uses a panoramic depiction like "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" to intuitively restore some representative features of the commercial civilization of the Northern Song Dynasty.
Dynamic version of "Along the River During Qingming Festival" part
First, there is sufficient supply of urban food and non-staple food.
The scene where the heroines are making fresh pastries in the kitchen is quite eye-catching. Unique and delicious food is the "magic weapon" for the successful operation of the tea house. Since there was no refrigerator, keeping food fresh was a headache for people in the Song Dynasty. Salting at home is naturally one of the solutions, and the prerequisite is that Kaifeng city has sufficient supplies of grain and non-staple food.
Kaifeng has become increasingly prosperous since the Five Dynasties , and by the Northern Song Dynasty it had developed into a megacity with a population of one million. Most urban residents are not engaged in agricultural production and need to purchase daily necessities. How to solve the food problem is the key to reflecting the city's material supply capacity. For Kaifeng in the Northern Song Dynasty, there were two main sources of supply of grain and non-staple food: First, grain from the southeastern region, which could bring about six million shi of grain to Kaifeng every year, basically meeting the needs of the palace, bureaucracy and garrison. . The second is supply from surrounding areas. A large amount of grain and non-staple food depends on the supply of Kaifeng's suburbs, counties and surrounding prefectures and counties, which together support the huge dietary consumption of capital residents. There are many butcher shops, grain stores and various restaurants and tea shops in Kaifeng city, and there are countless peddlers selling food. Take fish supply as an example. Every morning, fish vendors come into the city from Xinzheng Gate, Xishui Gate, and Wansheng Gate to sell thousands of fish. Even in winter, there are traders who purchase fish from other places and come to sell it.
The most noteworthy thing is the transformation of Kaifeng's suburban agriculture. Due to the relatively sufficient supply of staple food and the high profits from non-staple food, Kaifeng's suburban agriculture experienced a change in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty from mainly growing grain to growing vegetables, fruits, flowers and other cash crops. This obviously conformed to the more advanced needs of urban residents. Consumer demand. The profits from the non-staple food trade are so high that some farmers in the suburbs nickname their fields as the "Sea of Bronze." The supply of grain and non-staple food in regional central cities was relatively sufficient, so the Song Dynasty became an era of rapid urban development.
Second, rich market trade and "nightlife".
In the Kaifeng street scene shown in the play, shops of all sizes and vendors walking along the streets can be seen everywhere, and their business hours even extend into the middle of the night. With the development of commerce in the Song Dynasty, political and military central cities such as Kaifeng rapidly grew into economic centers and trade nodes, and their economic significance was as much as their political and military significance. The rise in economic significance has an important impact on changes in urban form. Taking the capital as an example, Chang'an in the Tang Dynasty was an officially planned and built classical city, and commercial and wholesale activities could only be carried out in a specialized "city". The residential area "Fang" is not only separated from the commercial area "City", but also separated by a Fang wall. The gate of the square is open during the day and closed at night, and there are probably only a few "canteens" in the square. In Kaifeng during the Song Dynasty, the distinction between cities and towns was broken. Commercial shops and private houses were mixed together. Private houses with one floor for business and two floors for residents were also common. As for the business items of the store, it can be said to be all-encompassing and everything you need. Documents from the Song Dynasty such as " Tokyo Menghualu " and "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" intuitively show the business conditions of various industries in Kaifeng City.
This is the night view of Yuhe River in Kaifeng today. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Li An
Stimulated by business activities, more and more merchants have extended their shops to the street, and the wide streets have become narrower and narrower. This is the famous "street invasion" phenomenon in the Song Dynasty.The Song Dynasty once demolished these "illegal buildings" and set up signs in some important areas, but they were gradually "occupied" by businessmen, and in the end they had to compromise by imposing taxes on the shops that invaded the streets. Therefore, the streets shown in the play are probably too spacious. The time limit for urban commercial operations in the Song Dynasty was also broken. A prosperous night market economy has emerged in Kaifeng. Shops of all sizes often stay open until three o'clock before closing, and then reopen at five o'clock. The prosperous " night economy" has lengthened people's activity time and stimulated residents' consumption desires.
Third, prosperous overseas trade.
The first major case involved in the drama is that the Qiantang County Magistrate and other officials used the smuggling trade to make profits, and the stolen money they received every year could reach 200,000 yuan. The Song Dynasty was an era of highly developed maritime civilization and overseas trade. A major feature of overseas trade in the Song Dynasty is that most trade activities were carried out by the private sector. Officials encouraged the public to engage in trade activities. Administrative affairs such as cargo taxation, entry and exit management, and contraband inspection were only handled through municipal shipping agencies. There was no large-scale organization. Official foreign trade behavior. Under such a relatively open policy, many people in coastal areas such as Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong made a living from overseas trade, and international ports such as Mingzhou (now Ningbo), Quanzhou, and Guangzhou gradually formed.
This is a street view of Quanzhou City taken in April 2021 (drone photo). Xinhua News Agency (photo by Zhou Yi)
The merchants and sailors of the Song Dynasty traveled all over East Asia, Southeast Asia and other places, and carried out extensive trade exchanges with merchants from Arabia and Europe in the Southeast Asia region. These trade activities enriched the economic ties between China and foreign countries, promoted the flow of materials and people in the world market, and also enabled Song coins to gain a high circulation status in East Asia, Southeast Asia and other places. The large-scale Song Dynasty merchant ship "Nanhai No. " that sank in the waters near Guangdong Province has produced as many as 180,000 cultural relics, including a large number of exquisite export porcelain, lacquer wood wares, lead and tin wares, which fully demonstrates the volume and volume of export goods in the Song Dynasty. Diversity.
The prosperous overseas trade has, on the one hand, brought a huge amount of additional tax revenue to the national finance. According to statistics from scholars, in the early Southern Song Dynasty, the state's fiscal revenue from overseas trade was about 2 million yuan each year, which was particularly important for improving the financial situation of coastal areas. On the other hand, overseas commodity trade networks were established from the coast to the interior. Incense, jewelry and other products from overseas are not only used for luxury consumption in the palace, but are also widely seen in the private market, and some have even become popular and highly sought-after "Internet celebrity products". Overseas goods are no longer high-end, but "fly into the homes of ordinary people." (Author: Wang Shen, Assistant Researcher, Institute of Ancient History, Institute of Chinese History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
Supervisor: Tang Xinyi
Editor: Zhou Jiamiao Yang Liu
Proofreader: Sun Hui
