The banquet is a way that the ancient Chinese enjoy life. In order to pursue the satisfaction and stimulate of the taste, the banquet is the best choice. There are various banquets in China’s ancient times. Palace banquet, the banquet of local authorities, private banquet, celebration banquet, sacrifices banquet, scholar banquet, military banquet, birthday banquet, greeting guest banquet, farewell banquet, wedding banquet, various festivals banquet…
Talk about China’s ancient feast, I have to talk about Man-Han style Banquet. Man-Han style Banquet is a kind of huge feast consisting of Manchu and Han foods. It originated from Qing Dynasty. It concentrates the quintessence dishes of the Han nationality and Manchu. Generally speaking, the dishes can reach more than 300 kinds and are divided three days to eat up. Man-Han style Banquet is large-scale and noble. It is very complicated to make course. We can say Man-Han style Banquet is the top of China’s ancient banquet.
There is a common saying in China: “It isn’t a banquet without wine”(The Chinese wine is different from the Western wine. Chinese wine is made by the grain and known as Chinese liquor too. The liquor can’t lack absolutely in any kind banquet. The liquor is the most important component of the banquet. Ancient Chinese mostly regard banquet as a kind of enjoying life and pastime. People had created various drinking way. For example urge the guests to drink, polite persuade guests to drink, toast in turn…
Though China’s ancient banquet takes fine food and good liquor as the core, the China’s ancients are not merely satisfied with the enjoyment of the taste. They will carry on some recreation, and increase the happy compositions of the banquet through the recreation, expand pastime range. For this reason, all kinds of recreation appeared during the feast. Such as drinkers’ wager game, song, dance, music, acrobatics, opera…
Drinkers’ wager game
The drinkers’ wager game is a kind of recreation that the Chinese ancients create for drinking. It incorporates intelligence and knowledge and adopts the varied way. The purpose is to improve the mood of the drinkers and regulate the atmosphere of the banquet. This kind of drinkers’ wager game often pushes the atmosphere of the banquet to the climax. The drinkers’ wager game usually has certain rules. Through the rules judgment win or lose, the loser should drink liquor as a forfeit. Drinkers’ wager game includes a lot game ways, for example finger-guessing game, hand flowers, exchange poetry…
Cast pot game
Cast pot game is a kind of game adding to the fun in China’s ancient banquet. It takes liquor pot as the target, takes wooden chopsticks as the arrow, throw and hit the pot mouth from certain distance, the chopsticks enter the body of pot. The ancient Chinese often have a competition with archery. However shooting arrows must have the corresponding location. In order to more conveniently recreation, Chinese ancients invented cast pot game, can imitate the archery and is simple. The game rule is very simple; the winner lets the loser drink.
Sing and dance
The sing and dance is a main project in China’s ancient banquet. But generally speaking, besides banquet scene of the imperial palace, the folk banquet take song disport as the core, dance disport as complement.
Acrobatics
The acrobatics actor performs the acrobatics in the banquet, appreciate for drinker. The content of acrobatics includes climbing pole, ropewalker, magic, swallow the sword, spit fire, step on the edge of the knife, somersault… some past master can use Qigong and float drinking cup back and forth even more, make people very surprised. (Qigong is a kind of Chinese kung fu, is named as breathing exercise too).
In a word, the banquet not only is enjoying table delicacies, but also is an exquisite way of life for Chinese ancients.
