After being choked to death by a copper coin, she became a demon Jin Ji in the other world

She was more pioneering than Zhao Song, more open-minded and tolerant than Liu Han, and far more civilized and elegant than Yuan and Qing.

[Sister Yuelong, can we meet Du Fu this time? I heard that he was as brilliant and carefree as the prosperous Tang Dynasty in his youth, as frustrated and displaced as the mid-Tang Dynasty in his middle age, and as miserable as the late Tang Dynasty in his old age, but he was helpless.]

[If Li Bai is the incarnation of the prosperous Tang Dynasty, then he is the portrayal of the Tang Dynasty. I really want to meet this poet. ]

[Ah, then you probably won't be able to see him this time. The place we are going to is none other than the core of the Tang Empire, Chang'an City. In the fourteenth year of Tianbao, Du Fu is on his way back to his hometown Fengxian County (Pucheng, Shaanxi) to visit his relatives.]

[Alas, what awaited him was the sad news that his young son had starved to death. He even wrote a poem about it, titled "Five Hundred Words of Thoughts on the Way from Beijing to Fengxian County."]

【My old wife lives in another county, and ten people are separated by the wind and snow. Who can ignore me for long? We are hungry and thirsty together. I heard crying when I entered the door. My young son has died of hunger. I would rather leave one person to mourn, and the people in the streets will also cry. I feel ashamed to be a father, and let the child die due to lack of food.】

[After the imperial examination in Chang'an in the sixth year of Tianbao, Du Fu began to suffer from frustration in his middle age. His youngest son died of starvation, which was just the beginning. His literary talent is undoubtedly unrivaled in the history, but his life is also miserable and frustrated.]

[Yue Lan, are you willing to let others see your miserable side and praise you? Praising suffering is never something worthy of praise. It is a helpless act.]

[If I have the chance in the future, I will go and meet Du Fu in his youth. At that time, he was also a talented man who could write "I will climb to the top of the mountain and look down on all the mountains"! ]

Shen Yuelan sighed softly upon hearing this. Gan Yuelong was right. It was indeed not a moral thing to go and watch others suffer. She had indeed not considered this point enough.

Although she could not meet Du Fu this time, Shen Yuelan could meet another talented man of the prosperous Tang Dynasty, whose seven parts turned into moonlight and the remaining three parts turned into sword energy. When he spoke from his embroidered mouth, he became half of the immortal poet of the prosperous Tang Dynasty, Li Bai.

At this moment, Li Bai and his wife Zong still live in Chang'an City. If Shen Yuelan is lucky, she may be able to find this fifty-year-old man among the population of more than one million in Chang'an City.

[Li Bai is still alive. I thought he had drowned in the river before the An-Shi Rebellion because he jumped into the water to catch the moon while drunk.]

[Haha, after all, as you said, Li Bai is synonymous with the prosperous Tang Dynasty, so many people think that Li Bai died in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, but in fact, Li Bai not only lived until the An-Shi Rebellion, but also lived for a long time after the An-Shi Rebellion before his death, just like Du Fu.]

[The hardships that Du Fu experienced in his later years were also experienced by Li Bai after the An-Shi Rebellion. The poems he wrote after the An-Shi Rebellion accounted for about a quarter of all his poems. The famous "Early Departure from Baidicheng" was written during this period.]

[I left Baidi in the morning amidst the colorful clouds, and returned to Jiangling a thousand miles away in one day. The monkeys on both sides of the river kept crying, and the light boat had already passed through thousands of mountains.]

However, despite this, Gan Yuelong did not recommend Shen Yuelan to look for Li Bai. The reason was not as heavy as Du Fu's. It was just that Gan Yuelong simply felt that it would be difficult for Shen Yuelan to find Li Bai within seven days.

[Alas, this is not allowed, and that is not allowed either, so what is the point of us going to the Tang Dynasty?]

[How can it be meaningless? Besides the Sage and the Immortal Poet, there were other poets in the heyday of the Tang Dynasty. Have you heard of the Poet Buddha? He is the Wang Wei who wrote "The lone smoke rises straight in the desert, the setting sun is round in the long river." ]

[Oh, I know him, the one who wrote "Remembering My Brothers in Shandong on the Ninth Day of the Ninth Month". Being a stranger in a foreign land, I miss my family all the more during festivals. I know my brothers are climbing the mountain, but there is one less person wearing dogwood branches.]

[Yes, that's him. He holds a high position in the government, so he has a permanent residence in Chang'an. It will be easy for us to find him. You can go and have a look when the time comes. As for Li Bai, it all depends on whether you two are destined to be together.]

Although the Tang Dynasty produced many great writers, it was not just about poetry and songs; the food during this period was equally tempting.

Shen Yuelan walked in the market town of Chang'an City. There were more than ten kinds of famous foods visible to the naked eye, including Xiao's wontons, Yu's rice dumplings, cold Hu Tu, hot Luo River, sashimi, steamed musk deer, skin cakes, roasted camel hump, orangutan lips, bear white, sugar crab, carp tail, prawns, shrimp sashimi, lobster, roasted whole lamb, steamed whole dog, etc.

Thanks to Zhang Qian and successive generations of pioneers in the Western Regions, there were quite a lot of spices in the Tang Dynasty, including the commonly used peppercorns, pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, and tangerine peel, as well as some more complex seasonings such as fermented black beans, bean paste, onions, ginger, and garlic.

Although the variety of condiments has increased a lot, the eating habits of ordinary people in the Tang Dynasty are still very different from those in later generations. The overall characteristics of food culture are barbarianization, health-preserving, religious and artistic.

The Tang people liked to eat large chunks of meat, drink large bowls of wine, and they liked to eat half-cooked meat that was fatty and fresh. In order to keep the meat fat and fresh, the Tang people often used a more barbaric cooking method, which meant cooking the meat while the animal was still alive.

In addition, the Tang people also preferred to eat dairy products. Bai Juyi's poem says: [Rice is red like flowers, mixed with new cheese sauce]. The cheese sauce here refers to the milk of livestock.

It is said that the reason why the Tang people grew tall, strong, plump and beautiful may be closely related to their eating habits, which even led to the aesthetic view that fat women are beautiful.

Chapter 167: The Debate between Chinese and Barbarians

[From this perspective, the eating habits of the Tang Dynasty seem to be a bit too barbaric? ]

[Well, how should I put it? The Li Tang Dynasty was very special. We all know that after the Five Barbarians invaded China, the Chinese orthodoxy inherited from the Qin and Han dynasties moved from the Guanzhong region to the south of the Yangtze River, which is the so-called migration of the elite to the south.]

[After the demise of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, which was based in the south of the Yangtze River, there was also the Southern Dynasties, which consisted of the Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen dynasties. Corresponding to this were the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Northern Dynasties, which were located in the north.]

[During this period, the northern region was in a state of chaos, with one side taking over the other, and the situation became chaotic until the establishment of the Northern Wei Dynasty.]

[After 265 years of turmoil and integration, the northern Hu people, represented by the Xianbei, were finally all assimilated into the Han nationality and became part of the Han nationality.]

[Whether it was the Li Tang Dynasty or the Yang Sui Dynasty before it, they were essentially the new Han people who originated from the reforms of Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei Dynasty.]

[Thus, although the Tang Dynasty was also a Han dynasty, it still retained a considerable portion of the Hu culture and eating habits. The most notable feature was their preference for dairy products and half-cooked fresh food.]

In addition, after a tour, Shen Yuelan also discovered that in the Tang Dynasty, the main meat was mutton, and because mutton has a strong smell, the price of pepper that can remove the smell was very expensive at the time, just like the pursuit of spices in medieval Europe.

Another interesting phenomenon in the Tang Dynasty was that poultry meat such as chicken, duck, and goose was sometimes not considered meat. Perhaps it was because compared with pork and mutton, poultry meat was less in quantity, so it was not very popular among the Guanlong nobles who had strong grassland habits.

In addition, the Tang Dynasty was influenced by the customs of the Xianbei people who originated in the northeast region, and fishing and hunting were also very popular, with fishing being the most common activity.

There is a very famous dish in Chang'an called [Qiyui], which is actually the sashimi of later generations. Shen Yuelan tried it and felt that although it was fresher and more delicious than the sashimi of later generations, it still had a fishy smell.

The staple food of the Tang Dynasty was also based on the northern noodle habit, more specifically, cakes. There were dozens of recorded cakes in the Tang Dynasty, such as steamed cakes, pancakes, Hu cakes, soup cakes, etc.

As for cooking methods, the three basic methods in the Tang Dynasty were boiling, steaming and baking. Due to limited conditions, stir-frying and frying had not yet appeared. Shen Yuelan felt that if they opened a stir-fry restaurant in the Tang Dynasty, they might become popular.

Shen Yuelan had been eating and drinking in Chang'an City for three or four days, but the more she ate, the more she felt something was not right. The reason was simple: Shen Yuelan felt that the grassland flavor in Chang'an City was too strong.

[Sister Yuelong, if we look at the people and things we see now, wouldn't the Li Tang Dynasty be a completely barbarian dynasty? ]

【No, to judge whether a dynasty is a foreign dynasty, we should not only look at one aspect, but also look at it comprehensively. Indeed, judging from the eating habits alone, the Li Tang Dynasty is more like a dynasty established by the Hu people than the Southern Dynasties.】

[For the Han people in the Southern Dynasties at that time, it was no different from the destruction of their country and their race, but for people in later generations, the Li Tang Dynasty was the Han Dynasty, because after the Northern Dynasties, there were no more Xianbei people, only the Han people.]

[And every Han person in later generations has the blood of Li Tang flowing in their veins. Under such circumstances, who dares to say that Li Tang was not a Han dynasty? To deny Li Tang is to deny oneself.]

[So, if the Mongols and the Manchus had finally completely assimilated into the Han ethnic group like the Xianbei, would there not be so many controversies about them? ]

[Of course, after all, no one would deny their own bloodline. ]

Although the food culture of the Tang Dynasty was seriously influenced by the barbarians, it was not without the influence of the Southern Dynasties culture. During the Tang Dynasty, Li Dan, who called himself the descendant of Laozi, strongly supported Taoism. The prosperity of Taoism greatly promoted the development of medicinal food and medicinal wine.

The medicinal food that Shen Huanyan had eaten in the past few days alone included more than ten kinds, including purple rice porridge, oil rice, orange peel soup, ginseng soup, donkey-hide gelatin soup, mung bean soup, lotus seed porridge and various meat soups.

There are even more medicinal liquors, including pepper and onion wine, seaweed wine, stalactite wine, five-essence wine, acanthopanax wine, rehmannia wine, wolfberry wine, black hemp wine, Xanthium sibiricum wine, chrysanthemum wine and more than a dozen others.

[Oh my, there are so many varieties of medicinal liquor on the market. I'm afraid it will be difficult to sell your medicinal liquor in the Tang Dynasty, Yue Lan.]

[Why? My medicinal wine was very popular in the Song Dynasty, but why is it not selling well in the Tang Dynasty? ]

[Humph, the health culture flourished in the Tang Dynasty, and there were many people who studied medicinal wine and medicinal diet. Although your medicinal wine is good, it can't withstand the suppression of your peers. ]

[Tsk, you profiteer, if you don't want to sell it, then don't sell it. Who cares? ]

[Hehe, ah, by the way, how was the fruit health and beauty experience I took you to yesterday? ]

[Well, it's a bit hard to explain. Putting a few slices of fruit on your face is called beauty treatment? Isn't that too careless? That thing made me smell like apples now. ]

[Humph, what do you know? Since this method has been passed down from the Tang Dynasty to later generations, it means that this method is still effective. Everyone loves beauty, and people in the Tang Dynasty also wanted to take care of their skin. ]

[Yes, yes, but why do we have to experience it? Our skin won’t change even if we just expose it to the sun or roast it over a fire.]

[Although our skin does not need to be taken care of, it is not as outrageous as you said. Where did you learn this habit of talking nonsense? ]

[I learned it from a certain person, Huanyan, Wanchuan, don’t you agree? ]

Huanyan and Wanchuan nodded in cooperation, both looking as if they were eager to create chaos in the world.

【Little bastards! 】

After a quarrel, the four finally decided to find a place to rest for a while.

[Okay, it's still early for lunch, let's go find a tea shop and drink some tea to get rid of the fat in your stomach.]

[Huh? I don’t have that?]

When Shen Yuelan was ordering tea with Gan Yuelong, the owner of the tea shop introduced that the tea art in the Tang Dynasty was actually a competition of tea cooking skills, which the Tang people called "Tea Fighting" or "Tea Battle". Those who were good at brewing tea were called Tea Doctors.

[Speaking of which, Lu Yu, the Tea Saint, seems to be a figure from this period. The world's first tea monograph "The Classic of Tea" was written by him.]

【Then... can we meet him? 】

[You can't see him. He has only been to Chang'an a few times in his life. He is now either in Jingling, Hubei, or on his way to visit the Bashan Gorge. Compared to the unreachable Lu Yu, you might as well savor the fragrant tea in your hand. It's more practical.]

Shen Yuelan had no choice but to listen to Gan Yuelong's explanation of tea art in boredom. Gan Yuelong had been in a good mood before and did not ask the shop owner to make tea, but did it himself, as if he also wanted to teach Shen Yuelan the art of tea.

[In the Tang Dynasty, tea was drunk by boiling and frying. When drinking, the tea cakes were first roasted on fire, then crushed into powder with a tea grinder, and then sieved into fine powder with a sieve, and boiled in boiling water.]

[When boiling, when water starts to boil and tiny water droplets appear on the surface like fish eyes and there is a slight sound, this is called the first boil. At this time, add some salt to the water for seasoning. When the water bubbles on the edge of the pot are like a spring, this is the second boil.]

[At this time, you need to use a ladle to scoop out a ladle of boiling water for later use, stir it with a bamboo clip in the center of the pot, and then pour the tea powder in from the center. After a while, the water in the pot will surge and ripple, like a rushing wave, which is called the third boiling.]

[At this point, pour the water you just scooped out back into the pot, and the tea soup is ready. ]

When Shen Yuelan was drowsy, Gan Yuelong finally made the tea. You know what, Gan Yuelong is really good and the tea he made was really good, but a little hot.

Shen Yuelan drank the whole bowl and savored it carefully. At first she thought it tasted good, but when she looked back on it, she found it had an endless aftertaste. When she wanted to add more tea, Gan Yuelong stopped her. It was not because Gan Yuelong was stingy and didn't want Shen Yuelan to drink more.

It’s just that the first three bowls of this tea taste the best, the last two bowls are worse, and after five bowls, you can’t taste the flavor of the first few bowls and can only drink it as water.

Chapter 168: Micro-Manipulation Master

During the past two days, Gan Yuelong took Shen Yuelan to eat and drink all the way in Chang'an City. Except for Emperor Xuanzong of Tang and Yang Guifei in the imperial city, who they did not go to see for fear of trouble, they saw all the other people they could see, including the "Poet-Buddha" Wang Wei, who was still in the capital, and the famous general Gao Xianzhi of the prosperous Tang Dynasty.

Shen Yuelan found Wang Wei very interesting, not because he was talented, but because Shen Yuelan saw in him the image of ordinary people in later generations, and even saw her own shadow.

To summarize it, it is this sentence: "Life is not only about pastoral and poetry, but also about the immediate reality."

Although Wang Wei was a man of great talent, his calligraphy, painting, music and Zen philosophy were almost as famous as his poetry. He was an all-rounder. However, his contemporary Yin Fan believed that Wang Wei, Wang Changling and Chu Guangxi were the representative figures of the Kaiyuan and Tianbao poetry circles.

After his death, Emperor Daizong of Tang wrote a comment on his collection of poems, affirming that Wang Wei was the greatest literary figure of the world, his poetry was the best of his time, and his reputation was unparalleled. Wang Wei's poetry, like that of some famous Western painters, reached its peak after his death and received official recognition.

[Red beans grow in the southern country, and when spring comes, they will sprout a few branches. I hope you will pick more of them, this is the most loved thing. 】

【Weicheng is covered with light dust from the morning rain, and the guesthouses are green and willow-colored. I advise you to drink a glass of wine and leave Yangguan in the west without any old friends. 】

However, contrary to his talent, Wang Wei's official career during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang was not very good. Therefore, he always wanted to retire but did not dare to do it.

He mentioned in his poem, "My younger sister is growing up, but my brothers are still unmarried. Our family is poor and our salary is meager, and we have not saved much. I have wanted to take off several times, but I hesitated and looked back. 】

What this means is that the family expenses all depend on him alone. Although it is very hard to make a living from the court, he dare not throw away this burden and live in seclusion on his own, because he understands realistically that seclusion also costs money.

However, even though Wang Wei served as an official throughout his life, he was still labeled a "landscape and pastoral poet". Together with his good friend Meng Haoran, he was called "Wang Meng", which is closely related to the fact that most of his poems are about landscapes and pastoral life.

Doesn’t Wang Wei’s life trajectory look familiar to you? It’s very much like those ordinary people in later generations who want to lie down but dare not resign. At least when Shen Yuelan saw Wang Wei, she felt mixed emotions.

If Wang Wei is a high-end version of a worker, then Gao Xianzhi is a bit like the Tang Dynasty version of Yue Fei. This man also has great military achievements and made great contributions to the Tang Dynasty's development in Central Asia.

However, his most famous war was a defeat, the Battle of Talas between the Tang Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate (Arab Empire).

The failure of this battle was not due to Gao Xianzhi's incompetence, but because at a critical moment when the two sides were in a stalemate, the Gelulu troops in the Tang army suddenly rebelled and attacked the Tang army together with the Arabs, causing Gao Xianzhi to be defeated.

At the same time, it also led to the outflow of China's papermaking technology to Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe, creating conditions for the European Renaissance.

[Ah, the Geluolu tribe deserves death! ]

This was a sentence that Shen Yuelan blurted out instinctively when she read the relevant records. Even now, Shen Yuelan still wanted to curse those traitors.

The reason why he is called the Tang Dynasty version of Yue Fei is that Gao Xianzhi was also unjustly killed. During the Anshi Rebellion, he strategically abandoned Shan County and retreated to Tongguan.

However, he offended the villain Bian Lingcheng because of something, and was falsely accused by him of abandoning the land because of cowardice and withholding food supplies from the soldiers. Finally, he was sentenced to death in Tongguan by the order of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang.

It must be said that the reason why the Anshi Rebellion was able to shake the foundation of the Tang Dynasty was that Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, a "micro-manipulation master" who was in no way inferior to Chairman Chiang, was the person who deserved the most credit.

None of Gao Xianzhi, Feng Changqing and Geshu Han was a talented general. They all believed that retreating to Tongguan and avoiding the enemy's attack was the best option in the early stage of suppressing the rebellion. However, they were either executed by Emperor Xuanzong of Tang or forced to send troops and suffered a miserable defeat.

If the strategic deployment of these three people is followed, although the Anshi Rebellion cannot be put down immediately, it should not be difficult to keep Chang'an. It is said that the biggest mistake of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang in his life was that he lived too long. Shen Yuelan thinks this is indeed the case.

So when Gan Yuelong suggested not to visit Emperor Xuanzong and his wife, Shen Yuelan agreed without hesitation. If it was Emperor Xuanzong of Tang from the Kaiyuan period, it might still be worth meeting, but it would be better not to meet the old thing from the Tianbao period.

For Shen Yuelan, it was okay not to see Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, but it would be a bit uncomfortable not to see Li Bai, so after Gan Yuelong and others fell asleep, Shen Yuelan's mind became active again.

I heard that Li Bai lived in poverty in his later years. I guess he couldn't afford to go to a decent restaurant. He probably could only go to common places like wine shops, or buy some loose liquor to drink. If I pretend to be a peddler selling loose liquor, can I catch this immortal poet?

Although this is like looking for a needle in a haystack, it is better than really believing in fate, right?

The early and middle Tang dynasties were undoubtedly the most prosperous eras for the Tang dynasty, and the alcohol policy during this period was also quite relaxed and free.

In fact, except for some temporary prohibitions issued during years of famine and natural disasters, during this period, the government no longer restricted ordinary people from making and drinking wine. Some emperors even took the lead in [abandoning] the prohibition and directly joined the ranks of winemaking.

This means that Shen Yuelan can take the goods and go out to sell them, as long as she does not violate the relevant curfew system. There is still a lot of room for maneuver.

But how should I sell it? If it delays my normal schedule, I don't think Sister Yuelong will agree. Tsk, it's unlikely that I can sell the liquor in bulk.

But if I beg Sister Yuelong to go to the Tang Dynasty wine shop in the name of buying wine, there shouldn't be any problem. Well, then I'll go to the wine shop and try my luck. If I still can't meet him, then I really have no fate with Li Bai.

So, on the penultimate day of the trip, Shen Yuelan finally met the great poet she had always wanted to meet in a tavern that was so shabby that it couldn't be any more shabby.

Although Li Bai was already very old at this moment, he was still in good mental state because he had not experienced the Anshi Rebellion and the Yongwang Case. He ordered a jar of rice wine and a dish of side dishes, and sat alone by the window, drinking leisurely.

Gan Yuelong was obviously not very interested in Li Bai. Shen Yuelan could see that this guy preferred Gao Xianzhi, who was handsome and good at fighting, rather than a weak scholar. She stayed in Gao Xianzhi's mansion much longer than Wang Wei.

Li Bai, who is the same age as Wang Wei, naturally failed to catch Gan Yuelong's eyes. Tsk, what a face-obsessed person.

Gan Yuelong not only did not refute Shen Yuelan's accusation, but also said proudly that she just liked young and beautiful women, wasn't it okay? It wasn't like she didn't have the conditions, so why should she put herself in a difficult position.

Shen Yuelan twitched her lips. This was true, but was it really okay to say it out loud? However, Shen Yuelan was too lazy to argue with her about these details. After tidying up her clothes, Shen Yuelan walked towards the table by the window.

Chapter 169: Inspiration

[Hello, may I ask if this father-in-law is the Qinglian Lay Buddhist, Li Bai? ]