Of course, there are also many rural areas where there are "nine bowls" at wedding banquets. In fact, it is the same as the "eight bowls", only with one more dish. Whether it is "eight" or "nine", there is a pun. Eight and nine have very auspicious meanings. Eight is congratulations on getting rich, nine is a long time. Most of them are fiction. There are more than eight or nine dishes at rural wedding banquets, but these are representative.
Some people say that the "eight bowls" of rural people's wedding banquets were born out of the Manchu-Han banquet, but they are not. They have existed for a long time. At that time, Zhao Zilong rewarded soldiers with four meats and four vegetables, but that wasn't called eight bowls. As for eight bowls, it is precisely because people worship the number eight that they have the rhetoric of eight bowls. According to the survey, these eight bowls were shaped in the Tang Dynasty and accepted by the people.
Eight is very auspicious. In the past, rural people sat at the square table, with eight people and sixteen dishes on the table. These sixteen dishes include eight cold dishes and eight hot dishes, of which eight are eight bowls. Four meats and four vegetables are all taken out of the steamer. Many city people have never seen a rural wedding banquet for guests. Steamed vegetables are the kind of makeshift earthen pot stoves. A steamer is placed on a large pot, and it takes many times to stack all the steamed dishes.
My father used to cook with others. He was called the "chef", which is now the cook. He also has a helper, and they cooperate very well. One is cooking and the other is cooking. My father said that there are more than "eight dishes and eight bowls" for rural people to entertain guests. In the past, rural people generally had little oil and water, and they could also eat good food when entertaining guests. There is wine and meat, and they will not be satisfied if they cook less. So they had to cook a lot of cold dishes, stir-fry and various soups in advance, ate almost eight bowls, and then served steamed bread. When you eat steamed bread, you will have eight bowls of dishes and you will be full.
Eight bowls of meat dishes are not greasy, the materials are not weak, and they taste greasy, which is very suitable for rural people. In my hometown, I remember eight bowls of meat dishes, including big skin (eight pieces), steamed pork, fish pieces, ribs, and vegetarian dishes including steamed lotus root, potatoes, tofu balls, eggplant and so on. I don't know the full name, and the pattern of eight bowls is different. Now that the living conditions in the countryside are good, the saying that there are eight bowls of chicken, two bowls of fish and three bowls of big skin has long since disappeared, but there are eighteen bowls and twenty-eight bowls.