A Diplomat’s Surprise at the Jurchen Feast

In the 12th century, Southern Song diplomat Hong Hao found himself at a lavish banquet hosted by Jurchen nobility—an experience that would become one of history’s most revealing culinary cultural clashes. Expecting a “whole lamb feast” to include delicacies like liver, lungs, and intestines (standard fare in Song cuisine), Hong was stunned when served only boiled mutton and a sheepskin. When questioned, his Jurchen hosts simply gestured at the spread declaring, “This is the whole sheep!”—highlighting their cultural rejection of organ meats that Song diners prized.

This episode, recorded in Hong’s travel accounts, exposes a fundamental divide in foodways between the agricultural Song Chinese and the pastoral Jurchen peoples. The captured diplomat (detained for 15 years after his 1129 mission to the Jin Dynasty) became an accidental ethnographer of dining customs, documenting how culinary preferences reflected broader civilizational differences.

The Song Dynasty’s Offal Revolution

Song-era culinary texts like Dreams of Splendor of the Eastern Capital (东京梦华录) reveal an urban food culture that wasted nothing. Morning markets in Kaifeng offered:

– Sheep stomach (tripe)
– Lungs served with spices
– “Red and white kidneys” (actual kidneys and testicles)
– Blood sausage and liver soup

This nose-to-tail eating extended to pork, with The Old Affairs of Wulin (武林旧事) documenting dishes like:

– “Pig organ pancakes”
– Lung sausage (灌肺)
– Liver-stuffed pastries

Advanced preparation techniques made these challenging ingredients palatable. A 1151 banquet for Emperor Gaozong featured five sophisticated offal dishes:

1. Beef tripe rolls (肚胘签): Honeycomb tripe wrapped in lard netting, deep-fried
2. “Sprouting tripe” (萌芽肚签): Book tripe prepared similarly, named for its bud-like texture
3. “Mandarin duck fried stomach”: Combination of two tripe types stir-fried
4. “Fake scallop”: Pig stomach sculpted to mimic shellfish
5. Shark intestine stir-fry: Utilizing marine offal

Why the Jurchens Rejected Offal

Three key factors explain the Jurchen avoidance:

1. Pastoral Practicality: As nomadic herders, they prioritized portable nutrition—muscle meat for immediate consumption, hides for clothing. Organs spoiled quickly during migrations.

2. Culinary Technology Gap: Without the Song’s advanced:
– Fermentation (for odor control)
– Precise knife skills (for texture refinement)
– Spice trade networks (for flavor masking)

3. Cultural Perception: Organs symbolized death in shamanic traditions, while whole muscle meats represented vitality.

The Knife Skills That Built a Cuisine

Song chefs developed remarkable techniques to transform offal:

– The Invisible Blade: A Shandong chef could slice mutton into hair-thin shreds on a living assistant’s back without breaking skin—a feat described in The Same Topic Records (同话录).

– Tofu Sculpting: Imperial chefs carved frozen bean curd into perfect spheres with internal cavities for stuffing, predating Joy Luck Club’s culinary feats by 800 years.

– Humane Butchery: Scholar Chen Shichong insisted on:
– Isolating animals before slaughter
– Single-stroke kills to minimize suffering
– Firing a chef who practiced live carving on deer

Legacy: From Medieval Kitchens to Modern Tables

The Song-Jurchen divide still echoes today:

– Regional Preferences: Northern Chinese cuisines (influenced by pastoral traditions) use less offal than southern cooking.
– Globalization’s Impact: Modern Chinese hotpot menus now include Jurchen-style meat-only options alongside traditional offal selections.
– Food Waste Debates: The Song’s nose-to-tail philosophy anticipates today’s sustainable dining movements.

As Hong Hao discovered, what a culture chooses to discard or cherish at the dinner table reveals deeper values—making 12th-century organ meats a surprising lens for understanding civilizational identity. The enduring popularity of dishes like Beijing “exploding tripe” (爆肚) and Sichuan “husband-wife lung slices” (夫妻肺片) proves the Song’s offal revolution still shapes palates eight centuries later.