It can be known from one or three paragraphs that Gu Guazhou has produced beautiful melons since the Han Dynasty, which are as big as ten-liter containers. Besides watermelons, pumpkins and winter melons, what other melons can produce such big fruits? However, pumpkins were not introduced into China at that time, and there were other varieties of winter melons.

, called winter melon. We can also learn from the fourth article that there are melons in the Western Jin Dynasty that have red flesh and are sweet and light. What is this kind of melon if it is not a watermelon? Is it a dragon fruit with a huge red heart? From the second article, we can see that watermelons may be the earliest in

The Qin Dynasty was introduced to Chang'an. The descriptions in ancient books are so specific, why do they still praise Western scholars? Have they read the Chinese version of "Qi Min Yao Shu"? Whether they know this book is a problem.

By the way, in "Essentials for Qi Min", yellow-flesh sweet melons (Hami melons), papayas, courgettes, soil melons, loofahs, black melons, and winter melons are already available. We don't need to worry about the vegetable basket problem of the ancients.

Next, let’s talk about pumpkins. This is another species involved in the "Columbian Exchange". According to Western perspectives, pumpkins could not have existed in the Old World before the Ming Dynasty. But by the middle of the Ming Dynasty, pumpkins had spread all over China. Isn’t this rapid?

A bit fast?

We asked Mr. Li Shizhen, a contemporary botanist from the Ming Dynasty, to present his research results: Pumpkins were grown in southern China, then transferred to Fujian and Zhejiang, and are now found in Yanjing. Planting was done in February, in sandy and fertile land, and in April

The seedlings grow in the moon and have many vines, one vine can stretch more than ten feet... Its seeds are like winter melon seeds, and its flesh is thick and yellow in color. It cannot be eaten raw, but it can be peeled and pulped. It tastes like yam and is better when cooked with pork.

It can also be fried with honey.

The flesh is thick, the color is yellow, and the seeds are like winter melon seeds. This record has been identified as a modern pumpkin. Li Shizhen lived only fifty years later than Columbus. During these fifty years, pumpkins were spread from America to Europe, and from Europe to Europe.

It spread to South Asia (Nanfan), then to Fujian and Zhejiang, until Yanjing... This spread is fast enough! It would take at least several years for a new species to be accepted by the soil and water of a place in ancient times and to master its habits.

, after several generations of harvesting, it can be truly stable and the seeds can continue to be passed on to the outside world.

Of course, this kind of conclusion based on empirical inference is not a solid one, so we will give it a solid one. Jia Ming, a descendant of Jia Sixie and a health preserver in the Yuan Dynasty, recorded in "Dietary Instructions": Pumpkin is sweet in taste, warm in nature, and has many

Eating it can cause athlete's foot and jaundice. Eating it with mutton can make people feel irritated. Avoid eating it with pork liver, red beans, and buckwheat noodles.

Pumpkins, which are sweet and warm in nature, are regarded as perjury by all "Western" scholars on the grounds that Columbus did not discover the New World. However, based on Li Shizhen's description, since the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, the eating properties of pumpkins have been widely understood, spread throughout the country and used for
Chapter completed!