Ancient Chinese Food Research Paper

Section A: Stable food supply

Now in order to live and be successful, you need to eat. The Ancient Chinese were/are very successful. They are also the longest civilization on Earth. So what was their stable food supply? The Ancient Chinese ate a variety of different foods. They ate rice, millet, fish, sorghum, wheat, pork, vegetables, fruits, and ginger. They ate the plant, fruit, and even the root! The Ancient Chinese used these ingredients to make porridge, tea, soups, etc. Specialization is another key to success. You have to have surpluses of food to specialize or master a trade/art. Now what food surpluses did they use to trade, and what did they trade for? The Ancient Chinese had surplus foods of rice, wheat, sorghum, millet, and barley which they used for trade. These 5 foods are a vital part of Ancient China’s food supply. Since they needed a lot of these, they planted and grew a lot. These led to surpluses. They used these surpluses to trade for toys (for the children), cotton, ivory, wool, gold, silver, etc. These items that they obtained from trade were traded through the Silk Roads.
Now in order to grow the food for the living, you have to have tools to help you out.
The Ancient Chinese had so many tools that they used so I probably can’t fit them on this paper. I’ll list a few. They used compasses, plows, harnesses, wheelbarrows, water wheels, harnesses, and crossbows. When the Ancient Chinese hunted, they probably used a compass and a crossbow. They probably used a compass to lead them back to a spot and a crossbow to shoot at game. When they were farming, they probably used plows, harnesses, and wheelbarrows. The Ancient Chinese probably used plows to turn the soil on their fields. The harnesses might have been used for horses to drag objects. Finally, the wheelbarrow might have been used to transports farming essentials. The Ancient Chinese used many tools to help them
out. You’re probably wondering what they grew and how they grew it. Mostly they grew rice, millet, sorghum, wheat, soybeans, cucumbers, lemons, oranges, peaches, apricots, and ginger. Now, what were their techniques of growing these crops so successfully? They used crop rotation, fertilization with human manure, building levees, and planting in rows. Crop rotation is when you have several fields and each year you leave a few as fallow. This lets the fields “recharge”. For example, you have three fields. One year, field one and two are used to grow crops, while field three is recharging. The next year, you use fields two and three, while field one is recharging, and so on. This stabilizes the fields. Next, they used human manure fertilization. First of all, why didn’t they use animal manure? The Ancient Chinese didn’t have that much livestock. This increased the room for crops. Third, levees are important. The Huang He and the Yantze flooded annually. The water flooded the irrigation ditches which killed the crops. The levees served as dams. Finally, they planted in rows so that it would be convenient for them to water, organize, and weed them. The Ancient Chinese had many different strategies that they used to help them out.