The Nguyen Dynasty king only ate rice with Kim Giao chopsticks, the reason was surprising!

Since ancient times, kings have had strict procedures to ensure safety when eating and drinking delicious seafood dishes. In particular, to prevent poisoning, the Nguyen Dynasty kings used Kim Giao chopsticks to eat.

In Vietnam, according to historical records, the Nguyen Dynasty kings had detailed regulations on preparing and serving delicious, nutritious and absolutely safe food.

Specifically, the Nguyen Dynasty established Ly Thien and Thuong Thien departments to serve meals for the king. Before that, during the reign of the Nguyen Lords, the team in charge of cooking for the Lord was called the Noi Tru or Tu Thien team. In 1820, King Minh Mang established the Thuong Thien team directly under the ban and built the Thuong Thien station near Thai Y Vien.

Thuong Thien team has about 50 people, all recruited from Phuoc Yen village. Phuoc Yen was originally the village where Lord Sai Nguyen Phuc Nguyen once held the government. According to Dai Nam Hoi's rules, the mission of the Thuong Thien team is "Every day, every delicious jade food is prepared according to the cooking method... Every precious rice is reserved for When the king uses it, he orders the Ministry of Households to transfer it, 3 times a month, and the soldiers must carefully check to see if it is enough.

Just like the water used every day entering the palace, it is supplied by a specialized monk who takes care of that, and the soldiers must carefully review and filter it properly. As for fish-hunting households, they look for fresh fish every day; Households that collect firewood provide firewood every day and are given registration numbers to ensure enough offerings are available. When cooking, the food must be absolutely pure... Even the Thuong Thien department has enough rules and regulations, employees who do not have a duty are not allowed in or out..."

To ensure food safety for the gods, Thuong Thien team staff must suffer severe punishments when even small incidents occur.

In addition, cleanliness and sophistication are also shown in the fact that even the water used to cook and make tea for the king must be taken from the place of origin. According to researcher Nguyen Dac Xuan, the water used to cook rice or make tea for the king must be taken from Ham Long well at the foot of the hill of Bao Quoc pagoda. Sometimes we have to row a boat to Phu Loc to get Cam Lo water from Tuy Van pagoda or go up to get water from the upper reaches of the Perfume River.

To prevent poisoning in food, kings used Kim Giao chopsticks to eat. Kings and lords of the Nguyen Dynasty used chopsticks sharpened from the wood of the Kim Giao tree taken from Bach Ma mountain. The characteristics of Kim Giao chopsticks are light, ivory white and when exposed to poison, the chopsticks will turn dark black.

Not only Vietnamese kings, ancient Chinese emperors also had strict regulations in preparing clean food for processing and safety in enjoying food.

Dishes offered to ancient Chinese kings had to go through strict inspection and cooking processes.

According to history books, food provided to the royal palace must have clear origins and be carefully inspected. Normally, the foods used to prepare dishes offered to the king come from regional specialties. The royal palace produces its own foods and some ingredients are purchased from other places.

To avoid the Chinese emperor being poisoned in his dishes, a eunuch would be responsible for testing the dishes offered to the king to see if they were poisonous or not. This action is called "Usually Good".

In addition, the Chinese royal palace used silverware such as bowls and chopsticks to test whether there was poison inside or not. The reason is because when exposed to toxins, silver will change from white to black.

Each dish offered to the king has a small sign next to it clearly stating the name of the chef who made it. This helps kings easily know who cooks which dish and if something goes wrong, they can quickly find the culprit.

In particular, Qing Dynasty emperors only ate 2 meals a day, the first meal was around 6 - 8 am, the second meal was around 12 - 2 pm. Even if you like a certain dish, you must not show it and must adhere to the principle of "no more than three spoons per dish" to avoid being poisoned.

The king's eating utensils were also mainly made from gold, silver and fine ceramics. Particularly, King Qianlong's utensils were mostly made of silver. Ancient people often poisoned themselves with arsenic. If food contained this, silver would turn black. Therefore, when offering food to the king, it must always be accompanied by a bar of silver. In the presence of the king, the eunuch will use a silver bar to test for poison in food. After the king finishes his treatment, a little bit of each dish will be kept in the Imperial Room so that if something happens, it can be easily checked and compared.

Dr. Tran Hong Con, Department of Chemistry, Hanoi University of Natural Sciences, said: since ancient times, the scientific community has known the properties of silver as a metal with very good antibacterial effects.

That's why silver is used to make bowls, plates, forks, spoons, and chopsticks for kings. When encountering toxic chemicals such as sulfide, sulfur... silver changes color immediately and helps people detect poison. Thus, the obvious effect of silver is to help identify some types of toxins in food.

The reason why the discoloration occurs is because of the chemical catalytic process that only silver metal can react quickly. Silver becoming dark can be due to environmental factors including chemicals such as toilet cleaners, house cleaners, human sweat... When exposed to toxic chemicals such as sulfide, sulfur... silver changes color. immediately and help people detect poison

Therefore, thanks to this principle, silver jewelry such as needles or brooches are very commonly used to protect the health of kings as well as mandarins and royal families. Silver jewelry is also widely used to protect the body.

Nowadays, because arsenic production has become modern, sulfur impurities are very few, making silver needles very difficult to detect. Besides, there are substances that are inherently non-toxic but contain a lot of sulfur. sulfur or conversely, very toxic substances such as poisonous grass, nitric acid, rat bait,... but do not contain sulfur. Therefore, using silver to test for toxicity is only relative.

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