Why do southerners think that northerners live on steamed bread?

Although this southerner is a little impolite, his statement is also true.

1. Generally speaking, the international market price of wheat is lower than that of rice. (So from 1950 s to 1960 s, in order to earn foreign exchange to buy industrial technology and support brother countries, the staple food of southerners has been in a huge deficit, while the staple food of northerners is in a deficit). It was the same at that time. Soldiers in the army, mainly southerners, advocate eating steamed bread in order to save money.

Second, historically, it can be traced back to the Eastern Jin Dynasty. At that time, the gentry of the Eastern Jin Dynasty mainly lived in Poyang Lake valley, and wheat was only one of the staple foods for families with low social status.

Moreover, at that time, the northern part of the Central Plains did not eat wheat, but millet, that is, millet coarse grains. Rice is only used in brewing. For northerners at that time, rice, the staple food of southerners, was very precious.

The gap between the extravagance in the south and the frugality in the north was already great in the Sui Dynasty.

During the Northern Expedition in the Southern Song Dynasty, the army once defeated the nomads and recovered many cities in the Central Plains, but those nomads abandoned a lot of grain and grass (all millet) and ran away.

Soldiers in the Southern Song Dynasty, mainly from Fujian and Zhejiang, starved to death because they could not get used to it.

Third, northerners have the habit of eating coarse grains so far, and now the normal society in the north has begun to accept rice.

But in some rural areas, the elderly still keep the habit of eating coarse grains.

In places like detention centers and prisons, the food conditions in the south are obviously better than those in the north. .