Kept in the historical name; the exact preparation is not reconstructed here.
DONGJING MENG HUA LU / 卷二
州橋夜市
Zhouqiao Night Market
This short entry is unusually dense evidence. Meng Yuanlao records a route, named vendors, live cooking, summer and winter menus, packaging, small prices and a closing time — all in a few lines.
ENTER THE NIGHT ↓01 / HARD ANCHOR
For once, the bridge is not only a literary location.
Zhouqiao has been archaeologically located at the crossing of the Northern Song imperial avenue and the Bian River. The diagram is schematic; the archaeological identification is the important part.
IMPERIAL AVENUE / 御街BIAN RIVER / 汴河州橋
METHOD / ANCHOR, NOT FULL MAP
Galok uses Zhouqiao as a securely identified node. It does not extrapolate this confidence into exact locations for every food stall named in the text.
02 / NIGHT MARKET
Season changes the menu. The street stays awake.
Meng separates summer and winter foods, notes items cooked on demand and repeatedly records named preparations whose exact recipes are now unevenly recoverable.
夏
SUMMERA chilled sweet item in the summer list.
Contemporary evidence explains this as boiled soap-pod kernels soaked in sugar water.
Two papaya preparations appear side by side.
The name itself records cooling ingredients and ice-cold service.
Confectionery and aromatic preparations extend the summer list.
冬
WINTERRabbit appears in the seasonal winter list.
Xuan zhi indicates roasting as the market serves it.
Wild duck is listed without further recipe detail.
The historical name is preserved rather than modernized into a speculative recipe.
Some witnesses give 煎角子; the food-word 夾子 is independently attested.
Modern explanations conflict. Galok leaves the dish unidentified.
Cooking happens at the point of sale, not only in a back kitchen remembered elsewhere.
A recurring box-like container; exact material and form remain uncertain.
A historical market price record. No conversion into modern currency.
The entry explicitly carries the market into the third watch.
梅紅匣
OBJECT / EVIDENCE LIMIT
A package is visible in the text, but its design is not.
The entry twice tells us that foods were stored in “plum-red boxes.” That is enough to treat packaging as part of market practice. It is not enough to reconstruct a carved wooden container, a paper carton or any other precise object form.
The temptation is to turn this passage into a colorful menu. Its stronger value is structural: the same paragraph records when people ate, how food was prepared, how some items were packed and how cheaply certain small portions could be sold.
1. The route begins with named vendors and small prices.
出朱雀門，直至龍津橋。自州橋南去，當街水飯、爊肉、乾脯。王樓前獾兒、野狐肉脯、雞。梅家、鹿家鵝鴨雞兔、肚肺、鱔魚、包子、雞皮、腰腎、雞碎，每個不過十五文。曹家從食。至朱雀門，旋煎羊白腸、鮓脯、爊凍魚頭、薑豉類子、抹臟、紅絲、批切羊頭、辣腳子、薑辣蘿蔔。WORKING TRANSLATION
From Zhuque Gate the market route extended toward Longjin Bridge. South of Zhouqiao, food was sold directly in the street: cooked rice, roasted meat and dried meat. In front of Wanglou were badger, preserved fox meat and chicken. The Mei and Lu shops sold goose, duck, chicken, rabbit, offal, eel, buns, chicken skin, kidneys and chopped pieces; individual portions were said to cost no more than fifteen cash. Cao's sold other prepared foods. Closer to Zhuque Gate were foods fried or prepared on demand, including sheep intestine, preserved meats, fish, seasoned items, sliced sheep head and spiced radish.
GALOK READING
Fifteen cash is useful because it is an actual historical price statement, but the book itself later describes different counting conventions in different markets. The number should remain a Song-period price, not be converted into a fake modern yuan equivalent.
2. Summer food is also a record of cooling, preservation and packaging.
夏月麻腐雞皮、麻飲細粉、素簽、沙糖冰雪冷元子、水晶皂兒、生淹水木瓜、藥木瓜、雞頭穰、沙糖綠豆甘草冰雪涼水、荔枝膏、廣芥瓜兒、鹹菜、杏片、梅子薑、萵苣筍、芥辣瓜兒、細料餶飿兒、香糖果子、間道糖荔枝、越梅、屈刀紫蘇膏、金絲黨梅、香橙元，皆用梅紅匣兒盛貯。WORKING TRANSLATION
In summer the market offered a long list of chilled, sweetened, pickled and prepared foods: mafu chicken skin, fine starch dishes, vegetarian preparations, sugar-and-ice cold dumplings, crystal zao'er, fresh-pickled and medicinal papaya, gorgon-fruit preparations, sweet mung-bean and licorice iced drinks, lychee paste, preserved vegetables, apricot slices, gingered plums, lettuce and bamboo shoots, spiced melon, filled pastries, sweets, preserved lychee and plum products, perilla paste and other confections. These were stored in plum-red boxes.
TEXT DETECTIVE / 水晶皂兒・水晶角兒
Some textual lines preserve 水晶角兒. A near-contemporary explanation in Zhuang Chuo's Jilei bian explicitly describes 水晶皂兒 as soap-pod kernels cooked and soaked in sugar water, giving “皂兒” unusually strong external support.
3. Winter ends at a dish we still cannot identify with confidence.
冬月盤兔、旋炙豬皮肉、野鴨肉、滴酥、水晶鱠、煎夾子、豬臟之類，直至龍津橋須腦子肉止，謂之雜嚼，直至三更。WORKING TRANSLATION
In winter there were dishes including rabbit, pork skin roasted to order, wild duck, dripping cream, crystal kuai, fried jiazi and pig offal. The line of food continued toward Longjin Bridge, ending with what the text calls xunaozi rou. This kind of miscellaneous eating was called zajiao, and it continued until the third watch.
UNCERTAIN DISH / 須腦子肉
Modern explanations range from a sliced or dipped meat dish to pig-head or sheep-head meat. No interpretation is secure enough to replace the original name on this page.
The excavation strengthens the district. It does not identify a stall.
Meng's night market
Food, prices, containers and hours are attached to the Zhouqiao–Longjin route in the literary record.
Late Northern Song Bian River deposits
Excavations east of Zhouqiao found late Northern Song riverbed and embankment remains plus large quantities of ceramics from northern and southern kilns.
Trade and consumption, not “this exact bowl”
The finds support intense circulation and consumption in the district. They cannot assign a particular ceramic sherd to Cao's food stall or to one named dish.
SOURCE / 河南省文物考古研究院等, “河南开封州桥及附近汴河遗址东区北宋遗存发掘简报,” 华夏考古, 25 Apr 2026. Peking University repository ↗
州橋夜市 / the night market reaches the third watch.
潘樓下每日自五更市合 / the next market begins at the fifth watch.