Entering China
“Fish-flavored shredded pork, black pepper chicken steak, potato roast beef, spicy wing root…”, these names are not the menu of a certain restaurant, but part of the menu of “13 general shallow plate collective food” provided for collective consumption by our army in the performance of training and combat missions. These wide variety of field rations were not developed overnight. Today, let’s talk about the changes in our army’s field rations.
In the era of “millet plus rifles”, there is nothing to eat▼
From an objective point of view, during this period, the level of China’s industrial development was low, the development of agriculture was immature, and the degree of mechanization of the troops was very low or even almost zero.
Militia straddles a bag of dry food diagonally (third from left)
From the beginning of the Red Army’s Long March to climb snowy mountains and cross grasslands, to the arduous 14-year War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and until the decades after the liberation of the country, our army did not form the concept of systematic field rations, especially the field rations during the Red Army’s Long March, which can be summed up in four words: “what you have and what you eat.” There are not only red rice and pumpkin soup that are eaten in normal times, but also Xuanwei ham that is supplied by various troops during the relaxed conditions, and tree roots, turf and even belts that are difficult to swallow in difficult times.
Li Yiyu, who served as ambassador to foreign countries and executive deputy director of the International Liaison Department of the CPC Central Committee after 1949, recalled: “The departure of the army was a strategic shift without a rear, with no granaries in front and no logistical supplies in the back, so they could only eat wherever they went.”
There is an article in the primary school Chinese textbook entitled “The Stubborn Little Red Army”, which describes the story of Comrade Chen Geng, who was then the head of the Red Army cadres and regiments, and during the Long March when food was in short supply, he wanted to help a hungry “little comrade” with a small bag of barley noodles, but was deceived by the white lie he made up with a bulging bag of dry food, and finally the little comrade who deceived Chen Geng died bravely. The barley noodles that appear in the article are not the slender, long, simple and easy-to-eat noodles that everyone is familiar with today.
highland barley
Highland barley, a variety of barley, whose yield per unit area is much lower than that of other food crops, can be grown in the alpine areas of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau at an altitude of more than 4 kilometers in some areas of Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan, Yunnan and Gansu.
Barley noodles, on the other hand, are ground into flour from barley wheat, which can be said to be a very simple or even poor dry food. When eating barley noodles, you need to boil them in water, otherwise you won’t be able to swallow them at all. This kind of barley noodles is usually carried in a long cloth bag with a diameter of about a few centimeters, and is carried cross-body on the shoulder. It’s okay if it doesn’t rain, but when it rains, the barley noodles become small pimples.
These little pimples can’t be boiled at all, so they can only be swallowed. And when all the hard-to-swallow barley noodles are eaten, they have to slaughter the animals used to carry the supplies. Wu Xian’en’s article “On the Dangling Mountain” recorded that the troops slaughtered two horses of cattle before crossing the Dangling Mountain in the area of West Kangdamba, and “distributed the meat to the wounded, and the skin and bones to the staff.” And the bulging thing that propped up the dry food bag of the “stubborn little Red Army” was the blackened oxknee bone with a few tooth marks remaining.When the livestock is finished, they have to take local materials, and they really have something to eat. From the belt around the waist to the weeds growing on the grass. The belt is fine, but it is this weed, because it is impossible to tell which ones are non-toxic and edible, so they can only test the poison by themselves. Soldiers who ate poisonous weeds vomited and diarrhea at least and died of poisoning. Therefore, when the soldiers picked wild grass and vegetables, they always put them in their mouths and chewed them carefully, and only after trying several times did they dare to swallow them.
A handful of fried noodles and a handful of snow▼
In October 1950, the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea broke out. The food problem of hundreds of thousands of soldiers who went abroad to fight made Li Jukui, then director of the logistics department of the Northeast Military Region, worried. As everyone knows, in the early days of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, our Chinese Volunteers were completely unable to control the sea and the air, so logistical supply was a great problem.
He had an idea and remembered that he had used fried noodles to solve his urgent needs during the Anti-Japanese War. Chow mein, on the other hand, is simple to make, has a longer storage time due to less moisture, is easy to carry, and the nutrients in the flour are more comprehensive than other foods that can be chosen. Therefore, General Li Jukui reported to the Volunteer Army Headquarters and proposed that fried noodles be prepared and distributed as rations for the Volunteer Army.
Making fried noodles for the Volunteer Army
There was a craze for making fried noodles for the volunteers in China, and even Premier Zhou personally participated in the activity of frying military rations for the volunteers. By June 1951, 30,000 tons of fried noodles had been shipped from China to the Korean front.
After agreeing to General Li Jukui’s proposal, the Volunteer Army Command decided to make fried noodles with 70% flour plus 30% sorghum flour or corn flour, and finally 0.5% edible salt. In the middle and later stages, the supply of flour was insufficient, and soybean flour and rice flour were added as substitutes for flour. The fried fried noodles are packed into dry food bags and carried, which can basically meet the food needs of about a week at a time.
Our volunteer soldiers, relying on those baked noodles in dry food bags, with cold water and even a handful of snow grabbed indiscriminately, pushed the United Nations forces led by the US army back to the south of the 38th parallel.
Warriors carrying bags of dry food on their shoulders
Individual rations are beginning to take shape▼
From the early stage of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, the units fighting on the front line reported to the headquarters of the Volunteer Army that fried noodles were inconvenient for distribution and consumption. The Volunteer Army Command made improvements to the fried noodles. In the end, it was decided to use fried noodles as raw materials, increase the use of edible salt and add cooking oil during the frying process, and finally use the machine to press it into a lump of dry food.
Compared with bulk fried noodles, this kind of chow mein is easier to carry and distribute, and it is also more convenient to eat than bulk chow mein. This chunky chow mein is the prototype of the compressed biscuits that were all the rage in the seventies and eighties.
In the old movie “Shangganling”, which truly reflects the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Zhang Zhongfa, the company commander of the Volunteer Army, called for eating this lumpy fried noodles and sticking to the tunnel. Due to the long period of time, although the taste of this lumpy fried noodles can no longer be studied, veterans who have eaten them say that this ration can only be said to be a little better than bulk fried noodles.
Volunteers in the Battle of Shangganling
After the start of the Vietnam War in the 60s, our country continued to provide North Vietnamese military and civilian weapons, ammunition and logistical supplies for many years. The General Logistics Department organized special forces to combine the advantages and disadvantages of the lumpy fried noodles distributed in the later stages of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, and developed compressed dry food that was eventually named 701 and 702.
In order to extend the edible life, the compressed dry food is filled with nitrogen gas and sealed with soldering when sealed. Since 701,702 compressed dry food was mainly supplied to North Vietnam, the tank was printed in the Chinese languages of China and Vietnam.
In February 1979, our army had no choice but to start a counterattack and self-defense war against Vietnam. At this time, our army had successfully developed 761 compressed dry rations based on 701 and 702 in 761 and distributed them to combat units. This compressed dry food inherits the advantages of 701 and 702 compressed dry food, such as shelf-stable and easy to carry, and further improves the heat in the compressed dry food to ensure that the combatants can obtain sufficient caloric supply.
701, 702 compressed dry food
However, the taste of compressed dry food is poor, and you need to drink a lot of water when eating, and some people will have diarrhea after eating 761 compressed dry food and drinking a lot of water. Some veterans pronounce the note 761 backwards as “Duladi”.
By the way, in the standard name of our army, there is no such thing as compressed biscuits, but they are uniformly called compressed dry food. However, because the term compressed biscuits is more appropriate, it is more often called compressed biscuits in the locality, and over time, the term compressed biscuits have also appeared in the army.
A gradual expansion of the variety of rations▼
After the end of the counterattack against Vietnam, our army summed up the lessons and lessons of the war, including increasing the variety of rations and paying attention to ensuring other nutritional indicators on the premise of providing sufficient calories. As a result, 94 dehydrated rice, crisp green cucumbers, spicy bean sprouts and canned carrots have been successfully developed, and the encapsulation form of 761 compressed dry food has been improved and the formula has been optimized.
This generation of field rations is characterized by the change from single metal packaging to flexible packaging and composite packaging, and the variety of rations is increasing. However, due to the priority of economic construction in our country at that time, after considering the surrounding geopolitical forms, such field rations were not equipped in large quantities with the troops, but were used as technical reserves.
761 compressed dry food
After the turn of the millennium, economic development fed back the construction of the troops, and at this time, the General Logistics Department proposed to further develop the types of field food, and developed 06 field food with all kinds of self-heating fried rice with quicklime as the heating material as the staple food, and added 09 individual self-heating rations and 13 individual self-heating rations such as cakes, biscuits, beef, and fruits.
09, 13 individual self-heating rations
The collective food guarantee when leaving the station has been gradually transformed from relying mainly on the on-site production of hot food by various cooking devices such as cooking trucks to general shallow plates. This kind of general shallow plate collective food no longer needs to be fried, but the food can be eaten separately after being heated with boiling water or steam.
13 shallow plates of collective food
epilogue▼
After decades of innovation and summing-up, our army has realized the magnificent transformation of field rations from scratch and from simple to excellent. We must admit that in the early and middle stages, the field rations based on bulk fried noodles and compressed biscuits were very difficult to swallow, and the nutrients provided were relatively simple, which could easily lead to night blindness and other problems after eating them for a long time.
However, it was precisely the martyrs who fought bloody battles on these simple and shoddy rations that laid a solid foundation for continuing to develop rations of a rich variety and good taste. Today, several decades later, the troops that have left their garrisons to train in the field now have more and better choices for carrying out combat missions, improving the efficiency and quality of logistical support, and effectively enhancing the combat effectiveness of our army.
