The picture shows the clay zeng, ding, wine pot and oven respectively.

Food holds a special place in people's daily lives. Chinese cuisine has played an irreplaceable role in the development of world cuisine, and eating utensils are a medium that the kernel of Chinese material culture relies on. Cooking and eating utensils and related customs and social functions are concrete embodiments of social, spiritual and institutional culture in a given historical period.
 

Primitive eating utensils went through a process of evolution from the Paleolithic Age to the Neolithic Age. People began to utilize clay mixed with water to shape the form of food vessels and then solidified them using fire to make pottery. They once used tree branches instead of bare hands to pick up cooked food and cooked food in earthern pits—pour moderate water into the pits, add heated stones into the water to make it boil and cook the food thoroughly. But then more and more people began to use pottery to cook food. The technology of clay molding and firing pottery developed during this period constituted a new chapter in human cuisine culture.
 

The invention of pottery sparked a significant change in food preparation, altered dietary structure and made life more convenient. According to archeological excavations, the late Neolithic Age saw the rise of clay ding, a type of pot on a tripod; zeng, a rice steamer, and ovens.

With the advent of the Xia (c. 2070-1600 BC), Shang (1600-1046 BC) and Zhou (1046-256 BC) dynasties, people overcame the limitations of primitive society and began enjoying the fruits of civilization. Increasing social productivity made the value of the utensil-making process more apparent.
 

A further innovation of the functions of pottery vessels, bronze cooking utensils became popular among the nobility. Bronze vessels enabled all food to be cooked together directly over fire. Furthermore, the proliferation of metal vessels gradually expanded the public’s cooking repertoire.
 

Bronze vessels in various shapes not only served functional purposes, like holding food, water and wine, but also acted as ritual decorations and symbols of social class. At the time, cooking implements became increasingly important in social functions, such as ritual systems, burial customs and sacrifices. In the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BC), a series of hierarchical ritual systems took shape.
 

During the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) and Warring States Period (475-221 BC), warfare didn’t impede the overall development of cooking implements. Although there was no great change in materials of cooking implements, the general needs of society were gradually enlarged. Each state had distinct designs. Pottery vessels were still the first choice of lower classes. By contrast, the nobility preferred bronze utensils. The popularity of lacquerware also grew in this period.
 

The conflicts that divided China during the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period ended when the belligerent kingdoms were ultimately united under the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC). Cooking implements of that period lost their complicated social functions. No longer ritual items for sacrifice to spirits and gods, they once more became mostly utilitarian.

Zong Chunli is from the School of Art and Design at Luoyang Normal University.