豆腐是谁发明的？
Who invented tofu? The legend of Liu An
Name: ________________ Date: ________
想象一下：两千多年前，一座山上烟雾缭绕，一位王爷正和一群人围着火炉忙来忙去。他们不是在做饭，而是在做一种药：吃了就能长生不老的药。
这位王爷叫刘安，是汉朝的淮南王。传说他非常喜欢研究长生不老，在淮南的八公山上请了很多人帮他炼丹。有一次，一锅热豆浆不小心碰到了盐卤，有的说是石膏，结果慢慢变成了很多白白嫩嫩的小块。大家尝了尝，又香又好吃。这就是豆腐。
长生不老的药没有做出来，豆腐却留了下来。这个故事在中国流传了很久。明朝的李时珍在《本草纲目》里写道：做豆腐的方法，是从汉朝的刘安开始的。比他早几百年，宋朝的朱熹在一首诗里也开玩笑说：早知道淮南王的办法，就可以坐在家里赚钱了。
可是，刘安真的发明了豆腐吗？问题是，汉朝留下的书里，几乎找不到“豆腐”这两个字。现在能找到的最早的记载，在一千多年前的一本书《清异录》里。书里说，有个当官的人很清廉，买不起肉，每天只买几块豆腐。当地人就开玩笑，把豆腐叫作“小宰羊”，好像豆腐就是他的羊肉。
1960年，人们在河南的一座汉朝古墓里发现了一幅石头上的画。有的专家认为，画里的人正在做豆腐；也有专家觉得，就算那时候已经有了豆腐，也跟今天的豆腐很不一样。还有人认为，豆腐可能是有人不小心把海盐放进了豆浆里，偶然做出来的。
所以，豆腐到底是谁发明的，现在谁也说不清楚。刘安的故事，也许只是一个好听的传说。不过，如果这个传说是真的，那就有意思了：刘安想让自己永远活下去，没有成功；可是他“不小心”做出来的豆腐，两千年后还天天出现在我们的饭桌上。
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 座 | zuò | constellation; zodiac sign (as in 巨蟹座) |
| 研究 | yánjiū | research; to study; to research |
| 结果 | jiéguǒ | as a result; in the end; result; outcome |
| 香 | xiāng | fragrant; sweet-smelling |
| 首 | shǒu | first (as in 首次) |
| 开玩笑 | kāiwánxiào | to joke; to kid |
| 留下 | liúxià | to leave behind |
| 叫作 | jiàozuò | to be called; to be known as |
| 幅 | fú | width (of cloth); size (as in 幅度) |
| 也许 | yéxǔ | perhaps; maybe; probably |
| 永远 | yóngyuǎn | forever; always; eternally |
| 成功 | chénggōng | success; to succeed; successful |
English (for the teacher)
Picture it: more than two thousand years ago, smoke hangs over a mountain, and a prince and a crowd of helpers are bustling around a furnace. They aren't cooking dinner; they're making a medicine: one that lets you live forever.
The prince was Liu An, Prince of Huainan in the Han dynasty. Legend says he was fascinated by the idea of living forever and invited many people to make elixirs for him on Bagong Mountain in Huainan. One day a pot of hot soy milk accidentally met some brine (some say gypsum), and slowly it turned into lots of soft, white little pieces. Everyone tasted it: fragrant and delicious. That was tofu.
The medicine for eternal life never came out right, but tofu stayed. The story was passed down in China for a long time. In the Ming dynasty, Li Shizhen wrote in his Compendium of Materia Medica that the way of making tofu began with Liu An of the Han. Centuries before him, Zhu Xi of the Song dynasty joked in a poem that if he had known the Prince of Huainan's trick, he could have sat at home and made money.
But did Liu An really invent tofu? The trouble is, the books left from the Han dynasty hardly ever mention the word “tofu”. The earliest record we can find today is in a book from more than a thousand years ago, the Qing Yi Lu. It tells of an official who was so honest he couldn't afford meat and bought only a few pieces of tofu each day. The locals joked about it and called tofu “little mutton”, as if tofu were his mutton.
In 1960, people found a picture carved in stone in a Han dynasty tomb in Henan. Some experts think the people in the picture are making tofu; others feel that even if tofu existed then, it was very different from tofu today. Still others think tofu may have been made by accident, when someone dropped sea salt into soy milk.
So who really invented tofu, nobody can say for sure today. The Liu An story may be nothing more than a good legend. But if it were true, it would be a nice twist: Liu An wanted to live forever and failed, yet the tofu he made “by accident” is still on our dinner tables every day, two thousand years later.