#rot3k

The

The peach oath thing

Aura

Ref :

Zhuge Liang: My lord, don't you have lofty aspirations?

In Chapter 91 of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, famed strategist Zhuge Liang attempts to cross the deadly Lu (modern day Jinsha) River while returning from a pacification of the Nanman people of Yunnan and Guizhou.

Suddenly, a violent storm erupts, and Zhuge Liang is told that local traditions dictated that forty-one human heads must be severed and sacrificed to appease the malevolent river spirits (土俗要用人頭祭祀，鬼神方退).

Refusing to shed more blood after the immense amount of bloodshed that had already happened, Zhuge Liang is known to have said,「吾受先帝託孤之重，安敢怠忽？今平定南方，豈可復妄殺？……吾今定南方，豈可妄殺？」

(Having received the heavy burden of entrusting the late Emperor's heir to me, how dare I be negligent? Now that the South is pacified, how can I rashly kill again? ... How can I wantonly slaughter?)

With this done, he ordered “cattle and horses to be slaughtered, dough to be kneaded into the shapes of human heads, stuffed with beef and mutton, and called them "Barbarian Heads" (蠻頭, mántóu)—which is today's "steamed bun" (饅頭, mántóu).”

(遂命殺牛宰馬，和麵為人頭類，內安牛羊等肉，名曰「蠻頭」——今「饅頭」是也。)

In TGCF, Xie Lian is depicted several times as eating mantou (“mantou god”) - which, as an inexpensive and filling “food of the people” does well to symbolise his unpretentious and simple mannerisms and way of being.

As you can tell via the connection to Kongming, they also represent mercy and the desire to save lives - another fairly important part of Xie Lian’s character (understatement)

Fun fact - years after Liang supposedly invented them, Western Jin dynasty scholar Shu Xi wrote Ode to Boiled Cakes (Tangbing Fu). He explicitly mentions mantou (written then as 曼頭).

"Zhuge Liang, surname Zhuge, name Liang"