There have always been street vendors in China who have made a living by selling local specialties to the common folk. In the second century BC, the poet and statesman Jia Yi proposed a chain of "take-away" restaurants on the northern border, in order to attract China's chief barbarian scourge, the Mongols, to the side of civilization. Whether his idea was put into practice or not is obscure, but certainly during the Song dynasty ( AD 960-1279), it was possible to get food, tea or wine at almost any hour of the day or night in restaurants or in little stalls set up in the streets by the street vendors.
