❉Cool down ~ Snow ❉
Looking forward to it, looking forward to it, the first snow in Shanghai is coming, and the first snow in Shanghai is gone... From midnight the day before yesterday to early yesterday morning, There was a brief sleet in Jiading, Chongming, Xujiahui and other places, and when you were not aware of it, the first snow waved its sleeve and did not leave a snowflake. Although the snow is not left, the cold air "stays" down - today's minimum temperature will continue to plummet, the urban area will drop to 1 °C, and the suburbs directly fell below the freezing point, between minus 2 °C and 0 °C. Fortunately, for modern people, in the face of cooling, there is heating in the north, air conditioning in the south, and then it can rely on "self-heating" (trembling), but in ancient times, how did the ancients spend the cold winter? Some people may think that wearing thicker is enough, but cotton was not popularized until the Ming Dynasty, and before that, how did the ancient people spend the winter?
Many people have heard a saying, if we cross back to the Qin Dynasty, what kind of food can we eat? Fish eggplant, potato goulash, scrambled eggs with tomatoes, no matter how bad you can always come to a tortilla. None of this, of course. Whether it is eggplant, potato or tomato, it was only after Zhang Qian passed through the western region, or even more than a thousand years later, that it was transmitted to China.
The cotton we are going to talk about today is also an imported product. It was not until the Song and Yuan dynasties that the technology of cotton cultivation was introduced to Jiangnan and the Central Plains, and was not widely cultivated until the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, if we travel back, let alone the Qin Dynasty, even in the Tang Dynasty, there are no cotton clothes and cotton pants to wear. So before that, what clothes did the ancients rely on to keep warm and survive the long winter? Why did people finally choose cotton to replace the previous cold?
Screenshot of the TV series "The Biography of Zhen Huan", the Qing Dynasty already had cotton robes, but there will still be fur decorations to enhance warmth
The oldest choice: fur coat wool
Animal fur is one of the earliest clothing materials used by humans. Natural animal skins have a strong insulation effect, and the acquisition of raw materials is not difficult. People hunted various animals, and after eating meat, bones were used to make tools, and fur was left to make clothes. Archaeologists have found 3 bone needles in the Xiaogushan Primitive Man Site in Haicheng, Liaoning, China, and 1 bone needle at the famous Zhoukoudian Mountaintop Cave site. It proves that people at that time had begun to use bone needles to sew animal skin clothes. Both sites are dated to more than 18,000 years.
Comparable to this period, a group of ancients—dressed in elaborately sewn leather coats, perhaps driving prey, crossed the Bering Land Bridge during the last cold ice age, crossed the huge, depressed Laurenteide ice sheet, arrived at a whole new continent, and multiplied there—they are the ancestors of today's Native American populations.
Screenshot of the movie "Crazy Hominid"
Animal skins are not only the first natural clothing raw materials used by humans, but also the longest used. During the Shang and Zhou dynasties, it can already be processed according to the characteristics of different animal skins. At that time, Tianzi's big fur used black lambskin, and doctors and nobles wore brocade fox fur, of which white fox fur was the most precious. The fur worn varies from grade to grade. It is recorded in the Book of Poetry, Qin Feng, and Zhongnan: "Gentlemen to the end, brocade fox fur." "In other pre-Qin literature, there are also records of sheep, foxes, tigers, wolves, sables and other furs making fur clothes or clothing. Among them, foxes and sheep are the most important.
Interestingly, fur fur was originally a winter dress for ancient northerners, and later southerners also began to like to wear fur coats. In the Qing Dynasty, Ye Mengzhu's "Reading the World" said that since Shunzhi, the south has also begun to wear fur for the winter, and the price of such clothes as robes has dropped a lot.
The rise of textiles: silk wool
Before the Book of Song was written, there was no word for "cotton" in Chinese characters, only cotton next to "纟", which refers to cotton wool made of silk. Bai Juyi once wrote a poem saying, "Guibu is as white as snow, and Wu mian is as soft as a cloud", which refers to the silk wool produced by Wu Di. In fact, Chinese has been raising silkworm reeling for a long time. Legend has it that the sericulture technique was originally invented by the Yellow Emperor's concubine Luo Zu. Whether there are luozu people in history is still two theories, but the discoveries of archaeologists are enough to support many claims.
Liu Bang in the TV series "The Legend of Chu Han" wore sackcloth clothes in the early days
In 1926, archaeologist Li Ji discovered half a cocoon while excavating the site of Xiyin Village in Yangshao culture. However, the isolated evidence is difficult to stand, coupled with the backward dating technology at that time, the authenticity of this half of the cocoon has been repeatedly questioned. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, 4700 years of silk were found in the Qianshan Yang site in Zhejiang. Later, urn coffins with silk residues were found in the Qingtai site in Xingyang, dating back about 5,000 years, which show that as early as the prehistoric period, Chinese ancestors have begun to use silk to weave rope and weave cloth. In the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the scale of sericulture was even greater, and many remnants of silk and silk fabrics after decay were found in the tombs of Shang Dynasty nobles such as Luoyang and Anyang in Henan. In the "Book of Poetry" created in this period, there are about forty or fifty poems with the contents of "silkworm work", "mulberry" and "silk", which fully shows the important position of silkworm breeding at this time.
The "Sub-carved Silkworm" found at the site of the double locust tree in Zhengzhou is about 5,000 years old
However, the use of silk wool is a luxury after all, and ordinary people can only resort to cheaper and more accessible "hemp". Hemp and kudzu were originally wild plants, and their fibers could be used to weave cloth. The "cloth" in the early literature generally refers to sackcloth. The common people who use linen as the main clothing material are called "cloth clothes". Hemp was not only the raw material for weaving cloth and weaving hemp rope, but also the raw material for filling bedding and clothing for commoners. In the Book of Verses, "You know that you have no clothes, and you are in the same robe as the Son", and the so-called robe here is a long dress filled with hemp. There is also a kind of clothing made of hemp called "brown", usually made of coarse linen or animal hair twisted into thread woven coarse clothing, not only rough and bulky, but also the warmth performance is also very poor, but even so, there are people who can not wear brown. Therefore, there is a sigh: "No clothes and no brown, how to die" ("National Wind, Feng Feng, July").
Screenshot of the TV series "Legend of Chu Han", the thickness of the clothes is also reflected in fur
In addition to silk and hemp, early people also used kapok wool to fill pillows and clothes. Kapok, also known as "red cotton", is a tall deciduous tree that gets its name because the flowers are red. The fruit of kapok, like cotton, is fluffy and silky, so it can be used both for spinning and filling. However, the kapok textile technology is too complicated, the thermal performance is not as good as cotton, and it has also won the title of "kapok cold and false name" (Tang BaiJuyi's "New Aya Jacket into a Sense and Has a Song"), so after the cotton was planted in large quantities, it was quickly replaced.
Alternative Creation: Paper Fur
During the six hundred years of the Tang and Song dynasties, with the increase in population, part of the cultivation of hemp gave way to the more important grain cultivation. As a result, dressing has become a pressing issue. It was during this period that China's papermaking technology developed greatly. On the basis of the abundance of raw materials, there have been major innovations in manufacturing technology and paper types, so some people who are trapped in clothing problems have hit the paper.
During this period, there were cold, durable and deliberately thickened paper coats, called "paper coats". Tang Dynasty paper clothes are made of hemp paper, its fiber strength is high, both anti-aging, but also insect-proof; the Song Dynasty changed to the use of paper, paper fur has become more wear-resistant, not only can resist wind and cold, breathability is good, the cost is also very cheap. Therefore, forced by hunger and cold, literati, soldiers, officials and monks wore "paper furs" to keep warm. In the Song Dynasty, there was a resident surnamed Wang who lived in seclusion in Wangwu Mountain, because he often wore paper fur, he was jokingly called "Mr. Wang Paper Jacket".
However, paper clothes have not been popular for a long time. With the popularity of cotton cultivation, paper clothes slowly withdrew from the stage of history. As a handicraft, the production of paper clothes is still circulating. Museums in Seoul, South Korea, house mid-20th-century paper-clad summer garments woven from paper rope, and priests still wear a "white dress" made of paper during Buddhist ceremonies at Japanese temples.
Appearance of "Cold Ace": Growing cotton and spinning cotton
Regarding the time of the introduction of cotton into China, people often quote the judgment of the Ming Dynasty scholar Cai Qing in the "Four Books and Quotations", holding that cotton was introduced to China at the time of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Guanzhong was imported from the Western Regions, Fujian and Guangdong were imported from overseas, and these regions were also the first to profit from planting cotton ("Between the Song and Yuan Dynasties, it was first rumored that it was planted in China, and Guan, Shaanxi, Fujian, and Guangshou were profitable, and this thing was built out of the country, And Fujian was through the sea, and Guanshan was also in the western regions." The Four Books of Meng, Vol. 15).
In fact, cotton was planted in China much earlier than the Song and Yuan dynasties. "Yugong Yangzhou" once mentioned, "Huaihai only Yangzhou ... Island Yi Hui clothing, weaving shells". The scope of Yangzhou at that time included a vast area south of Yangzhou up to the South China Sea; and Daoyi, referring to the inhabitants of the island (Hainan). Later generations believed that bei, or "jibei" and "gubei", referred to cotton, and Huifu was a cloth made of cotton.
Screenshot of the TV series "Huan Zhu Ge Ge", Xiao Yanzi is wearing a cotton suit
In 1978, the archaeological work of Fujian Province found a ship coffin in a cave site in Wuyi Mountain, Chong'an County, in addition to silk and linen products, there was also a fragment of blue-gray fabric, which was identified by the Shanghai Textile Science Academy as cotton, which was about 3200 years old, and the Central Plains were still in the Shang Dynasty. Coincidentally, in 1980, when the Xinjiang Loulan Archaeological Team excavated the ancient tomb on the outskirts of Loulan City, it found five pieces of cotton textiles, dating from the late Western Han Dynasty to the early Eastern Han Dynasty. It can be seen that at the latest, when the two Han Dynasties arrived, some areas in China began to grow cotton.
So, where did all this cotton come from? Throughout Asia, Africa and Europe, the first regions to grow cotton were in India and Egypt. The varieties of cotton produced in these two places are slightly different, called "Asian cotton" and "African cotton". According to research, the cotton planted in the early days of southern China is likely to have been introduced to China by India during the Western Han Dynasty. The cotton in Xinjiang was the first to be introduced to Central Asia from Egypt, and then into Xinjiang," also known as "small cotton."
For people at that time, cotton was a new type of textile raw material that was "not hemp and cloth, not cocooned and silky", as Wang Zhen recorded in the "Agricultural Book"——
Compared with silkworm farming, (cotton) does not need to be painstakingly harvested and can ensure harvest;
Compared with hemp, it not only saves the effort of weaving, but also has a better cold effect ("Compared with the mulberry silkworm, there is no labor to harvest, there is a necessary effect; the maple and the ramie are exempt from the work of performance, and the benefit of the cold is obtained").
Compared with other textile materials, cotton has a strong superiority.
During the Yuan Dynasty, China's cotton planting industry began to develop, and the Ming Dynasty prospered rapidly. This is related to the policies advocated by the government at that time. In the 26th year of the Yuan Dynasty (1289), there were Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangdong, Jiangxi, and Huguang Kapok Lifting Divisions. This was the beginning of the government's establishment of a cotton authority, and the Kapok Lifting Division at that time was similar to the cotton promotion department now. In the Ming Dynasty, Ming Taizu (1336-1398) clearly ordered that farmers with five to ten mu of farmland must plant half an acre of mulberry, hemp and cotton, and if it exceeds ten mu, the planting area will be doubled, and the planting of cotton will be raised to the level of laws. This policy has played a decisive role in the cultivation and promotion of cotton. Therefore, by the end of the Ming Dynasty, it was quite common to plant cotton in the Yangtze River Basin. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Xu Guangqi wrote the "Complete Book of Agricultural Politics", which has a detailed record of cotton, and at that time cotton cultivation was already prevalent in the Jiangnan region.
During the Qianlong Dynasty (1736-1795) of the Qing Dynasty, Fang Guancheng, the governor of Zhili, carved the "Imperial Inscription Cotton Poem", which still exists in Baoding City. Image source: Network
In the history of China, the raw materials for sewing clothes have developed with time, constantly updated and broadened, from the primitive society with fur to withstand the cold, to the rise of silk and linen textiles, the ingenious paper fur, and finally ushered in the planting of cotton. The advent of every new material does not mean that the old one is immediately withdrawn from the stage. Instead, they are used interchangeably, and they join the team of keeping people warm and cold.
There is such a popular sentence in the "Pipe", "The barn knows etiquette, and the clothing and food are enough to know honor and disgrace." Since ancient times, dressing has been an equally important subject as eating. Only when basic needs are met can people pursue a higher spiritual realm. Each new invention is the product of people's unremitting exploration in daily life and unremitting struggle for survival. This process is not only the embodiment of the wisdom of the ancients, but also to some extent can be regarded as the result of the integration of Eastern and Western products and cultural exchanges. Some of these clothes are simple and primitive, and some are fashionable and luxurious. In the long historical years, they have witnessed the vicissitudes of Chinese social life and aesthetic concepts.
This article is reprinted with permission from National Human History (ID: gjrwls).