The disappearing folk life customs and the disappearing small traders and craftsmen who walk the streets and alleys are the true portrayal of the fireworks in the history of Changsha, and are also an indispensable page in the memory of Changsha.
Continuing from the previous article", "Changsha Quietly Disappeared Life Customs and Trades (II)":
Men often smoke pipes and show elegance
Pipes are foreign cultures, and Changsha people are commonly known as "smoke bag brain shells". In the 16th century, pipes became popular in Europe and subsequently swept through Europe and the United States. In the Qing Dynasty, foreign embassy personnel and merchants came to China to introduce China and became a popular smoking tool for foreign workers.
The pipe consists of two parts, the mouthpiece and the pot, and the middle joint can be removed and cleaned. The pipe is short and exquisitely crafted, and the texture is exquisite and the shape is peculiar, and there are long and short branches. Common are heather wood pipes, sepiolite pipes, sea willow pipes, vulcanized hard glue pipes.
In the 1950s and 1960s, pipes were also popular among smokers in Changsha, and men often smoked pipes to show elegance and elegance. However, pipes have also caused trouble in life, and people can't cry and laugh.
In the 1950s, thousands of Soviet experts came to Work in China, and there was a nationwide upsurge of learning from Big Brother of the Soviet Union. Girls fell in love with the Braj dress from the Soviet style, while the men fell in love with the floral shirts and wide-brimmed pleated pants worn by Soviet experts. Even the pipes held in the mouths of Soviet experts were sought after by young men.
Listening to the old team, in that era there was a real story of "smoke bag brain shell trouble". It is said that there is a young man surnamed Ma who loves to follow the trend in a chemical factory in Changsha City, often wears a fancy shirt and holds a large pipe in his mouth. He also changed his name to "Muskie" in the Soviet style.
One night, Muskie came to the mass amusement park ballroom with a floral shirt, thin pleated pants, and a pair of shiny leather shoes. As soon as the music sounded, Muskie hurriedly tucked the large pipe into his trouser pocket. Politely invited a girl in a Braj dress to the dance floor and danced to the music. Before he could take a few steps, Muskie saw the girl's face flushed with anger.
But with the cheerful dance music, Muskie still wrapped his arms around the dance partner girl and ignored it. Suddenly, the girl stopped, threw her hands together, and angrily scolded , "Rogue! Then a loud slap landed on Muskie's face. The whole dance hall was stunned, and Muskie was even more angry and trembling, and somehow suffered this strange humiliation. As his body trembled, the big pipe in his trouser pocket also jumped suddenly, gently tapping his thigh. Suddenly, Muskie suddenly realized, and shouted: "It's all the trouble caused by the smoke bag brain shell!" ”
In the mid-1960s, the customs of life in Chinese also shifted with the changing political situation. There are fewer and fewer people in Changsha who are smoking pipes, is it the scourge of the brain shell of the cigarette bag? It is also unknown. Pipes have become a thing of the past as simple smoking utensils, and now pipes have evolved into one of the popular arts and crafts collections.
Some elderly people have a special love for bamboo pole dry tobacco bags
Changsha smokers also use a kind of dry cigarette bag, which is the long cigarette bag brain shell often said by Changsha people. Legend has it that it began in the Ming Dynasty. Dry cigarette bags are generally made of thin bamboo poles, one end contains a copper or aluminum cigarette bag pot with burning tobacco, and the other end is equipped with a cigarette bag mouth made of jade or jadeite, and a cigarette pack for tobacco is used in conjunction with it. The length of the dry cigarette bag is 20-60 cm and other specifications.
The figure of the bamboo pole dry cigarette bag is common in the historical theme of the shadow drama. The bamboo pole dry cigarette bag can also be used as a short weapon to carry with you, which is a sharp weapon for short strikes and self-defense protective bodies for walkers in the old days. Dry tobacco bags were also the favorite of the literati and scholars, and they were often given poetry with this object. For example, In Cao Xueqin's "Dream of the Red Chamber", jia baoyu once smoked a riddle with a dry cigarette bag: "There are two vague things in the heavens and on earth, and the LangJiu Festival is too careful to beware." Luan Yin Crane Letter must be condensed, so as to answer the sigh to the heavens. ”
More people in the north than in the south use bamboo poles and dry tobacco bags, and more people in the countryside than in the city. In the 40s and 50s of the last century, some elderly people in Changsha also had a fondness for bamboo pole dry tobacco bags. With the spread of short and delicate pipes to Changsha and the listing of paper cigarettes, bamboo pipe dry tobacco bags basically disappeared in Changsha. Occasionally, it is also a personal alternative preference.
Women often love hookahs
Hookahs are traditional Chinese smoking utensils, and when they originated, experts say are difficult to verify. However, in the middle of the Qianlong Dynasty, Lu Yao's "Smoke Spectrum" has a record of smoking with hookahs. From the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China to the founding of New China, smoking with hookahs was common in both the south and the north, and it was mostly women.
Hookah is designed according to the principle of "water filtration", smoking with a hookah can filter out some of the impurities in the flue gas, but also emit a "grunting" sound, smoke from the water, smoke taste mellow. After the sound of "grunting", the afterglow is lingering and the smoke is swirling, so it is especially favored by female smokers.
Changsha is no exception, and many of the female elders I know well love hookahs. I was most impressed when I first met my mother-in-law, who was sitting on a bamboo chair with a shiny copper hookah in her left hand and a paper coal in her right hand, but her eyes were quietly looking at me. Although more than 40 years have passed, its scene is still vividly remembered and unforgettable.
The shape of the hookah is strange and interesting, mostly made of brass and white copper, but also made of tin and silver. Hookahs are mainly composed of smoke pipes, straws, water pipes, smoke silos, needles, handles, etc. Smoking with a hookah also requires the skill of blowing paper coals to ignite and spit out soot ash.
With the progress of society, women have stepped out of their homes to go to society, and taking hookahs out has become a burden, and the social custom of smoking hookahs has slowly disappeared. I remember that my mother-in-law smoked Longshan brand cigars (the Six Cents known as the Changsha people jokingly called Liu maosi) and dropped the hookah.
All kinds of entertainers
Before the 1970s, changsha was bustling with a variety of entertainers. Changsha people are commonly known for such entertainers as "monkey tricks" or "dog skin plaster sellers". Under the walls of Tianxin Pavilion, which has a large number of people, the empty ground at the west gate of martyrs' park and other places is where they sell their art on the street.
The seller first draws a circle in the open space. Some knives, guns, sticks and other props are placed in the circle, and then the "bang-bang-bang" gong is sounded and shouted to attract the audience. When the audience gathers outside the circle, the sellers begin to dance hard with knives, guns and sticks, or play tricks with monkeys tied by chains, or perform small magic tricks.
Most of the artists are middle-aged men, or Shaolin, or Wudang descendants. When performing martial arts, there are generally "inner gangs" mixed in the audience, clapping and cheering, and Changsha people call it "with a cage". When the audience gathers a lot, they often perform wonderful dangerous skills, such as wire wrapping around the neck, palm splitting red bricks, hand drilling red bricks, spear tips piercing throats, mouth swallowing knives, etc., some are hard kung fu, some are playing routines, with false chaos, the general audience is difficult to distinguish between true and false.
When the performance is exciting, it suddenly stops, and the artists begin to sell ancestral martial arts cheats or ancestral bruise cream pills. The guys in the audience are competing to buy, attracting the audience who don't know how to buy. Fooled and thought he had picked up a bargain.
At that time, in the northern suburbs workers' club and the forefront of the Simaochong Post and Telecommunications Bureau, there was often a strong man named Tang Forest who claimed to live in Jingwumen to set up a show to sell art. He often performs the small magic of changing the color of tap water, filling a transparent glass with colorless tap water, holding a cup in his left hand, covering the mouth of the cup with water on the right, and the tap water in the glass immediately becomes purple-red after shaking, shakes and turns blue, and then shakes and then returns to colorless tap water, which surprises us when we see it. Later, I learned that this was actually a way to test the hardness of the water, but he deliberately dramatized the testing process.
After the 1970s, street stalls were banned by the government. Many of the entertainers who fell to the streets were old soldiers, rightists or discouraged teachers. In order to survive, they are forced to choose street art in desperation, just to mix bowls of rice and eat. After street selling was banned, most of the artists were incorporated into the "dirt boys" team on the street.
The above-mentioned entertainer Tang Forest, I saw him digging up the soil bare-chested on wuhei road. Also known as "Tufuzi", the urban memory platform mr. 4ki wrote an article entitled "The Experience of an Old Changsha "Tufuzi" on May 21. But before the 1950s, little is known about the active "water squirrel" team in Changsha.
The water man who sells coolies
A "water man" is a person who sells river water and well water for a living. During the Republic of China period, the residents of Changsha mainly drank river water and well water. Most of the water is carried by their own labor and shoulder to shoulder the barrel. Therefore, a group of people who specialized in selling river water and well water for a living were also born, and they were called "water servants". Some of them carry buckets on their shoulders, and some of them use large oval barrels on board trucks to haul and hawk and sell in the streets. Members of the public can buy LTL cash or hire water to pack the whole month and pay monthly.
Most of the water servants come from neighboring rural areas, and some unemployed dock workers have to pick up buckets of water to beg for food. They live scattered along the lower wall bay of the river, and sheltered in tents. Regardless of the heat and cold, it is often barefoot and straw shoes, and carries more than 100 tons of water every day. It is extremely difficult to carry water down the river, and if you are not careful, you will be in danger of slipping and drowning. After all the hard work, life is still unsustainable, it is true:
The coolie yard went ashore,
Don't sell river water to beg for food.
The heat and cold rise five more,
It is difficult to make money by walking the streets and alleys.
The unemployed poor people on the baisha well and the baisha tour road make a living by selling the water of the white sand well. Some were buried in the soil in front of the house with large water tanks, full of sand and water for sale. It is said that half of Changsha's drinking water was basically supplied by four wells in Baishajing.
According to records, during the Republic of China, Changsha had 600 or 700 "water servants", and more than 1,000 people at many times. At the beginning of the founding of New China, water servants were still active in the streets and alleys of Changsha.
In October 1951, the first water plant in Changsha City, Hongshantou, Hedong, was completed, with a daily water supply of 15,000 tons. In Changsha City, the first water supply main pipe from Hongshantou via Shuyuan Road, Huangxing Road and Cai Yi Road to Yingpan Street was laid, and from October 3, six water sales stations were set up in the urban area, such as Yichang Street, Baonan Street, ShaoyangPing, Shuyuanping, Shangbixiang Street and Juguan Ancestral Hall, which began to supply tap water to nearby citizens. The water sales station has 1 guard and 1 person selling chips, and residents go to the nearest water sales station to buy and raise water. Each large quintal is RMB 2 cents, and the small quintal is 1 cent. Later, with the reduction of the price of tap water, the price of water at the water sales station also fell, and 1 cent of water chips can buy four small quintals of water.
In August 1954, the second water plant in Changsha City, Fubu, Hexi Was built, and the water supply pipelines of Wuyi Road, Simaochong, Laodong Road, Zuojiatang and Xiaowumen were laid, and the water supply pipelines in Changsha City have reached 50.25 kilometers. The number of water sales stations set up by the Changsha Water Supply Company in the densely populated urban streets and alleys has also increased to 92, and the penetration rate of tap water supply in the city has reached 61c/o.
Since then, the residents of Changsha have drunk sweet and delicious tap water and completely given up drinking river well water.
In 1954, the Hexi Water Plant (also known as the Second Water Plant) was built, and the picture shows the net water pool of the former Second Water Plant
With the development of urban tap water supply, the way residents supply water for domestic life has been changed, residents can get water nearby, and the water servants have gradually lost the market. Only a small number of households with a shortage of labour still rely on water men to fetch running water. Later, the water pipes of newly built residential buildings were installed to households, and the plumbers who relied on labor also lost their business.
Since then, the water servants who have made a living by selling river water, well water and tap water have been transferred from other industries, and the first choice for the water servants to change their professions is to engage in the handling of scattered debris.
In the mid-1950s, the national economy developed rapidly, the volume of transportation increased, the government used the water servants to have good physical strength, have the advantages of the plate truck, organized the establishment of the board truck transportation cooperation group, responsible for the transportation of scattered goods, to solve the problem of the livelihood of the water servants. Since then, the trade of water servants has completely disappeared in Changsha.
(Series of articles, to be continued)
Reference: Chronicle of Changsha City
*This article is published exclusively by CityMemory, author | Liu Shuwen, Editor | clearly. Partial graph source network.