The winter solstice is cold, and the snow dances. This year's winter was a cold winter, a little colder than ever. When we hid in the "paradise" such as heating rooms and air-conditioned rooms, we really didn't know the cold, no matter the severe winter. But how did the ancients survive one cold winter after another? Will they suffer from the arrival of winter? Although the ancients did not have heating and air conditioning, they also had a different kind of cold magic weapon. Next, let's take a look at how the ancients spent the winter!
The ancients warmed up in winter and first started with wearing. "There will be fox fur in the upper stream, sheep fur in the middle stream, and kapok in the lower stream, and there will be non-robes."
Warm clothing such as mink fur is also a symbol of status. In the Qing Dynasty, there was a kind of Xuan fox robe and hat, white and pure, which was not available to non-cabinet ministers, and sometimes Shangshu would be blessed. In the homes of ordinary rich and noble people, all kinds of mink furs are almost a must-have clothing in winter. In the fiftieth episode of "Dream of the Red Chamber", when it was snowing heavily, Lin Daiyu "covered a big red feather veil white fox skin crane", and Shi Xiangyun was extremely exaggerated, wearing the "mink head face, the big hairy black gray rat inside and outside the fever coat" given to her by Jia Mu, and wearing the "digging cloud goose yellow piece gold big red orangutan felt", and also surrounded by "Zhaojun set big sable wind collar". Shi Xiangyun was still not enough, and he was also wearing a silver rat jacket and fox gizzard pleats. It can be described as extremely luxurious, and of course it is also extremely warm. With such equipment, why worry about the cold winter?
"Dream of the Red Chamber" in film and television dramas
The "Qing Barnyard Banknotes" also records such a story, saying that Gong Zizhen went to Yangzhou one day to see Wei Yuan, and the white fox fur he wore was pure white on the upper body and mud on the lower body. Wei Yuan was very strange and asked why. Gong Zizhen explained that when he crossed the river from Jinling, it was cold and snowy, and a man named Tang Yusheng gave him this mink, Tang Yusheng was tall, Gong Zizhen was short, and the mink was the same as the cloak on Gong Zizhen's body, so he walked with mud.
In the Qing Dynasty, the three eastern provinces had many pine forests and pine nuts, which were deeply loved by mink and often gathered under trees to eat them. Hunters often do not hesitate to travel long distances, venture to hunt mink, and then gather them into furs, sell to high-ranking officials and nobles, mink fur with moist fur, rich aroma as the top product, often worth thousands of gold.
Although mink and other things are not related to ordinary people, the people also have their own set of cold equipment. The first is the cotton jacket, before the cotton was introduced to China, it was only called "jacket", which was generally composed of hemp wool and other things, and after the cotton was introduced to China, cotton became the main raw material for the jacket.
Secondly, the warm hat, hood, ear cover, gloves these daily cold wear, these cold equipment rich people will also use, but the material is different, ordinary people mostly use cotton, velvet, rich people use fur. In addition, the hand cage is also a magic weapon to resist the cold, it appears because the fingers cannot stretch freely after wearing gloves, and most of them are used by women.
Different industries and regions also have their own unique cold equipment. During the winter and night patrols of the capital in the Qing Dynasty, a kind of sheepskin coat would be uniformly issued from above, which was similar to the current leather coat, but the processing was very rough. The ear tips mentioned above were originally because the winds of Yan and Zhao were as cold as knives and their ears were cracked, so someone made ear tips for sale. On the contrary, in Guangzhou, the climate is relatively mild, only the cotton jacket is needed in winter, but from time to time there are still extremely cold days, and the rich and noble families in Guangzhou will sew some wool and mink fur along the collar and so on, depending on the cold conditions.
After talking about the basic equipment to withstand the cold, let's talk about what the ancients relied on for heating. I believe that in the childhood memories of many people, before going to bed in winter, our parents will put a kettle filled with hot water into the bed, this method has been used by the ancients for a long time, and they have also given the kettle a very kind name - Tang Pozi.
Tang Pozi
"Soup" in ancient times is the meaning of hot water, the ancients hugged it to sleep, the relationship is similar to husband and wife, so the name is "mother-in-law", which is similar to the name of Lady Bamboo. Tang Pozi had already appeared in the Song Dynasty, and was quite popular with scholars, and Huang Tingjian of the Song Dynasty joked that "Xiao Ji warms her feet and lies down, or she can raise her heart." Buy a foot woman for thousands of dollars, sleep night and night in the morning", the foot woman here is the soup mother. Qu You of the Ming Dynasty also left a poem for Tang Pozi: "Cloth paper tent wind and snow night, the first letter gentle and gentle do not have a hometown." ”
We can find that the ancient poets always contained an intimate attitude when they sang to Tang Pozi, after all, they embraced them in their arms day and night in winter, could they not be intimate?
Without the warm quilt, the ancients of course also had heating tools, that is, all kinds of stoves, such as hand stoves, foot stoves and floor stoves. The "Chronicle of the Qing Customs" says: "When the hands and feet are cold in the cold, put charcoal in the foot stove, cover it with ash, place it in front of chairs and beds, and put your feet on it to keep warm." The same book also contains imitations of the Japanese "quilt stove" style, and built floor furnaces and stone stoves in the rooms.
Hand stove
The fuel in the stove is generally charcoal, and it is very popular for rich or poor families. In the ninth episode of "Dream of the Red Chamber", the raider confessed before Jia Baoyu went out that "the charcoal of the hand stove and foot stove has also been handed over", in the eighth episode, Lin Daiyu's servant also sent a hand stove for Lin Daiyu, and in the fiftieth sentence, Li Feng said that "he has sent people to cage the ground kang", and the ground kang here should be the earth stove. It can be seen that stoves can be seen everywhere in winter.
It is estimated that the ancients were too boring to enjoy the stove alone, and in the Song Dynasty, there would be an activity called "warm stove meeting". The "Tokyo Dream Record" says: "There is a yoshi into the heater charcoal, and the folk all use sake as a stove to warm the hearth." The Southern Song Dynasty Jin Yingzhi's "Drunken Man's Talk" Yun: "The old custom of October Shuo opens the furnace to the fire, and the wine and hot meat are in the stove, sitting around and drinking, which is called the stove." So far, the people's families have sent relatives to the party charcoal, wine and meat, and cotton, and newly married daughters and sent stoves. ”
The ancients not only got together to roast the stove, but also often prepared wine and meat, while grilling while eating, such activities are generally based on family, neighbors, friends as a unit, everyone chatted with each other about homely fun, the cold wind outside the house whistled, the snow flew, the house was full of heat, the wine and meat were fragrant, think about it warmly.
Hand stove in film and television dramas
Of course, in addition to the conventional heating methods, the brain holes of the ancients will sometimes open up, and they will come up with some more bizarre heating methods, such as "prostitutes" and "warm arrays", in short, to find some women around you and rely on their body temperature for warmth. This method is not only bizarre, but also less humane, so it is not very popular.
What is even more amazing is that in ancient times there were also greenhouses. During the Western Han Dynasty, there was a "greenhouse hall", this palace has a fireplace, the wall has a pipe composed of barrel tiles, called the "fire wall", the wall is coated with mashed peppers as a thermal insulation layer, and then laid with western carpets, decorated with heavy screens and curtains, when the hot gas is transmitted along the pipe to the wall, the heat is generated, the temperature of the entire palace will rise.
In the Ming Dynasty, in order to ensure the heating of the Forbidden City in winter, the craftsmen specially designed a fire path when creating the Forbidden City, which was hidden under the ground and inside the walls, and led to many rooms in all directions. These fires begin to heat in October every year, but the amount of charcoal required for heating is very large, and these charcoals cannot be inferior, they must be high-grade charcoal, and the cost of this winter can be imagined.
Schematic diagram of an ancient wall of fire
In the game with winter, how could the ancients give up eating this important aspect?
Everyone knows that the legend of dumplings was invented by Li Shizhen in order to treat patients with frostbite on the ears, whether this legend is true or not, dumplings are indeed the cold-repellent food in the north of winter, a bowl of steaming dumplings from the oven to the lower belly, the whole person will become full of strength. Although dumplings are not popular in the south, southerners also eat foods such as tangyuan during the winter solstice.
In addition to the cold-repelling foods such as dumplings and wontons, there is also a food loved by northerners - lamb. The ancients believed that eating mutton in winter could drive away the cold and keep warm, both north and south, and the north was heavy. There are also many ways for northerners to eat mutton, roast lamb, red simmered lamb, stir-fried lamb shreds, lamb hot pot, haggis soup, simmered lamb trotters and so on. It is recorded in the "Dumen Miscellaneous Songs": "Feed the foreign fat and tender number jingzhong, and the sauce is boiled red with clear soup color." The sun burns and burns, and the throat is greasy. ”
Lamb hot pot in The Age of Awakening
In the Qing Dynasty, Yangzhou Xiaodongmen also had a cooked mutton shop, and business was booming in winter. Diners tend to be "chickens chirping, furry felt hats, shrugging shoulders, snow coming frost". Most of the people who come here to ask for a bowl of mutton are ordinary people, who come with a cold breath, a bowl of lamb under the belly, steaming, full of strength, and when they go, they are no longer so afraid of the cold outside.
Mingren Zhang Dai's "Huxin Pavilion to See Snow" once left a deep impression on me, Zhang Dai went to the West Lake to see the snow, and saw it in the Huxin Pavilion: "There are two people sitting on the felt, and a boy's shochu stove is boiling", the people who came to see Zhang Dai were very happy, and pulled Zhang Dai hard to drink three glasses of wine.
The cold winter snow is a perfect time to drink. Wine can not only dispel sorrow, but also drive away cold. In many cases, we can see in the texts of the ancients that the snow and fine wine go out at the same time, and in the eighth episode of "Dream of the Red Chamber", Jia Baoyu came to Aunt Xue's residence, and it was the cold winter snow, and Jia Baoyu asked for wine. In the Tang Dynasty, Bai Juyi had already put a red line on the cold winter and fine wine, the song "Green Ant New Wine, Red Clay Small Stove." Late to the day want snow, can drink a cup of nothing" singing for a thousand years without rest.
The ancients learned the means of cold and warmth in practice and experience, and many aspects such as eating, wearing, using, and traveling all reflect the wisdom of the ancients in striving to improve their own living conditions. However, although there have been many means of heating in ancient times, many of them are exclusive to the rich, and a large number of people on the streets will still freeze to death every year. The "Miscellaneous Records of Xijing" says: "In the second year of the Yuan Feng, the great cold, the snow is five feet deep, the wild birds and beasts are dead, the cattle and horses are curled up like hedgehogs, and the three auxiliary people are frozen to death. "These people died of freezing not because of a lack of means, but because of economic poverty. The difference between today and ancient times is not only in the progress of science and technology, but also in the fact that everyone can find their own warmth in the cold winter, whether poor or rich, they will not freeze on the streets.
Xu Ke: "Qing Barnyard Banknotes", Zhonghua Bookstore, 1984.
Cao Xueqin: Dream of the Red Chamber, People's Publishing House, 2006.
Nakagawa Tadahito: Chronicles of the Qing Dynasty, Zhonghua Bookstore, 2006.
Xiao Fang: History of Chinese Folklore: Volumes of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, People's Publishing House, 2008.
(Author: Haoran Wenshi Jingsu)
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