When everyone is stuck in the bed late at night and the mobile phone is hard, have you ever thought that the ancients who did not have electric lights, televisions and mobile phones would do what they would do when it was dark? Do they have a colorful nightlife?
Let's start with the curfew.
The ancient ruling class tried to control the lives of civilians by curfews to avoid criminal activities to the greatest extent possible. The so-called curfew is that the city gates must be closed at the specified time, and people cannot walk freely on the street, otherwise they will be severely punished. For example, in the Tang Dynasty's Chang'an City at dusk, the Chengtian Gate beat four hundred drums, the city gate was closed, and pedestrians were forbidden to travel at night. Only on the day of the Yuan Festival, the curfew is lifted in the capital, there will be fireworks displays in the city, and the hotel will basically not close. By the late Tang Dynasty, the curfew system was no longer so strict, the night market was very prosperous, and in the Northern Song Dynasty, Kaifeng became a city that never sleeps, and many large hotels were open all night. However, in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, the curfew system began to be clearly and strictly enforced. That is to say, if you live in Lin'an City during the Northern Song Dynasty, you can play all night on the street. However, the night market prosperity of the night market has to pay a price, only during the Northern Song Dynasty, there were 44 fires in Kaifeng Province, and the government once restricted citizens from lighting lamps.
What if you want to come out and have a night out? For the children of rich and powerful families, the problem of curfew is easier to solve.
For example, this set of "Han Xizai's Night Feast" reflects a very lively private night party, and we can not only find a handsome person, a dancer, a singer, and even a monk in the painting. Han Hee-jae refused to be prime minister in order to avoid disasters and protect himself, pretending to be the night and night.
The curfew in the city is strict, but there is usually no one outside the city to patrol the night, so there are many nightlife gathering places in the outer cities of many big cities. For example, the Qinhuai River in Jinling City, the Eight Hutongs in Beijing... However, if you want to play here for a night, it is impossible to have a few money in your pocket.
Those rich and powerful masters, who have little energy and are embarrassed to wander in the flower streets and willow alleys, so they simply raise a group of singers and prostitutes at home, and let them perform a performance and comment when they are bored at night. If the kabuki at home are tired of watching, the Song Dynasty also had a special door-to-door performance to host the banquet of the organization "four divisions and six bureaus", as long as you have money, not only can you invite singers, dancers, cooks, waiters, but also a group of "lighting engineers" to support the façade for you, these people are in charge of the work of lighting the lights and cutting candles on the platform, the average small rich family can not afford so many lights, nor can it afford to raise so many people. In short, it is a sentence "We can't imagine the happiness of rich people".
After talking about the life of the rich, let's talk about the nightlife of the average civilian.
For civilians, especially those living in the suburbs or rural areas, there is really no entertainment that nightlife can do except tell jokes and tell ghost stories. The main reason is that ancient lighting is too expensive, and ordinary people can't afford to light the lights at night. When we hear the stories of "sac fluorescent snow" and "chiseled wall stealing light", we always feel that the protagonist's family is very poor, at least below the poverty line, in fact, ordinary civilians can not light the lamp. Even in the late Qing Dynasty, ordinary civilians had to burn a pine branch or a piece of shredder at night to illuminate it. "He Dang cut the western window candle together" is really only the leisure that only scholars and scholars can afford.
Candles in ancient times were completely different from the candles we use today. The candles we use are cheap because they are a product of the oil industry, are of high purity, and are relatively inexpensive. But in ancient times, candles used by people were made of beeswax, or made of animal oil. These candles burn erratically, and when they burn, they emit a very unpleasant odor, and smoke will come out a lot. In the "History of Song", there is such a story, the name Kou Zhun "the family has not tasted the oil lamp, although the place of the torch, must (burn) the torch candle", in order to show Kou Zhun's luxurious life.
To use the data, in the last years of the Qing Dynasty, the price of a candle was about 150 to 200 yuan. About 2 candles are consumed in one night. At that time, an ordinary Qing Dynasty Qipin official could not afford to buy a candle a day, only about 120 yuan.
Since the Ming Dynasty, the Forbidden City has had street lamps, but in the Qing Dynasty, except for the residences of emperors, empresses and princes, other palaces did not have street lamps. Therefore, every morning when the ministers went to court, no matter whether it was windy or rainy, they had to carry a small lantern to illuminate it. Because of the lighting problem, there were also problems on the way to the court, and during the Guangxu years, an official fell into the Royal River on the road and drowned.
Candles can't afford it, so what about oil lamps? First of all, the lighting effect of the oil lamp is very bad, in order to save fuel, the general family will make the line of the oil lamp very thin, if you want the oil lamp to shine the same effect as the candle, you have to thicken the cotton thread, then it also means that the fuel consumption of the oil lamp will increase. Lighting a lamp was a very luxurious thing for ancient civilians. In "The History of Ru Lin", Yan Jiansheng was always reluctant to swallow because the oil lamp at home lit two stalks of lamp grass, although this is an exaggeration, but it also reflects the preciousness of lamp oil from the side.
In addition to the cost of lighting is too large, the long work during the day is also the reason why the peasants slept in the bed early last time, for the vast majority of the people, whether economically or physically, the night is not enough to stay up, it is better to go to bed early.
After saying that the rich people also said the common people, then what is the emperor's day like? The emperor should not be short of lamp oil money, is he a night and night sheng zhen?
First look at Tang Taizong's one-day itinerary, he once wrote ten poems of "Emperor Jing", which introduced his day's itinerary in more detail. Later generations roughly sorted out the schedule of Tang Taizong's day - get up at 5 o'clock, work until 11 o'clock, eat for 1 hour, read for 2 hours, read at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, enjoy the music at 4 o'clock, walk in the garden at 5 o'clock, play the piano at 6 o'clock, feast on the minister at 7 o'clock, write a summary report for the day after going back, and go to bed at 10 o'clock.
What was the life and routine of the Qing emperor, who was known for his diligence? Every day when I wake up at 5 o'clock, I will get up earlier in the summer, and I will have breakfast before 7 o'clock; I will eat a full meal around one o'clock, and I will eat a light meal at five or six o'clock. The emperors spent most of the day at work, and they kept changing clothes. At night, what the emperors had to do every day was not to flop the cards, but to approve the recitals. Kangxi, Yongzheng, and the Qianlong Emperor all personally approved the recitals, and many times they had to be read until late at night, and the workaholic Yongzheng sometimes even stayed up all night. That's probably what nightlife is all about. So can the emperors of the festival be a little more relaxed? The answer is no. Ordinary people can eat and sleep well during the New Year, but the emperor has to be dragged up in the middle of the night, washed and dressed, and then prepared various sacrifices and rituals... Therefore, the happiest thing for emperors should not be to visit the night market, but to go to bed at 8 o'clock on time!