Bathing is a very common thing for us, but you know what? In ancient times, people bathed and there were legal holidays, so in ancient times, when conditions were limited, people took a bath once a few days? Without the current shower gel and soap, how would they bathe?
In ancient times, people will bathing called "bathing", "mu" refers to washing hair, and "bath" refers to washing the body, "bathing" these two words first appeared in the Western Zhou Period, ancient people's bathing is different from our current bathing, People in the Western Zhou Period are more bathing as a ritual, bathing has also become a special and important thing, so whenever a large gathering or ceremony is to be held, people will take a bath before this to clean themselves to show their devotion to ancestors and gods. According to the ancients, it is to clean the body and mind, not only to wash away the dirt on the body, but also to clean up the dirt on the mind.
To the Qin Dynasty period is every large-scale sacrifice, will require people to bathe and change clothes before they can participate in the sacrifice activities, according to historical records, there was the emergence of a bath in the Qin Dynasty, in Du Mu's "A Fang Palace Fu" there is written: "Erchuan dissolved, into the palace wall", "Wei Liu is greasy, discarded fat water also", which can be seen that there is a bath in the A Fang Palace, and also carried out careful planning and design, which can also see how much the emperor at that time attached importance to bathing.
In the "Zhou Li, Ritual Ceremony, And Dowry No. 8", it is recorded: "The steward is a guest, three days with a bath, and five days with a bath." "This means that there are guests visiting the home, first of all, it must be provided to the guests, three days to wash their hair, five days to bathe the environmental conditions, so as to show respect for the guests, these are enough to see how important the ancients regarded bathing.
For ordinary people, there are no convenient conditions in ancient times, it is impossible to take a bath every day, and if there is no timely warmth after bathing, the cold weather is particularly easy to infect the wind and cold, and in ancient times, the medical conditions are limited, people will have a small life if they are sick, so in ancient times people think that bathing is easy to hurt the vitality, so it is recommended that everyone bathe less, so there are even rumors that ancient people only bathed three times in their lives, which were washed once at birth, washed once when married, and washed once after death. Listening to such exaggeration, was the ancients really so unloving to bathe?
In fact, in the pre-Qin period, the ancients have developed a good hygiene habit of "washing hair for three days, bathing in five days", and in the Han Dynasty period, the bathing time of ordinary people was not stipulated, and they could arrange it themselves, and officials even had legal holidays to bathe, that is, after officials went to work for five days, they could have a day off to take a bath, and this holiday for bathing was also called "rest", which shows the importance people attached to bathing and bathing at that time.
"Xiu Mu" system to the Tang and Song Dynasties also changed, from the Han Dynasty's "five days a rest" to "ten days a rest", also known as "ten days a rest", after the Song Dynasty people bathed more times, some ancient rich noble women, even if they can not guarantee a bath a day, basically will also bathe once in two or three days, and like empress Dowager Cixi, who is famous for her luxury, she will take a bath every day in the summer, and once every other day or three days in winter, of course, there will be some people who do not love cleanliness. They may not take a bath for a long time, so in ancient times, how often people took a bath varied from person to person.
So in ancient times, there was no shower gel and soap, what did people use to clean the bath?
As early as the Zhou Dynasty period, people found that Taomi water can be used as a detergent for bathing, and in the pre-Qin and Han Dynasties, Taomi water is indeed the most easily obtained detergent, not only the ancients used Taomi water to bathe, until now there are also people used to clean kitchen utensils, etc., in addition to the use of grass and wood ash, the ancients mostly dissolved it in water for bathing, because grass ash contains potassium carbonate, which can play a role similar to soapy water in water.
Bath beans
Pancreas
Secondly, although the ancients did not have shower gel, but also had their own soap, is a bath called "bath bean", bath bean has appeared in the Wei and Jin dynasties, according to the medicine king Sun Simiao "Thousand Golden Formula" record: bath beans are dried with the pancreas of pigs, ground into a paste and bean powder, spices evenly mixed, and then made into a bean shape for bathing to decontaminate, and later improved the production of "bath beans", in the process of grinding add sugar, grass and wood ash, and add animal fat mixed evenly, also known as "pancreas", It's very close to the soap we use now.
Acacia
In addition, there is a kind of "soap pod" also known as soap horn, is the use of natural plants of the fruit made of detergent, but also very early by people to bathe, laundry, etc., but also because the soap pod tree is very common, so the soap pod has been used by the ancients as the main detergent, to the Song Dynasty people will mash the soap pod, add spices to make a soap ball, specially used to wash the face bath use, it is stronger than the washing ability of the soap pod, this is also the earliest soap, so although the ancient people did not have shower gel, but the wisdom of the ancients can not be underestimated , or be able to find other alternatives.