Modern people wipe it with special toilet paper after going to the toilet. However, papermaking was not invented by Cai Lun until the Han Dynasty, so how did people wipe after the toilet in their daily lives for thousands of years before the Han Dynasty?
Toilet chips
According to research, the "toilet paper" used by early people was bamboo pieces, even the emperor was no exception. Before the Tang and Song dynasties, people often used a piece of wood or bamboo called "toilet chip", which is precisely used not to wipe but to scrape. In the archaeological research excavations in Japan, many "toilet chips" in ancient toilets have been found, such as in 1992, during the excavation of the Fujiwara Kyo ruins in Takadō-cho, Nara Prefecture, the remains of the toilets known as "Japan's oldest toilet" were found, and the toilet remains were located on the outside of the Fujiwara Kyo Ukyo Nanjo Ichibaya building site at the end of the 7th century, "more than 150 pieces of chips were unearthed in the toilet pits". China's influence on Japan in ancient times was very large, so these discoveries in Japan are very valuable for inferring the Chinese of the Tang and Song dynasties.
lavatory
Of course, the ancients did not always use bamboo chips. In some places, stones, pebbles, etc. can be used as a filthy thing. Not only can it be washed and reused, but it is also environmentally friendly. By the Tang and Song dynasties, coarse paper had begun to be used, and it was not until the Yuan Dynasty that paper was widely used in toilets. We know that paper was invented in the Han Dynasty, but why was this thing that changed the course of human civilization not used by the Chinese people to wipe their butts until the Yuan Dynasty? Later generations speculated that the Yuan Dynasty was established by the Mongols, the culture was relatively backward, and there was no sense of the Han people to "respect the word paper", so it made toilet paper enter people's lives.
Paper and toilet chips