Hello everyone, I am learning from history.
In recent years, with the popularity of the Internet, many things that were originally very everyday to us have surprised foreigners: it turns out that China has such a wonderful thing?
For example, there were news reports before that a crooked fruit addict quit his drug addiction by chasing the immortal network text...
There are also Chinese Pluto coins to the world, so that foreigners shout, I gave my ancestors to burn the Pluto coins after the fortune suddenly became better, Chinese method is really effective! There are even people who have specially issued tutorials to teach people how to burn to be effective...
Not to mention the technical schools such as Li Ziqi and Grandpa Carpenter, each of her/their videos is played hundreds of thousands, millions abroad.
Recently, Crooked Nuts became obsessed with another Chinese gadget – the snuff bottle!
A few days ago, a user named @loganparsley shared a video of a Chinese snuff bottle painting on TIKTOK, and the result suddenly exploded, with more than 2.1 million views, and the entire snuff bottle (snuff bottle) under the label, the number of videos has exceeded one million.
Crooked nuts have never seen in the small snuff bottle can be painted, they all think it is printed, in the video below, netizens from various countries around the world in English, Russian, Latin, Arabic messages, express praise for Chinese culture.
See here @ take history as a mirror I myself am also very touched, to know that snuff bottles are only an accessory to snuff, and snuff is an imported product for China, the earliest was introduced to China from Europe during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Snus and cigarettes were originally recreational items for American Indians, and were brought to Europe by sailors after the Great Geographical Discovery.
At that time, Europeans were extremely obsessed with the way cigarettes could spit smoke and the way snuff was smoked directly through the nostrils, so tobacco spread rapidly in Europe and then spread to all parts of Asia.
Picture note: Europeans swallowing clouds and spitting fog
At that time, the Mongols could not hold a cigarette pot because of their perennial horseback riding, so the Mongols had a special love for snuff, and the snuff imported from Europe during the Ming Dynasty was basically sold to the nomadic peoples in Asia.
By the time of the Qing Dynasty, snuff began to gradually enter the royal and bureaucratic classes.
According to records, the first introduction of snus to China should be in the ninth year of the Ming Dynasty (1581), the Italian missionary Matteo Ricci paid tribute to the emperor such as snuff, self-chiming bell, and wanguotu, etc. At that time, there was no name for snus, but directly translated according to the transliteration of "snuff" as "Snahu", "Shi Na Fu", "Xi La" and so on.
Caption: Matteo Ricci and Xu Guangqi
During the Qing Dynasty, Western missionaries also offered a large number of snuffs and snuff bottles as gifts when paying tribute, and the Yongzheng Emperor thought that this "Shi Nahu" was not the tobacco that he smelled and smoked with his nose, so he named it "snuff", and the glass bottle containing snuff was naturally a snuff bottle!
Snus is different from cigarettes smoked directly, and a variety of precious materials are incorporated into the production, such as mint, ice chips, various medicinal herbs, and later some people add opium to it... It is then ground to a very fine finish, sealed with wax, and then placed in the cellar for about half a year before it can be used.
When used, smoke directly through the nostrils.
"Dream of the Red Chamber" the fifth and second times: Baoyu mission musk moon, take snuff, give him some sniffles, smack a few sneezes, and it will be fast.
Because the raw materials are not easy, so the snuff is only circulated among the top nobles, it is said that the Shunzhi Emperor saw this thing, he felt that it was very fresh and enjoyable, much stronger than the shisha.
Later, Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong not only smelled it themselves, but also gave snus as a benefit to their subordinates and ministers, so the snuff spread at once.
At that time, there was a saying circulating in the court, "Gold is easy to obtain, noble snus is difficult to find", at that time, the propaganda was that snus can not only wake up the mind, but also be blind, the most terrible thing is that the legend that snus can even prevent the epidemic!
Qing Wang Shichen's "Notes on Xiangzu" Volume VII: "The Near Beijing Division is also made as a snuff smoker, and the cloud can be clearly seen, especially the merit of dispelling the epidemic." ”
Of course, these slogans are just the propaganda of merchants, but in the Qing Dynasty's literati notes and poems, there is no shortage of statements that snus is very expensive.
Qing Ren Fang Kaoru's "Poetry of Jingshan Ju" has "crushed into pipa gold chips flying, smelling a slight incense mist." Haike sells for hundreds of taels, and the great official strikes a dagger" verse.
Since snuff was first circulated among the nobility, the small pot containing snuff was also quickly luxurized. Originally, Westerners chose glass bottles, which are both valuable and beautiful materials when they held snuff, and when they reached the Mongols, in order to prevent collisions and fragmentation, snuff bottles were changed to jade, agate and so on.
After the snuff officially entered China, China's skilled craftsmen carried out a series of oriental transformations for the small pots containing snuff, using precious materials such as porcelain, copper, ivory, jade, agate, amber, etc., using different techniques such as blue and white, multicolored, carved porcelain, nesting, craftsmanship, and inner painting in traditional Chinese culture, becoming a pocket artwork that integrates a variety of crafts.
In the Chinese snuff bottle painting, there are four major schools of Beijing, Lu, Ji and Cantonese.
Later, snus became more and more unpopular, after smoking snuff is not only easy to cause cancer, but also tears and snot flowing, cleaning and wiping are indecent, and snus manufacturing time is too long, it gradually withdraws from the market.
However, the snuff bottle has been preserved and has even become a valuable intangible cultural heritage in China.
Now many people do not know that snuff comes from the West, and even very few people have seen how snuff is smoked, but most of them know that the exquisite snuff bottle comes from China, and the crooked nuts on TIKTOK even praise it as a "mysterious oriental treasure"!