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Cold and warm, the ancients have a clever trick

In the long snow and cold winter, modern people have heating equipment such as heating, air conditioning, and hot treasures, how did the ancients resist the cold and heat?

The main heating tools of the ancients were braziers and stoves, and since the "drilling wood for fire" of the Lingren clan, the history of the ancients using fire for heating began. The ancients put the fire into a certain container, which is the "brazier" and "stove". With the advancement of production technology, braziers evolved from mud pots to clay pots, to copper pots, iron pots, and so on. Ordinary people's homes can probably only use simple braziers, but the heating methods of rich and noble homes are very exquisite.

fireplace

According to archaeological findings, the ruins of the "Xianyang No. 1" Qin Royal Palace were surprised by the appearance of three fireplaces, and the fireplaces were directly heated in the room. There was also a private bathroom for the palace concubines with a single fireplace for heating, which was definitely a luxurious pleasure at that time.

The main fuel for the fireplace is coal, and there are smoke holes outside to avoid soot poisoning. In addition, on the inside of the wall in the site, "a pipe with two cylinder tiles interlocked" was found, which was connected to the stove to form a "fire wall", which already had the prototype of a fire kang.

Pepper Room Hall

During the Qin and Han dynasties, there were rooms where the indoor temperature could be adjusted in winter. The "warm tone" in the Eastern Han Dynasty scientist Zhang Heng's "Xijing Fu" in the phrase "Chaotang Chengdong, Wen Tun Yan Bei" refers to this kind of "wen tuning room". The Wen Tun Hall, also known as the "Warm Hall" and the "Greenhouse Hall", was a place where the emperor and his ministers discussed and received guests. According to the "Miscellaneous Records of Xijing", the walls of the greenhouse hall were "made of pepper as a mud coating room" as insulation materials, splendid tapestries were hung on the walls, fire screens were set up, large goose feathers were used as curtains, and western blankets were laid on the ground. In such a "both inside and outside" room, the winter body temperature is naturally not too low. Later, the Pepper Room Hall of Weiyang Palace was dedicated to the residence of the Empress, so "Pepper Room" almost became a synonym for the Empress.

The method of using pepper mud as the insulation layer of the house, posterity has effectively imitated, from the "World Speaks New Language" Western Jin Dynasty rich man Shi Chong's "pepper as a mud coating room" to the Song Dynasty Wang Jue's "Palace Words" in the "Fragrant Wall Red Mud Through Shu Pepper", the pepper room is favored by the rich and noble.

Smoker

The smoker is a charcoal brazier with a cover, divided into two parts, the lower part is the basin, and the upper part is a hollow shield with a delicate pattern engraved. Smokers are generally owned by wealthy families. In the Han Dynasty, bronze Boshan furnaces specialized in incense and air purification appeared. In 1953, a beautiful smoker with a phoenix button on top was found in the tomb of the Jin Dynasty in Yixing, Jiangsu Province. In the Tang Dynasty, in the early winter, the main hall of the imperial palace was equipped with an smoker. According to the "Testament of Kaiyuan Tianbao", the Tang Dynasty royal family used "imported coal" for heating: "The Western Liang Kingdom entered a hundred pieces of charcoal, each with a length of more than a foot, and its charcoal blue was as hard as iron, and its name was Rui Charcoal." Burned in the furnace, there is no flame and there is light, each can burn for ten days, and its heat is compelling and inaccessible. ”

Cold and warm, the ancients have a clever trick

Collection of the Palace Museum, embedded enamel three-legged smoker

The shroud outside the smoker is called a smoke cage, and the smoke cage is exquisitely made, with bronze gilded and gilded, and there are filigree enamel. Some of the large smoke cages weigh hundreds of pounds and are more than a meter high. Nowadays, the Taihe Hall, the Zhonghe Hall, the Bohol Hall, the Qianqing Palace, the Kunning Palace and other places of the Palace Museum are all displayed with smoke cages. There is a depiction of the smoke cage in "Dream of the Red Chamber": "Qingwen only sits around the smoke cage", and sleeps on the smoke cage. The smoke cage can sit and sleep, which shows its size. Later, when Musk Yue went out, Qingwen wanted to scare her, and without clothes, she went down the smoke cage, the cold wind invaded the bones, a cold and a fever fell ill, and there was a moving detail of "Yong Qingwen's disease to supplement the finch golden fur" behind.

Cold and warm, the ancients have a clever trick

Western Jin Dynasty blue glaze. Skeletonized three-animal foot smoker (excavated from Yixing, Jiangsu, now in the National Museum of China)

Li Yu of the Qing Dynasty was not only a literary scholar, but also a skilled craftsman. In "Idle Love", he specifically talked about how to design a warm chair, there is a drawer under the chair, and the charcoal stove is placed in the drawer, so that sitting on it, God is warm and at ease, and the whole body is not cold.

Hand stove

The smaller smoker is a hand stove, also called "holding stove" and "sleeve stove", similar to the current warm baby. However, most hand stoves have lift beams (lift handles). The ancients wore wide robes with large sleeves, and the hand stove could be placed in the sleeves to warm up the hands, carry it with you, warm and convenient. It is said that it was founded in the Tang Dynasty, and by the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the production process became more and more pure. In "Dream of the Red Chamber", Jia Baoyu carries a hand stove when he goes to school; when Dai Yu goes out, there are also ya gui thoughtfully sending hand stoves.

Cold and warm, the ancients have a clever trick

The Guangdong Provincial Museum holds a copper tire filigree enamel hand stove

Foot stove

The name of the foot stove is the most interesting, there are foot mother, warm foot bottle, soup woman, soup mother, etc., is a kind of copper or tin made of flat bottle, which is filled with hot water, can be placed in the quilt to warm the feet, similar to modern hot water bottles. The Northern Song Dynasty literary scholar Su Dongpo gave a piece of foot stove to his friend Yang Junsu: "Send a warm foot copper stick, fill it with hot soup every night, stuff its mouth, and still wrap it in a cloth sheet, so that it can reach Dan and not be cold." Huang Tingjian also has a poem that says: "Buy a foot woman with thousands of dollars, and sleep at night and in the morning." "Dream of the Red Chamber" also mentions "Tang Pozi" in many places: Qingwen smiled: "After a long time of warmth, I remembered that Tang Pozi had not yet taken it." There are also foot stoves with built-in charcoal fires, outer cover covers, "transported around, while the furnace body is always flat", is a circular device, safe and convenient, known as "reclining incense (furnace)".

Cold and warm, the ancients have a clever trick

Copper-gilt filigree enamel three-legged smoker in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, collection of the Palace Museum

Ondol and warm pavilion

The heating method in the north is to use the hot kang universally, especially the people in the northeast, who expect the hot kang to survive the cold winter of March 9. The fire is a bed for sleeping connected to the fire channel of the stove, made of bricks and mud. Also known as "ondol" or "warm bed", almost all the bedrooms in the Imperial Palace of the Qing Dynasty had a kang. In addition, there is the ground kang, which is a hollow "sandwich wall" that makes the walls of the palace hollow, also known as the "fire wall". Fire channels were laid under the walls, and the fire opening was placed under the eaves of the porch outside the temple. Charcoal is burned, and the heat can be transmitted along the fire channel and the wall to the entire hall, making the room warm like spring. This kind of room with an underground fire tunnel is also called "Warm Pavilion", and the East Warm Pavilion of Kunning Palace in the Palace Museum is such a structure.

Ma Guoxian, an Italian missionary who came to China in the fiftieth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1711), described: "The stoves used in Beijing in winter are not like the stoves I saw in Germany, the Netherlands and England. The European stove stood in the room, like a small stove. The stove here occupies no place indoors, and the heat is transmitted to the room through the fire channels, which are completely laid under the floor. The device resembles geothermal heating today, adding: "According to the European method of heating, when our feet were still cold, our heads were already very hot." In Beijing, the feet are always comfortable and warm. Moderate heat fills evenly in every corner of the room. ”

Cold and warm, the ancients have a clever trick

The Palace Museum Yangxin Hall East Warm Pavilion

In the Qing Dynasty Imperial Palace, there was a special agency responsible for winter "heating" affairs, and even the lighting of the fire was managed by special personnel. There were also eunuchs responsible for distributing charcoal. The Ming Dynasty also had a "Salary Division" to oversee the supply of charcoal in the palace.

The above is all indoor heating artifacts, so what should the ancients do when they go out?

Dignitaries and nobles can wear brocade and mink fur, and there are also intimate equipment such as heaters in the car they ride, or they can also carry small cold weapons such as hand stoves. If you play in a fixed place outdoors, you will also place brazier-like equipment. In the "Qianlong Emperor Snow Scene", Qianlong and his children watched the snow and played, and the Qianlong Emperor "sat by the brazier". And ordinary people will have to rack their brains to keep out the cold. Before cotton was not popularized, the ancients filled the robe with hemp or reed flowers for warmth, and the warmth effect was of course very poor. The Spring and Autumn Warring States have an allusion to "whipping reeds", saying that Min Ziqian was abused by his stepmother, the two brothers wore cotton-filled cotton clothes, and Min Ziqian's cotton clothes were filled with reeds, reeds were not warm, Min Ziqian was so cold that he could not drive, and his father thought he was lazy, until he beat his clothes out of Luhua to know that he was wrong to blame his son.

During the Tang and Song dynasties, the poor people also used paper to fill clothes to withstand the cold, called "paper fur", generally using thicker and firmer paper, kneaded and sewn in, better than a single cloth to withstand the cold, but this is really a helpless move of "poor couples Pepsi Lament".

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