Today is the weekend, how do you usually live? Brushing mobile phones, accompanying babies, pets, sleeping lazily, etc., in general, people's lives are more diversified and there are more choices. I wonder today, how did our ancestors rest before the arrival of modern technological civilization?
First, the so-called week as a time cycle originated in the ancient Babylonian calendar, according to which one day out of seven days was a day of rest, on the grounds that it was an unlucky day. The world-wide system of weeks was formally established by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in 321 AD. This concept was brought to the mainland by Western missionaries at the end of the Ming Dynasty. However, Chinese the lunar calendar system was used until after the Xinhai Revolution, when the Gregorian calendar system began to be gradually popularized in China.
How do you rest under the lunar system?
In ancient times, it was divided into scholars, farmers, industrialists, and merchants.
Ordinary farmers generally refer to agricultural leisure (agricultural leisure also has to serve) and important festivals.
Institutional leave such as that stipulated by the imperial court was generally only for officials in the court. In ancient times, the more formal vacation was called "rest mu", but there was still a difference from our double rest system.
Han Dynasty
Before the Han Dynasty, there was no leave system, and officials could only take leave when they rested, which was called "returning home". The "Han Law" records that the officials "rested" on five days. "Rest" means to rest and bathe. Because the officials worked and stayed in the official office on weekdays, and their families were not allowed to follow, the imperial court stipulated that the officials could return home every five days to clean.
Why five days instead of seven?
The lunar calendar has three hundred and sixty days in a year, which is divided into twenty-four solar terms, seventy-two weather, that is, five days as a waiting, five days is a phenology, the ancients believed that 5 days will change. The "five-day break" follows the path of natural change.
In addition to Xiu Mu, the imperial court would also give officials holidays on important holidays, but there were not many festivals in the Han Dynasty, according to the records of the "Book of Continuing Han and Etiquette", the Han Dynasty seemed to have only five days off at the summer solstice and the winter solstice, and three days off on the emperor's birthday.
In addition, if you hold a position in the imperial palace, you cannot enjoy the benefits of "five days and one rest", which is a ten-day break. Like the army and college students, they are generally accumulated according to the five-day break, and then they can rest together.
Tang dynasty
During the Tang Dynasty, this system was reformed, and the ten days off were adopted, which ostensibly decreased, but the imperial court greatly increased the number of holidays.
Tang Dynasty officials worked during the day and generally went home at night, and officials with good conditions could rent or buy a house in Chang'an and pick up their families to live together. During the reign of Emperor Gaozong of Tang, the imperial court changed the "five-day rest" to "ten days off", that is, one day off every ten days, called "ten days off".
The number of days off has decreased, but holidays have increased dramatically. The Tang Law stipulates that during the Spring Festival, winter solstice, and Qingming holidays for seven days, officials around Chang'an can return to the countryside to worship their ancestors or visit relatives and friends.
Because of his belief in Taoism, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang also stipulated that the birthday of the Dao (February 15) would be a day off, and later named the emperor's birthday the Thousand Autumn Festival, which could also be a three-day holiday (changed to one day during the reign of Emperor Suzong of Tang).
In addition, the Mid-Autumn Festival, summer solstice, and Waxing Day can also be closed for three days, and there are as many as 21 festivals on one day off.
In addition, there are more humane regulations:
If the parents are three thousand miles away, there are 30 days of family leave every 3 years, and 15 days for more than 500 miles.
Sons can take 3 days off for the crown ceremony, and children can take 9 days off for marriage. There are also 15 days of leave in May and 15 days of winter clothing leave in September.
When his parents died, the civil servant forced Ding to worry for three years, the military attaché for one hundred days, and the teacher of the profession also had three days off when he died.
Anyway, I want to give more benefits to officials, so I say that everything is inferior but the reading is high!
Song dynasty
Chen Yinke once said that "the culture of the Chinese nation, which has evolved over thousands of years, was created in the world of Zhao and Song dynasties."
The enlightened and developed Song Dynasty can be seen from the holidays of officials, and it can be said that the officials of the Song Dynasty are the happiest officials in history.
The holiday system of the Song Dynasty followed the regulations of the Tang Dynasty, mainly in terms of time extension, and the Song Dynasty became the dynasty with the most traditional festivals and the longest holidays in Chinese history.
On the basis of the system of ten days off, Spring Festival, winter solstice, and seven days of cold food holiday, the Song Dynasty also created new festivals such as "Tianqi Festival" and "Tianqing Festival" (the emperor's mother's birthday), and it was necessary to take a holiday every festival.
In addition, family leave does not need to wait for three years, it is every year from December 20 to the twentieth day of the first month of the following year, all officials "seal" to stop official business, officials at all levels go home for the New Year.
According to historical data, in addition to the ten days off, various statutory holidays total nearly 100 days, and officials can take more than 120 days of vacation every year.
There was also the Song Dynasty's consideration of serving in the public and the prisoners' right to leave. If you are a service craftsman, you can also take a day off in the spring, cold food, winter solstice and Wax day. The displaced prisoners could not only enjoy the "ten days off", but also take three days off each in the spring, cold food, and winter solstice.
The three dynasties of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties were suspected of being culturally regressive, and the rulers were relatively mean and unkind, so the vacation benefits of officials were relatively small, and there were only big holidays in Zhu Yuanzhang's era, and daily life was canceled, a total of 18 days, and the Zhu Di era only restored the ten-day rest system, but the total number of holidays was less than half of the previous dynasty. You can see how bad the shrinkage is.
Earlier we said, the vacation system, then we can't help but ask, what did the ancients do on rest days?
Here we are mainly talking about the literati or the citizen class.
Literati could go on outings, feast on societies, and bard poems.
Nobles or wealthy people could perform polo, ball-pounding, archery, bowing, and pot throwing.
If at home the Song Dynasty literati often did a few elegant things: burning incense, ordering tea, hanging paintings, arranging flowers.
In the Song Dynasty, because the city's curfew system was gradually relaxed, the neighborhood system replaced the lifang system.
The emergence of a large number of frontage shops and the industry-exclusive area was the emergence of the washe hook bar, which greatly enriched the nightlife of the Song Dynasty citizen class, and the nightlife of Tokyo's Bieliang is not worse than it is now! "Tokyo Dream Record" says: "Seventy-two households in The Kyojo store, the rest are called foot points." Brand hotel 72, countless fast food, small stir-fry, specialty restaurants, many street vendors selling special snacks, OMG is actually very similar to the current food pedestrian street or night market,
Enough to eat and drink can also go to professional performances, children can watch puppet plays, adults can watch cockfighting, of course, there are colors, such as women's sumo, you think about that picture to understand, the mentality of the spectators. It is recorded that there are professional performance venues that can seat thousands of people.
In general, the Tang and Song dynasties were strong in national strength, most of the rulers were aristocratic, relatively enlightened to the literati, and everyone benefited a little more; the later dynastic rulers were either foreign or low-level, so they were relatively narrow in their hearts, and they always saw that others were too comfortable, so they squeezed desperately, just like the difference between foreign enterprises, state-owned enterprises and small private enterprises.
I myself feel that now everyone's offline social networking has become significantly less, and a lot less, now you can do everything without going out, as long as there is a network and mobile phones, so it is still recommended that you can go out more activities in addition to work.