In the middle of summer, high temperatures, often more than 35 ° C heat wave hit, in the air conditioning, electric fans, soda sticks and other cooling artifacts under the blessing, we can always be at home, office, comfortable fresh and cool, cool.
And the most painful, is the short sleeves, flip-flops, five points of sweatpants equipment, about three or five dead parties, street food stalls, spicy lobster + cold beer, that nightlife, not to mention how cool!
So, in the ancient times when technology was backward, how did people cope with the summer heat?
Regarding the ancient high temperature, the Eighth Year of Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty (1743), the Chronicle of Continuing Tianjin County, recorded:
"May is bitter and hot, the soil and stones are scorched, the mast is flowing gold, and many people die of heat."
In the Chronicle of Gaoyi County, it is also recorded:
"From the twenty-eighth day of May to the sixth day of the first month of June, the heat was unbearable, the walls were heavy and hot, the lead and tin were sold out in the middle of the day, and many people died of thirst.
Metals such as lead and tin are sunburned like popsicles, which is obviously an exaggeration used by the ancients. However, the statement that the high temperature that lasted for more than ten days, or even a few months, caused many people to die of heat, should indeed exist.
How many degrees should the temperature of the hot dead people be?
In 2019, Reuters reported rare high temperatures in Western Europe exceeding 40°C, and southern France reached a record high of 45.9°C, resulting in seven deaths in Italy, France and Spain.
Referring to the data of Western Europe, we have reason to speculate that in the hot summer of the eighth year of Qianlong, the temperature should be more than 40 ° C, and even the drought of "scorched earth and stone" has occurred, so it is no wonder that people will die of heat.
So, in the face of the high temperature and heat in the summer, what means did the ancients have to avoid the heat?
Ordinary people, the way to escape the summer, is more primitive.
In ancient times, farmers all worked at sunrise and rested at sunrise, and after breakfast, they carried lunch and hoes out of the house to the ground, and did not return home until the evening when the sun went down.
However, the grass hoeed up in the farmland must be dried by the sun, so that it will not come back to life, and compete with the crops for water and fertility. Therefore, there is a saying in The Tang poem that "when the day of hoeing is noon, the sweat drops fall into the soil", hoeing grass, you have to do it under the big sun.
At this time, for the ancient peasants, at noon when the sun was the most poisonous in the day, it was a beautiful thing to find a shady tree under the tree, or the shade of the stone wall or the ridge, and take a nap for an hour.
In the evening, after returning home, drinking a bowl of sour plum soup or herbal tea, piling up under a big tree and shaking a fan to cool off, talking about the parents' short, talking about the new things in the four villages, a hot day, even if it is mixed.
Here, Wen Shijun wants to talk about herbal tea alone.
Herbal tea, which is very common in the sweltering southern regions such as Guangdong, Fujian, and Taiwan, is usually made of cool and de-fire Chinese herbs such as honeysuckle and light bamboo leaves, and is cooked with decoction.
Originally it was an old thing similar to Traditional Chinese medicine, but it burst out of Wang Laoji, Jiaduobao and other best-selling brands, "afraid of fire, drink Wang Laoji", and now gathered together to skewer, eat barbecue, shabu-shabu, table corner on a few to hear the heat of the fire of herbal tea, has become the standard.
I have to say that herbal tea is the same as the old dry mother, which is a miracle in the domestic marketing industry.
Well, after talking about the outdoor coolness, the next step, we should go to bed!
Crooked students, please stop, this article prohibits driving.
Bamboo mats, grass mats woven with grass, are not unusual, we have all seen it. What I want to introduce here is the ancient summer artifact - "Bamboo Lady".
Mrs. that is, wife. We often say that we sleep with our wives in their arms, and this bamboo lady, in her usage, also let the ancients sleep in their arms.
The bamboo lady woven from bamboo grate is a hollow bamboo vessel that fits the shape of the human body. Its role is to let people hold it when sleeping, the limbs and torso can be extended to the greatest extent, increasing the heat dissipation area of the human body when sleeping, so the coolness comes.
The heat dissipation problem on the body is solved, what about the head?
The head, you need another heat dissipation artifact "porcelain pillow", appeared.
Porcelain pillows, as the name suggests, are derived from fired ceramics and are usually popular in the Song Dynasty. Because of the cold texture of the ceramic, coupled with the hollow heat dissipation design of the porcelain pillow, the ancients slept on it on the hot night in the summer, and the head part obtained a comfortable coolness.
However, just by looking at the appearance, such a hard thing, sleeping on the back of the head and neck, can it not be bumped?
Don't worry, let's look at the porcelain pillow.
Most porcelain pillows are about the same height as pillows of other materials, and are designed to fit the curvature of the human head, so the pillow is still quite comfortable.
As for the hardness, it is quite a sense of the times.
Let's not forget, the ancients, regardless of gender, were all accustomed to growing hair, separated by a layer of fluffy hair, not between the soft scalp and the hard porcelain pillow, played a buffering role!
After introducing the cool routines of the common people, Wen Shijun will take another pickpocket, the ancient method of summer escape of officials and nobles, imperial relatives and relatives.
The first thing to be pickpocketed is the ancient black technology that integrates the functions of air conditioners and refrigerators - "Ice Classic".
Ice Jian, forged in bronze during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, roughly resembles a square box with four legs.
By the Ming and Qing dynasties, ice canons made of wood appeared. Thanks to the advancement of metallurgical technology at that time, it can be used to spread lead or iron on the inner wall, so that when the ice lying inside melts, it will not leak out.
In the TV series "Yongzheng Dynasty", there are eight brothers, ten brothers and other people, taking out the frozen watermelon from the ice book to eat. At that time, the eunuch also brought a large basin of ice and poured it into a wooden box embedded with iron sheets, that is, ice books.
Speaking of this, you may find bugs, there was no refrigerator in ancient times, where did the ice cubes come from in the summer?
Let's turn our attention to the imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Forbidden City.
Surrounding the Forbidden City is a wide moat. Every year in late autumn, the imperial palace would send people to drain the moat, carefully dredge it, and then put it into the clean river water flowing from the western outskirts of the capital, that is, the direction of the Yuanmingyuan.
When the winter moon was cold and the moat was frozen hard and thick, the guards chiseled the ice into a foot and a half square and stored it in four cellars in the southwest of the Longzong Gate, stacked neatly. According to estimates, the four cellars can store a total of 20,000 pieces of standard-sized ice.
Therefore, when summer came, the emperors, concubines, princes and other dignitaries in the palace had enough ice cubes to cool off.
Ice cubes rest in the ice book, put a bowl of mung bean soup on the ice, put a glass of wine, or put a few pieces of watermelon in the yard, the cold and cool taste, no less than we unscrewed the Coke bottle today, grunt a few sips, bring the refreshing.
At the same time, the cold air emitted when the ice cubes melt, along the holes in the ice cover, spreads to the whole room, is not it an air conditioner that can reduce the heat and heat?
In addition, in order to avoid the sweltering heat of midsummer, the emperor would also build a special palace garden in a cool and humid place for summer. The most representative is the Yuanmingyuan in Beijing's Haidian district, and the Chengde Mountain Resort, which is farther away.
The Yuanmingyuan, historically has a high rate of appearances, but unfortunately, during the Second Opium War, it was burned after being looted by the British and French coalition forces. Coupled with the ant-like transport of locals later, now when we travel to the Yuanmingyuan to punch in, all we can see is a pile of broken stones.
But before 170 years ago, this place was the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens" that gathered three generations of Kang Yongqian and piled up with countless silver.
Most of the emperors who went from Yongzheng to Xianfeng moved to the Yuanmingyuan, which was densely packed with lakes and cool temperatures, to live and work.
As for chengde mountain resort, the word "summer escape" alone can tell the weather characteristics of the place.
Chengde is close to Inner Mongolia, higher latitude than Beijing, low temperature, and the mountain forest around the mountain village, ascending to the far horizon, the cool breeze between the mountains is slowly coming, quite a pleasant feeling. The Emperor of the Qing Dynasty received the Mongol princes here, and they could also close the distance between them in the cool "temperature".
After talking about the Ice Classic and the Yuanmingyuan, the Summer Resort, or the old routine, wen Shijun will pick up emperor LaoZi again, specifically Yongzheng and Zhen Huan's bed!
During the Yongzheng period, a magistrate presented the emperor with a cold mat made of ivory as a raw material.
How can hard ivory become a soft mat?
Fortunately, the two actual ivory mats are still preserved in the Palace Museum, allowing us to witness this precious cultural relic at close range. One of the sheets measures 2.1 × 1.4 meters, and the whole body consists of only 0. Woven from 2 cm flat strips, the table surface is woven with a glyph pattern, and the four sides and back bread are satin.
From the appearance alone, in addition to the raw material used for weaving is ivory, and the weaving pattern is more exquisite, its handicraft is basically no different from the cool mat woven by ordinary bamboo strips.
In other words, ivory must first be made into bamboo-like "ivory strips".
Ivory, originally relatively brittle, easy to break, but can be made like bamboo grates by craftsmen to weave flat thin strips, it is estimated that the use of a specific potion, a long time of soaking and softening of ivory, in order to achieve flexible material requirements.
Just as the so-called penny for a penny, Yongzheng is lying on the ivory mat, the touch is indeed quite good, so he came to be interested and asked about the materials and craftsmanship of this ivory mat.
However, when Yongzheng heard about the complicated production process of ivory mats, as well as the expensive materials and labor behind them, he immediately ordered that ivory mats should never be built again!
From The perspective of Yongzheng, since the beginning of the succession, he has always advocated frugality, if the emperor is too extravagant, it will cause the princes, nobles and dignitaries to follow suit, and then corrupt the atmosphere of pleasure, which will spread throughout the corners of the bureaucratic system and shake the foundation of the empire.
Therefore, Yongzheng decisively ordered that this luxury goods industry chain be strictly prohibited.
As Yao Ming said, "There is no harm in buying and selling", Yongzheng's decision to ban ivory mats, although the craft of this luxury was eventually lost, saved countless elephants.
By extension, tens of thousands of dollars of bags, hundreds of thousands of dollars of watches, and crocodile belts, python shoes, are nothing more than showing off the wealth, status and vanity of the wearer. The real use of functions, but it is ignored.