Thousands of work beds, thousands of workers' cars, jujube cinnamon mattresses under the hidden. Bells and drums play, firecrackers ring, whose bride is married.
In ancient times, when the form of marriage was still three media and six hires, and the Ming media was marrying, the "flower palanquin" was one of the few symbols of a woman's status. She is a palanquin that a woman can only sit once in her life, and the palanquin falls to the ground. It means that this woman has since given her husband's surname, tied her hair and knots, and has become a person from another family.
In costume TV dramas, directors always have ten miles of red makeup when arranging for noble women to marry. Pair it with a palanquin covered with red cloth, but don't actually be fooled by the TV series. The palanquin that the real ancient Miss Qianjin married is not as simple as in the TV series.
After all, the folk custom of "a thousand beds, ten thousand workers' cars, and ten miles of red dowry" was still a well-known marriage custom in Jiangsu and Zhejiang until the end of the Qing Dynasty, which is enough to think about how grand the marriage scene of their children and daughters of those real family families is. At that time, if the bride had a "thousand work beds" and "ten thousand workers' cars", she could hold her head high in her husband's house for a lifetime.
Why is that? Let's first understand what "thousands of workers" and "thousands of workers" really are. In ancient times, one craftsman worked one day for one worker, of course, two craftsmen had to be discounted, and two craftsmen worked for one day for "two jobs". Then "thousands of workers" is a thousand days, and ten thousand works is the time of "ten thousand days".
For the palanquin, it takes "ten thousand workers" to make a good palanquin, assuming that the palanquin is all made by a worker, then it takes more than thirty years for the worker to complete. It can be seen from this that the workmanship of this palanquin is luxurious and vast. A million caravans are not as good as this "million caravans".
Nowadays, there is such a luxurious and exquisite "Wangong Palanquin" cultural relics in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, which has served as the façade of the Zhejiang Provincial Museum on the now popular "National Treasures" program. Its origin was unveiled in 1986, and it was a flower palanquin made by a long-established "Jucheng No." (ancient wedding company) in Ningbo in the late Qing Dynasty. The flower palanquin has always been in the Ten Mile Red Makeup Exhibition Area of the Wulin Hall of the Zhejiang Museum for the public to visit.
Ningbo divided the palanquin into three grades, which were divided into "first class, second class and third class" according to the number of carved characters and the level of craftsmanship. The above flower palanquin is the "first class palanquin", and it is the most luxurious palanquin in existence, which uses the traditional mortise and tenon process without a single nail.
The palanquin has no palanquin doors, and the whole palanquin is composed of hundreds of detachable flower boards. And each flower board is dismantled separately, in fact, it can be regarded as an independent work of art, placed in the home. When greeting and sending relatives, there will be a special car dismantling master who will follow the side of the palanquin and be responsible for disassembling when the bride goes up and down the palanquin.
The process of the whole flower palanquin is mainly based on wood carving, vermilion paint coloring and golden hair (xiū) technology. There are nearly 200 figures with circular carvings and see-through carvings on the palanquins alone, plus those on reliefs and lenses, there are more than 400 figures. The smallest of them is only 1.8 centimeters.
So what are these characters doing? The furniture is a bit of an auspicious carving theme. For example, "Qilin sends a son", "Heavenly Official Blessing", "KuiXing Diandou" and so on are auspicious and festive themes at first glance. In addition to the characters, there are countless flowers, birds, fish and insects on the palanquin.
The dragon and phoenix theme is an indispensable part of it, and it is counted in detail. There are 38 dragons and 24 phoenixes on the bridge, and Zhenzhen'er is "Dragon and Phoenix Chengxiang". And the most surprising and ingenious thing is that it is the stage on those flower boards. The characters on the stage can actually move.
At that time, the craftsmen who made this palanquin made a design of a buckle under the characters on the stage. When the bride takes this flower car to her husband's house, the characters on these stages will shake from side to side. It's like you're really acting, so you can see that this mind is extremely clever.
At that time, the girls in Ningbo entered the husband's house in such a delicate flower palanquin. And "ten miles of red makeup covered the ground, eight large cars carried into the door" is also the face of those girls, is the dignity of these girls. At the same time, it also represents the expectations of the girls' parents for their daughter's future.
Therefore, the tall palanquins shown in the TV series are compared to the palanquins that miss Qianjin sat in in the real ancient times. It's really not worth mentioning, but this is also something that can't be done. The ancient palanquins of the Eight Classics are now basically displayed in museums, and the directors cannot afford it.
If you want to imitate, it is not so easy to imitate. After all, even if it is a "second-class car" or a "third-class car", the carved vermilion paint on it, etc., cannot be made for a while now. Of course, if it is true, there is no need to really spend time on this.