In film and television dramas, we often see that the pillows used by the ancients are mostly hard materials. According to historical records, the ancients used bamboo as pillows and jade pillows in the Spring and Autumn Period; in the Han Dynasty, pillows filled with hemp were mostly used; in the Tang Dynasty, people gradually began to use wooden pillows; porcelain pillows began to be popular in the Song and Yuan dynasties; and soft pillows began to be gradually popular in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
But in fact, soft and hard pillows have been recorded in various dynasties, the picture above is unearthed in the Great Desert of Minfeng County, Xinjiang, the Han Dynasty "longevity and longevity of the Great Yi Descendants", that is, soft pillows, both beautiful and very ergonomic. However, when everyone uses soft pillows today, there is a question: Don't those who use hard pillows feel headaches?
The first reason is that before the Qing Dynasty, the ancients had long hair and did not feel bad. The ancients, men and women with weak crowns and women, all had the habit of growing hair, regardless of whether men and women usually coiled their hair into a bun. It's not easy to keep your hair up, and it takes a long time to get up and tidy up if you sleep. The hard porcelain pillow and jade pillow just drag the hair bun, and they will not move randomly when sleeping, and they may not be able to sleep comfortably. Maintain this optimal sleeping position and protect your hairstyle.
The second reason is that hard pillows such as porcelain pillows and jade pillows are very cool. Among the excavated cultural relics, there is an inscription poem on the porcelain pillow of the Cizhou kiln: "The summer scenery is long, and the distant sky turns to the summer light." If people will be entertained, where is not cool. "It can be found that the porcelain pillow plays a certain role in cooling and relieving the heat.
The third reason is that Chinese medicine believes that pillows are high and good for the body. There is an idiom called "sit back and relax", and a hard pillow is conducive to maintaining this high and carefree posture, but modern medicine proves that the pillow is slightly lower than the distance from the shoulder to the same neck. Pillows that are too high can easily lead to chest tightness, pillow drops and aggravated shoulder periodontitis, so why did ancient people feel relaxed?
Sleepy and worry-free is first seen in the "Warring States Policy Wei Ce I": When it is Qin, Then Chu Han will not dare to move, and if there is no trouble with Chu Han, then the king will lie on his back, and the country will be worry-free. What is depicted here is a state in which the king lies on his back and appears to be high, and he can overlook the officials below without lying flat. The idiom of sitting back and relaxing is self-created by later generations, and the specific time is no longer verifiable. Maybe it's just an idiom created by later generations.