Furniture and life are closely related, by furniture to understand the living habits and social customs of the ancients, is another pleasure to explore Ming-style furniture. Novels, operas, notes, paintings and woodcut illustrations from the Ming and Qing dynasties provide rich information in this regard.
In a hundred years of life, when it is experienced, the day lives in half and the night lives in half. There is always no place for the place where the day is, or the church or the house, or the boat or the car, and there is only one bed at night. It is the bed, which is the thing that I have in common for half of my life, and it is in order compared to the chaff that is knotted. Man's treatment of things, its thickest, should be more than this.
——Li Yu, "Idle Love And Occasional Mail"
This passage comes from Li Yu, a writer and opera composer in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. He believes that most of his life is spent in bed, and he must cherish it carefully, and even jokes that the status of the bed is higher than that of his wife, which shows that the Ming people attach great importance to the bed.
The Zen bed was originally used in the monks' meditation room, and since the Song and Ming Dynasties, the literati would also meditate, either for meditation, or for the cultivation of truth, or as a work for their own moral cultivation. Gao Panlong, the leader of the Donglin Party in the Ming Dynasty, regarded "half a day of meditation and half a day of reading" as his own study procedure, which may be a reason why Zen beds are not only found in Zen rooms, but also in homes.
The luohan bed has a unique shape, different from the shelf bed or the pull-out bed, generally two meters long, one meter wide to one and a half meters, with a fence on three sides but no bed pillar, and the purpose is relatively similar to the bed. It can be reclined, seated, or used to meet guests, mostly in the hall or box. The name of the Luohan bed is not found in the literature and is difficult to examine. The Luohan bed generally gives people a sense of calm and thick, but this bed is concise and light, the style is very different, I think it is a scribe's study, which can be used to sit and rest, but also can be used to tune the piano and read, taste tea and play chess, and wash the dust.
In ancient times, the bed could be used as a seat and a bed. In the Tang Dynasty, Xu Jian quoted the Eastern Han Dynasty's pious "Popular Text" as saying: "The bed is three feet and five beds, the board sits alone, and the eight feet are known as beds", which shows that the bed refers to a short bed. Its seat surface may be equipped with a fence, or a tent, and it can also be pure and nothing. The Wei and Jin dynasties descended from the southern and northern dynasties, and larger beds gradually appeared. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the tatami was mostly placed in the hall, box or study hall for the purpose of meeting guests, sitting or reading.
Cross chair refers to the cross with a backrest, evolved from the beard bed, can be divided into two categories: circle back and straight back. Because it can be folded front and back, the form is light, and it is easy to carry, so the official eunuch travels and prepares more of this thing. In order to be able to fold, the cross chair cannot be equipped with goose necks or joint sticks under the armrests like ordinary chairs, so this chair is equipped with metal pillars under the armrests, which are connected with the support components at the upper end of the hind legs to make the structure more robust.
From the furniture to peek into the life of the ancients, the above is only a scale and a half claws, the content can not be regarded as comprehensive. However, this may be a direction to explore Ming-style furniture.