No matter where the gourd is grown, the scene of people using it as a kettle is very common and has a worldwide scope. The reason why the gourd can be used as a kettle has four major advantages: one is easy to grow, the second is lightweight, the third is practical, and the fourth is easy to replace. In general, the oldest living water vessels around the world are mainly gourds, wood utensils, coconut shells and bamboo tubes. In most areas where gourds are grown, people give priority to the use of gourds as simple kettles.
In the mainland, the use of gourd kettles is well known, the fifty-six ethnic groups have their own characteristics, the written materials are quite rich, and the related cultural relics and specimens are countless. Classifying the world's gourd kettles is extremely complicated and difficult, but the functions are uniform. Gourds in the natural growth process will appear a variety of shape changes, along with climate and environmental changes, gourd varieties have hybridization and variation, and which shape of gourd to choose as a kettle there is also a big difference, basically local materials and according to personal preferences. In the East and the West, the gourd kettles in different regions such as the tropics and temperate zones represent different gourd cultures and have a long history. There are many kinds of tricks in the gourd kettle, which can be described as "a scoop of creation, heaven and earth in a pot".
In the old days, the gourd kettle was cherished as the most important daily container for the family. Every day, a family's drinking water is stored in a gourd kettle, which people use to fetch water from streams and mountain springs, and also to transport seawater. People in the mountains always carry water hyacinths when they go out, and fishermen on the beach will carry water hyacinths with them when they go out to fish and sail to ensure the supply of fresh water. In the movie "Dumb Girl", there is a classic water hyacinth shot. In order to recruit duck breeding masters, the village threw a water hyacinth into the water, and if he could step on a small boat and use a bamboo pole to fish the water hyacinth, he would win, and finally the dumb girl skillfully jumped on the boat and easily picked up the gourd. This also shows that gourds are widely used in the extended areas of rivers and lakes.
Water hyacinth can basically be divided into three categories: household gourd kettle, water hyacinth for sea crossing, and water hyacinth used in field work. Water hyacinth is also the most common gourd container, as long as the opening, empty the seeds in the stomach, clean the gourd inside the gourd, you can fill the water, the opening is often used wood, animal bones, leather and so on as a stopper. In order to facilitate the carrying of gourds, people also weave wicker, bark, animal furs, etc. into net pockets, rope belts, etc. to tie them to the gourd. In this way, the hoist is easy to carry, hang and travel.
The general shape of the ordinary gourd kettle is spherical, straight- and straight-barreled, scoop-shaped, figure-of-eight and so on. Along the Mediterranean coast, there is also a unique flat round gourd kettle. Figure-of-eight is the easiest to hang, it does not need a net pocket, only a rope is tied from the middle, and other shapes of gourd kettles are best to have a net pocket to facilitate fixation.
From the author's research data, the Asian gourd kettle represented by China is basically based on the shape of the waist gourd, supplemented by the scoop gourd. On the African continent, it is basically dominated by scoop gourds, waist-pressed gourds and stick gourds (straight-barreled), the American continent is dominated by scoop gourds and waist-pressed gourds, Europe is dominated by waist-pressed gourds and stick gourds (straight-barreled), and Oceania is dominated by spherical gourds and waist-pressed gourds (hourglass-shaped). The shape of the gourd kettle on a hainanese fishing vessel is very different from the several types mentioned above. Through the analysis of film and television works, the gourds on domestic ships are mostly gourds and waist-pressed gourds, while foreign gourds are mainly stick gourds (straight barrels), which also reflects the cultural differences of gourds in different regions. The slender gourd, after cutting off the stem, forms a pot mouth, and the mouth of the pot is bent enough that even if the kettle is tilted, the water inside will not easily flow out. Usually, this type of water hyacinth is suspended directly from the beams of canoes or on the masts of larger ships. The scoop-shaped gourd kettle is convenient for fishermen to hold clothes, and the figure-eight waist-pressed gourd kettle is easy to tie to the child as a life jacket to prevent the child from falling into the water. Therefore, according to the size of the ship and the distance of navigation, the clever ancestors were also flexible when using the gourd kettle, and they were never rigid.
Many countries and ethnic groups distributed in tropical and subtropical regions still use gourd kettles as the main means of water transport, such as ethnic minorities in the southern part of the continent and some countries in Africa, South America, and Oceania that use gourd kettles as the main means of transporting water. In these areas, the gourd growth cycle is fast, and the gourds of individual varieties are large in size and fill with more water, and they cover the outside of the gourd or weave them into a net with animal leather, wicker, rattan, etc., which can be brought a lot at a time. For example, the indigenous people of the Taiwan region of the mainland use a kind of "big Pulun" gourd to draw water when they go to sea, and store their clothes and grain in the gourd, and when they travel far, they can carry the road on their shoulders, or they can use it as a floating tool to cross the river and swim in the sea. Women also often carry gourds on their backs and use gourd kettles to boil water and cook food. To this day, in the mainland Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau and other border townships, there is still this custom, the author once saw the local sinkhole, Leprosy Village in the deep mountain old forest of Yiwu Ancient Town in Xishuangbanna, the Dai tea farmers, with a gourd kettle to drink water, up the mountain to pick tea must bring water hyacinth, steamed rice must say put a few pots of water.
In addition, the gourd kettle is also one of the necessary military supplies for marching and fighting in the era of cold weapons. In the literature of the ancient frontier military career on the mainland, there are records of using gourds to fetch water to transport water. In the military museum exhibition, there is also a gourd kettle given to the boatman by a Red Army soldier after crossing the Dadu River.
The use of gourd water in foreign countries is also very much, the author once found the gourd as food, containers, musical instruments used in the book publication materials and famous oil paintings in the Prado Museum in Spain.
With the improvement of handicraft technology and the application of colorology, people carved, painted, and even spliced and inlaid on the shell of the gourd, etc., and the gourd kettle changed from an everyday container to a beautiful and beautiful handicraft, resulting in barter and thus forming a market transaction. With the change of people's requirements for the size, capacity, use cycle and other elements of the container for water, wood, coconut shells, bamboo barrels, steel, chemical plastic products have appeared one after another, resulting in the gourd kettle is getting farther and farther away from us. With the development of modern civilization and the improvement of productivity, gourd kettles are still widely present in all parts of the world, although the frequency of use has decreased, but the gourd kettle as a cultural carrier has still been preserved.
More than a century ago, more than 10,000 Chinese workers used their own blood and sweat to build the Pacific Railway across the North American continent, and these Chinese workers risked their lives to work hard in an extremely unsafe and difficult environment, making indelible contributions to the subsequent economic take-off of the United States. According to historical records, these southern Chinese, who may not have seen snow in their lifetime, withstood the test of the harsh winter, using hoes, shovels and explosives to penetrate a tunnel under the hard granite mountain. During the construction period, various accidents and dangerous accidents occurred frequently, and historians described the railway as "a Chinese bone buried under every sleeper." When studying this history, the author found that the southern Chinese workers traveled with gourd kettles before going abroad, and used them as containers for water during the rest of the construction of the railway. It was not until May 8, 2017, that the California House of Representatives unanimously approved the establishment of a railway Chinese worker's memorial day.
Figure 2.1102 Chinese workers outside the tunnel carrying tea and gourd tea sets, circa 1867, Library of Congress
Fig. 2.1103 Chinese workers not only brought gourd kettles to the United States, but also spread the gourd culture and tea drinking culture in the United States, and later many American seed stores were selling gourd seeds and making gourd kettles.
Figure 2.1104 Many tourists who come to California seed farms are interested in water hyacinths for Chinese laborers. This water hyacinth was used by Chinese laborers to fill tea. Almost every Chinese laborer carries his own pot of tea and water hyacinth on his back, like carrying a silver pot with him. Some of the water hyacinths are covered with six weaves on the outside and are equipped with a water bottle made of corks and gourds. (Source: USDA - Nursery and Seed Catalog, p. 17 Vaughn's Seed Shop Illustration (published in 1910) National Library of Agriculture)
Of course, in many parts of the world, gourd kettles continue to play an important role in holding water, but they also continue to exist in the form of gourd crafts and gourd artworks. Therefore, the existence of all things is reasonable.