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introduction
Cosmetics and skin care products are a necessity for people's contemporary life. At first, people were limited by the idea that cosmetics and skin care products were exclusive to women. If a man uses these "maiden" things, he will definitely be regarded as a freak.
With the development of society and the progress of the times, people's solidified thinking has been changed, boys can also pursue refinement, and the use of skin care products and cosmetics is also handy, becoming a "delicate pig boy" in the mouth of girls, lamenting that they are not as exquisite as men.
So in ancient times, how did women maintain their daily makeup and skin care?
The appearance is destined, and the skin care is pure and natural
Similar to today's girls, ancient women would also apply masks regularly, after all, everyone has a heart for beauty. The best skincare ingredient is motherwort ash, an all-natural herb with strong vitality.
The alkali contained in it can wash away oil and cosmetics on the face, and occupies an important position in ancient women's skin care products.
Motherwort is burned to ashes, then stirred with water, then simmered over low heat. Take it out after half an hour and grind it fine with a tool. Burnt small white chrysanthemum gray will turn into a fine white powder.
Boiling edible rice into soup and stirring it well, this is also a great success, and what you get is the mainstream skin care products at that time.
In this way, it can be supplied to wealthy ladies, and the method of use is also very simple, after washing the face, apply it to the face and gently rub, long-term use will make the face very smooth.
The biggest benefit of motherwort ash is that it makes the skin clear, not a little oily, and will not feel dry all day.
Compared with ordinary noble ladies, the skin care products of the queens and princesses in the palace will look very luxurious. Their usual skin care product is called facial fat, which is very effective and most importantly, it tastes very fragrant.
Motherwort ash is very precious to ordinary women, but compared to the creams used by harem women, motherwort ash is not worth mentioning. After all, face fat is much more precious than motherwort, based on motherwort ash, and added with many famous ingredients.
Ancient women's skin care products are single but not simple. With the emphasis on skin care, the cosmetics industry has risen rapidly, and water, milk, cream and essence have been derived from ancient face fats.
While paying attention to skin quality and experience, the price is also uneven, fully meeting everyone's skin care needs, and skin care is no longer exclusive to rich ladies.
Makeup is not exclusive to modern women, and makeup has a long history in China. Whether it is the tedious steps or the luxury of accessories, compared to the ancients, modern women are beyond the dust.
When it comes to ancient cosmetics, you can think of red face powder, although it is common, but I don't know the ingredients and how to use it. The flour used on the face in ancient times was made from corn flour and various spices added. Since corn flour itself has a certain stickiness, it is not easy to fall off when applied to the face.
"Etiquette and Internal Rules":
"Then on the fifth day, the soup is bathed, and on the third day, the dirt is burnt, and the pan is warm; Foot scale, then boiled soup cleaned. ”
With the development of the times, lead powder containing lead, tin, aluminum, zinc and other chemical elements has appeared one after another. Compared with rice flour, lead powder is not easy to deteriorate, and it is very popular with women after dehydration and delicate whiteness.
Powder is the base makeup, rouge is the makeup. Red is a general term for facial fat and mouth fat. Its raw material is actually a flower called "red blue", and the petals contain reddish-yellow pigment.
Place in a bowl with a repeated pestle hammer, wash off the yellow juice to turn into a bright red dye, add oil and animal bone marrow to make.
The people of the Tang Dynasty were very obsessed with the use of skin care products, which was inseparable from the love of the ruling class at that time.
According to Tang Dynasty custom, the eighth emperor of the first lunar month would reward ministers with fat and bath beans, and local institutions would use bath beans containing high-quality beans as spices to pay tribute to the royal family and nobles.
In the Song Dynasty, saponins were mixed with spices and many Chinese herbs with beauty effects, ground into powder and then coagulated into blocks, and finished products were sold on the market in block form.
This kind of "soap" can not only cleanse facial oil, but also have the effect of clearing heat and cooling blood, activating blood, building muscles, and aroma and so on. At the same time, it also has many effects such as beauty and freckle removal, which is a rare beauty care product.
It is unique and unique
As early as the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, ancient women began to pay attention to the matter of makeup. According to historical records, King Zhuo liked to stain the nails and cheeks of his concubines, so it seems that men attach great importance to women's makeup.
Above we mentioned many cosmetics in ancient times, which are similar to modern makeup techniques, so what are the differences between the ancients in terms of makeup steps?
From the perspective of historians, the makeup steps of the ancients were very cumbersome, and compared with the makeup of modern women, ancient women appeared more delicate.
Applying lead powder is almost the same as the current foundation, both to highlight the whiteness of the skin, after all, "one white covers all ugliness" is a fact.
The Sichuan Museum has a Song printed porcelain powder box, white porcelain tires, steamed bun shape, and the lid of the box is printed with peony flowers, which is a powder box for women in the Song Dynasty. According to the "Shuowen Jiezi":
"Powder, face dresser also, from the rice sound."
It is speculated that ancient women needed to grind grains into powder when making flour, and in ancient times productivity was low, and starvation was the norm. I have to admire that the first woman to apply rice flour to her face is really a "local tycoon".
"Qi Min Zhishu" details the production method of rice noodles, rice should be made of broom or millet, rice ground into fine powder sinking into cold water to ferment and rot, then wash off the acid, and then use a round powder bowl filled with rice juice to decant wine, and finally put it in the sun to the sun, the dried powder can be used to cover the face.
After the abandonment of flour, lead powder was widely used. The Shennong Hundred Herbs Sutra mentions that women use lead rouge and tin powder to make up their makeup.
Lead is originally an accessory of ancient alchemy, and vinegar white lead becomes as delicate as rice flour, and the lead hua that "washes away the lead hua" is actually lead powder.
Lead is a heavy metal, although it can brighten when applied to the face, it has serious side effects after a long time, but this also can't look at women who love beauty.
In the use of auxiliary materials in lead powder, the Tang Dynasty people liked to mix Western spices into the powder, called "Ying butterfly powder", and the Song Dynasty used motherwort powder and the like to make "jade girl peach pollen".
Lead powder was a favorite of ancient women, and as a rouge for foreign items, it also made women ecstatic. Rouge, also known as Yanzhi, is a foreign translation.
Rouge is native to the foot of the Yanzhi Mountain in the Western Regions and is extracted from a flower called "red and blue". Zhang Qian of the Han Dynasty sent an envoy to the Western Regions to bring rouge to the Central Plains, after which ancient women modified their faces after applying powder.
Applying rouge on the cheeks is a basic operation for Chinese and foreign women in ancient and modern times. As early as the pre-Qin period, women used whitewashed faces. The face is smeared with white powder to make the skin white and tender, showing the beauty of youth, so it is called "white makeup".
At that time, women had already begun to use rouge, and there was a tendency to raise eyebrows and dot their lips. You know, in ancient China, the decoration of the eyebrows was very important and was considered to be the external symbol of a person.
There are many records of "pink, white and black" in ancient books such as "Chu Ci", "Warring States Policy", and "Han Feizi", proving that thrush appeared as early as the Warring States period.
The woman's thrush first pulls out the original eyebrow, and then uses paint to draw the desired eyebrow shape at the position of the original eyebrow. As for the style of eyebrows, it is generally long eyebrows, but there are also "butterfly eyebrows" like silk butterflies.
In the face decoration of ancient women, there is also the custom of small lips, which appeared as early as the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. At that time, the beauty of women's lips was admired and valued.
It was during this period that lip stickers appeared, and the so-called lip stickers were applied to the mouth, similar to the lipstick that women wear today.
In short, in the simple and mysterious pre-Qin period, women's decoration was not only practical, but also permeated with traces of primitive witchcraft totem worship, fully showing the richness of human spiritual cultivation and the development of aesthetic ability.
The bead curtain reflects Qinglou Xiao, and the mirror remembers spring pink summer makeup
In addition to the above-mentioned powder makeup, eyebrow shaping, lip shaping, and facial rubbing are even more popular beauty methods for women. As early as the Shang and Zhou Dynasty, women already knew how to knead their faces, but it was not popular at that time, and was only used by dancers and palace people.
The material of this beauty method is cinnabar, and the palace of Qin Shi Huang is full of red makeup and green eyebrows, and Qin Gong breaks the shackles of face makeup color and opens the fashion trend of rich makeup and different shapes.
After Zhang Qian brought back the rouge, the Central Plains woman improved it, added cow bone marrow to make a sticky red paste, and loaded it into vessels made of gold, jade, ceramics, etc.
By the time of the Wei and Jin dynasties, the production process of red was more mature. There is a paper-like "golden flower rouge" that you carry with you, which turns rouge into tiny petals, and the silk thread is dipped in red and blue, so you can take out makeup at any time.
"Red cotton" is a liquid blush made from flower juice, and the craftsmanship is very close to modern times. Red in the Tang Dynasty was called "red pink", and it was very popular for women to use rouge to make red makeup, and poets repeatedly admired this makeup.
Meng Haoran's "Spring Love" poem Yun:
"Bead curtain reflects Qinglouxiao, mirror memory spring pink makeup"
Of course, ancient women, like modern girls, only wear heavy makeup when they are happy.
In addition, the emergence of "Dai" can be described as a major change in women's makeup technology. The ancients called the eyebrows "the rainbow of seven emotions", because of the strong expressiveness, can make the face more three-dimensional, so the status of ancient Chinese eyebrow makeup is much higher than eye makeup.
Qu Yuan once recorded in "Chu Ci Dazhao" that "pink and white dai black", "dai" is a blue-black pigment specially used for women's eyebrows. At this time, there was no eyebrow pencil, and the girls used green willow branches to light the diluted paint thrush.
In the Qin Dynasty, "moth eyebrows" were popular, and in the Han Dynasty, "moth eyebrows" and "eight-character eyebrows", "willow eyebrows" and "moon eyebrows" were most respected in the Han and Tang Dynasties, especially in the Tang Dynasty, girls had very high requirements for "shaving their foreheads", shaving off the original hair, which also made the makeup of eyebrows more important.
It also makes the forehead an important object of women's makeup, and the dotted forehead yellow, also known as appliqué, is a variety of styles of decorations cut from silk, colored paper, gold leaf, mica sheets and other materials. Shapes such as rhombus, moon, peach, flower, bird, fish, butterfly, mandarin duck, etc. The colors are mainly red, green and yellow.
Appliqué began with the "plum blossom makeup" of Princess Shouyang during the Southern and Northern Dynasties. In the Tang Dynasty, the girl who loves beauty was no longer satisfied with a single petal, but decorated with gold leaf, silver leaf, and even insect wings and bird feathers, as written in the "Mulan Word"
"Mirror Appliqué Yellow"
Yellow makeup is the "yellow frontal makeup" of the Wei and Jin dynasties, and the flower box is cut into birds, insects, flowers, leaves and other patterns with various materials, and pasted between the forehead and eyebrows. Oblique redness is the drawing of a crescent moon on the cheeks and temples that looks like a wound.
Facial dimples are also known as "flower dimples", and dimples are commonly known as "dimples". The face is made up, and on both sides of the woman's cheeks, there are various patterns such as danqing, cinnabar, or moon shape, or money shape, as well as various patterns carved from gold pieces and jadeite, which were more prevalent in the late Tang dynasty.
Early Tang women love red lips, lip points include pomegranate horn, big red spring, little red spring, tender and fragranceless, half corner, wanjin hong, zhi tanxin, dewdrop, inner homeland, tiangong bridge, luoer seal, light red and other kinds of heart heart, star halo, little zhulong, double sugar plum, flower girl photo, etc. in short, the most beautiful of the small, the most beautiful of the small is the cherry small mouth.
During the Sui and Tang dynasties, women's eyebrow ornaments were varied, with long eyebrows popular in the Sui Dynasty, thick eyebrows in the early Tang Dynasty, and short and wide bay leaf eyebrows popular in the middle of the Tang Dynasty. During the Yuan and later periods, it became popular to open eyebrows in the Bazi Palace.
At the end of the Five Dynasties, the faint butterfly wing eyebrows and thick upturned eyebrows were also emphasized. In short, throughout history, the art of women's makeup in the Sui and Tang Dynasties can be said to be the most colorful period in the history of Chinese makeup, and it is also the period when Chinese women attach the most importance to makeup.
Until now in the 21st century, cosmetics are no longer an accessory to life, but a necessity of life. Attending any important occasion, clean and comfortable makeup will bring you more confidence and opportunities, which is also an important reason why more and more male friends are paying attention to self-care and makeup.
epilogue
Think back to the universal face of ancient makeup and look at the pursuit of beauty in today's human beings. When the news reports that I am a victim, I can't help but lament the human suffering.
I also hope that these friends who are obsessed with plastic surgery will do it carefully. At the same time, the mass media should encourage the public to look at themselves with the correct aesthetic eyes, rather than blindly promoting the magic of artificial beauty.
It can be said that today's women's pursuit of beauty has reached its peak, as long as we pay a little attention, we will find that our lives are being "educated" by various mass media such as beauty advertisements, beauty books, beauty recipes, etc.
Love of beauty is a common human feeling, and the same is true of women in ancient times. It is the inheritance of this ancient makeup culture that we now have a large number of excellent talents who pursue beauty and skin, perhaps ancient makeup technology does not have a great reference for us, but it will always bring us a lot of inspiration.
Society is constantly developing and changing, and only better inheritance can achieve better creation.
Bibliography:
《Chu Ci》
"Magnolia Words"
"Qi Min Zhishu"
Shennong Hundred Herbs Sutra