Coordinates: Qianshuangjing Town, Changtu County, Tieling City, Liaobei Province (the end of the universe, on the sea of Nachantu)
The previous article "Remembering Bitterness and Thinking Sweetness 18: Looking at the Changes of the Times from the Evolution of the Quilt" talked about the evolution history of quilts in rural Liaobei, which caused heated discussions on the platform, which was really unintentional. After talking about the quilt, this time it was the turn to talk about the mattress.
In life, quilts and mattresses are often combined into one word - futon. The quilt is covered, and the mattress is used to spread, so the futon is also called "cover" by rural people. Before the 90s of the 20th century, when I left home to work abroad, I took my own bedding. For the convenience of carrying, the bedding is generally stacked in a bundle into a roll (similar to the straw roll beaten by the baler now), called "cover roll", and then carry or carry the "cover roll" out.
I couldn't find an authentic picture of the roll, so I had to replace this one
Ask a simple question - did the rural areas of northern Liaoning have quilts or mattresses first
Call it bedding or "cover", which means that the connection between the quilt and the mattress is very close. So let me ask a question: In the late Qing Dynasty, when our ancestors lived in rural areas in northern Liaoning, did we first have quilts or mattresses?
Many readers may reflexively say: "Without a quilt, sleeping will freeze; Without a mattress, the man should be so panicked and uncomfortable sleeping on the kang. These two things are indispensable and should be in no particular order. "That's what I thought at first. But by consulting the information and asking the elderly over 70 years old, the answer was really unexpected: there were quilts in rural areas in northern Liaoning first, and then mattresses. The mattress appeared more than a hundred years later than the quilt!
From the end of the Qing Dynasty to the early 60s of the 20th century - there were only quilts and no bedding on the kang in rural areas of northern Liaoning
During the Jiaqing period in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the Qianshuangjing area began to lift the ban on reclamation, and a large number of Shandong and Hebei immigrants who "broke into the Guandong" poured in. When these immigrants first arrived, they did not even have a house, so they could only build shacks and horse racks to live temporarily, and there was no kang in the shacks and horse racks, so they spread some hay on the ground, and people slept in the grass. Later, he built a muddy grass house to live in, and there was a fire in the house, and a kang mat was laid on it. When people sleep on the kang, they are wrapped in a quilt, and there is no mattress under the quilt, and the whole person sleeps directly on the kang mat. Why don't you have a mattress? It's not because of "poverty". At that time, many poor peasant and farm-hired families, so poor that the whole family had a tattered quilt, and they couldn't even cover a quilt for one person, how could they still have the ability to make a mattress? But it cannot be said too absolutely, in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, a very small number of landlord families with good economic conditions in rural areas still had cotton mattresses or dog skin mattresses, but that was a very small minority.
The cart shop at the end of the Qing Dynasty (old photo of coloring). Please note that there are only kang mats and no mattresses under the guests
My mother recalls that when she was 5 years old (1959), she started remembering and there was not a single mattress in the house. When sleeping at night in winter, each family of nine covers a quilt, rolls the sides of the quilt under the body, and wraps it into a quilt tube, so as to avoid the body falling directly on the kang mat. But after falling asleep, everyone will unconsciously turn over and change their sleeping position, so that when they move, the tube will be loosened, and the person will unconsciously fall on the kang table. The kang mat is not only hot, but also hot in the first half of the night, and cold in the second half of the night, making people unable to sleep steadily. When adults sleep, they fall on the kang mat and do not tighten it, and the newborn baby can't help but be hot and cold, so at that time, every family spread a cloth bag under the baby's body, and the bag was filled with crushed grain grass to prevent burning and frost. This straw bag is equivalent to the most primitive mattress.
Mid-60s of the 20th century - The kang on the mattress appeared
The mid-to-late 60s of the 20th century was a period of significant improvement in rural material conditions. My mother-in-law recalled that in the years before the young people went to the countryside, there were already mattresses in the house, and they were one person. At that time, the practice of mattresses was similar to that of quilts, which were all cotton, sewing inside, and tensing face. If you pick the difference between the quilt and the mattress, there are two: one is that the width is different. The mattress is spread under the body, as long as the width can ensure that it does not roll outside the mattress after turning over, so the mattress is generally about two and a half feet wide, much narrower than the quilt. Second, the material of face is different. The mattress is directly spread on the kang mat, in order to prevent the kang mat from scratching the mattress, the mattress face should use both strong and scratch-resistant, but also beautiful fabric, thick, durable striped velvet cloth, and a variety of flower cloth, it has become the preferred fabric for mattress face.
My mother made suede mattresses in the '80s
In the 80s of the 20th century, printed bedding face was common in rural areas of northern Liaoning
Early 90s of the 20th century - the evolution of mattresses
By the early 90s of the 20th century, mattresses had clearly evolved.
One is that the face of the mattress has changed dramatically. In the early 90s of the 20th century, the countryside gradually phased out sorghum straw kang mats and reed kang mats in favor of recycled plate kang mats, and then transitioned to paving kang board leather. The recycled board and kang board leather are very smooth, and the scratching damage to the face of the mattress is very small, which leads to the use of hot velvet cloth for the mattress face in rural areas, but all replaced with flower cloth and satin, which is the same as the face.
The second is the mass appearance of finished cotton mattresses produced by machines. In the early 90s of the 20th century, military service clubs appeared on the town street, and began to sell a large number of cotton mattresses imitating military products, which did not distinguish between inside and face, and the colors were military green and dark blue.
In the early 90s of the 20th century, the Military Service sold imitation military cotton mattresses
The third is the rise of "mattresses". Around 1990, the "Simmons" mattress became popular in the city, and its distinctive feature is that it is particularly soft and comfortable, more than an order of magnitude higher than the mattress on the kang. Some rural families with the conditions began to catch up with the trend and directly spread "Simmons" on the kang, replacing the handmade cotton mattress, which the common people called "bed mattress".
In the 90s of the 20th century, Simmons also went to the kang, and from Simmons, the development path of mattresses was deviated
Of course, laying "Simmons" on the kang also has disadvantages, that is, "Simmons" is thick and heavy, and it cannot be rolled up and put away like a cotton mattress during the day, which leads to a lot of areas on the kang being occupied by "Simmons", which is not convenient for people to move on the kang. Later, there was a sponge mattress, that is, buy a large sponge into the mattress cover and spread it on the kang, its advantage is that it is very lightweight, and it can be rolled up and put away like a cotton mattress during the day, and the price is much cheaper than "Simmons", which has also been popular in the countryside for a while.
Cheap sponge mattresses
After 2000 - disappeared handmade mattresses
After 2000, a variety of well-made, beautiful appearance, lightweight machines produced a steady stream of finished mattresses, although these mattresses are still called "mattresses", but they are essentially either a thin mattress, or a thin quilt with a quilt cover, and the traditional cotton mattress handmade in the countryside is no longer a concept. The handmade cotton mattresses, which have been popular in rural Liaobei for more than half a century, are rapidly disappearing, leaving only memories of "hot suede mattresses" for those of us.
The mattress now looks like this