During the Qing Dynasty, the use of toilets was the main way to go to the toilet, including potties, gong buckets, etc., without a special toilet. These toilets are stored in a "clean room". For the emperors and concubines, they would use a toilet called an "official room", which was managed by eunuchs, and was usually not placed in the palace, but passed to the place where they were needed.
This "official room" is available in rectangular and oval forms, made of wood, tin or porcelain. The wooden official room is rectangular, with a wooden frame installed on the outside, an oval opening on the frame, and a soft cushion around it, and a lid on the mouth, and the bedpan can be pulled out like a drawer, and the general wooden bedpan is equipped with a tin inside to prevent leakage. The tin official room is oval in shape, with a wooden lid on the basin and a button in the center; This potty should be used with a potty stool, which is relatively low, with an oval opening at the front end and a rounded opening below. The toilet stool has a backrest and a soft lining, just like a sofa without armrests now, sitting on it, no worse than the current toilet, but it can't flush.
It is said that when Empress Dowager Cixi needed to use the "official room", the palace maids would go to prepare various items, and the eunuchs would wrap the official room in a cloth cover and send it to the Empress Dowager's dormitory outside the door of the palace. For ordinary people, only "potty" can be used.
In addition to using the toilet, the emperor's excrement needs to wait until the end of the congratulations before it can be cleaned up, so the emperor needs to endure the presence of filthy qi in the process. In order to eliminate this smell, the eunuchs used scorched dates to cover up the smell of feces. This is also why the Qing emperor used burnt red dates to go to the toilet.
It helps to exert its effects of strengthening the spleen, warming the stomach, replenishing blood and diuresis. During the Qing Dynasty, scorched dates were used to eliminate the smell of excrement and could float on the surface of the water to cushion and seal the splash. It is said that the Qianlong Emperor not only could not smell this smell, because the toilet contained water, and he could not excrete it when he heard the "grunt" sound, so the eunuchs thought of using burnt red dates and adding warm water to cover up the smell of feces and reduce the embarrassment and discomfort during excretion.
In general, the royal life of the Qing Dynasty was very luxurious and luxurious, but it also paid attention to detail and hygiene in daily life. The emperor's toilet process required the use of various specially designed facilities and tools, and scorched dates became the solution to the smell and sound problem.
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