"The people follow the party, turn over and sing, and there will be no more bitter days..."
After the founding of New China, with the continuous development, the people's living standards gradually improved, and the people also got rid of the bitter life!
So what kind of life did people live before?
How poor were ordinary people in 1933 and 1946?
Next, let's analyze it from three aspects: eating, dressing and living!
Diet-wise
As the saying goes, the people take food as the sky!
Eating is a big deal for ordinary people!
So what did the common people eat during the Republic of China?
People in the southern coastal areas are almost inseparable from fish and shrimp, and people in Shanghai and other areas can often see ingredients such as hairy crabs on their tables.
Fish and shrimp are rich in protein, which is a good table delicacy for us now, and hairy crabs are now sold at extremely high prices, becoming a delicacy that we can only serve on the table during the New Year.
But this is food that these grassroots people in the Republic of China period can eat all the time, which shows that their living conditions should be good!
But quite the opposite!
The common people all rely on the mountains to eat the mountains, and rely on the sea to eat the sea. The people in the coastal areas also want to be able to eat white rice all the time, but the truth is not allowed. White rice can only be enjoyed by the wealthy, who can only rely on fishing and shrimp to fill their stomachs.
It stands to reason that eating these things can also be considered delicious, and at the same time, it can supplement the nutrients needed by the human body!
But at that time, the condiments in the hands of the people at the bottom were not so rich. They can only season fish and shrimp with simple condiments like salt and vinegar, and it is difficult to remove the fishy smell of the fish and shrimp themselves. The fish and shrimp that come out of this do not taste good!
Therefore, the fish and shrimp cooked in this way cannot be called delicacy, and the people just have to fill their stomachs.
And the bottom people living in the hinterland who do not rely on the sea also eat some coarse grains every day, and they can rarely eat white rice!
Although some farmers grow rice in their fields, the white rice produced is also sold, and they rely on the money to support the rest of their daily expenses.
Because there was no high-yield rice such as hybrid rice at that time, the rice yield at that time was not high. They can't enjoy this white rice, they can only wrap their stomachs with some coarse grains and agricultural and sideline products!
If some people live in the mountains, they can go to the mountains to hunt some game meat, although it is roasted in the most primitive way, it is also considered a delicacy!
In addition to making money by selling grain, some of the ordinary people at the bottom of the Republic of China would go to the road to do some small business. According to old photographic records from the Republican period, most of these small transactions are related to snacks.
Some people will choose to sell baked sweet potatoes, some people will choose to sell sugar gourds...
You can also see people selling long woven mats of dried grain, which are also intended for food service. There are still a handful of vendors who actually sell some toys and other supplies!
It can be seen that the common people during the Republic of China had a hard time in terms of diet!
Dressing
You can see the dressing style of the Republic of China period in related film and television works, some men will wear Zhongshan clothes, some people also wear small suits, and some people like Lu Xun wear robes and horse coats; Some of the women wore colorful small cheongsam, and some wore small dresses that looked very foreign...
But the characters in the TV series are all with halos after all, and they can leave a strong mark in history, proving that they are not ordinary people, and ordinary people in reality wear different clothes than them!
During the Republican period, the common people generally wore homemade local clothes, and their clothes were made from coarse cloth woven from their own household looms.
The color of coarse cloth is relatively single, and the clothes made of coarse cloth are definitely not as bright as the clothes sold in ready-to-wear stores. However, the coarse cloth woven by the loom is very soft and comfortable to wear.
While it can have comfort features, it also makes this coarse cloth clothes have inevitable drawbacks. Such clothes are relatively heavy and usually not very clean. So in some old photos, the clothes we can see on the people are all dirty and dirty.
In addition to its own poor cleaning, clothes made of coarse cloth are easy to shrink after being washed, which is what we often call "shrinkage" phenomenon.
Adult clothes are generally made according to their own body size, and it is not easy for grassroots people to make a piece of clothing, if the phenomenon of shrinking clothes can no longer be worn, this situation is a pity!
In order to protect clothes, ordinary people do not wash clothes so frequently!
The clothes made of coarse cloth are also relatively fragile, and coarse cloth is not wear-resistant, and it is inevitable that it will be damaged after wearing for a long time. For the grassroots people, even if their clothes are torn, they are reluctant to throw them, they will choose to find another coarse cloth to sew a patch on the broken place, and then continue to wear it out!
In some old photos, we can see that the same dress worn by ordinary people may have many patches on it, and even more can be described as a sewn clothing on top of the patch, although these people are still reluctant to throw away this dress and continue to wear it on their bodies!
And these children of the grassroots people in the Republic of China are not like the rich young master played in the TV series, who can wear a small handsome suit with a bow tie.
Because the children's bodies grow faster, these children wear large, coarse cloth clothes that do not fit, and some children only wear open-crotch pants.
From the dressing, it can be seen that the gap between the rich and the poor in that era was still very large!
But the gap between the rich and the poor in that era was not only reflected in food and clothing, but also in daily living.
Housing
Regarding the gap between the rich and the poor in housing, take the metropolis of Shanghai as an example.
Most of the film and television works of the Republic of China period will talk about Shanghai, Shanghai Beach in the Ten Mile Ocean Field, where there are powerful gangs, warlords who control the army, and rich businessmen who are worth a lot...
Their images in film and television works are all riding in a small foreign car to Shanghai to toast and change glasses at the cocktail party, surrounded by many beautiful women. Most of the houses they live in are luxurious multi-storey small western-style buildings.
But this is only the life of the rich, for the poor at the bottom, a piece of furniture in the rich mansion is even more valuable than the house they live in.
So where do these poor people live?
Most of them live inside the "rolling dragons" of suburban slums. "Rolling dragons" are huts made of thatch, and the poor have no money to build houses, so they can only live in thatched huts.
Correspondingly, there are inevitable problems in these rooms.
The first is the problem of the firmness of the thatched house, although it can be maintained in daily stability, but if it encounters windy and rainy weather, the disadvantages of thatched houses will be revealed.
Strong winds are likely to blow away some of the thatch on the surface of the house, and the warmth of the thatched house is greatly reduced; In rainy weather, thatch does not have a waterproof effect, which may cause heavy rain outside and light rain inside the house.
In order to save costs, thatched huts are also built very short. People who are slightly taller cannot stand completely upright in the house! Small and cramped living conditions inevitably bring oppressive feelings!
At the same time, the people in the shantytown are more casual, garbage is thrown everywhere, there may be feces on the road, and environmental problems are worrying!
But in the face of such a situation, the poor people have no choice!
Most of them are engaged in high-intensity physical work, but they receive very little salary, and being able to eat a full stomach every day is already the happiest thing for them, and it is already very good to have a place to live after a day's work, and they dare not expect how good the conditions in the district where I live are!
As things stand, the hushed enclosure for the uniform breeding of livestock is even better than these thatched huts. For example, brick or cement houses used in pigsty can also play a role in sheltering from the wind and rain, but houses made of thatch cannot!
It can be seen how difficult the living conditions of people were at that time!
Epilogue:
What do you think about the content of the poor life of ordinary people during the Republic of China?