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Text: Wen Shuyan
Edited by Wen Shuyan
Preface
There are countless poems praising women's skin in ancient literature and poetry, such as "Song of Long Hatred" in which there is an extremely gorgeous description of "hot spring water slippery washing cream", and ancient China also praised women's "skin like cream", it can be seen that ancient women still have a lot of experience in skin care.
The cosmetics in modern society are dazzling, and women now seem to treat skin care and makeup as a major event in life.
You must know that the mask is a thing that only appeared after the development of modern cosmetics, and there was definitely no high-end skin care product such as a mask in ancient times, and women in ancient times had to make some efforts if they wanted to keep their faces moisturized.
So, in the ancient period when there were no masks, how did ancient women take care of their skin?
Millennial focus on facial cleansing
Ancient people paid attention to the cleanliness of the face, ancient women did not wash their faces with water like we do now, in large families or families with good family background, the average housewife will use the fresh rice water at home to wash their faces.
Because after the rice is washed with clean water, the alkaline substances attached to the outside of the rice will flow into the rice washing water, and the alkaline substances in the rice washing water just neutralize with the oil on the surface of the human skin, which can have the function of eliminating oil and decontamination.
And rice water can not only be used to wash the face, but also can be used as a shampoo to wash hair, the alkaline substances in the rice water can also form an attached protective film for the scalp, reduce the secretion of scalp oil, in ancient times, often used rice water to wash hair, you can wash out a smooth and bright long hair.
However, during this period, rice washing water was not something used by every household, and rice washing water, which seems very inconspicuous to us today, was a luxury in many ordinary families at that time.
Because rice is too precious, washing rice water has almost become a skin care product that can only be used by aristocratic families, until the Tang and Song dynasties, new cleaning products appeared, and ordinary people began to gradually skin care.
In the Tang and Song dynasties, ancient women had a new invention in facial cleansing, and the most popular thing in society at that time should be bath beans, which can be regarded as a cleaning tool such as soap or laundry detergent.
The advent of bath beans allowed many low-class women to have their own cleaning products, and at the time, it was similar to the facial cleanser we use today, rubbing it in warm water and foaming.
Bath beans were greatly developed in the Tang Dynasty, when the folk customs were open, and the status of women was greatly improved compared to other dynasties, so skin care products also developed greatly during this period.
The Song Dynasty also almost followed the Xi customs of the Tang Dynasty, but there were also new developments in bath beans, and the cleansing effect was far from meeting their needs, just like we do now, not only to clean, but also to skin care.
The women of the Song Dynasty were very innovative, combining bath beans and traditional Chinese medicine to achieve a dual effect, both to cleanse the skin and to use Chinese herbs to rejuvenate the body's soft tissues.
Not only Song Dynasty women, but also many Song Dynasty men also paid great attention to their own skin management, and in many cases they would also use bath beans to cleanse and then skin care.
Unlike what we have today, ancient skin care products did not have high-tech, no additives, and were almost all natural products, and these herbs would penetrate into the skin and soft tissues to achieve the effect of repairing facial skin.
Natural beauty methods
We often say "sleep beauty sleep", in fact, according to ancient Chinese medicine classics such as "The Yellow Emperor's Neijing", sleep is indeed conducive to making the skin more smooth and fair.
This is mainly because the skin texture can be repaired during sleep, so maintaining enough sleep is also a great benefit to the skin, and the ancient people seemed to be painless beauty.
And ancient women didn't just sleep and beautify, they would put a kind of cream on their face before sleeping, this cream was not the hydrating and moisturizing cream we have now, but a paste similar to white powder.
In all dynasties and generations, the raw materials of this beauty powder are not the same, but the basic material of most beauty powders is generally pearls, which are ground into pearl powder to apply to the face, and pearls are a kind of skin care home goods.
When you wake up the next morning, as long as you wash off the pearl powder on your face with water, your skin will be whiter and softer, because the pearl powder absorbs impurities and oils in the skin when you sleep at night, making your skin more refreshed.
And in ancient times, there were not only night creams, but also the most primitive body lotions, and the use of body lotions can be traced back to the Stone Age. At that time, people in primitive societies discovered that animal fats were very effective in treating chapped skin.
Therefore, after hunting the animals, they separated the edible parts, stored the fur and the fat of the animal, and mixed the oil with the dry fruit of the plant to form the first body milk.
In the summer, in order to avoid wind and sun, you can apply such animal fat to the body, which can achieve the purpose of insulating the sun, and at the same time, the moisture contained in the skin can also be absorbed into the skin, so that the skin can be kept in a supple state.
And applying such animal fat in winter can also avoid dry and cracked fingers in winter, and at the same time has the effect of keeping warm, which can be described as a multi-purpose oil.
Lovers of ancient beauty
If you want to say that the most famous skin care lovers in the ancient period of the mainland, it is none other than Wu Zetian and Cixi, who are not only cosmetics lovers, but also have made great contributions to the development of ancient beauty technology.
The status of women in the Tang Dynasty was extremely high, and Wu Zetian pulled the status of women to a new height.
For example, according to historical records, when Wu Zetian was in power, there was a special imperial doctor who was responsible for the care of Wu Zetian's skin, and he would also develop skin care products that belonged to her according to Wu Zetian's skin condition, so as to make the female emperor stay forever.
At that time, Wu Zetian's skin care products were made of pearl powder and spices, and some raw materials such as lard and honey were added to the precious spices, and then mixed and wrapped with various petals in the imperial garden, and finally kneaded into the size of balls, as Wu Zetian's special beauty pills.
Not only that, Wu Zetian is also in love with roses for ten minutes, and often uses the products of roses in his beauty, drinking rose dew when he gets up early in the morning every day, and taking a bath with roses before going to bed.
The shadow of roses can be seen almost everywhere in her bedroom, and even the incense is made of roses, and every day under the influence of roses, she is also "skin like condensation, face like peach blossoms".
Many people mention that Wu Zetian is almost a powerful empress, but what many people don't know is that she is still a "beauty master", and she often uses roses to make rose essential oil, and the rose essential oil at that time can be described as real material.
Once the rose essential oil is volatilized, it will exude a charming fragrance, which is a result of himself for Wu Zetian, which is almost "hard to find" at that time.
The Empress Dowager Cixi was a beauty fanatic in the Qing court, and the history books recorded that Cixi spent a lot of time on skin care every day, and she also raised the luxury of mainland skin care history to a historical high.
According to the records of the Qing Palace and the oral accounts of the palace maids around Cixi at that time, there were hundreds of beauty methods for Cixi, among which there were more than a dozen kinds of beauty creams for the face alone.
For example, there are mixed pearl powder made from pearls of various colors produced in the ocean, precious jewelry such as coral and jadeite, and aloe vera, which is specially cultivated for skin care, etc., and these things are pounded into a paste mixed with soybean powder and applied to the face.
In this way, Cixi and Wu Zetian are almost the women who have spent the most effort on their faces in the mainland from the beginning to the present, and they are also a living pinnacle of ancient skin care in the mainland.
epilogue
There are two most important reasons why the beauty technology of the ancient mainland is so developed, the first is that with the development of economy and society, people's requirements for the maintenance of their own skin keep pace with the times.
It is said that "full of warmth and lust", and it is precisely because people can eat and drink enough at that time that they have more leisure and effort to consider how to maintain their skin, so the better the skin is maintained, the better the development of the society.
The second is that the ancient women of the mainland are generally "not out of the door, the second door is not out", in addition to making female red embroidery at home, they can only find some other idle things to do, so they have a lot of time to study how to maintain the skin.
After the current trend of women's emancipation flourished, most women are no longer bored or forced by other pressures to maintain their skin, and now more women are beautifying for "pleasing themselves", which is also the progress of the times.
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