Text丨Fat Boy Entertainment said
Editor丨Fat Boy Entertainment said
俗话说：“大暑和小暑，上蒸和下煮”。
As the greenhouse effect continues to accumulate, the global climate is gradually warming, although we humans may not feel it too deeply, but the glaciers that have been preserved in the Arctic and Antarctic for thousands of years are beginning to melt, which shows this.
Although this year's winter is colder than in previous years, many people may miss summer at this time, but when summer really comes, many people can't stand it.
In fact, not only in modern times, there will be such extremely hot weather, even in ancient times there were times when the heat was unbearable, although they were not entirely due to global warming, but also because of the extremely small probability of natural phenomena, there was the hottest summer in China's nearly 300-year history, this year was in the eighth year of Qianlong, that is, in 1743 AD.
Seeing this, many people can't help but wonder, we have all kinds of modern scientific and technological means to relieve our heat in summer, and the ancients had nothing, is it relying on "calm heart and natural coolness" to survive every hot summer?
In fact, it is not at all, and then I will introduce several ways for the ancients to escape the summer, and you must admire the wisdom of the ancestors after reading it.
Fan dissolution
The so-called "clean gentleman sweeps the dust, cool friends recruit the breeze", the common people throughout the ages are inseparable from the fan, the ancients called it "shaking the wind", also called "cool friends", is the first artifact of the summer throughout the ages.
In ancient times, families with good economic conditions would buy fans made of silk silk, which were not so tiring to shake. If you are a high-ranking official and noble, you can ask one or even several maids to help you fan the wind, so that you can enjoy the comfort brought by the "artificial fan". In ancient times, there were also some literati and writers who liked to write poems and paintings on fans to show their talents, which was quite funny.
Ice to cool off
Bingjian first appeared in the Zhou Dynasty in historical materials, and "Zhou Li, Tianguan, Lingren" mentions: "Sacrifice to Bingjian." ”
In ancient times, although every household did not have refrigerators and air conditioners, and there were supermarkets and milk tea shops all over the streets, in the Zhou Dynasty 3,000 years ago, people had actually mastered the ice-making method of "freezing and summer".
Bingjian is a container used by ancient people to hold ice in the summer and put food in it. Most of the ice kamps are cast in bronze, with lifting rings on both sides, a cover plate on the top, and double holes on the top, which can be used as a picker and can dissipate cold air.
When summer comes, you can open the lid and add ice cubes, and then fill it with food and drink, and you can drink it whenever you want, and the room will feel a little cool because of the cold air emitted by the ice can.
Therefore, the role of Bingjian in the past is equivalent to our current "refrigerator", thousands of years ago the ancients were able to make "refrigerators without electricity", this wisdom is indeed admirable.
Cold drinks to relieve the heat
However, since it was difficult to mine and preserve ice in the early days, ice also became a kind of reward for the Son of Heaven to reward his ministers.
It is recorded in the Book of Rites and the Lunar Order that every winter, the Son of Heaven would send people to dig ice cellars, and then open the cellars to collect ice in the spring and summer of the following year, and then distribute them to relieve the heat according to the rank of officials.
The Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi also once said in "Xie Bing": "The ceremony of awarding ice to the court, the grand ceremony of the imperial court, with its extraordinary things, to express special grace." ”
There is a saying that scarce is expensive, and ice cubes became a relatively scarce thing in the summer in ancient times, and there were even merchants who specialized in selling ice cubes during the Three Kingdoms period.
In the Song and Yuan dynasties, with the development of human beings, ice making in summer became a relatively simple period, and even shops selling ice drinks appeared on the streets.
The "Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival" also depicts a shop selling cold drinks, which were also called "fragrant drinks" at that time.
During the Yuan Dynasty, a grocery merchant came up with the idea of adding some honey, milk and pearl powder to ice, which turned out to be the world's first ice cream.
The great adventurer Marco Polo later brought the Chinese ice cream making method to Italy, and then to France, and after a series of improvements, it completely became international.
By the time of the Qing Dynasty, the ice-making industry had become very popular, and all kinds of cold drinks and popsicles were sold along the streets in the summer. It seems that people's love for cold drinks and cold food is really both ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign.
Cool clothes to cool off
In the hot summer, people like to wear cool clothes such as short-sleeved shorts, and the ancients' outfits are all kinds of robes and cloth in our modern impression, and they are divided into three layers: underwear, middle coat and outer coat. If it's winter, it's fine, but if you wear it like this in summer, I believe that no modern person can tolerate it, right?
In fact, we all misunderstood, because the ancient people also had summer coolsuits, and their designs were even more unrestrained than the short-sleeved shorts we wear now.
This kind of clothing is a gauze made of silk, which is light to wear and has good breathability, and has become a must-have clothing for many princes and nobles in summer.
Mawangdui once unearthed such a plain yarn Zen robe, which can even be put into a matchbox after folding, you can imagine the development of ancient yarn clothing.
This kind of silk yarn is expensive, and it is limited to dignitaries, and the common people don't even think about it. So the common people use a very tough plant "kudzu" to replace silk to make clothes, first boiled and then peeled, and finally through the warp spinning rope to make kudzu cloth, the processing process of clothing of this material is simple, and it can also achieve the state of light and thin cicada wings.
In the literature of "Shuo Yuan", it is written: "The endless kudzu lies in the wilderness, and good work is obtained, and it is thought to be a thread." Here, "絺" refers to fine arrowroot cloth, and "綌" refers to coarse arrowroot cloth.
In ancient times, men could dress a little revealing, or even be naked, but what about women? Women in feudal society were very conservative, what clothes should they wear in summer to cool off?
In fact, during the Tang Dynasty, women had begun to wear low-cut clothes, draped in gauze clothes, and umbrella-shaped skirts below the chest, which had good air circulation and allowed women not to endure the pain of high temperature in the hot summer.
In the Qing Dynasty, some people invented "bamboo clothes", that is, clothes made of bamboo, which can avoid skin and sweat sticking together, and there is a faint bamboo fragrance on the body, which can be said to be a very ingenious design.
Ryoden Summer Retreat
In addition to the above ways to escape the summer, some royal families and nobles will also build their own cool halls or summer resorts.
Zhou Mi mentioned in "Wulin Old Things, Volume 3" that an emperor's summer resort was called Cui Hantang, and once a minister entered it, as for "the body of the three dogs is warlike, and it cannot stand for a long time", the emperor later knew that it was caused by the cool and cold indoors, and quickly asked people to send silk yarn to put on.
In the pre-Qin period, this kind of house was called "cave room", and during the Han Dynasty, it was also called "cool room" and "Qingliang Palace".
Houses are generally located near mountains and rivers, with pleasant scenery and require thick shade. So even in the summer, the scorching heat can be completely insulated.
Outside the hall, surrounded by trees, surrounded by water, and at the same time feeling the cool breeze, for modern people, this can be called a fairyland on earth.
During the Three Kingdoms, Cao Cao also built the "Ice Well Platform" in Yecheng, and there were three ice rooms on the platform, and there were several ice wells in each ice room, and a large amount of ice and grain could be stored in the ice well.
After arriving in the Ming Dynasty, many large families almost had a few deep wells in their homes, and hollowed out cushions were spread on the wells, and people lay on them to pull out the cold.
Through the understanding of ancient history, we know that in the hot summer, the ancients invented so many solutions to the high temperature with their ingenuity, which is really admired by future generations, and the above several are actually only the tip of the iceberg of the wisdom of the ancients.
If you are interested, you can search for more historical knowledge, or go to the museum to experience the wisdom of the ancients thousands of years ago.