How dirty were the "braids" of the Qing Dynasty? United Kingdom woman: Nausea to the point of vomiting, difficult to swallow when eating
People who know history very well know that in ancient times, hair was very important to people, and even included it in the criminal law, called "punishment", as we all know, cutting hair is not harmful to people, but in ancient times, it was an extremely serious punishment, especially at the mental level. After the Qing army entered the customs, the "hair shaving order" was implemented in the Central Plains. It was required to leave only one penny of hair on the top of the head, and if it was bigger than one penny, it would be punished with death, so as to weaken the will of the Han people to resist and improve the status of the Qing government leaders, and when the shaving order was implemented, the most tragic was the "Jiangyin 81 Day", which caused more than 170,000 people to die under the Qing soldiers' swords, and only 53 old and young survived.
It is in this way that people in the Qing Dynasty often shaved the hair on the front of the head and left the hair on the back of the head in long braids, but this is very difficult to take care of, the Qing Dynasty royal family generally only took care of the hair once a month, when cleaning the hair, it would be sprinkled with sesame seeds, and then smeared with egg whites, which would make the hair black and bright. According to relevant historical records, when Cixi cleaned her hair, she would use high-quality bird's nest to wash her hair, which was too extravagant for the low-class people, who generally jumped directly into the river to bathe and wash their hair, and never used any hair care products.
Therefore, for the people of the Qing Dynasty, it is extremely common not to wash their hair for several months, and a United Kingdom lady once recorded in her diary that the hair of Qing Dynasty officials is still clean, and someone specially cleans it for them, while the hair of the people at the bottom is very disgusting, and they may smell the smell at a distance of several hundred meters, and they can't even eat. Although in the costume film and television dramas of the Qing Dynasty, scenes of biting braids are very common, but in the real history of the Qing Dynasty, the people have no courage and know that braids are very dirty.
Until the end of the Qing Dynasty, young people educated by Western culture directly lost their braids, and the Republic of China began to not allow long braids, and issued the "Hair Cutting Order", although it was not as strict as the previous "Shaving Order", but there were still many people of the older generation who thought that if the long braids were lost, the ancestors would not recognize themselves, so they did not want to lose the braids, so they continued to stay.
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