Before the Song Dynasty, how did the ancients spend the winter of dozens of degrees below zero
The country has been hit by a cold wave recently, and some areas have even experienced a significant drop in temperature, and snowfall has also been lifted. However, despite the current low temperatures, we can say that this year's cold level is not as high as at other times in history.
Even compared to the fifties and sixties of the last century, the cold this year seems insignificant. After all, since the beginning of the 21st century, the world has been in the midst of climate change, and it is moving in the direction of warming.
Winter is an unavoidable climate change since ancient times, but we can now keep warm by wearing down jackets, as well as high-tech thermal equipment such as heating, air conditioning, and wall-hung boilers.
However, it should be noted that, according to historical records, quilts and cotton clothes did not become popular until the end of the Northern Song Dynasty. So, without these thermal devices, and the ancient climate was even colder than it is now, how did the ancients survive this winter?
The cold winters we experienced during the period of global warming are not on the same level as those experienced by the ancients. China has experienced four glacial periods in history, among which the earliest Western Zhou glacial period occurred from 1000 BC to 850 BC and lasted for about 150 years.
According to the "Bamboo Book Chronicle", it was heavy rain and hail in winter, cattle and horses died, and Jianghan was frozen. "Mencius" describes: "drive tigers, leopards, rhinos, and elephants away", indicating that the climate was extremely cold at that time, cattle and horses were frozen to death, rivers were frozen, and even tigers, leopards, rhinoceros, elephants and other animals were forced to migrate due to the cold.
During the Eastern Han Dynasty, Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties (early A.D. - 600 A.D.), the earth experienced an ice period that lasted for about 500 years, and its average temperature was about 2-4 degrees Celsius lower than that of modern times.
According to the Book of Jin, from 333 to 336 AD, the northwest and southeast coasts of Liaodong Bay froze for three consecutive years. At the same time, the germination time of the plants and trees described by Jia Siqian in "Qi Min Yaoshu" was more than half a month later than in modern times, and the sea water froze and the germination of plants and trees was delayed, which indicates that it was extremely cold at that time.
This is the third glacial period, which occurred during the Song, Liao, and Jin periods from 1000 AD to 1200 AD. It lasted for about 200 years, the coldest of the first three ice ages.
According to historical records, during this period, plum trees in North China could not grow, and snow began to fall in September in the north, and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal was frozen in Suzhou for a long time. Even in 1111 A.D., Taihu Lake was blocked due to ice, and all the orange trees along the shore were frozen to death.
Since then, the Yellow River and Dongting Lake have also often frozen. Even the warmer Jiangnan region suffered from such severe cold, which shows the harshness of the climate during this period.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties (1400 AD - 1900 AD), China experienced a cold ice period called the Ming and Qing Xiaoice Ages, which lasted about 500 years. According to meteorological studies, in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the average annual temperature in Beijing was about 3 degrees Celsius lower than in modern times.
In the sixth year of the reign of Emperor Xiaozong of the Ming Dynasty (1493 AD), heavy snowfall occurred in the Huai River basin in September, and the snowfall period lasted until February of the following year. In the early Qing Dynasty, the average winter temperature in the southeast coastal areas was about 7 degrees Celsius lower than in modern times.
This shows that the ancients at that time faced a colder and longer winter than our modern people.
In ancient times, civilians struggled in the cold winter, and the lack of materials made keeping warm a severe test. Modern people have a variety of warm clothing, such as thermal underwear, autumn clothes and pants, large cotton jackets and cotton pants and down jackets.
However, before the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, cotton cultivation was not popularized, and even if it was popularized later, cotton clothes and cotton pants were still a luxury for ordinary people in ancient times. Cotton was introduced to China during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, but at that time it was only cultivated in the bitter cold areas of the border, and was not cultivated on a large scale throughout the country, so the cotton production was extremely low, and only the nobles could afford to buy quilts and cotton clothes and pants.
In ancient times, people divided the way of wintering according to rich and poor. In the era when there was no cotton, the warm clothing of the wealthy was mainly fur, which was beloved by modern Northeasterners. Nowadays, people in the Northeast are keen to wear mink, both men and women, which reflects the winter style of ancient dignitaries.
In fact, as early as primitive societies, our ancestors realized the importance of hunting animal fur to survive the winter. Fur has many advantages due to its excellent warmth retention effect, so in the cold northeast region, fur has become the first choice for people to spend the winter.
However, fur also has the disadvantage of being difficult to obtain. Animal fur had to be obtained through hunting, and the Han people have always been based on an agricultural culture, so hunting for animal fur was a challenge for the ancients.
Therefore, in ancient times, fur, like cotton, was a luxury.
In ancient times, the magnates had a soft spot for fur, such as the Northern Song Dynasty writer Su Shi wrote in "Jiangchengzi Mizhou Hunting": brocade hat mink fur, thousand horses roll Pinggang.
For an aristocratic class like Su Shi, the warm thing in winter is the mink, that is, fur products, which are beloved by our modern Northeast people. Of course, mink was not affordable for everyone, and the common people, who were slightly wealthier, could at most wear sheep or dog fur products.
For the economically disadvantaged civilians, they could not even afford to wear fur, so they could only wear some thickened coarse cloth clothes. In the south, it may be possible to survive the winter in thickened coarse cloth clothes, but not in the north.
Therefore, the ancients would find ways to fill their clothes with something to keep out the cold.
Before the Tang Dynasty, because cotton was not yet widely available, people's clothing was filled with a variety of materials, including catkins, reeds, hemp wool, etc., in contrast, it was more common to fill clothes with thatch.
The aristocracy and wealthy people usually used cotton clothes and fur to survive the winter, but the common people could only keep warm by filling catkins, hemp wool, and even thatch. In the Tang Dynasty, the population surged, and the output of mulberry hemp could not meet the needs of ordinary people, so the ancients invented paper fur to solve the problem of keeping warm.
The paper was deceived and felt thick, and the thatched eaves smiled at Wawen. There is nothing to do at the end of the day, and I don't go out when I sleep. "During the Northern Song Dynasty, the imperial court distributed 100,000 pieces of paper fur to the victims of the Sichuan disaster, which shows that it was widely popular in the Tang and Song dynasties and was the best-selling winter clothing at that time.
The ancients not only knew about using cotton to fill clothes, but also knew that the use of animal feathers and silk filling, etc., the warmth effect even exceeded that of cotton, that is, the down jackets we wear now.
However, the skills of the ancients to deal with the odor of feathers were not yet mature, which led to the serious odor of down jackets at that time. But even so, down jackets are still not affordable for ordinary people, and only the less sophisticated rich can wear them.
In ancient times, in addition to those luxurious warm clothes, ordinary people also had their own winter artifact - the coat. Liu Zongyuan, a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, once described an old man in a lonely boat, fishing alone on the river, although the snow was fluttering, but the old man was still warm as spring in his clothes.
Clothes have indeed become a necessity for ordinary people with poor economic conditions to survive the winter. It is made of straw and straw, and when you put it on, you put on a cloak and a hat, which is the real winter equipment.
The coat is not only thick and warm, but also rainproof and snowproof, snowproof in winter, and rainproof in summer, with high practicality and high cost performance.
The quilt filling built by the ancient people is also particular, the cotton quilt covered by the rich people, and the cloth jacket is used by ordinary people, and the filling is mostly cheap reeds, catkins, thatch, etc.
Although cloth jackets are cheap and warm, they have obvious disadvantages, and the longer they are used, the worse the warmth will be, and they will eventually become thinner and harder. Du Fu has a poem: "The cloth has been cold like iron for many years, and the delicate child is evil and cracked", which is to describe the shortcomings of the cloth after a long time.
The warm supplies for the winter on the bed, rich people can choose silk mattress, duck down, goose down mattress, etc., ordinary people will choose dry thatch, dry thatch is soft, moisture-proof effect is good, easy to dry, ** low, so it is the first choice of the poor mattress.
The ancients paid attention not only to the appearance of the house, but also to the warmth. They choose to sit in a north-facing and south-facing position to ensure that the interior of the house receives enough light to keep them warm.
And when it comes to heating, the ancients also had a lot of experience. The rich would use charcoal for heating, while the poor would gather firewood. The ancients also invented the fire kang, which was able to use the thermal insulation effect of the soil kang to heat the winter as early as the Western Han Dynasty.
In addition, the ancients also mastered the modern passive house insulation technology, which thickened the walls and ground when the house was built, and then used the principle of fire kang to heat the house, so that the interior of the house was warm like spring, and at the same time, the temperature of the house was not lost.
This kind of house was called the warm pavilion by the ancients, such as the special house in the court.
The ancients have long invented the artifact of warmth, whether it is a small and portable hand stove, or a quilt incense burner that uses the principle of gyroscope, it is the exclusive property of dignitaries. However, for ordinary people at the bottom, their way of keeping warm seems simple and crude.
A coat, a cloth and thatched beds are the winter standard. In contrast, the rich have a variety of ways to keep warm, so to speak, "rich in winter, poor in summer".
This also fully shows that economic strength is the key to deciding how to keep warm. Although there were many poor people in ancient times, every winter was a harsh survival challenge for them.