In ancient times, summer was still very hot, so how did the ancients dress in summer?

Mondo History Updated on 2024-03-04

With the hard work of countless ancestors for many years, China has made great progress in terms of science and technology, culture and art, and its position in the international arena has become more and more important. It is also because of this that the splendid culture belonging to our country has gradually moved to the world stage and attracted the attention of more people.

Among them, Hanfu, which has been very popular recently, has been all the rage in China in recent years, and even can be seen on the streets of foreign countries from time to time, which also reflects that our country's culture is imperceptibly influencing the world. But while Hanfu is prevalent, everyone is aware of a problem, that is, wearing this kind of clothes in summer is really a bit stuffy.

This also makes everyone very curious, that is, people who lived in ancient times would also wear this kind of clothing in the hot summer? There weren't any air conditioning fans at that time, so how did they survive the hot summer every year?

Some readers may feel that modern society because of the rapid development of science and technology, population and other aspects, resulting in an increasing amount of carbon dioxide emissions, and green vegetation, the environment is also a lot of destruction, so the temperature in modern society in summer must be higher than in ancient times, strictly speaking, there is indeed a certain reasonHowever, judging from the consistent movement of the earth and the geographical location of China, even if the temperature in ancient summer was not as high as it is now, it would not be much different, which was determined by objective conditions.

From the words of some poets or famous scholars, we can also imagine how hot the summer was in ancient times, Shi Nai'an once wrote, "The red sun is scorching like fire, and the fields and rice are half scorched"; Su Zhe also wrote, "Lying in the north window with heat, sweating and pouring into it". From these poems and sentences, we can see that the ancients were also full of helplessness about the hot summer, not to mention that the era they lived in did not have air conditioners and fans to reduce heat and other efficient tools to reduce heat and heat.

Summer can be quite dangerous for them, and it is also recorded in various ancient books, there have been many droughts in history, farmers have no harvest, and some people will lose their lives because of the hot weather.

Of course, the wisdom of the ancients should not be underestimated, you must know that in ancient times, people relied on their own wisdom to make the earliest "refrigerators" and "cold drinks". That's rightIn ancient times, people would go to the frozen river water in the coldest winter to dig ice, and then collect the chiseled ice, and transport it home to a cellar built in a shady place, and then cover it with straw and reed mats, and then spread a layer of insulating materials such as leaves, and finally seal the cellar.

As a result, the temperature of the cellar, which is not seen in the light of day, is relatively low, and the storage of ice cubes is full, forming a cold storage, which over time can be opened for ice in the summer, and of course, in addition to ice cellars like this one, there are also ways like ice wells. However, even so, every year when ice is stored in the storage area from the winter, about two-thirds of the ice will still be lost after the lockdown is lifted in the summer, so most of the ancients would store about three times the amount of ice needed in the summer in advance.

In the south, where snow and ice are scarce or not freezing, it is almost impossible to cool down in this way in the summer. However, at the end of the Tang Dynasty, the ancients found that as long as the saltpeter was dissolved in water, it would absorb a lot of heat when it was dissolved, which could quickly reduce the temperature of the water and even make it freeze.

In the Southern Song Dynasty, there was an ice drink market, and there were many kinds of cold foods and cold drinks on the market, such as bean paste icebergs, sour plum soup, iced melons and fruits, and so on. In the Yuan Dynasty, there were merchants who added some fruit pulp and cow and goat milk to the ice cubes, which can almost be said to be the earliest ice cream in China. Therefore, it can be seen that in terms of external cooling tools, the wisdom of the ancients can be said to have been exerted to the extreme, and it has played a very good cooling effect.

In addition to the external cooling tools such as the ice cellar just mentioned, cold drinks, cold food, etc., the ancients also made some articles in terms of clothing. However, you may have seen through some TV series that the ancients still wore very heavy clothes even in summer, layer upon layer, such clothes must be very warm in winter, but they are too heavy in summer. Then under the scorching heat of summer,How exactly did the ancients wear it? Is it really such a thick dress?

You may think that the ancients were too conservative in their own thinking due to the limitations of the times and the influence of the living habits and customs and culture at that time. The "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Forest" in the Wei and Jin dynasties must be familiar to everyone, namely Ji Kang, Ruan Ji, Shan Tao, Xiang Xiu, Liu Ling, Wang Rong and Ruan Xian.

They are all unruly people, especially Liu Ling, although this person is in a feudal society, but his thinking in some aspects is even far beyond our modern society, he is almost naked at home every day, even if there are guests visiting the house, it is still the case, he thinks that heaven and earth are his clothes, this kind of thinking and practice is difficult to accept even if it is put in modern society, it can be seen that the ancients are not all rigid and conservative.

And although most of the ancients were not so "ahead of their time", the clothes they wore in the summer were not so heavy and tight. In fact, it has been recorded in some historical books that the ancients of some eras would wear a kind of clothing called "gauze clothing" in summer, which is extremely light and transparent, and can almost be said to be transparent. It is this kind of clothing that seems to us to be too "open" to the ancients, but it was the ancients who first made and wore it.

This is not groundless, as early as 1972 unearthed in Changsha Mawangdui Han Tomb of the cultural relics, there has been a plain gauze clothing, the overall weight of this gauze is only 48 grams, less than one or two weight, it is said that it can be folded into a small matchbox.

You can imagine how cool it would be to wear such extremely light clothes in summer, which also proves that some people began to wear them like this as early as the early Western Han Dynasty. Of course, because of class reasons, ordinary people at that time probably didn't have the money to make such a piece of clothing, but even so, this will not hinder the people's pursuit of coolness in the hot summer. As we can see in some ancient frescoes and some paintings that have been handed down, some men are completely naked in the summer, and the lower half is only wearing shorts that cover important parts.

In a famous painting of the Northern Qi Dynasty, "School Books of the Northern Qi Dynasty", we can see that the ancients at that time, some men who participated in the school book work wore very cool sundresses and thin gauze clothes to discuss the work at hand, and some women also wore plain gauze clothes to work in the kitchen. These are all objective descriptions and records of the summer life of the common people of the dynasty at that time.

Including the Song Dynasty's "Huaiyin Summer Picture", "Willow Shade Gaoshi Tu" and so on, most of the ancient men depicted in it are naked and upperched, perched under the shade of trees, and lying on a cool couch. These paintings come from different dynasties, from different masters, and depict different scenes, but they all express a common feature, that is, the ancients did not always wear robes and coats on hot summer days, covering them tightly.

Of course, most of these situations are when there is no one around, or when there are only their own people at home, and there are no relatives and friends, they will wear this way, and if they need to go out on weekdays, they will also wear more solemn, neat, and atmospheric clothes. But even so, we can all see that the ancients did not wear layers of heavy long coats and wide robes all day long, as we imagined, which we people living in modern times imagined and imposed on the ancients through some less rigorous TV dramas. As mentioned above, there were many ancients, literati and artists who would place their affection on the mountains and rivers in summer, and in such sparsely populated places, some people would even gallop around and enjoy the cool air at will.

So, you can see thatAlthough the people living in ancient times did not have the current developed level of science and technology, they still relied on their own wisdom to find many ways to relieve heat for themselves, whether it is ice cellars, ice wells, ice jian. Whether it is cold drinks, cold food, or cool clothes, they are all the embodiment of the wisdom of the ancients. Even many of our current methods have evolved and evolved from the methods of the ancients, so they are very worthy of our admiration. At the same time, we can also find that in fact, our understanding of the ancients is still too superficial, and we must study history more seriously. **10,000 Fans Incentive Plan

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