Every winter, the whistling cold wind has become the standard, especially in the northern part of China, it is often cold. In ancient times, without heating and air conditioning, how did people survive the cold winter?
House Warmth: Fire wall and Kang
In cold winter, a warm house is undoubtedly the best way to keep warm. In ancient times, fireplace, firewall, and so on are good heat preservation way.
People build the walls of a house into a hollow sandwich wall. Under the wall, there is a fire passage. There are holes at the end of the fire passage, which can discharge smoke. The carbon mouth for adding fire is under the eaves of the house. After the charcoal fire burns, the heat can be transferred to the whole house along the sandwich wall. This kind of sandwich wall is called a “firewall”.
Warm Food: Warm wine, hot pot
In winter, the human body has a high demand for heat, and ancients will choose to eat some warm food as much as possible. Ginger, mutton, and so on.
The ancients believed that drinking alcohol can also warm the body. So people like to sit around the stove in the cold winter, boil a pot of hot tea or wine, and drink with friends at night, which is not only warm but also very comfortable.
Hotpot is a standard in the winter diet. There is a saying that a hot pot was called “antique soup” in ancient times. It was named after the sound of “Gudong” when food was put into boiling water.
Warm Clothes: Warm hat, gloves and cloak
In winter clothing, modern people have a cotton-padded jacket, down jacket, but the ancients were not so good treatment. It is said that in winter, poor families can only sew catkins into clothes or quilt covers to keep out the cold. After the application of large-scale cotton planting, the situation is better.
Fur Collar
Hand Warming
Hands and feet are easy to be frostbitten, so the ancients made various styles of gloves, some of which are short gloves showing fingers, some can wrap all fingers, and they are embroidered with patterns, which is very fashionable.
Cloak
Families with rich will choose to make a cloak, cape, cape with animal fur, which can block the thick wind.
Warm Boots
The room is warm, but people always have to go out. A pair of warm boots are particularly important.
Hat
The heat preservation measures of the head are various. In the Tang Dynasty, there was a kind of “fan hat” from the western regions that was quite popular: it was also known as the “ear cap”. The two sides of the hat had ear protectors, which fell down in winter to protect the ears.
Cold Proof Artifact: Lady Tang, hand warming stove
While paying attention to keeping clothes warm, people also have various small objects that can be called “cold protection artifact”, such as “soup lady”, hand stove, foot stove, etc.
In fact, the ancients did not have heating and all kinds of advanced measures to keep out the cold, but they invented many things to solve the problem of heating according to their actual life, and many designs have been used up to now.