Research on Clothing, Food, Housing and Transportation in the Qin and Han Dynasties

The pursuit of a higher level of life has always existed in history, but under the premise of no major changes in production and lifestyle, clothing, food, housing and transportation were generally developed slowly on the basis of the continuation of previous generations, and the continuation was more than the change, which was the case during the Qin and Han Dynasties. > > the original function of the clothes to avoid the cold, cover shame, with the development of the times, its social value of the function is also gradually revealed. > > Qin and Han period of clothing materials, mainly silk, linen, kudzu cloth, animal fur, etc., which in turn to the use of silk, linen is common. Since the Warring States, planting mulberry and hemp, sericulture and weaving performance is an indispensable part of the family sideline; textile, dyeing and other technology maturity, so that the silk, hemp clothing types, quantity, texture, pattern, etc., compared with the previous have made great progress. In general, silk clothing is a valuable item, mainly used by nobles, bureaucrats and the status and wealth of the class; ordinary people, mostly hemp cloth (made of hemp, ramie epidermal fibers) as the basic clothing, "cloth" as a clothing term, so it has become a representative of the civilian class. Kudzu cloth (made from the epidermal fiber of perennial herbaceous plants) was more precious than hemp cloth as a clothing material. During the reign of Emperor An, Empress Dowager Deng used Ge Cloth to give to all those who studied the books, showing that Ge Cloth was not an ordinary textile. Animal fur clothing material, commonly used in frontier or minority areas, not popular in the interior, or regarded as the clothing of the poor. In addition, cotton as a foreign material, mainly in the western region, the use is not universal, the Central Plains are more than enough. > > -- Qin-Han era of life rituals and customs of the general public usually wear clothing, can be divided into two categories of robes and short clothes. Originally, the clothes, clothing is different, the system is not connected to the upper and lower belonging to the clothing system. During the Warring States period, a new type of clothing was popularized by connecting the upper and lower garments together, which was called "deep clothing". During the Qin and Han Dynasties, various kinds of robes inherited the basic features of deep clothes, which was the most important clothing system at that time. There are different styles of robes, such as clothes, gowns, etc. Clothes are worn in summer. Clothing is a robe-style clothing worn in the summer, without lining, mostly made of light and thin clothing materials. Mawangdui No. 1 Han Tomb unearthed the plain gauze clothes, body length 128 cm, sleeve length 190 cm, weight only 49 grams. Robe is a kind of ankle-length, fat sleeves, lined with cotton wool fall and winter clothes, men and women can wear. Robe has floss robe, robe of the difference: floss robe is made of newly produced silk robe, mostly for the upper or rich class use; robe for the old and new mixed silk floss robe, mainly poor and poor people or hermit wearing. Similar to the robe, is a daily casual wear, but more broad. In the palace, rituals and other important occasions, wearing a disrespectful behavior, such as the Marquis Tian Tian "sitting clothes into the palace, disrespectful, exempt" ("Han Shu - Relatives Enze Hou Table"); East Han Dynasty, Duan was given Jiang Jiang a collar for the destruction of Qiang, which was already regarded as precious clothing. > > Short type of clothing has the difference between inner and outer clothing. Shirt without sleeves, close to wear, should not be thick, so for the single garment. Also close to the body, the shape of two: one is not sewn out of the pants, only a piece of cloth wrapped between the waist and stock; one is a closed crotch. The outer short clothes are 襦, and skirt. A 襦 is a knee-length coat. The Shuo Wen Jie Zi says: "襦, short coat also." The short coat is compared with the long coat, such as coat and robe. There are different kinds of jacket: the single jacket is mainly worn in summer, or the sweat jacket; the double jacket is lined with wadding and is worn when it is cold. The jacket is worn by both men and women. The hem of the jacket was just above the knees, so it had to be worn underneath. In the Han Dynasty there were also two kinds: one was not crotched, only on the legs, or shin jacket, which may not be worn in daily life; one was a two-crotch sewn together crotch pants, which must be worn underneath the ?àé, that is, this kind of thing. Except for the short jacket, the warrior wore a long jacket, and the short jacket was worn with a long one, which is also found in the literature and archaeological data. For women, the bottom coat was a skirt. The upper jacket and lower skirt was the common dress style for women in the Qin and Han dynasties, as the poem "Lefu Poetry Collection - Stranger's Mulberry" reads, "The light yellow color of the jacket is the lower skirt, and the purple color of the jacket is the upper jacket." The skirt was covered by a jacket above the knee, so it formed the style of long top and short bottom, and later there was a new trend of short top jacket and long skirt trailing underneath. > > In addition to the system of dress, attention is drawn to the system of crowns. "The most important thing in the body is the crown" (Lun Heng - Ridicule of the Day). In some cases, the crown is the most reflective of the hierarchy, ceremonial dress, its social value far beyond the practical value itself. "The crown is the beginning of rites," says the Rites of Passage, "the crown is the beginning of rites." Sima Biao's "Renewal of the Han Book - Public Apparel" records the relationship between the crown system and the wearer's identity, specific occasions, and establishes the hierarchy of respect and inferiority in the cumbersome regulations. Crowns were mostly made of fabrics such as velvet, onyx and lacquer. Qin and Han Dynasty more than four hundred years, more types of crowns, the shape of the system has changed a lot: the pre-Qin crown without conical cap, the Western Han Dynasty inherited this system, after the crown began to add the conical cap. Conical cap was originally wrapped hair turban, evolved into a cap. Low status people can not wear a crown, can only wear the conical cap. The interpretation of the name - the interpretation of the jewelry "recorded," twenty adults: the scholar crown, the common people scarf." Cai Yong also said, "conical cap, the ancient lowly deacons who do not crown the dress." ("Dictatorship") Upper class men can wear the conical cap when they do not wear a crown, and those who wore the conical cap (scarf) during the Han Dynasty were mostly men from the lower classes of society. About the middle and late Eastern Han Dynasty, the scarf is no longer a symbol of the poor or lowly, and gradually evolved into a symbol of fashion and elegance. > > Diet in human life has the first significance, so the old saying has "people eat for heaven". > > to all kinds of grain crops as the main food, vegetables, meat, fruit as a side dish, is the mainland regions of the diet of **** nature; meat and dairy products in the border areas of the nationalities of the diet occupies a large proportion. Grain crops in the Qin and Han dynasties, there are corn, millet, beans, wheat, rice and other kinds of. Corn, millet, millet and other crops, refers to or sticky or non-sticky various grains. Beans as a general term for beans, there is a difference between large and small beans. Wheat, as an exotic crop, has been widely cultivated in the lower reaches of the Yellow River since the middle to late Western Han Dynasty. Rice grows mainly in the area south of the Huaihe River, with many varieties; now the three major varieties of the rice family, indica, japonica, and glutinous, all existed in the Han Dynasty. The development of grain crops as the basis for the formation of the Qin and Han residents of the new structure of the staple food: the importance of the traditional crop millet weakened, the status of wheat rose significantly, the formation of corn, wheat, rice as the dominant staple food structure, peas and beans gradually by the staple food to the transformation of the side dishes. Vegetables are mainly sunflower (winter sunflower), as well as leeks, green onions, garlic, gourd, etc., and cucumber and other vegetable seeds have also been found in archaeology. Meat is mainly poultry, aquatic products and wild animals. Poultry to pigs, chickens for the general, Han Jane common to chicken hospitality passing officials, messenger records; aquatic fish-based, carp consumption seems to be the most prevalent; wildlife to small birds and animals, such as geese, pheasants, rabbits, deer and so on. Dates, chestnuts, pears, plums, apricots, persimmons, plums and other varieties of pre-Qin literature, the Han Dynasty have been unearthed in kind; first seen in the Qin and Han records of Pu Tao (grapes), away from the branch (lychee), etc., or from the Western region, or from the Lingnan. Meat in the border and northwest of the majority of sheep, mutton on the mainland is a rare meat, often used by the court as a reward. > > Staple food varieties mainly include rice, porridge, bait and cakes. Rice is made by adding water to corn, wheat or rice after removing the chaff, which is one of the staple food production methods handed down from the pre-Qin period. This production method is widely used, reflected in the *** concept, "rice" and "food" are closely linked. The Shuowen Jiezi (Explanation of Characters) says: "Rice is also food." Cooked rice can also be made, such as dry rice, dry rice, that is, rice in the sun, to remove its moisture, in order to save. This kind of dry rice food is easy to carry, is traveling indispensable items. Porridge was also a common staple food, corn, wheat, rice, beans can be made of porridge (soup). Wheat rice, bean porridge is the main food of the lower class people in the north, "wheat rice and bean soup are all the food of the farmers in the wild" (The Rush on the Chapter). Bait is a steamed food made of millet, rice and other rice flour and water, which existed in the pre-Qin period; cake is a steamed food made of wheat flour kneaded with water, which appeared along with the expansion of wheat cultivation in the Yellow River Basin and the development of milling technology. The book was written in the late Western Han Dynasty, and the book, "The Rush to the Chapter", has listed the cake and bait as the first food; since the middle of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the cake food has been popularized, and there are hu cake, soup cake, etc. The cake may be what is now called roasted cake. Hu biscuits may be now known as biscuits, soup cake seems to be today's noodles or noodles. The development of cake food greatly impacted the old wheat and rice tradition Peng Wei: "Miscellaneous Examination of Diet in the Han Dynasty", History Monthly, No. 1, 2008. , is one of the signs of the change in food preparation methods in the Qin and Han dynasties. For all social classes, sauce or black beans were the main accompaniment to meals, so the Tang described sauce as being like a leading general in the Han Dynasty diet. Sauce was generally made from soybean flour with salt, and black beans were fermented from boiled soybeans. Cuisine production, especially meat cooking, there are roasted, steamed, wax, chopped, etc., fried method has not yet appeared at this time. > > Qin and Han Dynasty prevailing meal system is the daily morning and evening meals, so it is common sense that "one day no longer eat is hungry" ("Han Book - Food and Wine"). Upper social and special groups of Zhangjiashan Han Jian "food law" records: the prime minister, the imperial historian (doctor) and two thousand officials of the envoys, "if the dispatch of officials, new officials and belong to the lieutenant, Zuo more than the levy if the migrant", as well as the military officials, the county officials have to report an emergency, to be eligible to receive the ChuanShe supplied by the treatment of the three meals a day. See Zhangjiashan Han Tomb Bamboo Slips [Tomb 247], p. 164. The king of Huainan was convicted and sentenced to three meals a day, but he was not subject to the two meals a day rule. When King Li of Huainan was convicted and migrated to Shu, the imperial court still gave him the privilege of "three meals a day" ("Han Book - Biography of the King of Huainan"). The so-called "three meals" refers to three meals in the morning, noon and night. The diet of the Son of Heaven was four meals a day according to the rules of etiquette, and it is not known whether this was the case in the Qin and Han dynasties. For the majority of the common people, working all day long, two meals a day is already rare; in case of disaster, war, starvation and even death, more often. For the aristocracy, bureaucrats and the rich, diet is not only the need to eat, enjoy the delicious food into the pursuit of diet. Pictures of brick and stone image of the kitchen map, literature on the description of luxury feasts, unearthed artifacts in the show of the sumptuous objects, recorded in the food production of the new documents Hunan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeological Research: "Yuanling Huxishan Han Tomb No. 1 Excavation Briefing", "cultural relics," 2003, No. 1. The food of those who had status, position and wealth was characterized by a variety of features, including feasts that reflected cultural characteristics. Among the banquets, the following can reflect the cultural characteristics: First, there is a hierarchy of status. Generally speaking, the hall is honored, the hall for the inferior, eastward for the honored, northward for the inferior. Secondly, separate meal system. Restricted by the seating, tableware, guests are seated on the ground, one person, one case of separate meals. Third, men and women feast together. Women could feast and drink with men in public, or even be invited to other people's homes to feast and drink with men. In addition to food, wine, silk and bamboo, song and dance, banquets, there are still "for life", entertainment and other activities: "for life" that is, the toast blessing, the younger generation to the elders, between the guest of honor can be "for life"; Entertainment, in addition to the line of drinking orders, there are still pots, games, etc., the loser must drink. > > Qin and Han Dynasty residence, to the room as the core, to the expansion of the courtyard, is the basic **** sex. > > The usual form of the general residence was a hall with two rooms or a building with two rooms. The Sleeping Tiger Land Qin Jian refers to the residence of an interrogated person by saying, "One Yu and two Nei, each with its own household, all the inner rooms covered with tiles, with large wooden utensils, and the door mulberry ten wood." Bamboo Slips from the Sleeping Tiger Earth Qin Tomb, p. 149. This description is quite reflective of the general living conditions: one hall, two bedrooms, all with doors, houses covered with tiles, wooden structures, and ten mulberry trees in front of the door. When Emperor Wen recruited people to migrate to the northern part of the country, Chao Qiu suggested that the court build houses for these people, "First, I built a room for them, with a hall and two bedrooms, a gateway to the house, and utensils" (Han Shu Chao Qiu Biography). From these records, a hall and two rooms seem to be the basic style of general civilian residence in the Qin and Han dynasties. House room accessory buildings have toilet, pigsty, etc., toilet and pigsty often connected, pig, fertilizer dual purpose. Room outside the house is the courtyard. Simple courtyards may be surrounded by bamboo or wood, while elaborate ones use rammed earth or adobe to build walls, thus forming a more enclosed space. The living space was actually not limited to this. Huainanzi - astronomy training "in the" seven sheds ": room, hall, court, door, alley, art, wild, that is, the inner room, hall, courtyard, gate, alley, street and the field. This from near and far, from inside to outside of the living space, although far beyond the narrow scope of residence, but more reflective of the people's living situation, the newly discovered for the first time in the country's Han Dynasty settlement sites can clearly prove this. > > Three Yangzhuang Ruins Liu Haiwang and Zhang Qupeng: "Introduction to the First Discovered Han Dynasty Village Ruins in China", Ancient and Modern Agriculture, No. 3, 2008. Located in the old course of the Yellow River in the southern part of Neihuang County, Henan Province, the site dates from the time of the two Han dynasties; it was silted up in the mud and sand as a whole due to a large-scale flooding of the Yellow River, with the layout of the courtyards and the rows and borders of the farmland well preserved, and with the roofs and the collapsed walls remaining in their original state. From the four courtyards that have been excavated, the layout of the courtyard is basically the same, all of them are closed two-entry courtyards sitting in the north and facing the south. In addition to a courtyard complex situation, the other three courtyards are a hall and two rooms, and the above people's residential system coincides with the courtyard of the occupants when the ordinary people. The building materials of the houses are the same: brick foundation, tile roof, a mixed structure of earth and wood. Inside the courtyard, there are toilets and animal stalls, etc. In addition to the excavated agricultural tools, the utensils for processing grain, such as stone mills (used for grinding pulp or flour) and stone pestles (used for shelling), were found in every household, which is useful for recognizing the dietary conditions of the people at that time. Outside the south gate of the courtyard, there is a brick well and a paved path connecting the front of the courtyard. At the back of the courtyard (north side), there are many kinds of trees in rows. According to the preliminary judgment, there are mostly mulberry trees, but there are also elm trees. The courtyard is surrounded by a large area of cultivated farmland. The courtyards are not connected to each other, but are separated by tens of meters of farmland. There are still a number of roads in the site, according to the width of the main road (the widest about 14 meters), secondary roads (about 5 meters wide), small roads (about 3 meters wide), and the small roads and the courtyard and the exclusive use of the main road connected to the road. > > large courtyard is the aristocrats, bureaucrats, the rich class of residence. This type of residence covers a large area, building facilities are more complete and complex. Room types in addition to the hall, bedroom, kitchen, toilet, there are also banquets and drinking places, garages, stables, warehouses and so on. From the archaeological discovery of the portrait masonry and ceramic house model, large courtyards in the central axis of the arrangement of the front and back of the hall and the gate and so on more than three or four buildings, before and after the construction of a number of heavy courtyard. The main door can pass through the carriage, there is a roof, there is a room next to the door can stay guests, called the door hiatus; into the door there is a courtyard, the main room for the front door, the front hall is the main building of the mansion, more tall; the front hall after the wall, divided into the house for the front and back, so there is a back hall, after the back hall or building, and then after the whole house back door. There are courtyard walls on the left and right of the central axis, and there are corridors inside the walls, so that the rear hall is connected with the door hips, forming a complex of several courtyards. These large courtyards were mostly occupied by several generations. Especially extravagant princes and bureaucrats, living in the direction of the development of gardening, in the Eastern Han Dynasty has a prominent performance. Residence has buildings, pavilions, platforms, pavilions, pools, mountains, flowers, wood, quite a garden atmosphere. For example, Liang Ji "wide open gardens, picking the soil to build mountains, ten miles of nine ban, like two bans, deep forests and streams, as natural, strange birds tame the head, fly away between" ("After the Han Book - Liang Ji biography"). Documentary records or exaggerated, but Liang Ji live in the luxury, which can be seen. > > The word "line" originally means road, and transportation is closely related to the transportation is also known as the ancient political, economic and cultural development of the foundation. > > Qin and Han Dynasty, the era of unification of the empire, the national transportation has a unified planning, the formation of the capital city as the center, radiate around the history of the earliest national transportation network, Jashan said Qin "for the Chidao in the world, the east poor Yan Qi, the south pole of Wu and Chu, above the rivers and lakes, near the sea of the view of the whole to" ("Han Book - Jashan biography"). The more important transportation routes at that time were: Sanchuan Donghai Road connecting Guanzhong, the Central Plains and the East, Nanyang Nanxian Road connecting Guanzhong and the Jianghan Plain, Longxi Beidi Road connecting Guanzhong and the Northwest, Zhi Dao connecting Guanzhong and Jiuhuan, and Handan Guangyang Road connecting the East of the river and the Right Beiping. From the surviving remains of the Qin and Han Dynasties, the width of the road is more than 50 meters, and the cost is huge, the recruitment of people is certain. Some important projects, such as the Qin Chidao and Zhidao, and the Han's Baoshi Road and Tongcao Canal, were started by the emperor's decision. Eastern Han Dynasty inscriptions, such as "open Baoshi Road cliff", "He Junge Road monument", etc., more or less also reflects the local construction of roads and bridges is not easy. Generally speaking, the city roads are better than the countryside, wider; the streets of the capital city are wider, such as Chang'an city's main street is 45 meters wide, the width of the main street in the city of Luoyang in the Eastern Han Dynasty is even more than 50 meters. The management of roads or passes was more strict. People from all walks of life were required to carry the "charm", "pass" and other pass credentials; for a long time, the road was prohibited for people other than the emperor to cross or walk. > > the development of transportation in the Qin and Han Dynasties, first of all, beneficial to political rule. The imperial court used transportation as the basis, supplemented by a perfect postal system, and implemented the governmental orders through the administrative documents, effectively controlling all parts of the country. The transmission of daily governmental orders varied according to their nature and geographical proximity, while the transmission of urgent governmental and military affairs increased the speed of information transmission according to their level, so that contact and communication between each other could be realized more quickly. The Han army Pingqiang general Zhao Chongguo, from Jincheng Shenzheng military plan, to Xuan Di after the approval of the promulgation of the round-trip, but only 7 days, the transmission speed of more than 400 miles per day. Secondly, it was beneficial to the social economy. Following the socio-economic development trend since the Warring States period, that is, production and consumption has broken through the geographical boundaries, based on the Qin and Han Dynasty transportation, "rich merchants and merchants around the world, trading goods are not through" ("Shiji - Cargo Shik Lianzhuan"), to lay the empire's economic prosperity in the era of the first establishment of the economy. Distributed in the main lines of transportation in the city, but also by its geographical advantages and have great development, "from the capital east and west, north and south, the mountains and rivers, through the counties, the rich and wealthy metropolis, is not the streets and streets, the merchants of the together, the breeding of all things" ("Salt and Iron Theory - force cultivation"). Once again, it was beneficial to cultural development. Various regions, all classes in the interaction, culture, customs, the mutual influence of cultural development has a special significance: in the cultural end of the Warring States era of division of the situation, the opening of a new situation of unity of the Han culture of the breeding. > > the main body of surface transportation is the car and boat, due to the geographical conditions of the differences, the north more by car, the south more boat, the car and especially important. The Qin and Han cars of many kinds, the most common light carriage. This is a kind of four sides of the open car, can stand ride, can also sit ride, most only driving a horse. The light carriage was small and fast, and was known as the "light carriage". Car than light carriage to add a pair of ears, that is, mounted on the car above, used to cover the top of the wheel fender; ear more rectangular, the outer side of the side panels hanging down. The color of the lugs depended on the level of the official, "the long official two thousand stone car Zhu two, thousand stone to six hundred stone Zhu left" ("Han Shu - Jing Di Ji"). In the Eastern Han Dynasty, different car decorations meant different grades and became one of the symbols of status Liu Zenggui, "The Carriage System Between Han and Sui," in Scholars' Series of Chinese Historical Studies, vol. 10, Life and Culture, p. 178. In contrast to the open carriages, there were clothes cars whose carriages were hidden. The most representative model of the clothes cart was the covered wagon, which often carried women. Horses were honored for driving, and oxen were inferior. The Historical Records - five Zong Shijia said after the seven countries of the chaos, "the poor vassals or by oxcart", oxcart is obviously a lower specification car; the late Eastern Han Dynasty, the situation has changed greatly, "the ancient nobles do not take the oxcart ...... which later slightly see the noble. Since the spirit, dedication, the son of heaven to the Shi Sui thought always ride" ("Jin Book - Public Opinion Clothing Zhi"). The car is mostly used in the upper class, for the poor, travel is also walking; ordinary people or solid family, often use the transportation, there are people and loaded with the function of the deer car (wheelbarrow).