The texture of clothes worn in summer is different from other seasons. The fabrics are thin and breathable. In autumn and winter, they are fur and cotton robes, and in summer, they are silk, cotton and linen. Including the obscene clothing in the robe (the underwear of modern people), the texture is different in different seasons. The ancients were very smart. Rich people in ancient times wore furs in winter, and rich people in modern times wear furs, it’s all the same. Moreover, there were facilities to escape the heat in ancient times, such as automatic equipment that continuously watered the eaves of houses to cool down, ice cellars for storing ice cubes, ice-cold food made from ice cubes, and melons and fruits soaked in well water. Another very important point is that the weather in ancient times was not as hot as it is now, and the earth is getting warmer. As early as the Western Zhou Dynasty, people collected ice in the twelfth lunar month, stored ice in the ice cellar in the first month, took out the ice in February, and chilled lamb and leeks to offer sacrifices to the gods. In the early spring and autumn, there were special "ling people" who were responsible for chiseling natural ice cubes in the cold winter and storing the ice cubes for use in summer to prevent heatstroke. At the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, iced rice wine appeared at the banquets of princes. In summer, the brewed rice wine is filtered to remove the lees, and then chilled. Drinking it is refreshing and sweet, refreshing both body and mind. This is a good summer drink. During the Tang Dynasty, the emperor built a cool hall in the palace specifically for summer vacation. Cool Hall, that is, a mechanically driven refrigeration equipment is installed in the hall. It adopts the cold water circulation method and uses a fan wheel to rotate to generate wind and send cold air into the hall. "Tang Yulin" records that "Xuanzong was in the Liang Hall. The water behind his seat fanned the carriage, and the wind hunted the skirts of his clothes. ... Water curtains were flying in the four corners, and the seat was filled with ice." This method of using natural water cooling has a good cooling effect. At the same time, machines are also used to send cold water to the roof, allowing it to flow straight down along the eaves, forming an artificial water curtain and filling it with cool air to achieve the purpose of cooling down. In addition to mechanical refrigeration, the palace also kept a large amount of ice. Every year in the cold winter, full-time officials are responsible for collecting natural ice cubes, storing them in ice houses, and taking them out during the hot summer for royal use. High-ranking officials and wealthy businessmen in the Tang Dynasty also built private summer resort facilities. Liu Yuxi described the characteristics of the water pavilion in his poem "Liu Consort Water Pavilion Summer Vacation": "Thousands of bamboo poles and green lotuses are numerous. The water pavilion is empty and cool, and the jade mat is empty. The red amber lamp is suspected of leaking rain, and the crystal curtain is more ventilated." This kind of water The pavilion uses machinery to transport cold water to the water tank on the top of the pavilion for storage, and then allows the water to flow down from around the eaves to form a rain curtain, thereby producing a summer cooling effect. This kind of semi-automatic refrigeration facility is quite expensive and cannot be built by ordinary people. Yang Guozhong, a prominent figure in the Tang Dynasty, also built icebergs to escape the heat, which was extremely rare in history. "The Legacy of Kaiyuan Tianbao" records: "Whenever the Yang family's descendants come to Fuzhong, they will take large pieces of ice and have craftsmen carve them into mountains, and surround them during banquets." The Yang family actually used to melt huge ice cubes to cool down and escape the heat. It shows that he is rich, arrogant and extravagant. Du Fu's poem "The young master mixes ice water, and the beautiful woman snows lotus root silk" reflects that ice sellers appeared in the market in the Tang Dynasty. However, natural ice storage was a rare thing in the Tang Dynasty. "Yunxian Miscellaneous Notes" said that "Chang'an ice and snow are as valuable as a gold jade in summer." There is also a more evil way to avoid the heat. Because Yang Guifei is obese and afraid of heat in summer, she often suffers from lung thirst, so she puts a jade fish in her mouth every day to cool her lungs. "Youyang Zazu" records that Li Longji learned that the counselor King Shen was afraid of heat, so he gave him a cold snake. The snake was as white as ice and did not hurt anyone. King Shen played it in his hand, and the heat was relieved a little. The imperial palaces of the Song Dynasty emperors were more luxurious and luxurious than those of the Tang Dynasty. "Old Martial Arts" contains: "To escape the summer heat in the forbidden area, and to stay in the retro style, choose Deqin Hall and Cuihan Hall to enjoy the coolness. Long pines and bamboos, thick green cover the sun, and the mountains are strange and graceful, and the silence is deep. Cold waterfalls fly in the sky, place your bets The land covers an area of ??ten acres. There are thousands of red and white lotus stalks in the pond, and the gardeners cover them with tiles of different kinds. Hundreds of pots of water-bottomed jasmine, orchid, musk vine, hibiscus, osmanthus, red banana and other flowers are arranged in the wide courtyard, and a wind wheel is used to drum them. , the palace is filled with fragrance..." The Liangdian in the Song Dynasty not only used wind wheels to send cold water and cool air, but also placed various flowers around the reservoir to make the cold wind fragrant and fill the room with fragrance. Cold drinks were further developed in the Song Dynasty. People mixed various fruit juices, milk, ice cubes, chrysanthemums, etc. to make frozen drinks, which were called "ice cheese". This was the earliest iced drink in my country. People in the Song Dynasty had the custom of enjoying the cool air in pavilions and swimming in lakes to escape the summer heat. Whenever the hot summer comes, people row boats, swim in the lake, choose wind pavilions and water pavilions, and spend the time playing. This custom spread from Kaifeng, Tokyo to Hangzhou, the southern capital. After the Southern Song Dynasty moved its capital to Hangzhou, every midsummer, people would go boating with their companions and flock to the West Lake to carry out a variety of cool activities. Urbanites in the Song Dynasty paid great attention to summer escape, and would add a variety of entertainment activities to add interest. Porcelain pillows became popular in the Song Dynasty. The pillow is glazed and it feels cool to sleep with your head on the porcelain pillow. There are countless shapes and varieties of porcelain pillows, such as children's pillows, in which a child's head rests on his arms, making him or her prone on the bed look very naive. The two sides of the porcelain pillow are often engraved with poems such as "Half the window has a moon thousands of miles away, and one pillow has the fifth-shift wind", "It's hard to get dusk in summer for a long time, and it's noon in the yarn kitchen. It's hard to sleep in the daytime if you forget your thoughts, but a pillow is the most peaceful." It shows that porcelain pillows are the most suitable pillow for summer. The best bedding for keeping cool. In the Yuan Dynasty, cold drink making workshops began to flourish. Smart businessmen added some honey and pearl powder when processing cold drinks, so that the cold drinks not only had a better taste, but also had beauty functions! During the reign of Kublai Khan, the ice-snow-like food made from milk and ice water was called "ice milk" in "The Travels of Marco Polo", which is the prototype of our current ice cream. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, folk use of ice gradually increased.
From the Qing Dynasty poet Wang Yuyang's poem "The aroma of cherries has faded away from the tea, and the sound of copper bowls calling for selling ice", we can infer that ice sellers in Beijing at that time used copperware to clink together to attract customers. There were many royal icehouses in the Qing Dynasty. According to the "Qing Dynasty Huidian", the Qing Dynasty set up 18 ice cellars in 4 locations in the capital, storing more than 200,000 pieces of ice. Each piece of ice weighed about 80 kilograms. They were all under the control of the Water Department of the Ministry of Industry. In addition to the ice cellar, there are also brick cellars and earth cellars. The ice stored in the brick cellar was used for altars, temple sacrifices and palace life. The ice stored in the cellar was used in various government offices. Officials were issued ice tickets according to their levels and received ice with their tickets. The Qing Dynasty stipulated that the ice supply time was from the beginning of May to July 30 of the lunar calendar. In ancient times, ordinary people mainly relied on fans to enjoy the coolness. The ancients called it "shaking wind" or "cool friend".