In order to keep warm and keep out the cold, the ancients mashed peppers and their petals in winter and painted them on the walls with mud. According to ancient records, there was a pepper room in Weiyang Palace in Han Dynasty. The walls were painted with pepper and mud as insulation materials to "take its warmth and fragrance", which had the effect of resisting wind and keeping warm in winter.
Pepper? Maxim. ) is a small deciduous perennial tree of Rutaceae and Zanthoxylum. It ranks first among the "thirteen spices" of seasoning, and is known as the "king of seasoning", with tall stems, short branches, small leaves, opposite, sessile, terminal inflorescences or terminal branches; Tepals are yellow-green, with roughly the same shape and size; Female flowers rarely develop stamens.
Botanical history
There are tiny and prominent oil spots on the causal skin, which look like flowers, hence the name "Zanthoxylum bungeanum". The earliest written records are in the Book of Songs, and the earliest use of drugs is in Shennong's Herbal Classic. There are folk poems of the Western Zhou Dynasty in The Book of Songs, which shows that Chinese people used pepper more than 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. The ancients thought that the aroma of pepper could ward off evil spirits, and the seeds of pepper had many meanings.
Therefore, some palaces of dynasties, such as the Han Palace, used pepper and mud to paint the walls. This kind of palace, called Pepper Room Temple, was built for Queen Gong Zheng. Dou Taihou lived in Jiaofang Temple when she was queen in Han Dynasty. Later, the Pepper House was compared to the queen's bedroom, which was proved by the phrase "After the pseudo-discussion" in the Collected Works of Cao Cao and "On the second and sixth day of every month, the quasi-Pepper House is allowed to enter the palace as soon as possible" in the sixteenth chapter of A Dream of Red Mansions.