What was the entertainment life of the ancients at night?

The nightlife in ancient my country was much less than it is now, because there were no electric lights. In ancient times when materials were not abundant, not many people were willing to use oil lamps all night. Therefore, in ancient times, even adults In the city, only a few places are brightly lit at night, while the rest are mostly dark.

Therefore, in ancient villages and towns, no one would go out as soon as it got dark. In some big cities, in order to ensure public security in the city and prevent people from committing crimes in the dark and windy night, or even assassinating princes and ministers, Therefore, a curfew has been implemented, and only some areas are reserved for pedestrians to move around. In other areas, pedestrians are not allowed to travel at will. Violators will be punished in accordance with the law.

So, in ancient times when nightlife requirements were so strict, what kind of entertainment activities did ancient people have at night?

Visit the romantic places

The so-called romantic places generally refer to what people call brothels. In addition to brothels, they also include some singing and dancing venues. In ancient times, brothels were very high-end entertainment places. , the cost of dozens of taels per night is equivalent to the living expenses of an ordinary person's family for a year, and most people really can't afford shopping.

And people who can travel at night are already of high status. Those who can come to brothels and other places to spend money at night are not ordinary people. At the very least, they are wealthy businessmen, and even many. They are all princes and ministers from the middle and upper levels of the court.

Reading and practicing calligraphy

Compared with those who hang out in the romantic field all day long and enjoy singing and dancing, most ancient literati still like to read and practice calligraphy. Come to cultivate your body and mind and enrich your knowledge.

In ancient times before mobile phones and computers, people wanted to acquire knowledge. On the one hand, they learned from listening to operas and the narrations of the elderly, but most importantly, they obtained it from schools and books. Therefore, ancient students and literati usually read at night by candlelight. If a civil servant was assigned to serve somewhere and did not bring several boxes of books in his luggage when he took office, he would be laughed at.

So in many costume dramas, good officials are described only with a few boxes of books and nothing else. However, this is indeed the case in real ancient times. As long as you are a civil servant, even if you are just pretending, you will often have a lot of books, calligraphy and paintings in your home. Even if you don't like to read books, you still have to use this to fill your appearance.

People in ancient times paid great attention to appearance and reputation. Especially for literati, appearance and reputation were as if they were their worth.

So in addition to collecting many books, calligraphy and paintings at home, literati also need to learn good calligraphy themselves. Calligraphy is a person's appearance not only in ancient times, but also in modern society. In ancient times, the quality of a scholar's calligraphy was even more important. Even when taking the imperial examination, the examinee's handwriting quality can directly affect his success or failure in the examination. Therefore, in addition to reading, literati also practice calligraphy at night to enhance their self-cultivation and as a pastime.

Watching theater and listening to music

Just like us modern people curling up on the sofa at night to watch TV series and movies, in ancient times because there were no TVs, computers, and no movie theaters to go to, rich people My favorite thing at night is to watch a show and listen to music.

This place is especially populated by family members of various big houses. In ancient times, it was inconvenient for the ladies and old people in the deep houses to go out at will, so the biggest pastime was to invite a theater troupe to liven up the house. It sounds like a drama.

Of course, it is too luxurious to have an opera troupe come to your home to sing opera. Even the rich people in the city mostly go to the theater to watch operas and listen to music.

In ancient times, theaters, teahouses and wine shops were often open until bedtime. The theaters naturally had resident actors performing every day, and occasionally famous actors were invited to perform.

Most of the teahouses and restaurants will invite some singers and actors to perform for the tea guests and drinkers. In addition to the monthly salary paid by the teahouse and restaurant bosses, the remuneration is equal to the tea guests and drinkers. Their rewards are almost the same as in modern bars and leisure clubs, and the entertainment methods of eating melon seeds and snacks, drinking tea, listening to ditties, and listening to cross talk in teahouses have even been preserved to this day.

But it must be mentioned that because there has always been a huge gap between the rich and the poor in ancient my country, even places for drinking tea and drinking are divided into three, six, and nine grades just like romantic places.

A tea-drinking place where you can listen to music and have snacks is called a teahouse. The tea brewed in the teahouse is also high-quality tea, or at least new tea. Desserts are also more sophisticated, and as long as you are willing to spend money, there will be maids who will give you a squeeze on your back and legs. Although this kind of enjoyment would be nothing today, in ancient times, it was already a very rare treat, so the price is not generally expensive.

The low-cost tea drinking places that ordinary people often go to can only be called tea stalls or big tea shops. Most of them drink large bowls of tea or herbal tea brewed with old tea or even high broken tea. Used to quench thirst and relieve heat.

Although wine shops are not considered high-consumption luxury places, ordinary people do not often go there to spend money. In ancient times, ordinary people basically ate three meals at home. Occasionally, they only went to small restaurants and meat restaurants to improve their lives. It would be a good idea to buy some cooked food in the store and drink it with a bottle of wine.

There are usually no singers in ordinary wine shops, because everyone comes here to eat and drink, and there are no customers to reward them. Only high-end restaurants will have singing artists resident there, just like today's high-end hotels and ordinary restaurants.

Enjoyments that seem common to us modern people were very rare in ancient times. This proves the benefits brought by the progress of science and technology and the development of the times.