There was no white and blue moon in ancient times, so how did ancient people wash clothes?

Washing clothes, mopping the floor and washing dishes may seem like nothing, but it takes a lot of time to actually do it. Now our life is extremely convenient. We don't want to use dishwashers, sweeping robots or washing machines to wash dishes. But in the early years, when there was no washing machine, advertisements for washing powder and detergent were everywhere on TV. After all, children can run, and after a crazy day's play, they are all Xiaohua Mall, and the white clothes will get old after a few times. While enjoying the "burning meat with bamboo shoots", mothers have to do their best to wash clothes. You see, we used to be embarrassed to wash clothes. In ancient times, there was no white blue moon washing powder and laundry detergent that didn't hurt hands, let alone washing machines. How did ancient people wash clothes? The answer is simple, push! Children know that clothes are dirty, so they wash them with water. If they are too dirty, wipe them hard. But what if a woman is too weak to wipe? Our working people in China invented the pestle (also called the pestle, which is similar in shape to a baseball bat and quite common in film and television dramas) to wash clothes by slapping them hard (although I am curious whether the clothes can really be cleaned by slapping them like this, I don't know when the washboard was invented). Is a washboard much more effective than a pestle? Therefore, in the poems of literati, we often see the scene of women "smashing clothes". Li Bai once wrote poems such as "Flowers blow the bamboo tube, night rags are on the bright moon" and "A bright moon hangs in the capital, and ten thousand washing hammers knock". The autumn wind blew Yi Dao's voice, and every household remembered the people guarding the border. Oh, when will the Tatar army be conquered and when will my husband come back from the long battle! ? "The crisp thumping of clothes in the autumn night evoked the poet's feelings, and also entrusted the woman's reluctant to part with her expedition husband. We wash clothes and beat clothes in China, and the Egyptian people are in full swing. A mural thousands of years ago depicts a group of men washing clothes. I saw someone rubbing hard and someone twisting hard. Anyway, in the era when there was no washing machine, everything had to rely on one pair of hands. What a time-consuming and laborious trouble! Hand washing is too tiring, and the cleaning ability of this water is terrible. If the clothes are stained with oil stains or dirt, rubbing red by hand is not effective. Although soap was invented in ancient Egypt (it seems that soap has a history of thousands of years! ), but due to the scarcity of production, soap was still very scarce until the seventeenth century (soap was not widely popularized until the arrival of the industrial age). Since we modern people didn't have any cleaning products for washing clothes in ancient times, how did ancient people effectively solve the problem of dirty clothes? Here is a grand introduction to the earliest washing powder in China: plant ash (potassium carbonate in plant ash can remove oil stains)! It's hard to trace back to how the ancients discovered plant ash's powerful washing ability (it may be a sacrifice or barbecue, but folks found it easier to wash with plant ash), but as early as the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, our ancestors began to widely use plant ash, and the Book of Rites said, "The crown is dirty and the ash is clean." "The clothes are dirty and gray." It means to wash the hat, belt and clothes with plant ash when they are dirty. People wash clothes by spraying grey water. The method is to put plant ash in a basket, dig a hole in the middle and put it in the water. The filtered water in plant ash contains a lot of alkali. This kind of grey water is a good helper to remove dirt, and it can be regarded as a grassroots version of washing powder. Even now, some remote mountain villages still use this primitive and effective method to clean large items such as bedding. When our ancestors popularized plant ash on a large scale, they gave full play to their intelligence and added shell ash to enhance the effect. According to the record of "Flower King", "all kinds of utensils are real and obscene. "Hong here refers to shell ash. Why can shell ash and plant ash be mixed to get a stronger decontamination effect? From a chemical point of view, calcium oxide meets calcium carbonate in water and forms a strong base through chemical action. The decontamination ability of strong alkali is leverage, which not only has excellent effect but also increases gloss, killing two birds with one stone. Therefore, in order to make silks soft and white, the ancients used to soak silks in plant ash water, then put them into shell ash and clean them. The linen fabric unearthed in Mawangdui has traces of using shell ash and plant ash. In fact, you may wonder why strong alkali has strong decontamination ability. That's because grease is the most difficult to clean the dirt on clothes. Under alkaline conditions, the degree of hydrolysis of grease will be intensified, and higher fatty acid salts that are easily soluble in water can be generated. Plant ash is mainly composed of strong alkali, so it is very effective to treat oil pollution with salt water and tofu. Western brothers also discovered the miraculous effect of plant ash, and the ancient Romans also developed a wonderful cleaning method: plant ash plus urine! (Roman who washes his hair with urine) Er ... Laundrymen in Rome collect urine from house to house every morning, and soak the clothes that need to be washed in a jar full of urine and plant ash (damn, it makes me sick to think about it). Urine is still an important resource in ancient Rome ... The Roman emperor Wei Bazhen specially set up a "urine tax" ... This urine tax is still Rome. This wonderful operation mode of "washing clothes with urine" has lasted for more than 1000 years ... I just want to ask those brothers who wash clothes with urine, do they dare to wear this clothes after washing? No taste? Besides veterans like plant ash, the laundry army also found natural alkali (actually sodium carbonate, because it is alkaline, the effect of washing clothes is also very good). Shennong's Classic of Materia Medica records that in the Han Dynasty, people collected alkaline earth containing trona from saline-alkali land in dry season to wash clothes. In the Han Dynasty, it was called "bittern", and in the Tang Dynasty, it was called caustic soda. Maybe it tastes bad. In the Song Dynasty, people who pursued delicacy simply added spices and starch to alkali and sold them in pieces. Boy, this is the predecessor of soap! In the Ming dynasty, another important step was completed in alkali production: artificial alkali production. People don't have to go to the saline-alkali land to dig and refine, but they can make a good caustic soda by hand. If you want to experience how the ancestors made the alkali block, Li Shizhen will teach you the production technology in Compendium of Materia Medica for free: after picking Artemisia and Polygonum, dig a cellar to soak it, dry it, burn it to ashes, then spray water, and pour two or three kilograms of flour and spices per kilo 100, and you're done! The appearance of artificial stone alkali (Japanese milk stone alkali) quickly swept the country. Stone alkali has changed from a good gift in the early days to a daily necessities that ordinary people can use. In the late Ming Dynasty, there were also shops specializing in selling artificial stone alkali, both for ordinary people and luxury models with spices. These stores sell their brands and become a symbol of word of mouth. Among them, excellent old shops such as Hexianglou and Huahanchong survived tenaciously until the forties and fifties of last century! Look at the peach-shaped and gourd-shaped rose alkaloids produced by these century-old stores. It is hard to believe that our ancestors used such a "modern" decontamination artifact hundreds of years ago. And western countries also admit that before the industrial revolution, the purity of alkali extraction in China was the highest in the world! Of course, in China, where washing liquid is so developed, how can caustic soda meet the needs of ordinary people? So a real ancient version of "soap"-Gleditsia sinensis came into being. Gleditsia sinensis, the scientific name of Gleditsia sinensis, can produce foam in water after mashing, and the decontamination effect is very good, so the ancients also used it to wash clothes. Since the Western Han Dynasty, the ancients began to use this unique "China soap" because it is cheap, easy to use and easy to get (Gleditsia sinensis can be used when picked, besides washing clothes, Gleditsia sinensis can also cure skin diseases and promote hair growth), and Gleditsia sinensis is much more popular than caustic soda. Zhou Mi recorded in "Old Wulin" that there was an orange-sized ball made of Gleditsia sinensis powder in Lin 'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, and Zhou Mi named it Soap Ball. Rich people certainly don't use such cheap ordinary soap, but they have a special luxury soap-"pancreas"! Maybe everyone will wonder, what is pancreas? Actually, this is a pig's pancreas ... not too dirty, this thing can be very delicate. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Jia Sixie proposed that the pig's pancreas could be used to remove the viscera (the pig's viscera is rich in digestive enzymes and lecithin, so it can effectively increase the decontamination ability). How is this "pancreas" made? "Qianjinfang" states: The washed pig pancreas is ground into a paste, and soybean powder and more than ten kinds of spices and medicinal materials are added, and after careful preparation, it is made into granular beans (so it is also called bath beans). You see, every step takes polishing time, which is naturally expensive. The "pancreas" made of pig pancreas was very popular in Wei and Jin Dynasties, and it had to be a royal family to qualify (even the royal family used it to bathe and wash their hands, so they were reluctant to wash their clothes). Ordinary landlords and rich people have never even seen it! Here, I want to tell you a joke. Wang Dun, a rich Xu Jin, married a princess. Such a local tyrant is at least well informed. As a result, the maid brought him a bowl of water and a bowl of pancreas just after she went to the toilet, which meant washing her hands, but Wang Dun didn't know it. He thought there were cookies after going to the bathroom. As a result, this product ate a pot of bath beans ... Wang Dun, a hillbilly, naturally got everyone's attention. Laugh and laugh, but think about it. Even wealthy families have never seen this thing. It can be seen how expensive bath beans are! Of course, with the continuous development of science and technology, swallows flew into the homes of ordinary people in front of Xie Wang in the past, and the pancreas that can only be used by the royal family is no longer dedicated to the court. By the Ming Dynasty, big cities such as Beijing, Nanjing and Suzhou had set up shops specializing in selling pancreas. In addition to pig pancreas, sheep pancreas is also added, and various spices are added: sweet-scented osmanthus, roses and peony (actually similar to our soap). Of course, the shape has also changed from the previous beans to a big lump. Noble ladies can't help loving these sweet-smelling pancreatic soaps. At this time, pancreatic juice is more used for washing face and skin care, which is recorded in biographical novels of Ming and Qing Dynasties. Legend of Heroes of Children says, "I put on soap and fragrant beans to save face, and I made some sweet-scented osmanthus pancreases and rose pancreases ..." It can be seen that women of all ages love beauty! Author: Hu Yu