Chapter 10 Shaking briquettes to heat the kang

On November 28th last year, "Gai Xian" Professor Xia Yuanyu published an article "Hong Xue Gai Lun" on the Zen theory of the immortal heart, which is more wonderful than Tong Xuan, and it is admirable.It is said that his profession is crawling. This trip has never been heard of before. At first hearing, he was both surprised and happy. What surprised me was that I knew nothing about Hongxue. He was favored by senior Meng Xueqin. I dragged the little pawn across the river to get to the corner, and the fairy fate is fleeting. Hurry up and come to a section of rocking briquettes in the north to join in the fun and join in the fun, lest "Gaixian" laugh at me for being too lazy!

There is a proverb in the Mainland that says: "Frost's fall sees ice balls." As soon as it enters October, the ancient city of Beijing is already chilly. Washing up early in the morning and rinsing your mouth with cold water will feel a bit icy, and practice Baduanjin in the courtyard. There is already a thin "breath".According to the regulations of the Qing Dynasty, the stove was lit on the first day of October, and the fire had to be turned off on the first day of February of the following year. Bow, the door was replaced with a cotton curtain, and the coal room (a room with a pile of coal in Beijing is called a coal room) has long been filled with red coal, lump coal, and large and small briquettes.Households in the northern metropolises of the inland country use coal as the main fuel. The red coal comes from Shanxi, and the coal powder for shaking briquettes comes from Mentougou, not far from Beijing. As for chopping firewood, charcoal is rarely used, it is just a fire starter.

Coal shops: There are coal shops in all the streets and alleys of Beijing. Although the houses are small, the yards can be spacious. The coal powder is piled up like a mountain, and there must be space to pile loess, shake coal balls, pile coal balls, and dry coal balls (fortunately, the land in Beijing was very valuable in the early years. , no one in Taiwan can afford to open a coal shop).The courtyard wall of the shop is always chalky and white, with the words "Wu Jin Mo Yu" written in block letters, and coal black people who compete with Bao Gong like Li Kui rush in and out. When you go to the coal shop to call briquettes, it is like going to Africa.

Some well-to-do households in Beijing think that the ready-made briquettes in the coal shop have too much soil and less coal and the fire is not strong. If the family has a partial yard or a yard, they like to go to the coal store or call a coal dealer who specializes in pulling camels in Mentougou to unload a few cars or a few The coal dust of camels (seven camels called one) was dumped in the yard, and workers shaking coal balls naturally came to the door to sell business.Although shaking briquettes does not require any special skills, all you need is an iron rake, a steel shovel, and a large wicker dustpan with square eyes, but the briquettes are shaken by either Dingxing or Laishui villagers, and there are few other counties. People do this business.They shook the briquettes to dry, and piled the briquettes in the coal house. When the sky was cloudy and it was about to rain, they asked the owner to prepare a reed mat and tarpaulin to cover the briquettes.Shake the briquettes once, and the large and small briquette stoves for heating this winter and the large stove in the kitchen are not afraid of running out of coal.

This kind of briquette stove for heating, Beijingers call it a white stove, is a special craft, and the material is made of white ash produced in Zhaitang (place name) and polished with a fine hemp knife.The most famous shop is called Pang Gongdao, with 20 or 30 workers, big and small, and there is a lot of business that can't be done all year round.Beijing not only buys white stoves for residential use from his house, but also the big ovens for bakery shops, and the hanging ovens for porridge shops and sesame cakes are also Pang Gongdao's exclusive business. There are four white stoves for heating: special, large, medium, and small. The stately mansion and the deep house of the bank bank are all special-sized large white stoves, covered with red copper or cupronickel. There is a complete set of rods, dials, and cleaning rods, even brick-milled stove bowls, and iron-made fire lids.Put it on the stove plate, the first two and three stoves, it depends on the size of the room.

There is also a fat and fat small briquette stove with a narrow hearth and a short body. Beijingers call it "Little Fat Boy". There are two ways to write Kang characters: "Kang" and "匟".The kang is the one that lights the fire, and the kang is the one that does not light the fire. People in the south sleep on beds, so it is not very clear which kang or tsun the northerners sleep on. The large mansions in the north all have a certain pattern, whether it is five bays, seven bays, or nine bays, there must be a four-panel green screen door leading to the back in the middle. Although the door is set up on weekdays, it is always closed. The festive ceremony officially opened.On weekdays, a hospital bed is placed in front of the screen door, with a table on it, and a small table behind the table. Mostly, there is a three-inlaid jade ruyi with a glass cover, or a pair of porcelain hat cylinders.On the left and right, there are a pair of long pillows and thick mattresses. In winter, leather mattresses are added, and in summer, grass mats are replaced.There is also a pedal bed on the left and right in front of the hide, and a pair of high-waisted white copper spittoons are placed in the middle of the pedal bed, which are prepared for visitors to cough and soot.Guests and strangers are all invited to sit on the bed and serve cigarettes and tea. As for friends who are familiar and informal, they are allowed to sit casually!

The most stylish princely mansion in Beijing is hollow under the surrounding corridors, just like the basement now. There are furnaces built on the left and right sides of the upper corridor, and the underground is actually a tunnel extending in all directions.From the main room to the east and west wing rooms of the suite, the stove is covered with wooden boards, and when the wooden boards are lifted, one can walk down the steps.On both sides of the main house, there are one or several fire pools for burning briquettes. After burning briquettes, the main room, suites, and east and west rooms all feel as warm as spring. Day and half a month.The bitter Yan Yan burns three or two times, and he can survive the coldest three or nine days.The citron, bergamot, narcissus, and wintersweet placed in the house can all bloom earlier, and they bloom more vigorously than those placed in the warm hole in the flower factory.However, the amount of briquettes used to burn a floor furnace is too large. Although coal was cheap in the early years, it was expensive. Therefore, unless there is a big event in the family, no one is willing to light the fire pool to warm the winter.

People in the south of the Yangtze River think that when winter comes, families in the north will burn a kang to keep warm. In fact, it is extremely rare for wealthy families living in northern cities to burn a kang!Some of them are the night guards, housekeepers, and small envoys who live in the house and leave the house.The hot kang must be built with bricks or compound soil. It is not possible for ordinary cement workers to build a stove and build a hot kang. This craft is also a specialty.There is a pothole under the kang, which goes straight to the bottom. The stove for heating the kang is a special product.There are two gas holes to the outside of the pothole. Although the fire is raging, the gas will not be contaminated at that time, but after a long night, the fire is extinguished. If the gas is trapped inside, it can kill people like gas poisoning.So in the early years, it was often heard that the watchmen who patrolled the night watch were smothered to death by gas, which is not special news!

In the early years, because the rich and wealthy families in Beijing slept under the chariot, some of them imitated the inner court, building boat-shaped wooden boards along the wall, with hollowed-out and gold-painted lintels, floor-to-ceiling covers with colorful carvings, and tassel brocade tents. , embroidered mandarin thick, the bedroom is as long as the bedroom.At both ends of the hide, there is a small table with low legs and drawers. In addition to placing clocks, hanging watches, candlesticks, mirrors and various small pendulums on the table, the drawers can be used to place pearls and emeralds for makeup removal and dressing.A firm and thick Prue felt is placed under each table, which can stabilize the table so that it will not sway. In the middle, various thick and thin cotton quilts are stacked, and high and short long rectangular ear pillows are piled up in a big pile.This kind of hidden board is made of hard and non-mothy wood, lest the old people sleep on it and feel afraid of the board, so the materials used for the bedding are mainly thick, soft, light and warm.Although the plaque is hollow, no one puts a palace smoker to keep warm. Put a Tang Pozi quilt in the quilt tube for three or nine days, and it will be warm enough.

Before Tongguang, there were no sofas and chairs with springs in the north. Generally, sitting chairs, even though they were made of rosewood rosewood and thick cushions, were still too uncomfortable to sit on. Lightweight furniture such as rattan heart rocking chairs and Xiangfei couch became popular.Since the eight-step beds, Ningbo beds, and lacquer-filled beds with rattan drawers in the south became popular in the north, rich and noble families first used them as concealed beds, and then gradually eliminated carpenters and replaced them with soft beds.As for families with strict house rules, it is said that the rattan bed is brown and soft, and young people tend to bend over after sleeping for a long time, so they are still not allowed to sleep on the bed.Modern doctors strongly advocate that everyone sleep on wooden beds and abandon spring beds. It can be seen that the opinions of the older generation are quite reasonable.

Who slept on the hot kang in the early years?As far as the author knows, most of the old-fashioned small four-in-one houses in Beijing have one or two brick kangs, because everyone sleeps on beds, and the brick kangs take up too much space, so they are all demolished. Even if there are brick kangs left, they are still used for heating. There are very few Kang people.With the rise of the Anti-Japanese War, except for the coal-producing counties in the northwestern provinces, everyone still burned kangs in winter. By the 34th year of the Republic of China, when the author left Peking, the people who burned kangs in and outside the city could be said to have completely disappeared. Building cooked kang is not something ordinary masons can undertake, and it has another set of skills.There are specialized craftsmen to build hot kangs and bathhouses to build large pools. If the fire path is not built properly in brick kangs, either the heating and cooling of the kangs will be uneven, or the heat will fluctuate.One year, Cao Kun mutinied and robbed pawnshops in Beiping City. The author's family fled to Lianggezhuang Shijiaqian Sanye Zhuangzi in the south of Beijing to temporarily avoid the military chaos.His family vacated the main room to accommodate us, and the long-term workers heated the kang very warm in order to please the guests from afar.The surface of the kang is ground with fine wheat stalks made of Sanhe soil and is bright and bright. As soon as I fell asleep, it was warm and relieved from fatigue, but within half an hour, I gradually felt irritable and dry mouth. Sit and wait for the cock to crow.In this way, the next day, the tongue was bare and the lips were scorched, and even the eyes were shy and shy and covered with red threads. From this, it can be seen that it is not the habit of sleeping on the hot kang since childhood, and this kind of warm spring feeling is not blessed! Even though the bedding of emperors, concubines and concubines in the Qing Dynasty was plain and thick, with silk and pearls, carpenters still slept there.Cixi enjoys the most in her later years. She is honored as the empress dowager. In addition to her palace bedroom in Sanbeizi Garden Changguan Building, there is a wire bed covered with brocade embroidery, the palace where she lives daily and the palace in the Summer Palace. The summer palace is not the same as usual sleeping wooden plaques, but the lake silk and Sichuan brocade and Chinese tapestry are soft and comfortable.Xuantong’s big wedding, the bridal chamber of Kunning Palace, still slept with the carpenter. It was not until he moved to Chuxiu Palace and bought a copper bed with steel wire springs at the suggestion of Empress Wanrong that the palace changed from sleeping to sleeping. bed. The palaces of the Qing Dynasty followed the old system of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. They were deep and spacious during the two summers. The courts participated in the court discussions.The so-called Warm Pavilion is nothing more than a windshield and lattice window, with fur curtains and brocade curtains to shelter from the winter cold.As for the post-officials of the Ye court, the leather or cotton curtains hang deeply, the gaps are narrowed, and the palace fumigation is curling up, and the hand stove and foot stove are close to each other, so the room is naturally warm.Unless it is very cold in March and September, there is a special kind of chalk clay stove in the palace. It is fat and short and has a large chamber. The fire was exhausted, and it was time to carry it out of the palace again.The palace is very cautious about lighting fires for heating, and of course they dare not burn hot kangs for heating. There is no such record in the official and private documents and private records of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. From this, it can be inferred that the rich mansions were not heated. Kang is nothing more than imitating the inner court. According to the equipment, the southerners have never seen it, even the middle-aged people in the north have not caught up with the era of it.Mr. Tang and I only met each other when we were young. Since then, our family has changed to beds. After all, brown drawers and rattan drawers are much more comfortable than those with brick surfaces.I am the apprentice of Unrivaled Immortal, and my words are not enough to win people's trust, but Mr. Tang is not influenced by me, and I speak the truth.What he said about the situation in the palace is also true.When he was a child, he once went to the palace to pay New Year greetings to Concubine Jin, and offered him spring pancakes (Taiwanese round pancakes). Seeing that the concubine had rewarded him, the concubine and court ladies all came to help him roll them, and he fell ill.When I went to the concubine's bed, I invited Dr. Zhang to see me.Concubine Jin was sitting next to him, and the imperial physician had no choice but to kneel down and feel the pulse.Therefore, what he said about the Yang in the palace and the foreshadowing on the Yang are all true. As mentioned in the previous article, there is a hat tube on the table.This thing was eliminated after entering the Republic of China.It is a cylindrical object more than one foot high and four inches in diameter, similar to a vase, made of porcelain, with holes carved on the wall and painted, specially used for official hats.The official hats worn by officials in the former Qing Dynasty, no matter the autumn hats worn in autumn and winter, or the summer hats, often have downward-sloping plumes at the back, which cannot be placed flat on the table. stand up.