How the Ancient Chinese Kept Warm in HARSH Winters

China has a variety of climates, from tropical jungles and limestone mountains of the south, to the deserts of the west, to the more temperate climate zone in the central plains and northeast, which is more similar to what you would find in the northern United States or northern Europe. And that means that summers are warm, but not outrageously hot, but winters do get cold, and snow is to be expected, especially in mountainous areas. And over the past 5,000 years, the cradle of Chinese civilization has existed in this area, from the central plains up to the northeast, with every Chinese capital in the north too, with the exception of just two of them. Some are even very far north, like Beijing, which was the capital city at certain times in history and remains the capital today. And this means that throughout history, Chinese people had to survive harsh winters without modern technology. And from peasants right up to nobles, Chinese people lived in similar structures, wooden houses with paper windows. And actually, you often see these windows open to the outside in TV shows, even in winter, since I guess the houses themselves did not trap much heat at all, thus it didn't make much difference if the windows were open or closed. So was everyone just freezing all the time, even inside their own homes? Well, realistically, pretty much no one in China had the luxury of stripping down to their underwear in a thoroughly heated room, but they did have their own ways of effectively keeping people warm from thick quilts to hot soup and tea to hand warmers to Chinese hot water bottles to charcoal braziers. And these charcoal braziers especially were in just about every home or palace and they came in a variety of different styles. In addition to this, there were some ingenious inventions like the traditional kang or stone bed warmed by a fire underneath and even heated floors in some buildings. And in this video, we're going to go through all of them. This is how ancient Chinese people kept warm through harsh winters. So most buildings in ancient China were not thoroughly heated. There are a few exceptions that we will talk about, but for most people, it was a case of heating the person and a small area around them rather than heating the whole structure that they could walk around in freely. Let's now look at some of the most common heating methods. The charcoal brazier. so this is called the huopeng in chinese literally means fire pot and it is a pot made of either metal like bronze or made of something else like clay that could be filled with charcoal which is called tan in chinese and this could be placed right next to where you and other family members were going to sit you could warm your hands over it and you could also use it to warm up food like chestnuts now charcoal which is the remnants of burned wood the parts that haven't been completely burned to ash, is a special type of fuel because certain types of charcoal burn with virtually no smoke. Thus, you could burn it indoors with no chimney and you'd not all be dying of burnt wood, unlike some medieval European homes where the family would literally all sit around an open wood fire in the home with no chimney spewing out smoke. And it seems charcoal has been used for a very long time in China. You see references to it in the book of rites, Li Ji, which was compiled during the Warring States period and described social customs during the Zhou Dynasty. In the chapter on government orders in different months, it states, when grasses and trees turn yellow and fall, then cut firewood to be made into charcoal. They explain exactly what it is in the Shuo Wen Jie Zi, the earliest Chinese character dictionary written in the Eastern Han Dynasty, where it states, burn wood, and what remains is charcoal. So it has been used in China for over 2,000 years to heat homes, and like we said, it was placed in a huo pen, And these range from simple bronze designs to more elaborate decorative designs in later centuries. For example, here is one used by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty. And these could be strategically placed around the house. For example, here we see one next to each seat to warm the person sitting there. And here we see one large one in the middle of a palace that many people can sit around. In that scene, do also notice that there's a lot more fabric around too, which also played a role of keeping heat in. but this is not your average peasant's home, it's a noble's palace. But the Chinese didn't just warm the air around a person, they had various methods of warming the person's body and keeping it that way. Let's look at some of those now. Clothing. Now we won't go into too much detail about clothing, but in China, like in Europe, fur was a material that was frequently used to keep people warm. Often, you would be looking at a fur collar rather than a full fur coat, or outfits that had fur on the collars and sleeves and even included these fur hand muffs. Indoors, you may also want a fur blanket to keep yourself warm. Fur garments were called qiuyi, and depending on how wealthy you were, you would be using different types of fur and different amounts. So someone very wealthy could perhaps afford a larger amount of fur on their coat, like a huge fur collar that kept you really warm, or perhaps a full fur coat, and it would be fox or leopard fur, whereas a commoner may only be able to afford a coat that had a small amount of fur on it, and it would be something cheaper like deer fur. But it seems these coats were pretty good, and the Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi wrote a poem praising the warmth of his new fur coat. The middle section of this poem reads, "'From the morning it embraces me until dusk, "'and at night it covers me as I sleep through to dawn. "'Who would know how severe the winter months are? "'My limbs and body are warm like spring.'" Anyway, in addition to clothing, the ancient Chinese had a few more tricks up their sleeves. hand warmers. This little object on the floor here is a traditional Chinese hand warmer or shou lu, literally hand furnace. And actually you could put one of these inside your sleeve too if you had those big sleeves. So they were sometimes called xiu lu too, sleeve warmers. Basically these were little bronze pots that would have charcoal burning inside and you would hold them in your hands to keep warm. They were especially popular amongst women and these things were pretty convenient since they used the same fuel as the fire pot, charcoal. That is, until you ran out. I mean, charcoal was pretty expensive since people had to make it for you, and based on the theory of supply and demand, the price would go up the colder the weather got. There's even a poem by Bai Juyi called The Old Charcoal Seller, and in it, one line reads, So pitiful, he is clothed in only a single layer. In his heart, he worries that charcoal will be cheap and hopes for cold weather. Anyway, hand warmers were available in different designs from simple bronze models like these to more elaborate and luxurious designs with cloisonné finishes. There is one story that says these things were invented for the emperor of the Sui dynasty who requested something to warm his hands. And they were popular in the Sui, Tang, and also Ming and Qing dynasties. You will often also see them in ancient paintings. Chinese hot water bottle. Now these things are called Tang Po Zi, the hot water lady. And these are basically pots that you fill with hot water. They often have a cloth wrapping around them to avoid scalding. So it's really literally the exact same concept as hot water bottles that we have in the West. Only difference is they're not flexible. All right, let's now look at one of the most ingenious inventions. The heated bed and underfloor heating system. Okay, so we're now looking at something that gives off quite a bit of heat, since this is a system that was invented in what is the northeast of China today, and also northern Korea, where it does get very cold. For example, in Harbin, the warmest it gets in January is nine Fahrenheit, which is minus 13 Celsius. That is the warmest it gets during the day. And at night, it often goes down to minus 11 Fahrenheit, which is minus 24 Celsius. Well, in the north of China, they invented something called the Kang, which is this heated bed that can be used for sitting on in the daytime or sleeping on at night. Often it can have a stove for cooking integrated into it too. So basically the smoke from the fire flows through a load of brick passageways built into the bed and then finally up the chimney and safely outside. This is a good illustration that I found on the internet of one of the current designs still in use of the Kang in northeast China. You have the stove in the kitchen and then through a wall to the right it extends and there is a bedroom or living room to the right with the Kang bed in it and the smoke flows through underneath the bed. The Kang uses thermal mass to keep you and your home warm, i.e. the bricks get heated throughout the day as you use the stove in the kitchen for cooking and then at night they slowly release their heat as you sleep on their warm surface, which stays at about 40 degrees Celsius or 104 Fahrenheit. If you extend the channels of the Kang under the floor, this then becomes the Di-Kang or floor Kang or now also commonly called Di Nuan. In the Qing Dynasty, this became popular, but this is actually nothing new. One of the earliest references to underfloor heating in China is the book Shui Jing Zhu, or Commentaries on the Water Classic, which dates back to the Northern Wei Dynasty. There is a temple called Guan Ji Temple, and in the temple is a great hall that is extremely tall and can accommodate 1,000 monks. The floor is made of stone with clay smeared on top of it, and inside its foundation is a network of channels that extend out to side rooms. Outside, there are four stoves, and the smoke flows inward through the channels in the floor, warming the whole hall. Little bit of a rough translation there, but you get the idea. So China did have underfloor heating in certain buildings just a few hundred years A.D., and actually, archeological findings of L-shaped flues in Heilongjiang and Jilin Province in northern China show that Kangs were being built as early as the first century A.D. So throughout history, these things definitely existed, and some of these systems actually also survive in Korea, where they are called ondol. Although a lot of our current knowledge of underfloor heating in China comes from the preserved examples in the palaces of the Forbidden City in Beijing, like the Dongnuanguo, or the Eastern Warm Palace. There were pits outside where a fire would be lit below floor level, and the hot smoke would waft around a maze of columns below the floor. So the emperor would enjoy a warm floor, But even so they would still employ other methods that we've talked about like the fire pot the hand warmers and the chinese hot water Bottles and he was probably toasty the peasants not so much in the northeast where it gets ridiculously cold kongs were common But you would probably all still have to be huddled on the kong to keep sufficiently warm In other parts of china where they relied on fire pots and hand warmers alone I think it would have been a real challenge for people with limited financial means Remember the colder it gets the higher the price of charcoal goes But the Chinese people survived and the civilization lives on.