There is an explicit provision in the law of the Han Dynasty: “officials take a rest on five days.” In the Han Dynasty, migrant workers had to take a special day off to bathe every five days.

Bathing and other private matters were written into the law in ancient times… This can be traced back to the ancient sacrifice.

Part of the picture of unknown bathing baby ladies in Song Dynasty

Freer art collection

Zhou Li recorded that the ancients needed to bathe and fast before sacrificing to show their respect to the gods. Over time, “one bath for three days and one bath for five days” has become a custom.

“Shuowen Jiezi” records, “mu, promotion also”; “Bath, sprinkle body also”; In ancient times, bathing was divided into two parts, one was to wash your hair and the other was to wash your body.

Today, let’s talk about the ancient people’s shampoo.

01 wash your hair frequently

The sanitary conditions in ancient times were not good. Did the ancients wash their hair only once a few months? The ancients… The ancients used to wash their hair?

Cough, if you hold the above ideas, you will look down on the ancients too much. In fact, the ancients washed their hair frequently, but they were not inferior to modern people at all.

Let’s take a look at the lady who loves beauty in the book of songs, Xiaoya, picking green:

On a vast green field, a woman was walking down the path unhappily. Her little mouth said, “pick the green all the time, don’t make a profit. Give it to the Music Bureau, and give it to mu.” She said, I’ve been picking grass outside all day. I haven’t picked a handful yet. My hair has become messy. I’d better talk less and go home and wash my hair.

Why do women who pick half go home to wash their hair? In fact, she is waiting for the return of her sweetheart. Originally, the agreed time limit was five days, but six days later, my sweetheart still didn’t appear. She eagerly went back to wash her hair just to welcome her sweetheart with her most beautiful state.

Today, we use “meet and shampoo” to ridicule the importance we attach to our date, and this kind of “shampoo” social intercourse has already appeared in the book of songs.

Part of the bathing drawing of Qing Gu seeing the dragon imperial concubine

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Shampoo is not only a special way for young men and women to express their love, but also a courtesy of respecting the elderly.

According to the book of rites, “on the fifth day, please take a bath in Tan soup, and on the third day, please take a bath. During this period, the face is dirty, the pan is dirty, the foot is dirty, and the tan soup is clean.” The younger generation in the family should boil water to take a bath for their parents every five days, and boil water to wash their parents’ hair every three days. Usually, if parents’ faces or feet are dirty, they should also burn rice washing water to wash them for their parents.

The “three-day wash” stipulated here was also the frequency of shampoo for nobles and ordinary people at that time. However, ancient people washed their hair frequently and inevitably encountered some conditions. For example, “Shiji · Lu Zhougong aristocratic family” recorded interesting stories about “shampoo”:

Duke Zhou was an important minister in the early Western Zhou Dynasty. Wise men came to visit him every three or five times. Unfortunately, several times, Duke Zhou was washing his hair. But the guests can’t neglect. What should we do? Duke Zhou had to stop, hold his wet hair, throw it behind him, and go out to entertain guests.

Duke Zhou’s behavior of courtesy to the virtuous corporal is admirable, but it can be seen from the side that Duke Zhou is really a shampoo master!

02 often comb your hair

Looking at the increasingly sparse head and higher hairline in the mirror, do you have the same trouble as Xiaobian? Don’t worry, for this reason, the ancients have already taught the secret recipe - “if you want to hair, comb your hair a thousand times.”

Yes, if you want to have a beautiful black hair, you have to learn from the ancients “often comb your hair”.

It is reported that Su Shi, a great writer, also experienced the trouble of hair loss. Because of homesickness, Su Shi, who washed his head, felt that “the top of his head is becoming more and more desolate”. Therefore, on a lonely night, he looked at the night sky and left two desolate sighs of “heavy quilt, cold feet, heavy frost, light new head and thin feeling” in “two songs outside Changzhou”.

A famous doctor saw the haggard Su Shi and gave him a move: “comb your hair for more than 100 times, lie down and sleep until dawn.” Su Shi would like to follow the doctor’s advice. Sometimes, when he walked in the moonlight, he didn’t forget to spread his hair around his shoulders and comb his hair as he walked. Gradually, his hair loss became less and less. Looking back at his dense head, he said excitedly, “thousands of muscles are cold and fast, muscles and bones wake up, and the wind dew gas flows into the frost and fluffy roots!”

Half moon shaped jade comb of Southern Song Dynasty, collected by Nanjing Museum

Su Shi is not the only one who strongly calls “combing his hair”. Lu You, a poet in the Southern Song Dynasty, said that the secret of “having black hair in his later years” is to comb his hair often.

In the morning, he “combed his hair and brushed his face” in front of the makeup mirror; When he met with something unpleasant, he kept his door closed and “frowned and combed his hair again”; Having nothing to do, he took out his comb and “combed himself with short hair”. Even when he was ill, he “combed his hair in the book of changes”. He said: “comb your hair and bathe your feet for a long life. When you go to sleep, you are in peace.”. In Lu You’s eyes, combing your hair is a top priority in life.

In his later years, Lu You’s face is getting old, but his hair is still well maintained. He called his hair “fetal hair” and cherished it.

In addition to the above two poets, Empress Dowager Cixi of the Qing Dynasty also knew the benefits of combing her hair. She ordered the eunuch to comb her hair a hundred times a day. She had to comb her hair when she got up early and went to bed. Therefore, her hair was still green after 70.

Qing ivory carvings painted with gold combed in the collection of Shenyang Palace Museum

Source: arterial shadow

In many ancient medical classics, the importance of “often combing your hair” is mentioned. As suggested in the Yellow Emperor’s Canon of internal medicine, “three grates a day make hair dense”; “On health preservation” refers to “comb your hair one or two hundred times every morning in spring and March.” As well as the first “hair should be combed often” in the “Sixteen fitness” proposed in the health preservation description of the Ming Dynasty.

Seeing here, you may have a question that combing your hair is inseparable from combs. Did the ancients have such a variety of combs as modern people?

To talk about this issue, I have to mention - “Chlamys farreri”. Comb is the combined name of comb and comb. It is a common hair combing tool in ancient times. Those with thinner teeth are called “comb”, while those with denser teeth are called “grate”. There are beams in the middle and dense teeth on both sides. Ancient people used combs to clean their hair, remove hair dirt, lice, fleas and other dirty things hidden in their hair.

Jile Feitian gold comb of the Tang Dynasty was unearthed at the construction site of Sanyuan road in Yangzhou City in 1983

Yangzhou Museum, Jiangsu Province

In addition, the material of ancient combs is also very particular. The “rhinoceros comb” made of natural rhinoceros horn by court nobles can relieve headaches because of its heat clearing and detoxification; Folk people use “cattle and sheep horn comb” to replace the precious rhinoceros comb; “Boxwood comb” is specially recommended in compendium of Materia Medica because “its