"Chinese Tales" goes viral! Let's take a look at the little-known facts in Langlang Mountain

Coinciding with the 2023 New Year's Day holiday, the 8-episode original online animation short film "Chinese Tales" jointly launched by Shanghai Film Art Studio and a certain website was released strongly. It has been widely praised by the audience for its profound meaning, compact plot, exquisite painting style, and strong Chinese traditional cultural charm. The Douban score is as high as 9.3 , which made many people who have experienced the prosperity of Chinese animation exclaim that "Shanghai Film Art Studio does not give up, and Chinese animation is amazing."

If you look closely at this classic Chinese comic, you will find that it not only contains traditional Chinese culture, but also contains a lot of little-known facts. Take the first episode of the film, "The Little Pig Demon in Langlang Mountain", for example...

Crow Monster: Why are you plucking my feathers?

Tang Monk and his disciples still had four days to reach Langlang Mountain. Coach Bear ordered the little demons to make 1,000 wooden arrows within one day. The little pig demon cut wood and made arrows, but found that the wooden arrows could not hit the target. Then he had an idea and plucked a feather from the crow monster and stuck it on the blunt end of the wooden arrow, then used the feathered arrow to hit the target.

When all the wooden arrows were made, the crow monster's feathers were almost plucked out...

The pig demon uses the feathers of the crow monster as arrow feathers

Source: Bilibili

As we all know, the arrow is a great invention of mankind. Since its birth, whether used alone or later used in conjunction with a bow (i.e. "bow and arrow"), it has been widely used in wars and hunting due to its long-range aggressiveness, and even later evolved into a traditional sport - archery.

The general structure of an arrow is: arrowhead (i.e. arrow head), shaft (i.e. arrow shaft), and feathers (i.e. arrow feathers).

According to the story logic of "The Little Pig Demon in Langlang Mountain", the order of structural evolution of the arrow should be: the arrowhead appears first, and the arrow feather appears later.

In actual archaeological discoveries, compared with stone or metal arrowheads and wooden arrowheads, arrow feathers made from bird feathers are more difficult to preserve because they are easy to rot . Therefore, I do not make a conclusion as to whether featherless arrows came before feathered arrows or whether they appeared at the same time.

Top: Modern arrows Bottom: Replica of medieval arrows

Source: Wikipedia

But what is certain is that humans have a very long history of equipping arrows with feathers. In other words, arrow feathers appeared very early.

In 1991, a German couple of tourists, Mr. and Mrs. Simon, discovered an ancient corpse that was very well preserved by ice in a large glacier in the Ötztal Alps near the border between Austria and Italy. They later named it "Ötzi the Iceman" (German: Ötzi) after the place where the corpse was found.

Archaeologists believe that Ötzi the Iceman lived between 3350 and 3150 BC, which is about 5,300 to 5,100 years ago, roughly during the Yangshao culture period in the Central Plains of my country. (Ancient corpses can easily cause discomfort, so I won’t take a picture. I’ll just praise Tadpole for being so considerate~)

Found along with the "Ötzi the Iceman" was a quiver he carried with him, which contained 14 arrows, all of which had arrowheads made of viburnum and dogwood.

Two of the arrows had remnants of arrow feathers, and these two arrows with arrow feather remnants also had flint arrowheads, so these were obviously two completed arrows.

The discovery of the remnants of the "Ötzi the Iceman" arrow feathers shows that at least 5,000 years ago, humans had already installed bird feathers on arrows in order to enhance the stability and hit rate of arrows .

Left: Ötzi the Iceman's quiver and 14 arrows

Right: The arrow with the remaining feathers and arrowhead, now in the South Tyrol Archaeological Museum in Bolzano, Italy

Source: South Tyrol Archaeological Museum

Knowledge Development

Regarding the structure of arrows, there is another popular classification method, that is, in addition to the arrowhead, shaft and feather, the end part of the shaft where the feather is located is called the "quiver", which is the part used to hold the bowstring when the arrow is used with a bow. From the perspective of manufacturing materials, thequiver is actually a part of the shaft.

Pig Monster: Why are you grinding my bristles?

It is said that on the third last day before the Langlang Mountain Monster Group's "Plan to Capture Tang Monk", the Crow Monster and the Pig Monster were assigned by the Bear Leader to clean the big pot used to cook Tang Monk's meat. However, the Bear Leader complained that they did not clean it clean enough.

Coach Bear grabbed the little pig demon and had an idea. He let the little pig demon hold his hand, and then used the bristles on the back of the little pig demon (i.e. pig bristles) to scrub the pot. The effect was immediate...

The bear coach uses the pig demon's bristles to clean the pot

Source: Bilibili

In a broad sense, pig bristles refer to the long and hard hair on the pig's neck, back and other parts, as well as the hard hair on other parts of the pig that can reach 5 cm in length.

Pig bristle not only has moderate hardness, but also has excellent elasticity and toughness. More importantly, it has excellent adsorption properties , making it very suitable for making brushes for cleaning items in daily life.

So, Coach Xiong is not doing anything wrong. The use of pig bristles to make brushes has a long history all over the world. The more common ones are daily necessities brushes, medicine brushes, toothbrushes, etc. made of pig bristles.

A 14.8-cm-long bamboo-handled brush was found in the Southern Song Dynasty Tomb No. 5 in Jiangtang Village, Wujin District, Jiangsu Province. The handle was made of bamboo, and the head had 8 rows of bristles in 3 rows. It was determined that the bristles were made of black pig bristles.

Judging from the length of the brush and the actual picture, it is not a toothbrush. I think it is used to clean larger daily necessities.

A bamboo-handled pig-bristle brush found in the Southern Song Dynasty Tomb No. 5 in Jiangtang Village, Wujin District, Jiangsu Province

Source: Minutes of the Clearing of the Southern Song Tombs in Wujin Village, Jiangsu

A batch of Ming Dynasty medical instruments were unearthed from a Ming Dynasty cast-in-place tomb in Changjing Town, Jiangyin County, Jiangsu Province. Among them were two brushes made by threading pig bristles into ox horn brush handles.

The excavators believed that the objects unearthed together with the two brushes included a large number of medical instruments such as iron surgical knives, iron round needles, and wooden medicine jars, so the properties of the brushes were more obvious and they should be medicine brushes.

Unearthed from a Ming Dynasty mortar-cast tomb in Changjing Town, Jiangyin County, Jiangsu Province

Two medicinal horn handle boar bristle brushes

Source: "Medical instruments from the Ming Dynasty unearthed in Jiangyin County"

Around the 1770s and 1780s, British entrepreneur William Addis was imprisoned for disturbing public order. He found that people in prison used cloth dipped in some shell powder or ashes to clean their teeth, which he thought was ineffective.

So he thought hard, he saved the animal bones left over from meals, then poked a few holes in them, borrowed some pig bristles from the jailer and tied them into bundles, passed them through the small holes in the bones, and finally sealed them with glue. After he was released from prison, he used this method to produce and run a toothbrush business.

For a long time, William Addis's "bristle toothbrush" was considered the first mass-produced toothbrush.

The semi-finished product of William Addis's "Pig Bristle Toothbrush" collected by the Hertford Museum in England reflects the production process of the toothbrush at that time.

Source: Hertford Museum)

Tang Monk: Are you going to stew me or roast me?

There were only two days left before Tang Monk and his disciples passed by Langlang Mountain. Coach Bear ordered the Crow Monster and the Pig Monster to chop a thousand kilograms of firewood before night to stew Tang Monk's meat.

After they finished the task of chopping wood at night, Lord Wolf came to inspect the work and discovered that the crow monster had spied on the king's trap during the day, so the crow monster was taken away to be "dealt with".

Lord Wolf burned the freshly chopped 1,000 kilograms of firewood and announced that the king would change the "stewed Tang Monk" to "roasted Tang Monk" and ordered to collect 2,000 kilograms of hickory wood less than 20 years old...

Lord Wolf announced that the dish "Stewed Tang Monk" would be changed to "Roasted Tang Monk"

Source: Bilibili

Some archaeologists believe that cooking techniques such as roasting, boiling, steaming, shabu-shabu, and stir-frying can reflect the culinary characteristics of ancient China.

Boiling in a broad sense includes stewing. Boiling means cooking. This cooking method appeared very early and has a history of more than 10,000 years . It has been used by humans at least since the Neolithic Age in China. Cooking utensils commonly used for cooking food seen in archaeology include cauldrons and tripods.

First there were pottery cauldrons and tripods, and with the development of productivity, bronze and iron cauldrons and tripods appeared one after another.

A Shang Dynasty pottery tripod unearthed from the Panlongcheng site in the Hubei Museum

Photo by Qu Shiyi

Roasting is a more primitive cooking method.

Archaeological evidence shows that as early as the Middle Paleolithic Period 200,000 to 300,000 years ago, prehistoric humans in the Fenhe River Basin in my country were "barbecuing" food.

From 2015 to 2017, archaeologists discovered broken vertebrae and limb bones of herbivorous animals in the loess strata of the Guoshuidong site in Xiangfen County, Shanxi Province. They also found charcoal piles, charcoal chips, stone products, and red-baked earth. It is speculated that this was a place where humans at that time held barbecue picnics.

The ancient burial mounds unearthed from the Guoshuidong site date back to about 200,000 to 300,000 years ago

Animal bones, red-burnt earth, charcoal and other remains

Source: New Archaeological Progress of Dingcun Site Group since 2011

From this point of view, Lord Wolf’s announcement of “roasting Tang Monk’s meat” instead of “boiling Tang Monk’s meat” is actually a regression in cooking methods, but roasting meat is indeed more delicious than stewing meat (personal feeling~)

References:

[1] Chen Jing and Chen Lihua, “Records of the Excavation of the Southern Song Tombs in Wujin Village, Jiangsu Province”, Archaeology, No. 3, 1986.

[2] Jiangyin County Cultural Center: “Medical instruments from the Ming Dynasty unearthed in Jiangyin County”, Wenwu, No. 2, 1977.

[3] Mary Bellis. "History of the Toothbrush and Toothpaste". About.com Money.

[4] "Who invented the toothbrush and when was it invented?". The Library of Congress. 2007-04-04.

[5] leur, Nicholas St (21 June 2018). "The Final Hours of the Iceman's Tools". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 July 2018.

[6] Petraglia, Michael D.; Wierer, Ursula; Arrighi, Simona; Bertola, Stefano; Kaufmann, Günther; Baumgarten, Benno; Pedrotti, Annaluisa; Pernter, Patrizia; Pelegrin, Jacques (2018). "The Iceman's lithic toolkit: Raw material, technology, typology and use".

[7] Brenda Fowler (2001), Iceman: Uncovering the Life and Times of a Prehistoric Man found in an Alpine Glacier, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, pp. 105–106, ISBN 978-0-226-25823-2.

[8] Peng Huirong, Research on Chinese Archery Culture, Shanghai Institute of Physical Education, 2010.

[9] Chen Xinhua, Research on the History of Ancient Chinese Archery, Soochow University, 2017.

[10] Wang Yiren et al., “New Archaeological Progress in the Dingcun Site Group since 2011”, Acta Anthropologica Sinica, No. 3, 2018.

[11] Wang Renxiang, “Ancient Chinese Dietary Traditions from the Perspective of Archaeological Discoveries”, Journal of Hubei University of Economics, No. 2, 2004.

END

Author: Qu Shiyi, Master of Cultural Relics and Museums

Former editor of Global Exploration magazine

Editor: Guru