Why did the hats of Song Dynasty officials have two long ears when they went to court? What does this do?
Is that really the case? Wrong, this is just a story made up by later generations.
The official hat in the Song Dynasty is called "Fu (→) Tou", which evolved from the head in the early Tang Dynasty and is still directly called "Tou" or "Folding towel" in the official documents of the Song Dynasty.
"Woe to me, a refers to the four corners, but also four zones. The second strap hangs from the back of the head, and the second strap is tied to the head, so that twists and turns are attached to it, so it is also called' folding towel'. Wotou was originally a black square cloth. After covering the top of the head, the two corners hang down behind the back, and the two corners are folded back to the top of the head to tie a knot, so it is also called "folding towel".
There are a lot of discussions about Shantou in the official documents and scholars' notes in the Song Dynasty, but in many documents in the Song Dynasty, it is not mentioned that the straight-footed Shantou was invented by Song Taizu as an official. People in the Song Dynasty didn't even understand why they had to show their horns. For example, in Song Dynasty, Cheng Dachang said in "Showing Numerous Exposures": "The system of hoeing the ground, cutting the yarn to cover the head, making the best use of everything, tying the two corners behind the head ... changed to hard corners, and history does not contain the beginning, I don't know when."
On the contrary, many documents in the Song Dynasty mentioned hard corners and peaceful corners in the Tang and Five Dynasties. The two corners knotted behind the hoe are the predecessors of the "long hat wing".
After knotting, the two small corners of steamed bread hang behind and sway. People gradually feel that it is not beautiful enough and solemn enough, so they try their best to do all kinds of exaggerated transformation and fixation, and the two corners have become the focus of Shantou's decoration.
"At the beginning of Tang Wude, I bought a flat-headed towel ... folded it and tied it with more than ten silks. Today it's called Xiaojiao, and its hanging corners are slightly bent upwards, saying it's a towel. Then there are two wide horns, short and sharp, called ox ear hoe, which was called soft wrap in Tang Dynasty. After the middle and late period, people who are immersed in the exhibition are also served today. However, the system is integrated and beneficial to people's self-interest. "
It can be seen from this text description that since the early Tang Dynasty, people began to make a fuss about the two corners of the hat. During the 300 years from the early Tang Dynasty to the late Tang Dynasty, it became longer and longer, and a skeleton was added to bend into various fixed shapes.
Or outward splayed, or horizontally stretched, or obliquely upward, or upward, or unilateral, or relaxed, or crossed, with long angle, spread angle, intersection angle, flower angle, local angle, soft angle, comfortable angle and other shapes.
In the murals of the late Tang and Five Dynasties, the hoe is almost 360 degrees, including the straight angle, which is longer than the shoulder, similar to the Northern Song Dynasty. Almost all the five generations of male patrons of Dunhuang murals wear exhibition horns. At this point, we understand that the pair of long wings on the official hat of the Song Dynasty are actually horns, and the Song Dynasty only continued this development trend in the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties and further exaggerated it. People are beautiful because of their length. It is a popular hat decoration, and it is an exaggerated decoration that exposes the decoration.
Besides, this is not the official hat of the court. In various documents of the Song Dynasty, it is also recorded that the horn-spreading hoe is actually a kind of hat that can be used up and down.
"History of Song Dynasty, Yu Fu Zhi" said that "Five Dynasties gradually leveled off. In the system of the national dynasty, the monarch and the minister take a right angle ... flat two angles, with iron as it. "
At that time, from the Emperor and Crown Prince to officials and ministers, and even musicians, musical instrument guards and actors, they could be used on many occasions.
From the murals, we can see that many doormen, geisha musicians and even hard-working servants in the Tang Dynasty, the Five Dynasties, the Liao Dynasty, the Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty used the horn-spreading hoe. Naturally, it can't be specially designed by Zhao Kuangyin to stop officials.
Shen Kuo also discussed this in Meng Qian Bi Tan, but he thought that the hard-horn hoe with skeleton was used by the kings in the Tang Dynasty, and the emperor himself liked to wear this hat first. In the late Tang Dynasty, it was abused by local buffer regions, and in the Song Dynasty, the right angle became the common style of princes and nobles:
"Tang people, only hard-nosed people have to use it. In the late Tang Dynasty, Fang Zhen was good at life and began to use hard corners. There are five grades in this dynasty: right angle, local angle, intersection angle, facing the sky and downwind. Only the right angle is noble and humble. "
In the study of popular history, we often see this situation, a structure with practical functions is exaggerated and decorated because of exposure. Once the trend of exaggeration begins, it will get out of hand, develop to extremes, and even break away from the original structure and function, becoming something that future generations cannot understand.
In the Song Dynasty, the ordinary "hoe" evolved into a pair of long wings, which were hard and beautiful, that is, exaggerated to the extreme.
It is actually very common in the history of clothing development to develop from actual structural function to prominent decoration. There are many similar examples, such as the "flag head" with high feet on women's heads in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, the necklaces of some women in Myanmar as giraffes, and the toe cap with a length of more than two feet in the Middle Ages in Europe, all of which have no practical function or are divorced from the original actual function, and all belong to the situation that the decoration is gradually exaggerated and beautiful.
Future generations seem incredible. In order to illustrate this situation, people often attach a special story of a celebrity to spread, and even different versions of the characters are often different.
The long ears on both sides of the crown cap in the Song Dynasty were actually Shantou corners that originally played a knotting role. In the long-term evolution of hundreds of years, they gradually became stiff and dignified, and developed into an exaggerated decoration. When the Long Boxer was popular in the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, it was inherited and developed into the first uniform in the Song Dynasty.
This kind of first dress was widely accepted and used by all walks of life, ethnic groups and times in the Five Dynasties, Liao, Song and Jin Dynasties. When it grew to the extreme, it also played a solemn and correct role objectively.
When the development is too exaggerated and affects the use of real life, it will gradually disappear.
In the Yuan Dynasty, the horn-spreading hoe was no longer used in daily life, but became a kind of hat for official uniforms. Because it was too inconvenient, it was used less and less in the Ming Dynasty and gradually disappeared.