Eat their fill,
Wear warm clothes,
Rest one day every six days.
Such a life was something these craftsmen and laborers had never even dared to imagine. When Jiang Hao suddenly announced it, they felt overwhelmingly blessed.
"Fourth!"
At that moment, Jiang Hao spoke again. Everyone realized he was not finished and immediately listened even more intently. "Fourth, I will teach you how to build heated kang beds. Once you have them, you will know what a warm winter night truly feels like."
Heated kang beds?
What were heated kang beds?
No one understood what he meant. In fact, kang beds already had a rudimentary form in the Han dynasty, mainly in the north. When Su Wu was sent as an envoy during the Western Han, he was captured and made to herd sheep for nineteen years in the freezing Xiongnu lands. The Book of Han recorded that he "dug a pit in the ground and placed warm fire within." Heated kang beds truly spread during the Tang dynasty. They remained prevalent throughout northern China in ancient times, found in nearly every household: "They built earthen beds in a ring, lit fires beneath them, and ate, slept, and lived atop them. These were called kang beds, used for warmth."
Even in modern times, heated kang beds were everywhere in northern China, especially in the Northeast.
Jiang Hao's family lived in the north. Before they built their villa, the eastern room had an earthen kang bed while the western room had an ordinary bed. After the villa was built, heh, they still made two rooms downstairs with earthen kang beds.
Have you ever seen someone living in an apartment building who still insisted on building a kang bed?
These people had no idea what the heated kang beds Jiang Hao spoke