[300 Questions about Chinese Culture]
Author: Rong Naijia
How did the ancients dye their hair? (Public domain)
How did the ancients dye their hair? What to use for dyeing hair? Is there too much hair dye? We found that the ancients’ hair dyeing recipes are not only dazzling, but also diverse. The materials are all taken from natural sources, and most of these hair dyeing recipes are made by well-known Chinese medicine experts in history.
Han Yu, a great writer in the Tang Dynasty, once lamented that he was not yet forty years old. The ancients were also very concerned about the gray hair. After all, this is one of the old appearances. The appearance of gray hair, in the normal state, is a message that the life clock changes, announcing that a person’s life process has turned from an upward to a downward signal. So did the ancients dye their hair? Mid-Tang Dynasty poet Liu Yuxi’s verse in “Mi Jiarong, the Singer”, “Recently, the ancestors are lighter, so dyed mustaches and beards are born later.” In his sigh, he said that men in the Tang Dynasty were good at dyeing beards and hair and advocating youthful fashion.
Sure enough, the ancients not only dyed their hair, but also paid much attention to dyeing their hair long ago, regardless of whether they were male or female. So how did the ancients dye their hair? What to use for dyeing hair? Are there as many types of hair dyes as modern ones? From ancient books, we can find some hair dyeing recipes left by the ancients, which are not only diverse, but also diverse. The materials used are all derived from natural plants, minerals, and some are derived from animals, and most of these hair dyeing recipes are made by famous medical scientists in history.
Ge Hong of the Jin Dynasty
Ge Hong’s book “Elbow Reserve Emergency Recipe” records several ancient recipes for dyeing hair, which are widely used by the people.
＊Stained ox gall and Sophora japonica:
“Ancient Fang has eyesight and black hair. Sophora japonicus is stained in the ox gall and dried in the shade for a hundred days. Swallow one after eating. It will be light for ten days, white and black for thirty days, and will be powerful within a hundred days.”
This is a pill to be swallowed: Sophora japonicus is soaked in ox gall and then dried in the shade for 100 days before serving. Ge Hong said that every time he swallowed one after a meal, his white hair would turn black in 30 days.
* Vinegar boiled beans:
“Beans boiled in vinegar milk, lacquer, as black as lacquer.”
This is a liquid hair dye. The method is to cook black beans with the liquid yeast used for brewing vinegar, that is, vinegar slurry, to cook a black lacquer-like thick juice. Dyeing the hair while it is hot can be used to dye the black lacquer-like hair color. Of course, the beard Can also be dyed. Doctors say “it will work.”
“Secrets of Foreign Taiwan”Including the enhanced version: Take four liters of fine-grained black beans, use four buckets (40 liters) of vinegar slurry (liquid yeast used for brewing vinegar), and boil them into four liters of thick juice. Remove the black beans for use. Then wash the hair with a good lye, wait for it to dry, heat the hair with the boiled black bean juice, wrap the hair with a silk cloth to sleep, and then remove the cloth after one night to let the hair dry. Then strengthen the hair care, wipe the hair with bear fat, wrap the hair with a silk cloth and care for the moisturizing effect, you can achieve the effect of black as lacquer. The doctor said that one application will not change for three years.
＊Forged Shihu Powder Paste:
“Take the forged stone, Hu powder, and classify it. The pulp is warm and it is applied to the evening. Wrap it in oil coat, wash it off tomorrow, it will be black, great.”
“Forging” was originally also called “chi”, which is a hardened stone used to temper metal axe tools. Hufen is white rice flour and fat-coated flour. Take equal amounts of forged stone and beard powder and mix them with warm water to make a hair dye. Before dyeing your hair, wash your hair clean, apply the dye paste to your hair at night before going to bed, wrap it in an impermeable oil coat, and sleep overnight, and wash off the dye paste tomorrow. The dyed hair will be dark and swarthy. very good. This agent can also dye hairs.
＊“Pulling white hair” to black hair:
This recipe is suitable when the amount of gray hair is very small. After plucking the white hair, apply the above-mentioned white honey in the pores of the hair root sacs to give birth to black hairs. Many women in modern times feel that their eyebrows are too thin and go to tattoo their eyebrows. The “Elbow Reserve Emergency Recipe” records that when they want to grow eyebrows, they use needles and apply honey to give birth to black eyebrows.
Ancient books also record good days and auspicious days for longing the year to pull out the gray hair, as follows:
(Yellow Calendar) 4th of the first month, 8th of February, 12th, 13th of March, 16th of April, 20th of May, 24th of June, 28th of July, 10th of August Nineth, September 15th, October 10th, November 10th, December 10th.
Sun Simiao in Tang Dynasty
The record of “A Thousand Golden Wing Recipes” written by Sun Simiao, the king of medicine in the Tang Dynasty, said that “blue grass” can be dyed: “The blue taste is bitter and cold and non-toxic, and the main detoxification is…long service, the head is not white, the body is light,… The stems and leaves can be dyed blue.” The blue fruits and stems and leaves have dyeing functions, and the usage is different. The fruit of Jiufulan is not white and young; if the juice of blue stems and leaves is used, it can be stained blue and black. “Blue dye” raw material. (“Tongzhi” says there are three kinds of “blue”: Polygonum blue dyes green, big blue is like mustard dyed green, and Chinese locust blue dyes like locust.)
So does Huafa have a solution? “Qianjinyifang” records “Melon seeds powder cures early graying of hair”.
Wang Tao of Tang Dynasty
In the Tang Dynasty, people who wanted to turn white hair back to black, regardless of gender, were written by Wang Tao, a medical scientist in the Xuanzong period of the Tang Dynasty. It records many hair dyeing formulas from ancient times, which is also a reflection of people’s hair dyeing needs. for example:
Wu Ma Wan:Steam the Wu Ma Jiu for nine exposures, then pound the powder, and then take the jujube paste and make a pill for a long time.
Hibiscus leaf detergent:Mash the hibiscus leaves to make juice, and wash your hair with hot soup and juice.
Black water:Black mulberry water is often used to wash hair that is black, or it can be directly applied to the hair with thick juice.
Raw sesame oil and ebony hair oil:Use raw sesame oil to soak ebony plum and use it to coat your hair.
Fu Ju Zengnian to black hair:Picking chrysanthemums on the first day of December in the yellow calendar, the rhizome of this chrysanthemum is called “Longevity”. Take the “Changsheng” and dry it in the shade for 100 days, divide it into equal parts, mash it with a thousand pestles, then sieve it, add honey and make a pill the size of a Chinese sycamore seed, and serve. Three doses a day, seven pills at a time, the gray hair turns black in one year, and the tooth loss reappears in the second year.
Ming Dynasty
In the Hongzhi and Zhengde reigns of the Ming Dynasty, Song Xu’s book “Zhuyushan Fangzabu” recorded the dyes and skin care products that were popular at that time for black hair and hairdressing. Two examples are as follows:
Black hair cream:
Ingredients: Platycladus orientalis leaves, Bailing, Baiyao decoction, bud tea, Polygonum multiflorum, Eclipta prostrata, sour pomegranate peel, green walnut peel, Cyperus rotundus (one or two each), green salt (two and a half dollars).
Method: Put the ingredients in a porcelain ware and fry them in water, boil them to a boil, put them cold in ginger juice (seven taels), and use them to wipe the hair in the morning. The retort can be fried and reused.
Shampoo soap:
Dry lotus grass (ie Channa sylvestris) in the sun, dry it with soap and shave it into fines, wash and wash the beard daily, it can make gray hair black, hair loss can regenerate, and thin hair can grow new hair. Hair becomes thicker.
Laoya Wulifang:
Eclipta prostrata (the roots, stems and leaves are taken for washing in July and August). One slice is marinated in two or two green salt for three nights, and then placed in a porcelain pot and simmered. Grind into fine powder and store the porcelain for later use. You can swallow it after wiping your teeth in the morning. This side can be both grievous and unfathomable.
The above hair dyeing methods and prescriptions are mostly from the hands of ancient Chinese medicine experts. Books have been available since the Jin and Tang Dynasties. What is more precious is that the hair dyeing effects of these prescriptions are still “not faded” after time washing, because Chinese medicine It fundamentally enhances the vitality of the human body and supplements the external beauty. If it can be carried forward again, it must be “super popular”. The relationship between turning black hair and nourishing the kidneys and keeping in good health has been explained in ancient Chinese medicine. Hair care is part of the comprehensive health care of Chinese medicine, which is completely different from modern hair dyeing with chemical dyes. @*#
Editor in charge: Li Mei
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