Introduction of snow pool ice room

Between the west gate of Jingshan Park and the east gate of Beihai Park, there is an east-west Laolishan Gate Street. Turn north from the middle section of Lishanmen Street and you will find Xuechi Hutong. There were six royal ice rooms in the Qing Dynasty, and now there are two. Xuechi Hutong is also named after the igloo. Nearly 3,000 years ago, there was a poem in The Book of Songs: "On the second day, the ice rushed, on the third day, Lingyin collected, and on the fourth day, its fleas offered lambs". It is said that as early as the Zhou Dynasty, people collected ice cubes in the twelfth lunar month, stored them in the ice room in the first month, and took them out in February, and chilled mutton and vegetables were used for sacrifices. The ancients frequently held ceremonies to worship gods and ancestors, and the offerings must be clean and fresh, otherwise it would be disrespectful. After the sacrifice, you have to share the meat with your relatives, saying that you will bless. This is called "parting". So the sacrifice should be kept fresh with ice. In summer, dignitaries also use ice to prevent heatstroke and make cold drinks to keep food fresh.

■ The Qing Dynasty established the 18 Ice House in Beijing * * *, which was in charge of the Ministry of Industry and Water, and * * * stored 205,700 ice cubes.

According to the Qing History, the Qing Dynasty set up the 18 Ice House in the capital * * *, which was in charge of the Water Department of the Ministry of Industry, and * * * stored 205,700 pieces of ice, each of which was one foot and five inches square and weighed about 80 kilograms. These ice chambers are divided into brick pits and earth pits, and the quality of ice stored varies with different water sources.

Brick pits are made of stones and city bricks and belong to brick pits. There are five to the west of Longzongmen in the Forbidden City, which store 25,000 pieces of ice. There are three ice depots outside Deshengmen, storing 26,700 pieces of ice. There are six Xuechi Hutong, with 54,000 pieces of ice. The ice in the brick pit is used for sacrifices in altars and temples and court life.

Earth cellar, that is, digging earth pits, building earth walls and building a reed mat shed roof, is not as good as brick cellar in heat preservation and cleaning. There are two ice depots outside Deshengmen, which belong to cellars and store 40,000 pieces of ice. There are two outside Zhengyangmen, and 60,000 pieces of ice are stored. The ice in the cellar is for government offices. Officials will be given ice tickets according to their grades, and they will go to the ice room to get them.

■ Every winter solstice in the second half of each year, ice accumulates in the moat, Beihai and Yu He of the Forbidden City.

In the Qing Dynasty, there were 120 attendants in the Ministry of Industry and Water Affairs, who began to collect ice in the moat, Beihai and Yu He of the Forbidden City from the winter solstice to the second half of each year. However, due to the lack of manpower, short-term workers are needed. Leather clothes, leather pants, special "sandals" and long leather gloves are provided by the government. Before rivers and lakes are frozen, we should "flush the river", that is, remove weeds and sundries, open the upstream gate to flush, and then close the downstream gate to store water. Before mining, the Ministry of Industry will send officials to worship the river god. The water surface picked with ice can be picked again after freezing again. In a winter, you can harvest ice from "three crops" to "four crops" repeatedly. The collected ice cubes will be transported to the freezer by unskilled short-term workers and then packaged by skilled officials. It will be loaded from the innermost part of the ice room to the top of the cellar, and then closed for use in summer. The Qing dynasty also stipulated the time for ice supply, from the beginning of May to July 30th in the lunar calendar.

■ There were "official pits" and "official pits" in ice rooms in Qing Dynasty, and private ice rooms only appeared in the Republic of China.

In the Qing dynasty, there were also strict grade regulations on the use of ice. There are 18 ice rooms under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry and Water Affairs, collectively called "official pits", which are specially used for ice in the palace and government. In addition, there is a "building cellar", which is a franchise for some Wang Fu to operate their own ice storage for Wang Fu to use ice. For example, the Icehouse in the Icehouse Hutong (now Mibai North Lane) and the Mibai Xie Jie outside Di 'anmen belong to the "Fu Pit" of Gongwangfu. No one is allowed to operate the ice room without authorization. Because it is profitable to sell ice in summer, the price per 100 Jin of ice is 5 taels of silver, so in the late Qing Dynasty, some businessmen contracted the management of Wang Fu Ice House, but they had to pay Wang Fu a high contract fee. During the Republic of China, the official ban was lifted, and many private ice houses appeared in Beijing.

■ Empress Dowager Cixi's summer snacks need to be chilled.

In Mr. Jin Yi's book A Talk about Maids, the maid-in-waiting He described Empress Dowager Cixi's summer vacation in the Summer Palace as follows: "The palace is famous for its snacks, candied fruit in autumn and winter, and sweet bowls in midsummer. "Sweet Bowl" is a summer snack ... Slice the newly picked lotus root buds, mix them with the pulp inside the melon, remove the seeds and eat them with ice. ..... Break open the green walnut, peel off the astringent tender skin inside, pour grape juice on it, and eat it chilled. "This shows that the ice used in the Qing Palace in summer is one spot.

According to 1900, Ye Henala Yuechao, a nephew of Cixi who fled from Eight-Nation Alliance to An with Cixi, wrote in 1962 a reminiscence article "Xin Chou Documentary": "Xin Chou spent the summer in Shaanxi, and Cixi wanted to eat iced sour plum soup. The weather in Guanzhong is warm, there is no ice, and it is safe. Some locals have suggested that Taibai Mountain, more than 100 miles southwest of Chang 'an City, has holes in the mountains, which are deep and cold, and contain thousands of years of ice. Because local officials were ordered to send people to Taibai Mountain to transport ice for the royal chef every day. "

■ The igloo is a semi-underground building. From the outside, it looks like a huge and low old house.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Mr. Jin Shoushen wrote in "Life in Old Beijing": "The ice room, a snow pool, is the cleanest in the ice room ... The hidden ice is collected from the North Sea and transported out through the Lushan Gate." It's the igloo in Xuechi Hutong.

Today, there are still two ice rooms in Xuechi Hutong, one of which has been abandoned, with garbage and sundries piled inside and outside, and the other is the parking lot where employees in Beihai Park store bicycles. This brick cellar made of stones and city bricks is basically the same, although it has been ruined. The igloo is a semi-underground building. From the outside, it looks like a huge and low old house. The side wall of the ground is about 20 meters long, the wall height is only 2 meters, the gable width is about 10 meters, and the highest point of the mountain is about 4 meters. The roof is a double-slope, herringbone roof covered with yellow glazed tiles, which is the symbol of royal architecture. The gables at both ends have arches with a width of 1 m and a height of 2 m, and there are steps leading to the cellar bottom. Inside is the vault of a city brick, like a big city gate, without beams and columns. The rammed earth between the wall, vault and roof tile is very thick, which seems to have good sealing and heat insulation performance. Until after the Revolution of 1911, when Puyi was the "closed little emperor" in the Forbidden City, the ice bank in the snow pool continued to supply the palace with ice for several years.

Now every household uses refrigerators and air conditioners, and the system of storing ice cubes specially for the royal family has become a thing of the past. Only those two old ice houses, Xuechi Hutong, and the broken yellow glazed tile on the top of the cellar, once a symbol of the former royal family, still glow faintly in the sunset.