In ancient times, some people could eat "ice" food in summer. How did this happen?

The earliest cold drink originated in China. At that time, in order to cool off the heat, the emperor asked slaves to bring ice in winter, store it in the cellar and take it out in summer. Around the end of the Tang Dynasty, people mined a lot of saltpeter when producing gunpowder. It is found that saltpeter absorbs a lot of heat when it is dissolved in water, which can cool water into ice and people can make ice in summer.

Later, business people gradually appeared. They added sugar to the ice to attract customers. In the Song Dynasty, there were many kinds of cold food in the market, and merchants also added fruit or juice to them. Merchants in the Yuan Dynasty even added fruit pulp and milk to the ice, which is very similar to modern ice cream.

Icehouse is an ancient traditional custom. Also known as "ice storage". It's hot in summer and freezing in winter in northern China, so it's a custom to store ice cubes in the freezer in winter for the next summer. The origin of this custom is very early, recorded in the Book of Songs, and widely used in the court and government. In ancient times, officials were in charge of this matter and built "ice wells" to pit ice.

Song Gaocheng's "Wu Ji Yuan" says: "There is an iceman in Li Zhou who cuts ice by hand and makes it into ice. Note: Ling, ice room also. It started here. " There is an ice well platform in Yecheng Old Story. Wei Zhengyun: In the 19th year of Jian 'an, Wang Wei and Cao Cao built this platform to store ice, hence the name Ice Well.

"Song Hui" said: The Stegosaurus was built for three years, and it was set as an ice well service, which was also placed under the Imperial Capital Department. There were three kinds of ice storehouses in Qing Dynasty: official ice storehouses, official ice storehouses and commercial ice storehouses. With the arrival of summer, nothing is more affordable than eating iced watermelon and blowing air conditioning. Even many friends shouted that air conditioning gave him a second life.

Of course, there are all kinds of ice cream and chilled fruit in the refrigerator. Although the hot weather makes us upset, the cold things in the refrigerator are a comfort to ourselves, which is the comfort brought by technology. However, for ancient times, how could they spend the hot summer without a refrigerator?

The ancient people's summer heat naturally cannot be separated from ice. Then the problem is coming. Without a refrigerator, where did the ancient ice come from? In our impression, it seems difficult to have ice in summer without a refrigerator. But the ancients were still very clever. Their summer ice mainly comes from two sources: one is stored in winter; Second, it comes from artificial manufacturing.