With the advent of the mobile Internet era, it has brought great convenience to our work and life, especially takeaway and carpool travel, for many people living in big cities, it is simply convenient to not want, saving us a lot of time, greatly increasing work efficiency and life happiness.
If you want to ask when takeaway and carpooling were born, it is estimated that most friends will answer: "This must be a product of modernization!" It shouldn't be long so far! If you think so, you can only say that it is "lonely and unheard", because these things that have brought great changes to modern life, the ancients have not fallen behind, all of them have experienced one by one, is this true or false?
Image: Screenshot of delivery materials
First, from the people to the emperor, everyone loves to "order takeaway"
1, "courier brother" strides like a fly
Speaking of takeaway, its "predecessor" is the rise of express delivery, in fact, "express delivery" is definitely a very old profession in the history of our country, the earliest can even be traced back to the Zhou Dynasty, but the things passed at that time were relatively limited, mostly government decrees or military intelligence.
In addition, the speed of the ancient "express delivery" is not very fast, which is mainly due to the lack of transportation and the restrictions on the traffic road, most of the time can only be completed by manual walking, the speed of the "courier brother" is maintained at two hours about 4 to 5 kilometers.
During the Sui Dynasty, there was a "courier brother" named Mai Tiejian who was very famous, and he was nicknamed "Scud", he was physically amazing, he could travel five hundred miles a day, even faster than riding a horse, according to historical records, once he had to escort the official documents to Xuzhou, set off from the capital that night, and returned early the next morning to complete the task. From a modern perspective, xi'an to Xuzhou is about 12 hours by train, and people have completed the round trip in 24 hours.
With the continuous progress of ancient science and technology and the increase in market demand, the Tang Dynasty appeared "fresh express", want to eat the origin of fresh fruits and vegetables will no longer be a dream, the most representative "fresh express" in history, is Tang Xuanzong from Shuzhong for Yang Guifei "consignment" of fresh lychees.
It is conceivable that the "courier brothers" must be wading through mountains and waters, walking like flying, and do not know how many horses have died along the way to complete the "loving home delivery". As for the private express delivery business, this has to wait until the emergence of dart boards in the Ming and Qing dynasties, which is relatively late.
Image: Stills of transporting fresh lychees
2. The Emperor's "Exclusive Takeaway"
Nowadays, everyone has a hard and busy day, do not want to personally cook when they will order a takeaway to solve hunger, in fact, the earliest "takeaway industry" has appeared in the Northern Song Dynasty, if nothing else, take the famous "Qingming River Map" as an example, in which you can see a person holding two bowls, his profession is the "takeaway brother" at that time.
During the Song Dynasty, some merchants began to provide related services, and the historical saying is: "Implement the plain summons on a time-by-hour basis, and do it aggressively."
In the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, the catering industry flourished, and every day there were all kinds of vendors walking the streets and alleys, even until late at night, as long as you were hungry, you could stop them from ordering food directly, and then enjoy a variety of cuisines without leaving home. "The city economy house often only buys food and drink in the city store, and does not buy vegetables at home", I think this is probably the meaning.
Photo: Screenshot of the little brother who delivered the takeaway in the Qingming River Map
Merchants and white-collar workers living in the cities of the Song Dynasty, like today's office workers, generally do not cook at home, but more directly go to the restaurant or "order takeaway". This habit does not only exist in the people, even the emperor who is accustomed to eating the taste of mountains and seas in the palace likes to let his eunuchs or ministers order takeaways.
For example, Song Xiaozong specially found a group of people to collect various delicacies for himself to the people, and sometimes when he was happy, he would call the minister to enjoy it together, and it is said that once he was very happy, he directly rewarded the takeaway brother with a large tip, which was quite generous.
Image: Screenshot of the information on calling the minister to dinner together
Second, the ancients went out and preferred "carpooling"
1. The emergence of the "shared donkey"
During the Western Han Dynasty, there were no airplanes, high-speed railways, for the vast majority of ordinary people, donkeys are equivalent to today's "BMW", first of all, it is not something that any one person can afford; secondly, even if it is obtained by chance, whether it can be fed, this is also unknown.
Due to the limited efficiency of walking, for a long time, donkeys were the preferred means of transportation for ancient people to go out, and under this environment and great demand, "shared donkeys" came into being.
What many people did not expect was that the first to put the "shared donkey" into practice was not a cunning businessman, nor a certain working people with unique wisdom, but the founding emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty, The Guangwu Emperor Liu Xiu.
According to reports, at that time, Liu Xiu was just a tireless student, and his family was also a middle class, but he could not stand the fact that this brother always spent money and always spent a lot of money, making the family's economy often tight. In order to solve this problem, he found his classmates to borrow money to buy a few donkeys, and rented them to those in need to earn rent.
Not to mention, such a "unreliable" thing in the eyes of most people at that time made Liu Xiu's wallet quickly bulge, and now it seems that Liu Xiu is really a person who does big things, and this mind and this idea are different from ordinary people.
Image: Stills of a rented donkey
2, all kinds of needs can be met
In addition to "sharing donkeys", later there were also "shared carriages", "shared palanquins", etc., one day the weather is particularly good, three or five friends to go on an outing, in the morning everyone will unite to go "carpooling", so that the carriage will accompany the whole day or so, the first light to return, the key is that everyone does not have to spend too much money, it can be said that it is very affordable.
In addition, there is a more fashionable and hot "shared car" called a car, as the name suggests, that is, the canopy is made of a good texture felt, which belongs to a more luxurious vehicle, which has the meaning of a modern "special car". In the Tang and Song dynasties, this kind of car was used by ordinary people as a "wedding car" to welcome the bride, which is also an important part of China's "kissing" custom.
Photo: Stills of carpooling to an outing
Of course, if you are a person who often gets motion sickness, you can choose to use a "shared car", summer and winter have special designs to ensure the overall comfort of the ride, speaking of which, you have to admire the great wisdom of the ancient working people.
Article author: Dahui
The entire graphic was produced by the team of the Big Cafe Say History Studio!