This statement is unfair. In fact, before the Western Han Dynasty, people basically wore "open-backed pants" regardless of class, age and gender. "Pants" means "crotch", which is interpreted as "crotch and shin clothes" in Shuowen. "Shin" refers to the calf, and "Shin-coat" is a sheath for keeping the calf warm, with one left and one right, and there is no connection between the front and rear crotch, which is a broad sense of "open-crotch pants". Nobles and rich children use "Wan" (fine silk, very fine silk) as "Ku" clothes, which is the origin of "Wan Wan".
During the reign of Emperor Zhao of the Han Dynasty, Huo Guang, the hero of Qilin Pavilion, held the goal of letting his niece, Queen Shangguan, "pamper and have children" and let the ladies-in-waiting "be poor and bring more things." . It means that ladies-in-waiting are forbidden to wear "open-backed pants" again, and they are all changed to "poor".
This matter is recorded in the Biography of Empress Zhao Shangguan in Han Xiao, which wrote:
I just want the queen to like having children, and the emperor is restless when he is around. Both the left and right and the doctor are interested, so words should be banned. Although the imperial envoys were poor and brought a lot, there were no entrants to the harem.
The second half of the text is translated as: "Even if the court orders, it is not allowed to pass. There are many nurses around, and no one can enter the palace behind. "
There is a controversy in this translation, that is, "one belt and more". This is obviously not to send many paramedics. It means to wear more belts on the "poor". It seems that Huo Guang's adult is very experienced.
There is an explanation for "poverty", which refers to tight underwear. But before that period, men and women basically didn't wear underwear, so this explanation is not very accurate. The whole history of China and the history of empresses are explained in this way, that is, "let all the ladies-in-waiting sew their crotch tight". It can be seen that "poverty" is an improvement on the original "open-crotch pants" and is a kind of open-crotch pants. I think that the reason why "poor people" have "multiple belts" may be because there was no "elastic belt" at that time. In order to prevent the emperor from being "light and fat" and "easy to pull", Lord Huo asked the ladies-in-waiting to wrap more belts (guess).
Before the Western Han Dynasty, clothing was "under clothes" for both men and women. "skirt" means "clothes that cover the lower part of the body" In order to keep out the cold, some upper-class people began to wear a pair of open-backed pants under their skirts, while ordinary people don't wear pants. Therefore, we can see in the film and television dramas that the ancients always took the posture of "kneeling" in public (that is, the actors still wore underwear in this performance), "sitting on the basket" (sitting with legs straight) and sitting cross-legged are all inappropriate behaviors.
Regarding the origin of Chinese crotch pants, Chronology of Six Kingdoms in Historical Records states: "King Wuling of Zhao wore it for the first time in the 19th year." It is said that King Wuling of Zhao changed to short-sleeved pants in the army to meet the needs of riding, imitating the Hu people, and the style of pants was close to modern times. However, this kind of crotch pants was mainly worn by soldiers as military uniforms, and it was only worn by the army or lower-level workers until the Qin and Han Dynasties. The upper class aristocrats were confined to traditional rituals and disdained to wear them.
The "poverty" mentioned above is pants with crotch and front and back lacing, which was improved by learning from Khufu. Yan Shigu, a Confucian scholar in the early Tang Dynasty, persuaded him that "poor pants have front and rear crotch, so there is no traffic". Because the traditional pants are just gaskin's clothes, and Khufu's pants cover the whole leg and connect the front and rear crotch, they are called' poor pants'. "
Later scholars thought that women only wore crotch pants from the time when Emperor Hanzhao was the Shangguan Queen, and it gradually became popular from bottom to top. But it was not until the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Tang Dynasty that people really put on pants in the modern sense, and their sitting posture changed from kneeling to sitting on plates and baskets.
Interestingly, Shangguan became a queen at the age of 6, and Zhao Di 15 died. Despite the policy of "bringing more if you are poor", she still failed to give birth to a son and a half. Later, Emperor Xuan Di ascended the throne, two generations younger than Zhao Di. In fact, he was called the Empress Dowager at the age of 15. So the Shangguan empress should be the youngest empress dowager in ancient China.