1. Apply lead powder
Lead powder is a heavy metal. Although it will whiten when applied to the face, long-term use will make the skin blue and yellow, and young girls will eventually become Yellow-faced woman.
The first step in ancient people’s makeup was to apply lead powder, which was similar to today’s foundation. It was to highlight one’s fair skin and beauty. After all, “one white skin covers all ugliness.”
In ancient times, women first used rice flour ground from rice grains to apply facial masks. In ancient times, the level of productivity was not high, and when most people still ate rice to satisfy their hunger, I have to admire the greatness of the first woman who used rice flour to spread her face.
2. Apply rouge
It is said that the plump Yang Guifei sweated red in summer, which shows how much rouge she applied.
Rouge, also known as Yanzhi, is a foreign word. Because rouge originally came from the foot of Yanzhi Mountain in the Western Regions, it was extracted from a flower called "red and blue". During the Han Dynasty, Zhang Qian went on an envoy to the Western Regions and brought rouge back to the Central Plains. Women applied it to their faces after applying powder.
As early as the Shang and Zhou dynasties, women already knew how to apply blush on their faces for beauty. However, it was not popular at the time and was only used by dancers and courtiers. The material was cinnabar. "In the palace of the First Emperor of Qin, all the makeup is red and the eyebrows are green." The Qin Palace broke the shackles of facial makeup colors and started a fashion trend of rich makeup colors and different styles.
3. Painted eyebrows
During the Warring States Period, there was no specific material for eyebrow painting, so women burned willow branches and painted them on their eyebrows.
The ancients called eyebrows the "rainbow of seven emotions" because they are the most expressive and make the face more three-dimensional. Therefore, eyebrow makeup has a much higher status than eye makeup in ancient China. Poems often use the word "distant mountains". "Dai Qing", "Cuiluo Yushu" and other gorgeous words are used to describe the woman's eyebrows.
During the Warring States Period, there was no specific material for eyebrow painting, so women burned willow branches and applied them to their eyebrows. Qu Yuan recorded in "Chu Ci·Dazhao" that "pink is white and black is black, only Shi Fangze". "Dai" is a kind of blue-black pigment, specially used for women to draw eyebrows. There were no eyebrow pencils at that time, so girls usually used cyan willow branches to add diluted pigment to their eyebrows.
4. Dot forehead yellow
This is a decoration cut from silk, colored paper, gold foil, mica sheets and other materials and pasted on the eyebrows or forehead.
In the "Mrs. Dudu's Worship to the Buddha" in Cave 130 of the Mogao Grottoes, the two girls, "Nv Eleven Niang" and "Nv Thirteen Niang", have complicated makeup, which is quite youthful and playful and beauty-loving. Interesting. Especially the eleventh mother-in-law has flower patches on her cheeks, corners of her mouth, and corners of her eyebrows.
Forehead yellow, also known as appliqué, is a decoration of various styles cut from silk, colored paper, gold foil, mica sheets and other materials. It can be pasted on the eyebrows or forehead, or on the cheeks or cheeks. At the corners of the mouth, etc., the shapes are round, diamond-shaped, moon-shaped, peach-shaped, as well as flowers, birds, fish, butterflies, mandarin ducks, etc. The colors are mainly red, green and yellow.
Applique mother-of-pearl began with the "plum blossom makeup" of Princess Shouyang during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. By the Tang Dynasty, beauty-loving girls were no longer satisfied with a single petal, but instead used gold foil, silver foil, and even insect wings. , birds' feathers are cut into patterns and pasted on the forehead, which is the "mirror yellow decal" in "Mulan Ci".
5. Some lipstick
Lipsticks from tombs of the Western Han Dynasty were unearthed in Hunan. Even though they were more than 2,000 years old, they are still bright and eye-catching, and the lipstick production technology is very exquisite. In the Tang Dynasty, there were as many as twenty or thirty species of plants used solely for making lipstick.
Just as makeup experts can recognize Jing Tian’s lipstick in different episodes of "Glory of the Tang Dynasty" at a glance, people in the Tang Dynasty used beeswax to replace the animal fat ointment of their predecessors, and mixed it with cinnabar and lithospermum. , and finally debugged lipsticks in different colors such as red, pink, and reddish brown.
The eyebrow shapes in the Tang Dynasty were rich and colorful, and the types of lip makeup were also extremely diverse. In the 30 years of the late Tang Dynasty alone, there were 17 lip styles, including round, heart-shaped, and saddle-shaped. The most popular ones are cherry-shaped and flower-shaped.
The ancients advocated "a little cherry mouth". In order to achieve this effect, girls first used white primer to cover the lip color, and then used lipstick to draw a lip shape in the center of the lips.
Extended information
1. In ancient times, lipstick was stored in lipstick boxes. The method of making lip balm was originally made from beef marrow and tallow mixed with spices and cinnabar. In the Tang Dynasty, beeswax replaced animal marrow fat.
2. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the formula was changed to the formula of wormwood mixed with safflower juice or silver vermilion. The lipsticks of the past dynasties were all in the form of jelly, which is close to today's lipsticks, so they are also called "wax rouge" and "oil rouge".
3. This kind of red lipstick is stored in a small box for women to carry around and do it cheaply when they need to touch up their makeup. The specific way the ancients used this cosmetic to apply lipstick was to scoop up a little bit of lipstick with their fingertips and "dot", "note" and "even" it directly on the lips. Bai Juyi described this in detail in his poem: Finger evenly, pink sweat spreads in red.
Reference material: People's Daily Online - How did ancient people wear makeup?