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How bamboo and wooden articles helped moms look after kids
By Wang Lihui and Pan Zheng |
August 29, 2011, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IN the 1960s it was common for a family in Jiading District to have four or five children. For some families the number was even over 10. Since most families could not afford to hire a nanny, mothers had to take care of all their children on top of doing all the housework. However, within the poor economic conditions, Jiading mothers still had ways to show their deep love to their kids with the aid of the articles made of bamboo and wood. These unique apparatus, such as the baby cradle and standing barrel designed by Jiading people, helped mothers juggle between kids and housework.
In past years, bamboo grew around almost every Jiading household. Therefore, local craftsmen often made some objects like chairs, beds and toys with bamboo. The baby cradle is actually a bamboo bed for babies to sit in or lie down. It looks like a baby crib woven of bamboo with three levels. There is an opening at one end of the top. Before the baby lies down in the basket, an extra board is needed to cover the opening, so as to prevent the baby from falling down. The second level is just under the opening for baby to sit in, and the bottom level is for baby to rest its feet. On the top four corners of baby basket there are four bamboo poles for installing a mosquito net.
The standing barrel is made of wood, normally fir, for babies to learn how to stand up. Compared with the bamboo basket, the standing barrel was more common in ordinary families so that almost every Jiading resident of that time learned how to stand in it during his or her childhood.
Huang Zhenwei, a folk collector of Jiading, says it looks like a mini blast furnace with the upper diameter of 30 centimeters, the lower 60 centimeters and the height around 76 centimeters. It is composed of 26 trapezoidal wooden boards with two iron straps circled outside. At the lower part inside it there is a piece of clapboard. People usually put "brass foot warmer" beneath it. Babies could stand on the clapboard with arms resting on the barrel edge, and the foot warmer could keep their little feet warm so that parents didn't need to worry about the baby catching a cold in winter.
The brass foot warmers were also a must for elderly Jiading people to warm themselves in winter. It was almost the size of today's rice cooker, and punched with many holes on its top, allowing the heat to escape. When winter came, Jiading people would burn cotton stems in their kitchen stove to get rid of the smoke, then put the charcoal of cotton stems in the brass foot warmer.
In past years, bamboo grew around almost every Jiading household. Therefore, local craftsmen often made some objects like chairs, beds and toys with bamboo. The baby cradle is actually a bamboo bed for babies to sit in or lie down. It looks like a baby crib woven of bamboo with three levels. There is an opening at one end of the top. Before the baby lies down in the basket, an extra board is needed to cover the opening, so as to prevent the baby from falling down. The second level is just under the opening for baby to sit in, and the bottom level is for baby to rest its feet. On the top four corners of baby basket there are four bamboo poles for installing a mosquito net.
The standing barrel is made of wood, normally fir, for babies to learn how to stand up. Compared with the bamboo basket, the standing barrel was more common in ordinary families so that almost every Jiading resident of that time learned how to stand in it during his or her childhood.
Huang Zhenwei, a folk collector of Jiading, says it looks like a mini blast furnace with the upper diameter of 30 centimeters, the lower 60 centimeters and the height around 76 centimeters. It is composed of 26 trapezoidal wooden boards with two iron straps circled outside. At the lower part inside it there is a piece of clapboard. People usually put "brass foot warmer" beneath it. Babies could stand on the clapboard with arms resting on the barrel edge, and the foot warmer could keep their little feet warm so that parents didn't need to worry about the baby catching a cold in winter.
The brass foot warmers were also a must for elderly Jiading people to warm themselves in winter. It was almost the size of today's rice cooker, and punched with many holes on its top, allowing the heat to escape. When winter came, Jiading people would burn cotton stems in their kitchen stove to get rid of the smoke, then put the charcoal of cotton stems in the brass foot warmer.
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