Question: When is a bed not just a bed?
Answer: When it’s a Kang bed!
Question: What is a Kang bed?
Answer: Oh, that’ll be answered within!
Spoiler’s Alert: It’s the only bed that could warm your feet and cook your dumplings at the same time.
The Kang Bed
Northern China
Turns out, this humble bed has been doing double duty for centuries — and not just in homes. Okay. And a big OKAY. Just generally speaking, the Kang – or “a” Kang is really a heated bed-stove. Call it a heating device and call it a sleeping platform. It is made of mud, bricks, or stones. So, now, next question: What does it do? Other than a mechanism to cook food, it transmits heat from the fire beneath it to also provide warmth to make a comfortable sleeping environment. It is a northern Chinese practice that you would not be surprised at all to find in a home, especially in some wealthy homes and Imperial palaces. The Kang is present to make those frigid winter months in the northern areas of China a bit more comfortable. Later you will learn what other benefits a Kang provides.
Physically, a Kang bed is a heated platform about 2 meters or more long. It has many uses, mainly seen for sleeping in the northern part of China due to the frigid winter climate. Other uses were adapted for general living — eating, entertaining, and working. The traditional Kang bed was made of bricks or other forms of fired clay, and more recently concrete. In addition, there is more than one form of Kang bed — there’s the standalone, those that are connected to a fire wall, and the ones that are attached to a cooking stove in diverse ways.
Know also that the term “kang” means “dry,” that it was used for heating; it also was moisture resistant. I won’t get into much detail here — i.e., the type of mud that holds the stone or bricks together, or the different ways the smoke is removed from inside the home. Archaeologically, the Kang has been traced back at least 7,200 years in northeastern China. They have been found in caves, where one could enter only by using ladders. Additional evidence depicts the Kang bed in homes and palaces as early as the 1st to the 4th centuries AD. The Chinese give significant importance to the presence of the Kang in their homes out of necessity as well as culturally. Also, some of these Kang beds provided a cool surface during the warmer months when needed. Even the placement of the Kang in the room carries importance, for they are named differently depending on where they appear in the room and for what reason.
Let’s move on to my real purpose for this blog: U.S. Soldiers in Northern China and the Kang Bed during WWII
During World War II, American soldiers stationed in China — particularly in the China-Burma-India Theater — encountered a wide range of living conditions. One of my cousins from Neptune, New Jersey, was among them. In a letter to his fellow members of The Chain Letter Gang, belonging to the Wolverines from Neptune, N.J., he described sleeping in a six-man tent in northern China. He didn’t have the chance to experience the warmth of a traditional Chinese kang bed-stove, which would have been a welcome comfort during the bitter winter months he spoke about. However, a cartoon published in The China Lantern on November 20, 1945, humorously depicted U.S. soldiers enjoying the comfort of Kang beds while stationed near Chinese homes. It’s likely that local families offered these beds; and as the cartoon demonstrated, the offering of the beds reflected the spirit of hospitality and cooperation between Chinese civilians and American troops during the war. Though formal records are scarce, it’s reasonable to believe that soldiers adapted to their surroundings and made use of available resources to improve their comfort and well-being.
Today’s Wikipedia states:
Its interior cavity, leading to an often-convoluted flue system, channels the hot exhaust from a firewood/coal fireplace, usually the cooking fire from an adjacent room that serves as a kitchen, sometimes from a stove set below floor level. This allows a longer contact time between the exhaust (which still contains much heat from the combustion source) and (indirectly) the inside of the room, hence more heat transfer/recycling back into the room, effectively making it a ducted heating system similar to the Roman hypocaust. A separate stove may be used to control the amount of smoke circulating through the kang, maintaining comfort in warmer weather. Typically, a kang occupies one-third to one half of the floor space, and is used for sleeping at night and for other activities during the day.[1] A kang which covers the entire floor is called a diking (Chinese: 地炕; pinyin: dì kàng; lit. ‘ground kang’).[1]
Yes, we know that it is so sad that our soldiers and fighting people from all over the world faced many challenges finding sleeping accommodations. They found themselves in tents, barracks, bunkers, makeshift shelters, ditches, sandpits, and the like. Our soldiers, though, were trained well. They were adaptable, resilient. They were tired. The men of our country found ways to rest. If they didn’t collapse where they were, perhaps they were fortunate and found a place that was comfortable – someplace cool in a hot desert atmosphere, someplace warm where the weather was freezing cold. And if our soldier found him- or herself in northern China, he or she just might have been happy to be invited to wake up to the warmth of a fire burning under them after they fell asleep atop an ancient Kang bed.
Specific documentation on the use of the Kang bed in northern China by U. S. soldiers is scarce. We have to rely on small articles or even cartoons as the one posted here to learn that our own people found themselves warmed by these traditional heated platforms that are still part of the living arrangements in northern China today as they were during WWII.
See: The China Lantern (U.S. Armed Forces, Pacific Theater), November 20, 1945. Published by American front-line units stationed in China during World War II. Archived in Box 1, Folder 1 of the World War II Division Newspapers Collection at the Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
This Chinese heated platform goes back many centuries in China. Made of mud bricks, clay, or stone, and built with a hollow interior cavity, it channels the smoke and heat from the stove (firewood or coal) beneath it. The platform became warm as well as the entire sleeping area. Sometimes, the Kang took up to a half or a third of the room’s floor space.
See: The China Lantern
TLUD aka Chinese Burner as Kang Bed-stoves as Daoist Neidan alchemy – Daoist Discussion – The Dao Bums
Here’s a portion of an article I found. I think you’ll like it. The title is, What is Kang Bed-Stove? and yelang tells us:
The Kang bed also acts as the “bed” for healing within the family. When children or adults in the countryside have headaches or colds, they drink a bowl of ginger soup with brown sugar or a bowl of dumpling soup, cover themselves with a blanket on the warm Kang bed, and take a nap. Without injections or medicine, they sweat profusely and recover. The Kang bed also provides certain therapeutic or alleviating effects for rheumatic diseases and pain in the lower back and legs.
In the past, rural living conditions were limited, and there were many children in the family. At bedtime, the Kang bed became a battleground for children to claim their territory. Families with many children let the younger ones sleep at the adults’ feet. When someone needed to use the restroom at night, they had to step over several human walls. In such situations, either someone’s leg was pressed or someone’s arm was bumped. Squabbles and spats among siblings were frequent, often requiring parental intervention to settle them down. With the passage of time and the improvement of rural living standards, housing conditions have improved, and young people are no longer fond of the Kang bed. Urban high-rise buildings have phased out the Kang bed. The history of the Kang bed, once flourishing, has gradually faded from people’s lives. Only those born in the 1950s and 1960s still cherish and fondly remember the Kang bed in rural areas.
In many northern homes, the living quarters are dominated by this kang, a raised platform with flues underneath for heating. Inhabitants slept on the kang and in the winter much of the daily activity took place there.
Source: Exhibition of Graphic Art in Printed Books of the Ming Dynasty. (Taibei: National Central Library, 1989), page 219.
“Attending a sick mother-in-law”, woodblock print from Zhongjiao wulunchuan xiangniang ji (2 chuan).
The Kang can also be used to dry clothes and shoes, allowing children to wear dry and warm clothes to go to school the next day. In addition, baking potatoes and roasting eggs in the stove pit of the Kang is also a great pleasure for children. The fragrant baked potatoes and roasted eggs are unforgettable delicacies佳肴(jiā yáo) for many people from the Northeast during childhood.
See: Northeast Kang: A Warm Home against the Cold – ChineseLearning.Com
In wealthier households, sometimes the Kang beds were elaborately decorated with polished stone, clay, or mosaic designs. This is probably where there was more military or international exposure during WWII and U.S. soldiers in China were permitted to use these beds in the colder northern regions. In the April 20, 1945, issue of The China Lantern, that very Kang Bed is documented.
In conclusion, some U.S. soldiers in Asia during WWII experienced what the Chinese have valued in their traditions for centuries. For them, the Kang bed-stove represents a unique blend of clever design, practical use, and cultural importance. It highlights the creativity of ancient societies in adjusting to their environments. Although its popularity may have decreased in some areas due to modern heating options like radiators and air conditioners, the Kang bed still exists and is cherished. It holds memories of families and the feelings of those living in northern China today. The legacy of the Kang bed-stove reminds us of the lasting nature of human innovation and the need to respect our cultural heritage.