The use of sofa footrests

Foot pedal, now commonly known as "foot pedal", ancient name "foot bed" or "step bed", is a kind of small furniture placed in front of the seat in ancient China to support the feet. Since the Song and Yuan dynasties, it has often been used in combination with thrones, chairs, and beds, and some are connected to the furniture itself, such as the pale and the foot pedal on the chair; Others are made separately, such as the footrest of a throne and a bed. In addition to pedaling on the bed or sitting, the foot pedal also has the function of tying the feet.

Generally, the seat surface of the throne or large chair is higher, exceeding the height of the person's calf, and the feet must be suspended on the chair.

The pedal is not only a tool for the feet, but also sometimes acts as a seat. For example, in the book "Dream of Red Mansions" written by Cao Xueqin, a great writer in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, this function of the foot pedal is described. The sixteenth episode "Jia Yuanchun chose Fengzao Palace, Qin Keqing died on Huangquan Road" wrote that Mama Zhao went to Jia Lian, "Ping'er waited earlier than the kang edge to set up a pestle, and there was a small pedal, Mama Zhao sat on the pedal, Jia Lian picked two plates of dishes on the table and put them on the pestle to eat for himself.

Although Mama Zhao is a relatively high-profile subordinate in Jiafu, in the eyes of Wang Xifeng's personal maids Ping'er and Jia Lian, her status is still very lowly, and she naturally can't sit on an equal footing with them, so she can only sit on the small foot under the edge of the kang to eat, and even the dishes and bowls used for eating can only be placed on the stool and cannot be served. It can also be seen from this that the foot pedal is also a seat for people of relatively low status in some informal settings.