In January 2019, I spent some days in Beijing, and one afternoon, I went to visit Teacher Zhang Long. Her home is in an old building of the China Architectural Design Institute, I have been to three or four times, strange, each time I go back to always take a little trouble in the community around a few circles, and then bother her on the phone to point out the mystery to find. This time it was the same, fortunately the weather was fine, and under the good winter sun, I walked with a slight sweat on my back and warm on my body.
With a few greetings, Teacher Zhang Long took me into the living room, where a cup of tea and a cake had been placed on the coffee table in front of the sofa. I sat down on the couch, took a sip of tea, and had a relaxed conversation with her. On the wall of her house hung several calligraphy written for her by her grandfather, Mr. Zhang Yuanji, which I always liked to stand in front of when I came before. I have always liked Mr. Yuanji's words, and the ink from the beginning is full of the wind and bones of the scholar Zheng Zheng and the aura of Xuan Ang, and I still can't get tired of seeing it. This time, it was found that these words were replaced by copies - the original was donated to the state by Zhang Long and his brother Zhang Renfeng on the 150th anniversary of Zhang Yuanji's birth in 2017, along with many other Zhang Yuanji's relics, and the Haiyan Museum held the "Exhibition of Cultural Relics Donated by Mr. Zhang Yuanji's Descendants" that year. During the conversation, she said of my hobby of seal engraving: "I have a seal engraved book for you. I said yes, how surprised in my heart, she has been engaged in a lifetime of English work, never heard that she has been interested in this "carving insect skills", how can there be a seal engraved book? In just a few moments, she brought me a book with a dark blue cover from another room and put it in my hand. This is the original plutonium seal score, and the left side of the cover is signed with a brush: Wading Garden Seal.
I carefully read this seal book, which contains a total of 30 seals and 31 seals (one seal is a two-sided seal), 12 side sections, and the seals are covered calmly and clearly, but unfortunately the edges are blurred and do not see the spirit. Two large 5 cm square chapters, "Zhang YuanjiYin" and "Nongchen Hanlin" (below), which I remember deeply in the exhibition hall of the "Exhibition of Cultural Relics Donated by Mr. Zhang Yuanji's Descendants" in 2017. Two seals, one Zhu and one white, with a knife, Cangrun Jinxiu, Jing Mu Blending, full of qin and Han seal charm. Teacher RenFeng once recalled that when he was a child, he saw this pair of seals placed in a glass cover, which Mr. WonJi used when he wrote the sign for the store. The time of the "Zhang Yuanji Seal" seal was engraved in 1944, and the single "Wu Pu Carving" and the "Nongchen Hanlin" single model "Thick Factory Zhiyin". Wu Pu is Wu Putang, houchang, born in 1922, loved seal carving since childhood, was a student of Wang Fu'an, and became famous in Hangzhou at a young age. At the age of 18, he opened a shop in Qinghefang and made a living for people, and at the age of 19, Wang Fu'an set a run for him. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Mr. Yuanji was in economic distress, and in 1943 he began to supplement his family with characters, and in 1943 and 1944, he asked people to engrave nearly 100 seals, most of which were engraved by his close friend Chen Shutong. Chen Shutong paid special attention to this young seal engraver, and many of his own seals were also handled by him, and after the founding of New China, he was also recommended to work in the Antiquities Sorting Department of the Shanghai Cultural Relics Preservation Committee. Unfortunately, Wu Pu's life was thin and shallow, and he died in 1966 at the age of 44.
Teacher Zhang Long said that nearly 100 seals of Mr. Yuanji were once all copied, and later implemented the policy to return these 30 pieces. In 1986, her father Zhang Shunian asked friends to make 6 copies of these seals into 6 prints, and 4 prints: "This book is reserved for me, my brother has one there, and the others are placed in Haiyan Zhang Yuanji Library and other places." She said. I continued to read the seals, among which there were also seals such as "Zhang Yuanji Seal", "Yuanji", "Jusheng" and other seal engravers such as Xie Yong, Chen Julai, Wang Fu'an's son, etc. for Mr. Yuanji, which I am not unfamiliar with, and I have seen many times in Mr. Yuanji's books and books. In addition to these self-use seals, there are two seals that have a special significance for Mr. Zhang Yuanji.
Zhang Yuanji's tenth ancestor, Mr. Zhang Qiling, was a famous learned man during the Ming Dynasty, and Mr. Yuanji wrote such a passage for this ancestor: "My family's family has been cultivating and reading, and the Ming Middle Leaf clan has grown, and those who have been promoted to the rank of The First To be able to write articles are called Fu Jiugong, but they are absolutely determined to advance, immersed in the study of righteousness and economics, and their disciples are extremely prosperous, and they are called Mr. Dabai." Try to build a house in the south of the castle, read among them, and now the so-called wading garden also. "The Ninth Ancestor was Zhang Weichi, the son of Mr. Dabai, nicknamed Luofu, a jinshi of the twelfth year of Shunzhi, who had served as an official in the middle of the dynasty, but did not favor his name and did not shy away from slander, and his upright personality made him very unhappy in the floating and sinking of the eunuch sea, and after a few years, he returned to his hometown and expanded Mr. Dabai's study office in the south of the city, changed its name to Xiangyuan, and planted flowers and bamboo, wrote poems and drank, and also built schools for the township, famine relief, river dredging, and houses for the benefit of one party. However, when Mr. Wonji's father's generation, the family road gradually declined, and the garden was also abandoned. At that time, there was a Wuye Village outside the south gate of Wuyuan Town, Haiyan County, which was said to be named after the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and the garden was located here. Born in Guangzhou, Mr. Wong Chai returned to Haiyan with his mother at the age of 14, and then wandered away all his life, but he was always worried about his hometown. Teacher Zhang Long remembers that there were four green landscapes hanging on the east wall of the living room of the old mansion at No. 40 Jisifeier Road (now Wanhangdu Road) in Shanghai, and it was the "Garden Map" that was painted. In the 1920s, Mr. Yuanji returned to his hometown to visit the grave, and learned from his relatives that a clan member had dug up a seal, 3 centimeters long, 2.5 centimeters wide, and 1 centimeter high, which was printed as "Family Living in Wuye Village in the South of the City" (below), and he concluded that it was a relic of Mr. Dabai or Luo Fugong, so he bought it, and this seal has since become his desk treasure.
On October 18, 1927, Mr. Wong Chak experienced an "adventure". On this night, he was eating on the second floor of his home on JiSfer Road when he suddenly broke into five people with guns and took him away, frightening his family. The kidnappers thought that Mr. Wong Chai was the big boss and asked his family for a ransom of 300,000 yuan, but after investigation, it turned out that it was just a cold soldier, and the ransom was reduced again and again, 200,000, 150,000... In the end, the family ran around, relying on the pawn and the loan barely exchanged for 10,000 yuan, so that Mr. Yuanji escaped from danger. "The famous garden silk bamboo competition is mournful, chatting and leisurely Gu Qulai. Each team actually charged the ticket holders, and if they could take the stage together. "Don't you have a little white qiu and Du Xia, and his livelihood is in difficulty." Laughing at the rough to avoid hunger and cold generations, also as an example of the god of money. These two poems were composed on the first and second day of Mr. Yuanji's old lair of kidnappers, and were not included in his own compilation of the "Ten Poems of the Thief's Cave", which shows his composure and humor. In a letter to Tang Youhe on October 28, Mr. Wong Chak said that the kidnappers believed that business was his own private property, not to mention that last year's dowry to his daughter was 300,000, so he had to ransom 300,000 yuan: "Brother Xiang and laugh, let someone send someone to review." The more two days came to talk, the more misunderstanding, but the matter has been so, always hope to weigh the subsidy, so the cost is also very small. However, the younger brother already felt that the burden was light. In the other, he lived for six days, eating and living, and there was no great suffering. However, the sun and air are almost nothing, and fortunately the body is still supported. His initial prison was very strict, and his brother told him that he would never flee. After two or three days, they learned from each other, were open and honest, and almost nothing was said. Because he was advised to give up early. He who hears his brother's words has reached the point of tears. When sending the brothers back, shake hands with each other, and if they have to be corrected at different times, they will see each other again. In 1927, the year of Ding Jiao, in order to commemorate mr. Yuanji's abduction experience, Chen Shutong asked the elder Tong Danian of the Xiling Printing Society to engrave this "Ding 卯 Regeneration" seal (below), the seal Jiatian character boundary quasi-Qin indian style, elegant style, strong atmosphere of gold and stone scrolls, especially the circular treatment of the "Ding" character on the printing surface, extremely vivid, chic and interesting.
I took the seal in my hand and turned it over, I couldn't bear to close it, and before I knew it, the sky darkened. Teacher Zhang Long held the lamp in his hand, and the bright red color of the printing clay on the printing sheet suddenly lit up in the room. She said let's go after dinner, and I said okay, so the two of them ordered dinner on their phones, two bowls of pumpkin porridge, a durian cake, a mara cake, and a cabbage. Until 8 o'clock, in order not to disturb her rest, I said goodbye and left, taking the book and the cake with me.