Look for snow parsley trails in Beijing

Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition

Beijing Botanical Garden, Cao Xueqin Memorial Hall (Image source: Visual China)

At the end of Gengzi's year, I was in the capital looking for the traces of Cao Gong Xueqin.

The first and last stops are in Tongzhou. One day in the midsummer of the sixth year of Qing Yongzheng (1728), a group of people arrived in Zhangjiawan, Tongzhou, via the canal waterway. It was 13-year-old Cao Gong Xueqin, and his family of more than a dozen people who survived the disaster. At the end of the fifth year of Yongzheng, the Jiangning Weaving House, where three generations and four members of the Cao Yin family had successively attacked the jiangning weaving house, was raided because of too much deficit in weaving funds. The 60-year prosperity of the Cao family in Jinling has become a dream, and the young Cao Xueqin has fallen from the gentle and rich village of brocade and jade to the real life of displacement and displacement, preparing for the hardships of the world and the warmth of human feelings. In her magnum opus" Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin, an adult, fictionalized the rise and fall of rongguofu from Jia Yuan, Jia Daishan, Jia Zheng, Jia Baoyu to Jia Lan's "five generations and beheading", integrating reflections on the Cao family's encounters and remembrance of the years of the lost water.

One

Where did Cao Gongxueqin live after entering Beijing? At the national seminar on "Dream of the Red Chamber" in October 1982, Zhang Shucai, a researcher at the First Historical Archive of China, announced a document found in the archives of the Qing Dynasty Ministry of Internal Affairs that yongzheng was transferred to the Punishment Department on July 29, 777, stating that after the Cao family was raided, "the family property population of the capital and the family property population of Jiang Province", and was ordered to reward Sui Hede, who succeeded him in Jiangning Weaving, Sui Hede "saw that Cao Yin's wife and widow were powerless and could not survive, and the property of the Yongzheng family was in the local room of the City of Garlic outside the Chongwen Gate of the capital City, and there were three pairs of domestic servants. Give life to Cao Yin's wife and widow."

Through Zhang Shucai, Duanmu Hongliang, and others conducted field investigations against Qianlong's "Whole Map of the Capital City", they found the "Seventeen and a Half Rooms" where Cao Gong entered Beijing and settled in Garlic City. In 1999, when Liangguang Road was built, the courtyard was demolished, and then rebuilt near the original site, and will be open to the public from 2020. There is one more memorial site for the former residence of Cao Gong in Beijing.

Cao Gong still had relatives and friends of prominent nobles such as Wang Fupeng of Ping Commandery in the capital. The Qing historian Dai Yi believes that Fu Pengdang is the prototype of the King of Northern Jing in "Dream of the Red Chamber". Pingjun Wangfu is now the Second Experimental Primary School of Beijing on New Culture Street, and the courtyard building is well preserved. On the stone steps of the palace, the footprints of Cao Gong were printed. However, there was a huge disparity between the rich and the poor, and Cao Gong was bound to be unhappy when interacting with his relatives and friends of the dignitaries. Therefore, Cao Gong's friend Dun Cheng's poem "Sending Cao Xueqin" says, "Persuade Jun Mo to play diners, and persuade Jun Mo to buckle the Fu'er Gate." The residual cup is cold and moral, and it is not as good as writing a book in Huangye Village. ”

Cao Gong's happiest thing was to talk day and night with his friends duncheng and dunmin brothers in the right wing sect of Shihu Hutong, drinking, composing poetry, and painting stones. In the twenty-second year of Qianlong (1757), Dun Cheng, who was at Xifengkou, fondly recalled the time of their past reunions in the poem "Sending Cao Xueqin", and he believed that Cao Gong's talent was like the "poet ghost" Li He. But Cao Gong was an alcoholic and often "fell backwards", and only friends could tolerate Cao Gong's madness and pride after he was drunk. Dun Min also has a poem "Painting Stones in the Qin Garden", which records the scene of Cao Gong painting stones to write blocks in his chest after he was drunk.

Nowadays, the area around the Qingfeng Gate Bridge of the Tonghui River outside the East Third Ring Road was a place where friends such as Cao Gong and Duncheng Brothers often gathered to drink. Dun Min has a poem "River Dry Drinking Inscription Wall and Hanging Snow Parsley", remembering that on the snowy winter day after Cao Gong's death, friends came to Qingfengzha river dry restaurant again to collect drinks, but when they climbed the building and looked away, it was difficult to see the "poet" and "drunkard" Cao Gong who had gone away like passing water, and could only look at the Hanlin Xiao Temple.

At that time, Qingfengzha was surrounded by "thousands of villages" and liquor stores, which was a prosperous place in the countryside. Nowadays, both sides of the Tonghui River are traffic arteries, and the place where Cao Gong drank freely, and the restaurant where Dun Min left the inscription poem, has disappeared without a trace. However, qingfeng park, which is currently built around the Qingfeng Gate Bridge, although small, is beautiful and quiet, suitable for strolling through nostalgia. I very much hope that a stone stele can be erected next to the Qingfeng Gate Bridge, stating that this place is where Cao Gong gathers to drink, and then his friends leave inscription wall poems, which can add another Cao Gong memorial site for the world's "red fans".

Two

Cao Gong lived outside Chongwen Gate for more than a decade and then moved to the western suburbs. When Dun Cheng wrote the poem "Sending Cao Xueqin", Cao Gong had already "written a book in Huangye Village" and wrote "Dream of the Red Chamber", so there were sentences such as "Blocking Basil Tun in the Ring of the Present".

Cao Gong was in the western suburbs of the clear water and green mountains, looking for poetry temples, selling paintings and selling wine, while writing "The words seem to be blood" and "not lovers do not shed tears" of "Dream of the Red Chamber". Friends praised him for his "good painting of gong poetry", and Cao Gong also used poetry and painting into the novel. "Dream of the Red Chamber" is full of poetry and painting, and there are poets and poetry clubs in the Grand View Garden, which are divided into poetry schools and poetry styles. Under the influence of the cultural atmosphere of daguanyuan, even the illiterate Wang Xifeng can recite the first sentence of the appropriate joint poem "One Night North Wind Tight", which not only sings out the real scene of the joint poem after the snow, but also leaves a huge imagination space and room for the people who follow the joint sentence. In Cao Gong's pen, Wang Xifeng's only poem is connected with the artistic conception of "wind sword and frost sword strictly compelling" repeatedly recited in Lin Daiyu's poem, which to a certain extent tells the situation and state of mind of Cao Gong during his stay in the capital.

Where is the "Yellow Leaf Village"? Since the 1960s, wu enyu, Wu Shichang, Zhou Ruchang, and Hu Deping scholars have conducted many field surveys based on historical records and local legends, and finally confirmed that the No. 39 courtyard of Zhengbaiqi Village, where Cao Gong's inscription wall poems, was found, that is, the "Yellow Leaf Village" where Cao Gong lived and wrote books.

Today, in the Beijing Botanical Garden at the foot of Xiangshan Mountain, there is the restored "Huangye Village", the Cao Xueqin Memorial Hall, which exhibits many cultural relics related to Cao Gong, and the huge "Yuan Gem" that is said to be the prototype of the "Psychic Treasure Jade" and "Wooden Stone Former Alliance" on the side of cherry ditch. All year round, there are readers of "Dream of the Red Chamber" and fans of Cao Gong who come here on pilgrimage and linger.

In the twenty-eighth year of Qianlong (1763), Cao Gong's only beloved son died prematurely. Cao Gong was overly sad and died of illness at the age of 49 on Chinese New Year's Eve Night. Duncheng lamented Cao Gong's "illness without a cure and even the failure of the king", highly appreciated Cao Gong's talent, and clearly stated in the elegy that Cao Gong's death of illness left a posthumous writing: "Kaizhen still has ice and snow texts, so the exchange is scattered like clouds." "Ice and snow text" refers to Cao Gong's poems including "Dream of the Red Chamber". It is a pity that the text after eighty times of "Dream of the Red Chamber" is lost and has become an unsolved case and regret in the history of literature.

Three

Where was Cao Gong buried? In the mid-1960s, Wang Kunlun, who wrote "The Character Theory of the Dream of the Red Chamber", asked people to search for the tomb of Cao Jiazu in Yangzha, Tongzhou, but unfortunately it was shelved for some reason. On August 1, 1992, the Beijing Daily reported that a tombstone inscribed with the numbers "Cao Gong Zhen Xia Tomb" and "Nong Wu" was found in Zhangjiawan, Tongzhou. The authenticity of the tombstone is still inconclusive, Zhangjiawan has a Cao family pawnshop and 600 acres of canon land, Cao Gong is buried here, or it may be possible.

"Dream of the Red Chamber" is a "book of weeping and tears" (Liang Qichao commented on "Peach Blossom Fan"), in which the deliberately created image of Lin Daiyu who "died of tears" (Gengchen Ben Fat Batch) predicted the end of Cao Gong's life of "dying of tears". Lin Daiyu, who is sensitive and self-respecting under the fence, hates spring and autumn sorrow, tears often flow, and his poems such as "The sleeves on the pillow are difficult to wipe, let him dot and spot" are all portrayals of Cao Gong's state of mind.

Today, I walk through the ruins of Cao Gong in the capital city, pasting the footprints and traces of Cao Gong, and more than 200 years of time seem to have disappeared without a trace. Cao Gong's life experience spans time and space with the help of "Dream of the Red Chamber" and directly hits the hearts of readers of all generations. The life experience and life reflections of Cao Gong condensed in "Dream of the Red Chamber" are rich and deep, inspiring.

As a reader of "Dream of the Red Chamber", everyone understands what they can understand, and everyone can pursue the height of life and the depth of thinking. "Dream of the Red Chamber" is a rare book that can be read for a lifetime, and is often read. I grew up in the world where I can read "Dream of the Red Chamber", how fortunate! He also lived in the capital where Cao Gong lived and wrote "Dream of the Red Chamber", and was able to perform the relics of the time, and even more so!

There is a "Dream of the Red Chamber" in the world, which shines in ancient and modern times. Cao Xueqin lived in the capital and was more elaborate.