Pu Songling, an outstanding literary figure of the Qing Dynasty, is known as the king of the world's short stories and has a huge influence in the world. As for most people, you may not have read his "Liaozhai Zhiyi", but you must have seen the movies and TV series based on his novels, the most famous of which is the "Ghost of Qiannu" trilogy.
Pu Songling was poor all his life
Pu Songling's former residence
"Liaozhai Zhiyi" and "Dream of the Red Chamber" are known as the "double wall" of classical Chinese novels, which shows Pu Songling's position in the history of literature.
When Pu Songling was nineteen years old, he took the township examination and won the first place in the three examinations of the prefectural government, but he repeatedly failed in the following examinations. On the road of the township test, Pu Songling repeatedly lost and defeated repeatedly, from the age of 21 to 63, participated in 7 township examinations in his lifetime, did not succeed once, until the age of 72, he became a Gongsheng, Gongsheng is equivalent to a copy of the person, which means that he has been doing the show for a long time, and he has been lined up to Gongsheng by queuing.
As a literati, Pu Songling was unfortunate in his life, because of his poverty, even writing books became a problem, until he was recommended by someone at the age of 41, he became a teacher.
When Pu Songling wrote "Liaozhai", he was appreciated by Wang Yuyang and twice wrote an inscription for him. Speaking of Wang Yuyang, he entered school at the age of 6, no poetry at the age of 8, published poems at the age of 15 in the "First Draft of the Luozhitang", and took the boy's test at the age of 17, and the three tests were the first place, and he was known as a "prodigy". At the age of 22, he was admitted to the jinshi, and at the age of 26, he served as the governor of Yangzhou Prefecture, and his erudition and poetry were deeply appreciated by Kangxi, and he was later promoted to shangshu of the Punishment Department, and his status was prominent.
According to research, in the first month of the twenty-sixth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1687), Wang Yuyang went to Zichuan to mourn his friend Bi Shengyu, who was teaching at the Bi family at that time. The two met, and Wang Yuyang praised Pu Songling's work and inscribed a poem for Pu Songling's just completed first draft of "Liaozhai Zhiyi". At that time, Wang Yuyang was already a leader in the literary world, and his inscriptions and poems had a positive impact on the improvement of Pu Songling's reputation and the subsequent wide circulation of "Liaozhai Zhiyi".
In 1715, Pu Songling died of illness, and his descendants buried him in his hometown of Pujiazhuang, Zichuan District, Zibo City, Shandong Province.
Pu Songling's tomb was excavated, and the book that accompanied the burial was not "Liaozhai Zhiyi"?
In 1966, a "breaking the four olds" movement swept in, and many historical and cultural monuments in the country were destroyed. The tombs of cultural celebrities, including the tombs of Confucius, Yue Fei and Pu Songling, were severely damaged. Among them, the excavation of Pu Songling's tomb is the most surprising, the people at the scene can't believe their eyes, they think That Pu Songling is a literary giant, there will be a lot of valuable things in the tomb, I didn't expect that the tomb is some ordinary things.
Pu Songling's burial chamber is very simple, the tomb is built with cheap three-in-one soil rammed, and there is no luxurious coffin in the tomb, only 4 seals, copper stoves, copper mirrors, dry tobacco bags, changming lamps and other 1 piece each dug out.
Although there are not many things in Pu Songling's tomb, there are still historical relics worth preserving, such as the four seals, which are now nationally protected cultural relics, he is to prove the authenticity of Pu Songling's tomb and the literary value of his works, but the people at the scene at that time did not realize it, almost threw it away, and was begged by the people of Pu Songling Memorial Hall to recover it.
For these things, you can find them in many future materials. However, there is another earth-shattering secret hidden in Pu Songling's tomb, that is, this secret, which has sparked endless debate in the cultural circles to this day.
The mystery in Pu Songling's tomb is a book that Pu Songling pillows. This book is not "Chatting with Zai Zhiyi", but "Awakening marriage biography".
For this matter, the professor of Shandong University and the academic leader of ancient literature has a more detailed record in his book "Fox Ghosts and Human Beings: Interpreting the Strange Book< Liaozhai Zhiyi >".
According to the narrative in the book, in 1980, the author secretly interviewed the head of the excavator of Pu Songling's tomb with the director of the Pu Songling Memorial Hall, and restored the scene situation. The head was one of the only people who had seen Pu Songling's remains, and he said that there were only a few cultural relics unearthed from Pu Songling's tomb, and only four stamps engraved with "Pu's Songling", "Liuxian", "Liuxian Songling" and "Willow Spring Water Map" proved that it was indeed Pu Songling's tomb.
The head recalled that there was a copper hand stove, a small copper lamp, an ordinary brick platform on one side, and a cigarette bag mouth, glass, and the pipe of the tobacco bag, made of ordinary wood, had long been rotten.
For the book that Pu Songling was sleeping on, the head was very sure that there was a book, but it was not "Liaozhai Zhiyi", and this head knew the words and had a certain understanding of "Liaozhai Zhiyi". It was only when the author asked if it was "The Legend of the Awakening Marriage", the head said that he did not remember.
Who wrote "The Tale of the Awakening Marriage"?
"The Legend of the Awakening Marriage" is a Shandong love letter between "Dream of the Red Chamber" and "Jin Ping Mei", signed "Western Zhou Sheng". Obviously, Xi Zhousheng is a pen name, and the researchers have made different inferences about the author's real name, among which The greater impact is Pu Songling's statement.
The Qing Dynasty Yang Fuji's "Dream Of Trivial Pens" records: "Bao Yiwenyun: Liu Xian still has a novel of "Awakening to the Marriage", and Gai Shi has some meanings." Li Ciming also wrote in the "Diary of Yue Man Tang" that "Awakening to the Marriage of the World", written by Qing Pu Songling.
The character plot of "The Legend of the Awakening Marriage" is quite similar to the story of the "Jiangcheng" woman in "Liaozhai Zhiyi". Based on this, Hu Shi wrote "Pu Songling's Birth Year Examination" and "Examination of the Inheritance of Awakening Marriage", and from the three points of geography, writing, and characters, the author was Pu Songling. However, later researchers mostly held the non-Pu Songling theory, and put forward the following numbers: Zhang Qiu scribe said, Ding Yaokang said, Jia Yingpet said, Cai Rongming said, among them, it is believed that Ding Yaokang is the majority, but it is still inconclusive.
"Awakening to the Marriage" is a highly regional novel, the whole book is written in the dialect of central Shandong, the background of the story is mainly in The town of Mingshui in Xiujiang County (another name for Zhangqiu) in Jinan Province, Shandong Province, with a strong local atmosphere. Therefore, "The Legend of the Awakening Marriage" must have been written by a Shandong person, and it remains to be further examined by historians as to whether the plot content and expression technique resemble that of Pu Songling, the author of "Liaozhai Zhiyi", or whether the narrative style is similar to that of Ding Yaokang, the author of "The Biography of the Continuing Golden Bottle plum".