Wang Zengqi: Wang Pan's Wild Recipes

I am very interested in Wang Xilou. He was a Ming Dynasty song master. In my hometown there will be a prose composer, which I always find strange. Wang Xilou's writing of scattered songs can be said to be unprecedented in my hometown, and before him, at the same time and in the future, he would not have heard of any other prose writing. The name of the West Building is Pan, the character is hong gradually, when he was young, he should not try, lived in the West Building of Gaoyou City, talked with the scribes at that time, and called himself the West Building. The west of Gaoyou City is on the verge of a canal, and Wang Xilou's "Chao Tianzi Yong Horn": "The official ships come and go in a chaotic manner, all of you, raise the price." "Exactly what you see on the canal embankment. When I was a child, I also saw the "official hall" on the embankment to pick up and drop off official ships. Many people in Gaoyou know Wang Xilou, but not because he writes scattered songs. I have not seen a copy of "West Building Music House" in the collection of my relatives' house, and many people do not even know what "Sanqu" is. Most citizens knew that Wang Xilou was a painter. Gaoyou still circulates a post-break saying: "Wang Xilou marries his daughter - painting (words) more silver and less." There are some almost mythical legends about Wang Xilou's paintings, but none of his paintings have been left. I have long heard that he also wrote a "Wild Recipe", but I have not seen it, and I deeply regret it. Recently, Zhu Yanqingjun entrusted his friend to find it in the library of Yangzhou Normal University, and he found it in Tao Jue's re-editing of "Saying Qi", photocopied a copy and sent it to me.

Paying attention to the grass and trees that can survive the wilderness and merge into a map seems to be a custom of the Ming Dynasty. Zhu Yuanzhang's fifth son, Zhu Xu, collected more than 400 kinds of grass and trees that could fill his hunger, planted them in his garden, asked the painter to draw according to the physical drawings, added instructions, and compiled a book of "Saving the Wilderness Materia Medica". Wang Pan was a commoner, and of course he couldn't weave and draw such a voluminous book as Zhu Xu did. Made up, it can't be engraved. His "Wild Recipes" only collected fifty-two kinds, but they were all visually inspected, tasted, self-titled, and hand-drawn, and most of them were engraved at his own expense,—— who would want to carve such a miscellaneous book without fame and fortune? His intentions are precious and touching.

The beginning of the Wild Recipe has only a simple inscription:

Wild recipes

Gaoyou Wang Hongwei

There is no order, and there is no year of publication. I thought this book was feasible, and no one would fake it.

Among the fifty-two kinds of wild vegetables, I only know: white drum nails (dandelion), puer root, marlan head, artemisia annua (i.e., artemisia annua), goji berry head, wild mung bean, artemisia annua, amaranth, purslane, and gray strips. The rest not only do not know, but have not even heard of it, such as "swallows do not come to incense", "oil burning"...

"Wild Recipe" above and below. The text accounts for about three-fifths, the figure accounts for two-fifths, and the "text" has two or three lines after the name of the dish, most of which are the time of eating and the way to eat, such as:

White drum nails

The name dandelion, available at four o'clock, is small and available on extremely cold days, and is cooked.

Behind it are the popular music houses that are similar to ballads, most of which are based on the name of the dish, expressing emotions and lamenting the sufferings of the people's livelihood. The poor eat wild vegetables to survive the famine and do not pick vegetables for the sake of tasting new ones. My hometown is very poor, because of the flood, the Wild Recipe mentions it several times, such as:

Eye dish

Eye dishes, such as Zhang Mu, look forward to spring every year, and ripe when autumn comes. What a tired year, worried about the four wild waves drifting house.

Cat ears

Cat ears, listen to my song, this year's flood hurts Tian He, cangyu empty rat abandons the nest, cat xi cat xi will be helpless!

In the years of famine, abandoning one's family and fleeing, selling children and selling women is a common thing, and there are some small poems in "Wild Recipes" that are written very tragically, such as:

River cabbage

The river is green and the river is green, and the daughter who picks vegetables by the river cries. Daddy's new dead brother took advantage of the ripeness and saved me and my sister to look at the house.

A young lady

Artemisia annua, the root is firmly rooted, and it cannot be dissolved, such as lacquer glue. Jun did not see yesterday's seller on the ship, the child hugged the mother crying and refusing to let go.

After reading such poems, we can understand why Wang Pan wrote "Wild Recipes", and his intentions in compiling "Saving The Wild Materia Medica" were different from Zhu Xu's compilation. At the same time, it also lets us know how Wang Pan could write such a loose song as "Chao Tianzi Yong Horn". We have to think of a word that people didn't like to use for many years: people's nature. I think Wang Pan is different from Chen Loud, who is also known as the "Crown of Southern Qu". Chen Loud couldn't help but slip, while Wang Pan's feelings were sincere.

The paintings of "Wild Recipes" are not painted as works of art, but only for the shape of the portrait. However, Wang Pan is a painter, and the past people commented that his paintings were "unique in nature", and the original work would never be so powerless. "Say It" was originally a reproduction, the engraving is not good, I would very much like to see the first engraving.

I think the evaluation of Wang Xilou should be higher, not only because I am a High Postman.

July 3, 1989