There is a saying in old Beijing, saying "Tianqiao style - just talking and not practicing", in fact, this sentence is a bit biased, the traditional Tianqiao folk art performance, true and false, and even many artists are famous in the world, leaving an eternal memory in history.
Beijing's flyover is located outside the Zhengyang Gate in the east of Xuanwu District, and is said to have been built in the Yuan Dynasty, in a north-south direction, with White Jade Railings on both sides. There is a pavilion on the north side of the bridge, the bridge is very high, and under the bridge is a small river longsu ditch from west to east. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, it was the only way for the emperor to worship the Temple of Heaven and the Temple of The First Farmer, hence the name Ofte Bridge. According to the Qing Dynasty's "Guangxu Shuntianfu Chronicle", "Yongdingmen Avenue, north of Zhengyangmen Street, Jingsan. There is a bridge known as the Sky Bridge. "In the thirty-second year of Guangxu, the high bridge body of the overpass was demolished and replaced by a low stone bridge. After several reconstructions, it was completely demolished in 1934, and the bridge site no longer existed, but the overpass remained as a place name.
In the early years of the Republic of China, the old royal style disappeared into the long river of history, and the Tianqiao area gradually became a prosperous civilian market, which was regarded as a typical area of the civilian society in old Beijing. The famous scholar Qi Rushan said in the "Preface to the List of Flyovers": "Those who have overpasses are also places where the lower-level people of Beiping will meet and rest. Into it, and the social customs of Peiping can be seen. ”
The flyover has prospered and developed due to the rise of the market, and this market is for the civilian public, integrating cultural entertainment and commercial services, and gradually forming a unique civilian culture of the flyover. Among them, the most famous is undoubtedly the tianqiao artist. People who go to the overpass want to buy some daily necessities, on the other hand, they want to taste the delicious and inexpensive flavor food, and another purpose is to see various folk arts.
In the old days, many jianghu artists "swept the ground" on the overpass. The so-called "ground" is to draw a white circle on the ground as a performance venue, and the jargon "paint the pot". The pot is used for cooking, the pot is drawn, and there is a field, and the artist has a bowl of rice to eat.
There are also many types of performances, such as acrobatics, music art, wrestling, hard qigong, storytelling, cross-talk, etc., and there are many kinds of products. One of the most famous is undoubtedly the "Eight Monsters" who have extraordinary skills and grotesque words and deeds.
The "Eight Monsters of Tianqiao" are not 8 people, and in different periods, there are different theories, from the early activities in the late Qing Dynasty, such as the poor, vinegar drowning, Han Mazi, Pot Bald, Tian Lame, Sun Ugly, Snort, Chang Fool, to the old man who played with clams in the middle of the Minchu, Lao Yun Li Fei, Flower Dog Bear, Jin Zhong, Silly King, Bird Zhang, Zhizhen Monk, Cheng Fool, and then to Xiao YunLifei, Da Jin Ya, Jiao Dehai, Da Bing Huang, Shen San, Cui Ba'er who rubbed oil, Cao Mazi, Sai Huo Donkey, etc., who were active in the early Ming Dynasty. There are dozens of artists on the list.
In fact, the well-known artists in Tianqiao are far more than these, Meng Xiaodong, Li Guifen, Jin Shaomei, Bi Yunxia, Qin Xuefen, Zhang Baohua, Liang Yiming, Xin Fengxia, Bao Shanlin, etc., have all sold their art in Tianqiao. The most numerous of them are undoubtedly the category of book critics, Chang Lian'an, Hou Baolin, Lian Kuoru, Guo Ruilin, etc. have all studied and sold art in Tianqiao.
The origin of the Tianqiao artists is complex, including the descendants of the fallen flag people, the refugees of the Gyeonggi generation who went to the city to make a living, and the people who went to the sea to walk the caves. Together with the merchants, catering operators, and people who come here for entertainment and consumption, they constitute the modern tianqiao culture. Modern poet Yi Weeping wrote "Tianqiao Song", in which "wine flag play drum Tianqiao City, how many tourists do not remember home" wrote about the prosperity of the Tianqiao market.
The famous writer Lao She once liked to take the "Dangdang car" (tram) to the overpass to watch plays, like to eat various snacks at the stalls, like to sit on the bench to watch "pull foreign films", and even like to enter the small guest house where the peasants stayed, lying on the Chase shop and chatting with the people at the bottom, and his drama "Longsugou" was created against the background of civilian life near the overpass. In his later years, Lao She intended to write a long novel set in the sky bridge, but unfortunately failed to do so.
In addition, the writer Zhang Hexhui's "Laughing Cause" writes about the love tragedy of a pair of Hangzhou youth Fan Jiashu living in Beijing and Shen Fengxi, a singing girl in Tianqiao, which describes the life of the tianqiao at that time, so that readers can leisurely yearn for the life of the tianqiao in that era.
The materials in this article are mainly quoted from the "Beijing Local History and People's Life Chronicle"
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