In that year, the Qianlong Emperor met Peng Yuanrui and had the legend of "cold wine" versus "lilac flower"

The Qing Dynasty civilian scholar Xie Jian recorded an "absolute" of a beautiful woman with a flower surname in the "YizhiLu", the upper link is: lilac flowers, hundreds, thousands, ten thousand heads; the lower link is: Yijie lotus, one foot, half foot, two feet. The prefixes of the three words "cloves, incense, and flowers" are the same as those of "hundred, thousand, and ten thousand (ten thousand)", and the words of "benefit, knot, and lotus" are similar to the lower parts of the three words of "one, half, and two".

Data chart Lilac blossom Xinhua News Agency reporter Wang Jianwei photo

Lu Yixiang, who is two years younger than Xie Jian, has a slightly different narrative in "Leng Lu Miscellaneous Knowledge". He said that the Qianlong Emperor summoned literary attendants when he was idle, and made a link: "Cold wine, one point of water, two points of water, three points of water." "氷" is included in the Kangxi Dictionary, which is a common word for the word "ice". Peng Yuanrui, president of the Siku Quanshu Museum and the QinghuiDian Museum, said to him: "Lilac flowers, hundreds of heads, thousands of heads, ten thousand heads." Lu Yixiang commented: "It is not difficult to speak, it is difficult to be agile, and those who do not have the wisdom cannot." The implication is that this kind of monarchy is not difficult, but Peng Yuanrui is so quick to come up, it is a natural wisdom.

Xie Jian is a citizen, Lu Yixiang is an official, and after the death of the Qianlong Emperor, these two talents were born, and it is difficult to judge who wrote it crediblely. Perhaps "lilac flowers" and "cold wine" were the popular passages of that year, and it was not excluded that the qianlong emperor, who was vassal and elegant, knew in advance the so-called "absolute" "cloves, incense, and flowers" before he came up with "lilac, cold, and wine".

Perhaps influenced or implied by this couplet, in the harsh winter of many years later, with a slight drunkenness, I blurted out: "The condensation is light and cold." "The first four words have one point, two points, three points, and four points, and the last three words have four points, three points, and two points in turn.

The point on the left of "氷" is a Chinese character, which is synonymous with "Lord" in ancient times, and later appeared more as a symbol of sentence breakage when reading, and the original independent "character grid" was weakened. The phenomenon of borrowing two points of water is rarely seen in other places today except for occasional calligraphy creations.

"冫" is also a Chinese character, homophonous with "ice", and was first written as "仌", like the form of water that first condensed into ice. In the "Explanation of Words", "冫" is a partial word, and the original meaning is of course mostly related to freezing and cold. A friend once asked, what do you say about the words "times" and "net"? I replied that "times" in "Shuowen Jiezi" does not have anything to do with freezing and cold, but the side of "times" is not "冫", but "two", and "two owes" as "times". "Net" refers to clean and clean, the original word in the "Explanation of Words" is "浄", and later generations changed from "氵" to "冫" in order to facilitate writing. If you want to explore the origin of Chinese characters, you will find that there are many interesting logics, such as the original meaning of "condensation" is ice, that is, water becomes hard; "Ling" means that ice comes out of the water; "cold" is "cold", "cold" is "frozen", and "frozen" is "仌"... When I write the association, I usually subconsciously think carefully, that is, the expression is unified with the glyph, not only writing about the harsh winter, but also the best from the glyph - "ice condensation", cold enough.

"Light" originally meant thin taste, but at that time I thought about mixing water with wine, and the taste became weak. "氵" is pronounced as "water", and the meaning of the word is the same as that of water, and the "Explanation of Words" is interpreted as "quasi-also"; "quasi" is flat, and the level and level are not difficult to understand. The simplified word for "accurate" is "accurate", and sometimes it is written as "凖", but in fact, it is not compatible with the cold and cold eight rods. The original word is the word of three points of water, mostly related to water, such as rivers, rivers, lakes, seas, waves, waves, waves, waves, waves, surges, and even rolling, sand, desert - the original meaning of "rolling" is the flow of large water, the original meaning of "sand" is water rare sand, refers to the small stones scattered in the water, "desert" has a clear meaning, but also refers to quicksand, the composition of the word is clearer - "desert" is not a place of lack of water?

The water condenses into ice, reflecting a faint color, "illumination" is not exactly "light"? In the following four points, the pronunciation and meaning of the word are "fire"; in other words, most of the words with "灬" can be related to "fire", such as hot, strong, cooked, steamed, boiled, fried, cooked, etc. As for the word "swallow", it is said that the swallowtail is shaped like "fire". And the traditional character of "dot", the left side is black, what is black? Xu Shen had a saying: "The color of fire." What is a "point"? Little black only... If you understand a few points, you may know the general meaning of thousands of words, the so-called "show talent literacy and reading half", not without reason.

At that time, the Qianlong Emperor had good luck and met Peng Yuanrui, and there was a legend of "cold wine" to "lilac flowers"; now, my sentence "Light and cold", who will be right? Although it is a few points more than the Qianlong Emperor's shanglian, but the luck is still "a little" ah...

Original title: Still poor "a little"

Text/Lee's Soft

Source/Beijing Evening News