author
Snow Tong
The northeast has entered the middle of winter, and the outdoors at minus twenty degrees have rarely seen green. However, whenever this time comes, there is always a strange green tree that looms in the streets and alleys, and is lush in the major shopping malls. It is strange because trees are not only evergreen, but also green. At the moment, people are not unfamiliar with this scene, because Christmas is coming, and the Christmas tree has been standing there for more than a month.
Originally a Western religious holiday, Christmas has now evolved into a shopping festival. Sure enough, there is no festival that merchants can't hold. It's funny to say, Westerners have Christmas, everyone celebrates at home, we celebrate Christmas, everyone is shopping. I don't know when we began to be enthusiastic about foreign festivals, Valentine's Day, Easter, and gift-giving in the West; Thanksgiving, Christmas, and never falling. Like to celebrate the foreign festival, like foreign objects, in fact, it is not so now.
In the late Ming Dynasty, many foreign missionaries operated in China. At the founding of the Qing Dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor was even more in love with Western science. His astronomy, calendar, arithmetic, and mechanics were all first-rate, and many of his court advisers in these areas were European scholars. There are so many Western clocks, snuff bottles, oil paintings on display in the Forbidden City... Each one of them crossed the ocean to China hundreds of years ago, and each one is a priceless treasure, which is collected and sought after by the relatives of the emperor and the state, and has become a symbol of the status of the nobility and high society.
The era of "Dream of the Red Chamber" is set in the Qing Dynasty in the early eighteenth century, less than three hundred years ago, when many Westerners had already arrived in Asia. "Dream of the Red Chamber" is full of large and small Western objects, which all highlight the prominence of this national family at that time.
clock
The sixth time, "Grandma Liu entered the Rongguo Mansion", the book borrowed the eyes of this poor old woman from the countryside to highlight the Foreign School of the Jia family and modern fashionable decorations.
Grandma Liu sat on the edge of the kang, waiting to meet Wang Xifeng, the young grandmother of the family. The first time she entered a rich family, she was at a loss for words, and she thought everything was fresh and interesting. She looked around, and then suddenly heard a strange voice:
Only the clattering sound was heard, very much like playing a gong and sifting noodles, and it was inevitable to look east and west. Suddenly, there was a box (wooden box) hanging on the pillar of the hall, and there was a scale falling underneath, but it did not stop shaking. Grandma Liu thought in her heart, "What is this?" What's the use? ”
Obviously, Grandma Liu from the countryside had never seen the Western wall clock used by the rich and noble.
The Forbidden City in Beijing has a "sundial", that is, our ancient clocks, we use the movement of daylight to calculate time. Engrave a scale on a compass that has been calculated by angle, set a pointer in the center, and the shadow of the pointer can be moved to which scale, and the time can be read. Humans have also developed methods of calculating time with water leaks and hourglasses, but they are not accurate enough.
Time is related to the calendar, the moon orbits the earth, the earth orbits the sun cycle, the formation of the year, month, day, hour division, must master astronomical knowledge, in order to accurately calculate the unit of time.
At that time, China did not have this ability to interpret science. However, some scholars have researched that in 1092 AD, Su Song of the Northern Song Dynasty invented the hydrodynamic mechanical astronomical clock; in 1335, the Italians used machinery on the self-chiming bells of the church, but the volume was too large to be used by ordinary people in life. In 1656, the Dutch huygens invented the hammer pendulum, which led to the home clock.
In "Dream of the Red Chamber", it is also written that Fangguan was curious about the self-chiming bell in Baoyu's room, and also broke the pendulum, causing the bell to stop ringing.
In the fourteenth time of "Dream of the Red Chamber", Wang Xifeng assisted Ning Guofu and also mentioned the clock.
"The people who are with me on Su Ri have clocks and watches with them, no matter how big or small, there are certain moments. There are also hour clocks in your upper room. ”
Wang Xifeng is a master of time planning. To manage a Ningguo Mansion of several hundred people, she knew how to make plans and was accurate to every quarter of an hour. The "clock" is large in size and inconvenient to carry, so there is a "watch" that is easy to carry. Of course, it is not the watch we wear now, but the pocket watch. Baoyu has a pocket watch and often takes it out to see how time it is.
Snuff bottle with "Irvine"
The Forbidden City in Beijing has a large collection of snuff bottles, each of which is small and exquisite. There are also many snuff bottles in the folk, which is a category that collectors like to choose.
Snuff bottles are of course used to hold snuff. It was also one of the small accessories of the upper class of the Qing Dynasty, which seemed to represent a special identity and taste more than the cigarette boxes, cigar boxes and pipes of gentlemen today. And its size, one hand can just hold, and it belongs to personal items. So, with a lot of private smell.
Fifty-second time, Qingwen was playing greedily in the middle of the night, accidentally got cold, "fever headache, nasal congestion is heavy", Baoyu rushed to take out the exquisite texture of the snuff bottle, Qingwen picked out some snuff with long nails and put it on the tip of the nose to sniff, suddenly felt a sour and spicy taste straight to the mind, even after a few sneezes it was much easier.
This snuff bottle of Baoyu is not Hanyu Song porcelain, but an imported product, which is an authentic foreign product, and it is also filled with imported "fine foreign tobacco". The original text is as follows:
Musk Yue really went to take a small flat box with gold inlaid double-button Venus glass and handed it to Baoyu. Baoyu then opened the lid of the box, and inside there was a yellow-haired with Western enamel, two ribs and flesh wings, and some really fine foreign smoke inside. Qingwen only cared about the painting, and Bao Yu said, "Sniff it, it's not good to go away." ”
The painting on this snuff bottle seems to be painted in the lid of the box, and Qingwen should not have seen it normally, so she looked at it in a daze. Western enamel yellow-haired, is a nude painting of a blonde beauty, two ribs with flesh wings, it should be an angel, or a goddess.
After relieving the nasal congestion, Bao Yu ordered someone to go to Wang Xifeng to ask for some foreign medicine to put qingwen stickers to cure the headache. Foreign medicine is called "Ifera". What exactly is the transliteration of the text, it is no longer possible to examine, it feels a bit like the pronunciation of French. It's a headache-curing cream that spreads over a finger-sized red satin, heats it up, and sticks it on either side of the temple.
The book says that Wang Xifeng's sideburns have been accustomed to attaching this medicine for many years, which on the one hand shows that it is not easy for Feng Jie to run the family and work hard; on the other hand, it also implies that the use of Western imported drugs in Jia Fu at that time was already a common operation.
Jinxi Ocean self-propelled ship
In the fifty-seventh time of "Dream of the Red Chamber", a small toy of Baoyu appeared, which was also a Western object. This time is the famous "Hui Zi Juan Love Words Try Busy Jade".
In order to test how deepLy Baoyu's love for Dai Yu was, Zi Juan tricked him into saying that Sister Lin was going back to her hometown in Suzhou. Bao Yu was in a hurry to attack his heart, and he was crazy and stupid. Pointing to a "JinxiYang Self-Propelled Ship" on the ten brocade compartments of his room, he shouted:
"That's not the boat that picked them up!"
Then he clung to the toy boat and was afraid that Sister Lin would leave. The lover is so, laughing and crying. We also know through this description that the nobleman originally had Western toys. Eighty percent of pure imports are still gilded.
Baoyu's room
When Grandma Liu visited the Grand View Garden, she drank too much, mistakenly broke into Baoyu's Yihong Courtyard, and lost her way inside. Because Baoyu's room has an organ, this mechanism is a dressing mirror.
Grandma Liu looked at the flowers, turned over a shelf of books, a screen, a door behind the screen, and suddenly saw an old woman like herself. Grandma Liu thought it was her own family, and talked to her for half a day, and her mother-in-law did not react. Grandma Liu reached out and touched it, it was cold, and only then did she understand it, and I heard that the rich and noble family had a kind of dressing mirror:
"Don't I look in the mirror?"
Grandma Liu guessed well, she touched a door through Baoyu's living room, and the door was inlaid with a dressing mirror that was the size of a person. This mercury-plated mirror on the back is also an imported product from Europe.
Around the seventeenth century, Baroque palaces liked to decorate their halls with mirrors, and the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles is a famous example. Mercury was a very precious metal at the time. When Li Zhen'er in "Golden Plum Bottle" remarried to Ximen Qing's family, she carried two large cans of mercury. Later, in order to build a new garden, mercury was sold and turned into silver. It can be seen that mercury was the hard currency of the time.
It is said that the mercury mirror is particularly white and bright, so the mercury mirror that is as large as the person is really expensive, not to mention that there is a mechanism setting on this mirror.
When Grandma Liu did not break through the mechanism, she also saw a painting, which was a beautiful picture. Grandma Liu was drunk and mistook the person in the painting for a real person, and when she talked to him, the other party laughed but did not answer. Grandma Liu reached out to pull her, overheard a "grunt" sound, and crashed into the wall. She looked closely and found that it was a painting, and Grandma Liu was also surprised:
"It turns out that the painting has such a projection?"
She also touched it with her hand, and it was indeed flat. Those who are familiar with Western painting must have heard of the "perspective method". Using light and shadow and proportion, the three-dimensional space is made on the three-dimensional canvas plane, creating a visual illusion. The house seems to be accessible, and the portraits are convex and lifelike. What Grandma Liu saw was a Western painting. Bao Yu is the noble prince of Jia Province, the eyeball of the old ancestor, and it is not surprising that his room has a variety of foreign objects.
Western wine, glass jar, agate bowl
Baoyu not only has the house arranged in a foreign atmosphere, but also the eating utensils are very foreign. In the sixtieth time of "Dream of the Red Chamber", Fang Guan in baoyu's room took a small glass bottle five inches high, which contained "rose dew", and gave it to the daughter of the Liu family in the kitchen. The mother and daughter of the Liu family have not seen the "rose dew", looking at the sunlight, there is half a bottle of rouge color liquid in it, and Liu sister-in-law said:
"It should also be the Western wine that Baoyu eats."
This description reveals that Baoyu drank "Western wine". Three hundred years ago, it was not known whether Bao Erye's red wine came from France or Italy. No matter where it was, there must not be much European wine imported at that time, not a rich family like Jia Fu, and ordinary people may not have seen it.
The thirty-first time, Qingwen waited for Baoyu to change clothes, accidentally fell and folded the fan, caught Baoyu in a bad mood, said a few words to Qingwen, and Qingwen, who was sharp in the corner, stopped drying and began to return her mouth.
"At first, even such a glass jar and agate bowl were broken, and I didn't see an atmosphere."
At this point, we know that the use of glassware in Jia Fu was originally a routine operation. At that time, we had not yet mastered the glass blow molding process, as long as it was glass products, it was pure import. So how many manpower and material resources it takes for fragile objects to get to the palace of the nobles. It's so easy to get to the hand, on the contrary, it is falling, it is broken, it is not a big deal, it is so light, it is really shocking.
As for the agate vessels, in addition to the mention in Qingwen's mouth, there is also a detailed description in the book. The thirty-seventh time, Tanchun was ill, and Baoyu sent someone to see the third sister and bring some fresh lychees with him. I used a white onyx saucer wrapped in silk. The raider later asked:
"There are also many guys who usually send things, and Baba's take this."
Qingwen Dao:
"Why don't I say the same thing. He (referring to Baoyu) said that this plate is only beautiful with fresh lychees. I sent it, and the three girls saw it and said it was beautiful, so they put the plate on it, but they didn't bring it. ”
What else can be said? It can only be said that the exquisite exquisiteness of the nobility is in these daily lives, and the princes and ladies are first-class in aesthetics.
In addition to these, there are also some foreign goods. For example, Dai Yu cut the silver scissors of the sachet spike in her hand; the Red Sweat Towel of the Qian Xiang Kingdom given by Jiang Yuhan to Bao Yu was tied to the body in the summer, no sweat stains, and the skin was fragrant, which was a good summer product; the scarlet foreign blanket laid by Madame Wang on the Rongxi Hall Kang; the jade sprinkled flower crepe dress and the big red crepe silver rat skin skirt worn by Sister Feng were all foreign goods. The glass hydrangea lamp that accompanied Baoyu to the end; the glass kang screen that Wang Xifeng borrowed from Wang Xifeng to borrow a "slight swing"; even the Siamese tea and the Siamese lingbai incense smoked pig not only "entered the mouth" but also imported goods. Not to mention the imported garments that I have previously interpreted in detail, such as "Qiu JingQiu" and "Que Jin". These high-end atmospheric and high-grade foreign goods have appeared in the Grand View Garden again and again, reflecting the family heritage of Jia Fu for a hundred years.
"Dream of the Red Chamber" depicts the social life of the early Qing Dynasty. At that time, the Qing Dynasty was a highly centralized state, a feudal dynasty that was "closed to the country". In such a state, Jaffa can get such benefits in foreign trade, in addition to satisfying material enjoyment, there are also sensory pleasures and psychological satisfaction.
The use of foreign goods is also one of the important manifestations of the Houmen Gongfu to highlight its identity and reflect differentiation. In the early Qing Dynasty, the dignitaries used foreign goods, and the current rich and idle people loved cultural relics. Cao Gong is an economist in life and a spiritual psychologist. Time has passed three hundred years, but human nature has never changed.
Disclaimer: This article only represents the personal views of the author and has nothing to do with the position of this public account. Some of the illustrations come from the Internet, if there is infringement, please contact to delete.