Let's start with a story:
During the Qin and Han dynasties, there was a cave lord in the Baiyue region (now the Yunnan area of Guangxi), who lost his wife at an early age and followed up with a string, and originally left a daughter named Ye Zhi.
This girl was intelligent and capable, very pleasing to her father, and after her father's death, her stepmother and her half-sister abused her in every way, and she could only pick up a fish by chance with herself, and carefully feed it every day with leftovers after work.
The article is accompanied by a picture of the network of related materials of "Unitary Yang Miscellaneous Tricks"
At first, the fish was packed in a wooden basin, and later grew into a giant, and Ye Zhi could only herd it into the pond in front of the door, and one day when Ye Jie went out, the stepmother fished the fish ashore and boiled it to eat.
Ye Ji cried bitterly when he heard this, and at this moment a god descended from the sky and told her to hide the fish bones in the house, and if she prayed sincerely, it would be enlightened.
So Ye Ji hid from his stepmother, prayed to the fishbone, and really got a set of "clothes and silken tops, crept gold shoes" to participate in the group dance of the nearby tribes.
Unexpectedly, this was detected by the stepmother, so she fled in a hurry and left a golden shoe at the scene of the dance.
This golden shoe was found by the lord of the Tuo Khanate near the neighboring island, who sent people to the vicinity of the lost place for all the women to try on, only Ye Limit could wear it, and finally the lord of the country returned to China with Ye Limit and fish bones, with Ye Limit as the upper wife, and Ye Limit's stepmother and daughter were killed by Flying Stone.
Seeing this, perhaps the reader will be confused: how is the plot of replacing the fish bones with "pumpkin carriages" and "Cinderella"?
Are you sure it's not plagiarism? Of course not.
The story of Ye Zhi, which dates back to the Tang Dynasty about 1200 years ago, comes from the notebook novel "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks".
The author of "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks" is Duan Chengshi, who likes to interview various people in society and then compile them into a text, ye zhiyi is derived from the Guangxi folklore told by his family doctor Li Shiyuan.
In addition, the plots we see now such as Wu Zetian appreciating Luo Binwang because of a passage, and Li Bai's drunkenness and making Gao Lishi take off his boots are all from his pen, and even the word "news" is derived from his work "Jinli News".
If you put it now, Duan Chengshi will definitely become the winner of the Putzelli News Award, and if you casually post a hot article on today's headlines and Weibo, the attention it will arouse can hardly be imagined.
And Duan Chengshi is the protagonist we want to talk about today.
01 The first journalist in history
Duan Chengshi can be said to be the first journalist in history, which can be called the literary wonder of Datang.
Duan Chengshi is from a prominent background!
His ancestor was Duan Zhixuan, one of the twenty-four heroes of Lingyange during the Tang Taizong period, his father was Duan Wenchang, the chancellor of the Tang Muzong period, and his grandfather was Wu Yuanheng, the iron-fisted prime minister of the Tang Xianzong period, and the number of high-ranking officials and dignitaries in the family was innumerable.
When he grew up, Duan Chengshi, Li Shangyin and Wen Tingjun were called "Three Talents", also known as "Thirty-Six", because all three of them ranked sixteenth in the family.
What is different is that Duan Chengshi is a typical rich and handsome man, not comparable to these two grassroots literati, in terms of creation, Li Shangyin is good at obscure poetry, Wen Tingjun is good at flower words, and Duan Chengshi is good at gossip literature.
Thanks to The Ancestral Yu Yin, Duan Chengshi successively served as a school secretary, Shang Shulang, Jizhou Thorn History, Jiangzhou Thorn History and other positions, and the Quan Tang Poetry contains more than 30 of his poems, but most of them are mediocre works.
What really has literary value is that he used his decades of travel experience and experience to compile a "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks", which covers everything, involving grass, trees, fish and insects, cultural classics, property resources, Chinese and foreign anecdotes, etc., sprinkled with dozens of volumes, which can be called a large collection of "Ghost Blowing Lanterns", "Where are the Fantastic Beasts", and "The Tale of Genji".
Visiting the famous mountains and rivers is a popular movement in the upper class society of the Tang Dynasty, Duan Chengshi, as a donkey friend who loves wild travel, conducts field interviews and records with locals everywhere he goes, accumulating many materials for future creations, which can be called Li Shizhen in the medical field.
Duan Chengshi has the temperament of a gossip reporter in his bones, specializing in collecting strange secrets.
Once, he passed by Caizhou and found a kind of grass leaf hiding rats, with a sensitive sense of news, he recorded: "Artemisia, Tian Zaishi, the son of the cloth, Yamato Zhong, tasted the north of Caizhou, there is grass on the side of the road like artemisia, the stem is as big as a finger, and its ends are clustered leaves... Looking at it, there are dozens of mice in the leaves, and only like soap pods, the eyes are still open, and the chirping is sound..."
This ability to create scripts is a pity in ancient times.
As a media worker with a strong professional spirit, Duan Chengshi did not shy away from respect and inferiority, and often personally interviewed and investigated the parties, including friends, colleagues, subordinates, envoys, businessmen, cooks, servants, etc., and even many Persians who came to the capital Chang'an to do business.
Through exchanges with these foreigners, Duan Chengshi excavated the customs and customs of Western countries, and later generations were able to glimpse the living conditions on the other side of the ocean more than a thousand years ago.
For example, the description of The Kingdom of Filial Piety is speculated to be what is now Egypt: "In the Middle of Pingchuan, with wood as a fence, more than ten miles in the Zhou Dynasty, and more than 500 gates in the Great Gate." The climate is always warm, and it does not wither in winter. There are sheep, horses, no camels, no cattle. The vulgar nature is true, the hospitality is traveling, the body is long, the nose is yellow, the green eyes are red- haired, the hair is draped, and the face is like blood..."
Similarly, there are anecdotes that record Countries such as North Africa, Sudan, and Somalia, which also have high historical value.
02 The brain hole is strangely open
In addition to opening a window for the Chinese people to understand the world, Duan Chengshi has also made great contributions to the spread of traditional Chinese culture.
The passage where Wu Gang cut down the osmanthus tree in the Guanghan Palace, which we are familiar with now, comes from his "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks and Heavenly Scrolls": The old saying that there is a laurel in the moon, there is a toad, so the book says that the laurel is five hundred zhang high, and there is a person under it who often cuts it, and the tree is created and combined. People surnamed Wu Minggang, Xihe people, Xuexian has been, who ordered the tree to be cut down.
There is also Han Xiangzi among the eight immortals that we are familiar with, after Duan Cheng's imagination, the prototype became Han Xiang, the nephew of the famous literary artist Han Yu.
In the text, Duan Chengshi is a serious nonsense: Han Xiang is born debauchery, does not like to read, and cultivates all day long. Han Yu was worried about this and asked Han Xiang if he would have a skill to settle down in the future? At that time, it was the cold winter season, Han Xiang showed his hand in front of everyone, covered the dead branches of the peony with soil, and then with a finger, the peony flowers in the pot bloomed instantaneously, and also bloomed in several colors.
Of course, this is nonsense, because after Duan Chengshi grew up, the party Han Yu was still alive, and the great god Han Xiang in the text was indeed Han Yu's nephew, he and Duan Chengshi were people of the same era, with Han Yu's influence in the literary world, his relatives had such a skill, why didn't they leave a single word in the work?
The biggest possibility is that Duan Chengshi implied in the text that Han Xiang had become an immortal and intended to beautify it, otherwise he would definitely be involved in lawsuits such as reputation infringement.
In addition to these brain-opening paragraphs, Duan Chengshi also created a number of idioms for future primary school students, if you know the origin of these idioms, primary school students understand so easy!
No skin: I heard that Ge Qing, a tattooed stranger in Jingzhou, claimed to be a loyal fan of Bai Juyi. Duan Chengshi immediately went to the interview, but also on the spot to verify, in order to become famous, this Ge Qing live broadcast a strip show, only to see his tattoos all over his body and pictures and texts, there is a person holding a wine glass standing in the chrysanthemum, tattooed "not this flower prefers chrysanthemum"; a tree hanging with a pattern of silk bags, tattooed "yellow clip Valerian forest cold leaves", counting down a total of more than thirty songs, Duan Chengshi while admiring, while sighing: "You are really complete body!"
Fortunately, Bai Juyi also wrote a large number of five-word poems and seven-word poems, otherwise it was just a "long hate song", which Ge Qing could not tattoo on his body, and on the road to The bo position, there has been a source throughout the ages.
There is also adultery: the wolf has long front legs and short hind legs; the fox is the opposite, with short front legs and long back legs. Wolves are strong in combat, but they are scheming, so every time the two goods do bad things, they always act together, so they are called adulterers. The original text records: "The front foot of the fox is extremely short, and each line often rides on the leg of the wolf, and the wolf cannot move, so the obedient people in the world are called wolf."
03 Interesting souls pick one
According to statistics: in the Tang Dynasty where Duan Chengshi was located, the poems were like sweat and cattle, and the Quan Tang Poems included more than 48,900 poems in 900 volumes, and to this day, less than one percent of what we can know.
However, these interesting descriptions of Duan Chengshi in "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks" have inherited the classics with the passage of time. Both in the field of history and literature, it is highly respected by future generations.
Its eclectic narrative style and strange and grotesque imagination have created a precedent for Zhiwei novels, and the well-known "Journey to the West", "Liaozhai Zhiyi", and "Mirror Flower Edge" are all drawn from this book to be published.
The Siku Quanshu records: "His books are full of strange and nonsensical things, and the secret books of the testament are often wrong." Therefore, although the commentator is sick of its pompousness. And can not fail to quote. Since Don. Pushed as the leader of the novel, Mo or waste also. ”
Lu Xun commented on the "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks" in the "Historical Outline of Chinese Novels": "This book either records secretaries, or narrates strange things, immortals, Buddhas, people, ghosts, so that the movement and planting, the rice is not complete, and the class is gathered, just like the book." Although the source may be derived from Zhang Hua's "Naturalist History", in the Tang Dynasty, it was still an original work. ”
Most of the time, the path to success is lonely.
For example, If Duan Chengshi did not have this "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks", with the poems he left behind, he might have disappeared into the brilliant poets of the Tang Dynasty, and if it can be occasionally recorded in history, it is nothing more than an insignificant second generation official.
The legend of the Tang Dynasty can not be more loved, the unrestrained imagination, the future generations can not be!