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On the stage of the Guilin branch of the 2017 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, 16 color rubbings of the word "Fu" in different forms pinned on the good wishes of the people of Guilin and sent New Year blessings to the global audience. The official name of these rubbings is called "Guilin Color Rubbing", also known as "Royal Palace Secret Rubbing".
Where are their "secrets" and what kind of relationship do they have with which royal palace?
Let's travel through time to discover the story behind the "Secret Extension of the Royal Palace".
Rubbings are made by covering the surface of utensils with materials such as paper and silk, and using pigments to reproduce the words, patterns and patterns of the utensils. It is one of the important carriers for recording Chinese history and culture.
The name "Tuo" was first found in the Southern Dynasty's "On Books": "All the books of Tuo (Tuo) use thin paper", (Zhong Xuan: calligrapher of the Three Kingdoms Period) It can be seen that there were rubbings as early as 1700 years ago.
Rubbings can not only clearly, completely, accurately and truly reflect the pattern and charm of the original artifacts, but also be an important material used to study ancient calligraphy, literature and history.
Excellent rubbings are worth a thousand words, and orphan rubbings are priceless treasures. Many of the inscriptions, bronzes and other artifacts that have been lost and destroyed can only be known to their original appearance because of the rubbings circulating in the world.
For example, the inscription of Emperor Wenzong of Yuanwenzong when he passed through nanshan temple in Guizhou (present-day Guigang City), Guangxi, the original stele has been destroyed in the war, fortunately, the Ming Dynasty rubbings have been handed down, and the world knows that this emperor Yashan Danqing worked in calligraphy.
The process of rubbing, first covered with paper or silk on the utensils, moistened with a special potion, and then gently hammered with a brush, after the wet paper dries slightly, use the flutter to dip the ink on the paper and beat it evenly, and when the paper is completed, the rubbing can be obtained.
Rubbing technology is distinguished by color, which can be divided into three categories: Motuo, Zhutuo and Caituo, and Guilin color rubbing technology is a kind of color rubbing. However, when did it originate, where did it come from, and why was it called "Wangfu Secret"?
This begins with the division of princes in the Ming Dynasty more than six hundred years ago.
In the third year of Ming Hongwu (1370), Zhu Yuanzhang made his nephew Zhu Shouqian the King of Jingjiang, after which the Jingjiang wang clan multiplied in Guilin and had an important impact on the development of Guilin culture.
The author of this "You Duxiu Rock Record" engraved on the Duxiu peak reading rock is Zhu Zuojing, the fifth king of Jingjiang, who created the "Secret Expansion of the Royal Palace".
In the ninth year of Yongle (1411), Zhu Zuojing, who had loved literature and painting since childhood, inherited the Prince of Jingjiang and wanted to be a generation of sage kings, but he soon discovered that this was just a luxury. The Yongle Emperor Zhu Di, who had launched the "Battle of Jingnan" to seize the throne as the king of the clan, was afraid that other clans would "draw gourds in the same way", so he often intimidated and beat the kings of the clan, Zhu Zuojing had just been in office for more than a year, and his uncle Zhu Zanyi was deposed by the emperor as a shuren, this "knocking on the mountain and shocking the tiger" shocked Zhu Zuojing greatly, and in the following ten years, he did not ask about political affairs and became a Peaceful "Idle King" in peace.
The trees wanted to be quiet and the wind was not stopping, and the Xuande Emperor Zhu Zhanji inherited his grandfather's harsh attitude towards the kings of the domain. In the seventh year of Xuande (1432), the Guangxi Envoy Department denounced the Jingjiang Palace for selling smuggled salt, and Zhu Zhanji issued a decree reprimanding Zhu Zuojing.
The emperor's anger frightened Zhu Zuo's soul into not guarding the house, and from then on he became even more trembling and walking on thin ice. However, in the seventh year of orthodoxy (1442), Zhu Zuojing was reprimanded by the orthodox emperor for his family infighting.
Although Zhu Zuojing had been cautious, but the heavens were unpredictable, in order to keep the throne and show his attitude of avoiding politics, he thought of a clever trick - facing the wall.
Li Huilan, researcher of the Institute of Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Jingjiang Royal Palace in Guilin: The history books also record that at that time, he especially liked to cultivate himself in the cave of Duxiufeng and study the culture of Buddhism and Taoism, because he also wanted to express an attitude to the imperial court and show the emperor that he did not have any political ambitions.
There is a cave under Duxiu Peak called Xidong, Zhu Zuojing carved a lot of poems and idols in it, and he often printed down various poems on The West Cave and Duxiu Peak and gave them to relatives and friends.
Since Duxiu Peak was exclusively occupied by the royal palace, if you want to obtain the stone carved rubbings of the famous people on the peak, you can only pass through the royal palace, so these rubbings are very popular among the literati doctors. The rubbing technique is secretly passed down from generation to generation by the royal craftsmen, and the world is called "the royal palace secret tuo", at first it was Motuo and Zhu Tuo, and later the craftsmen combined the popular color of colored porcelain with the painting coloring technique to form a color extension.
After Zhu Zuojing's death, his successors were not interested in the gold stone rubbings, so they sealed the west cave and stopped rubbing. The secret of the royal palace was like a flash in the pan, just blooming, and it was hidden in the secret realm.
It was not until 64 years later, in the twelfth year of Jiajing (1533), that zhu Bangfeng, the tenth king of Jingjiang, inadvertently discovered the secret left by His grandfather. According to Xu Xiake's "Journey to the West in Guangdong", after reopening the West Cave, Zhu Bangfeng resumed the habit of his grandfather and constantly made the secrets of the palace to give to people, and everyone was proud of it. Zhu Bangfeng carved a "Fu" character written by Zhu Zuojing in his later years on the stone wall of the cave.
Intangible cultural heritage Guilin color rubbing technology autonomous region-level inheritor Dai Donghui: Zhu Zuojing wrote this word, the word in the Tibetan character, contains the meaning of "a body of ten thousand blessings", implying that life from the beginning to the end, this prince is also as he pursued in his life, 7 years old to inherit the knighthood, reigned for 58 years, lived to 65 years old, so people call this fu word "wan quan fu".
The middle-aged man who is coloring the rubbings is named Wang Jisheng, and it has been more than 30 years since he learned rubbing technology in the 1980s.
In the process of rubbing, Wang Jisheng gradually learned about the history of the royal palace secret Tuo, and he had a bold idea in his heart - to restore the royal palace secret Tuo.
Wang Jisheng, inheritor of Guilin's intangible cultural heritage, Guilin color rubbing technique: When I saw these portraits, I wondered why I couldn't carry out color rubbing and restore this color rubbing technique of the Ming Dynasty? But the physical object did not, and then a lot of work was done, such as studying some murals in the Ming Dynasty, as well as the more famous painters of the Ming Dynasty, colored porcelain, and so on.
In the absence of physical reference, Wang Jisheng's team spent five years to restore and develop the Guilin Caituo technique, and developed new techniques such as Yancai Yuntuo and Inlay.
The most distinctive point of Guilin's color tuo technology is that according to the different materials of the rubbing, the natural mineral plant pigments such as cinnabar, lapis lazuli, turquoise, mica, turmeric, and qingdai are mixed and colored, so as to make the color natural, thick and pleasant, transparent and full, and the color lasting, which not only includes the color of watercolor art, but also contains the elegance of Chinese painting ink, and also has the durability of murals.
Another feature of Caituo is the modulation of adhesives. The traditional white mustard water used in Motuo, the viscosity is insufficient, it is difficult to fix the thick rice paper, silk, silk and other materials, Wang Jisheng and others through thousands of tests, and finally made a white mustard water as the base, adding peach gum and other Chinese herbal medicines of the color extension adhesive, not only can be used for rice paper, but also for silk, silk, and does not hurt the surface of stone carvings.
Nowadays, in order to better protect cultural relics, most of the time rubbing printers print on the reproduction of stone carvings.
In 2018, Guilin's color rubbing technology was included in the seventh batch of representative projects of intangible cultural heritage at the autonomous region level. The Jingjiang Wangcheng Scenic Area has opened the Wangfu Secret Tuo Museum and the Living Heritage Experience Hall, allowing tourists to understand and experience the unique charm of Caituo, and has also developed many cultural and tourism products with the Wangfu Secret Tuo as the core, which is quite popular. In order to better inherit the intangible cultural heritage skills, several non-genetic inheritors have recruited many apprentices to inherit the skills and cultivate talents through continuous study and practice.
Guilin Caituo, between tens of millions of pounding and ink color printing, imprints the thick heritage of the history of the thousand-year-old city, depicts the ingenious beauty created by the century-old ingenuity, and also inherits the glittering color of the Lingnan context.