Commenting on the Sichuan Humanistic History Documentary "Shu ShouBing"

"Why Li Bing"

A new interpretation of the aesthetic proposition of poetic society

——Commenting on the Sichuan Humanistic History Documentary "Shu Shoubing"

Poster of the large-scale historical celebrity documentary "Shu Shou Bing"

Recently, the Propaganda Department of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee, the Propaganda Department of the Chengdu Municipal Party Committee, and the Sichuan Radio and Television Station jointly produced two episodes of the humanistic and historical documentary "Shu Shoubing" were broadcast on the CCTV Record Channel. The first episode of the film focuses on the "art of water control", through the analysis of the core cultural spirit of Li Bing's water control - "dredging", interpreting the shining wisdom behind the idea of "changing blockages into dredging, guiding by the situation"; the next episode focuses on the "way to rule the world", through Li Bing's "road to becoming a god", exploring the spiritual totem behind the official way of "people-oriented, benefiting the four sides".

The documentary does not follow the linear narrative description of Li Bing's life and deeds, but takes two clues: first, the determined historical context - "the great achievements of Dujiangyan and Li Bing's practice of water control" as the clue; second, the uncertain historical legend - "Li Bing's own folk tales and myths" as the clue. Through interviews with today's historians, water conservancy scholars and cultural scholars, on-the-spot examination of historical legends and speculations combined with historical historical materials, the epic puzzle of Li Bingzhishui as a cultural phenomenon more than 2,000 years ago is carried out in the vast historical time and space, in order to outline the evolution of Li Bing's historical image as the lord of the river and the god of water.

Compared with the well-known Dujiangyan and its exquisite structural design, and the ancient weir dam, which still plays an important role in water division and governance for more than 2,000 years, the documentary focuses on pursuing a logical clue that coexists with Dujiangyan, that is, the proposition of "why Li Bing" has been upgraded to a poetic social aesthetic.

It is not easy for the documentary to answer this question specifically, the historical record of Li Bing's life is extremely limited, the birth and death are still unknown, let alone other biographical studies, so it is difficult to outline a specific image from the documents passed down from generations. In folk literature and oral legends, many people interpret Dujiangyan and Li Bing directly and intertextually, Li Bing is Dujiangyan, and Dujiangyan is Li Bing. In the process of filming, the documentary cleverly avoided this problem, abstracting the specific Li Bing into the god of water and the god of the lord of Sichuan, which became a cultural phenomenon of folk belief, giving the image of Li Bing a mythical connotation of social imagination. In the documentary, Shu Shoubing is described as a social and cultural phenomenon, but also becomes a spiritual worship and cultural totem of the Shu people in the human-god community. The gradual evolution and improvement of the display process of Li Bingshui's image reflects the historical context of the development and evolution of ancient Shu water conservancy, and is an important channel for understanding the history and culture of Bashu civilization. Under the approval of the temple sacrifice system of the later generations of officials who "worship with death and diligence, worship with the country with labor, be able to withstand major disasters and defend against great troubles", combined with the Taoist social values of "going with the flow and acting naturally", the folk beliefs about Li Bing were blessed, resulting in irrigation ceremonies and rituals rich in religious and folk colors in the Dujiangyan irrigation district, and the worship of Li Bing became a spiritual link connecting thousands of households in the irrigation district. Since then, Dujiangyan and Li Bing have become the twin stars representing Shu culture, shining in the galaxy of China's brilliant culture, and shining with other representative cultures of Chinese civilization.

In the documentary, there is a question that has been slowly unfolding along with the film's interviews with experts, leaving readers with abundant space for reflection and open thinking conclusions. That is, with the attention paid to the specific figure of "Li Bing", it has led to an unavoidable social thinking: whether it is the hydraulic technology of bamboo cage and maple, or the site selection of Dujiangyan, the method of excavating Yulei Mountain, including the regulations for the cultivation of "deep beaches and low weirs"... So many inventions and initiatives of cross-era significance, are he alone? Is it possible that Li Bing actually presided over the construction of Dujiangyan as a local governor, but in the process, because he modestly and boldly accepted many innovations and inventions of the people, and truly benefited the people of this land, he died on the front line of water control, so in the long historical changes, people have concentrated many events and legends on him alone because of love and nostalgia?

In response to this question, the documentary gives the audience a wealth of space for association, and also places the specific image of Li Bing in a time spanning two thousand years for examination. Li Bing's water control practice can no longer be observed and analyzed from a time section, only after he was upgraded to the myth of folk beliefs, through the spiritual connection between temples and ancestral halls and ordinary people, with the help of the organic integration of water god worship and annual cultivation and irrigation ceremonies, hundreds of households of Guyan water users and Guyan managers, as well as irrigation and annual cultivation organizers and implementers formed a tacit communication of different classes, injecting cultural impetus into the continuation and effective management of irrigation projects.

It is precisely because of the worship of Li Bingshui as a cultural bridge that successive local governments and local residents have taken the initiative to build, maintain and renew Dujiangyan for nearly two thousand years, and in the construction of the Dujiangyan water conservancy project, there has been no suffering of passive conscription in history and the lack of trust in the name of the material work in similar huge projects, the harmony and order of administrative management and grass-roots governance can be agreed, the combination of water conservancy and irrigation ceremonies can have a sense of beauty, and it has survived in the historical catastrophes of the Central Plains civilization for a long time.

Therefore, Li Bing, as a myth and legend of folk beliefs, has transformed the continuation of Dujiangyan from the continuation of the nominal construction function to the actual management function continuation, and then rises to the spiritual continuation in the sense of Chinese culture today. It may not matter who Li Bing is in specific history, but in the long history of Chinese civilization, in the characteristics of the pluralistic and integrated Civilization of Chinese civilization, the cultural qualities given to Li Bing by the people have been continuously passed on to future generations and inherited from China with the gushing waters of Dujiangyan. These cultural qualities contain the spirit of struggle of "unremitting self-improvement", the patriotic feeling of "serving the country with loyalty", the sense of responsibility of "the rise and fall of the world, and the responsibility of the husband", the spirit of sacrifice of "sacrificing life for righteousness", the innovative idea of "revolutionizing the old and making new", the public morality consciousness of "helping the poor and the poor", and the value concept of "forgetting the family in the country and forgetting the public and forgetting the private". Li Bing, as a world cultural heritage, has been spread to the world with Dujiangyan from the ancient Shu kingdom to the land of China, and together with Dujiangyan, he has profoundly reflected the excellent cultural genes of our Chinese nation, accumulated the deepest spiritual pursuit of the Chinese nation, become the profound cultural memory of our Chinese nation, and demonstrated the great cultural self-confidence of the Chinese nation.

However, the documentary still has slight deficiencies, mainly reflected in the next part of the film to vigorously render the cultural image of Li Bing as a characteristic of the regional spirit of Shu culture, but the induction and comparative study of Li Bing as a cultural trait is still thin, the expert interview question is not focused, and the historical context of the formation and development of Li Bing's cultural image characteristics of historical figures is not fully explored.

At the end of the documentary, there is an intriguing shot, the twilight li bing in the dujiangyan landscape looking back at the distance, the eyes are eager, let us instantly understand who is Li Bing. In the waves of flowers that were turned over from the pile, in the sky above the Fulong Temple, Shu County's Shou Li Bing smiled and glanced at the millennium.

(The author is an associate professor at the Department of Film, Television and Drama, School of Arts, Sichuan University)

Author: Yuan Yimin

Source: China Art News