What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
In the fifth year of the Northern Song Dynasty (1072), Su Shi, who was making a general judgment in Hangzhou on March 23, as the deputy governor of the state capital, was invited by Taishou Shen Li to the Jixiang Temple to watch the peony flowers together. In the flower bush, Taishou Shen Li proposed, let's not plant a peony flower in each person's head, right?! Therefore, while everyone was wearing flowers, Su Shi wrote this seven-word poem "Appreciation of Peonies at Kichijoji Temple":
People old hairpin flowers are not ashamed of themselves,
Flowers should be ashamed of the old man's head.
Drunken passers-by should laugh,
Ten mile bead curtain half hooked.
In fact, before the Song Dynasty men's hairpin flowers, the Tang Dynasty had. It is said that Tang Xuanzong's nephew Li Ci, the king of Ruyang, was a handsome and beautiful man, who was "the first beautiful man in the royal family", he liked music, and once beat a karma drum for Xuanzong, and Xuanzong was happy to hear it, so he personally picked a red hibiscus flower and placed it on the hat of the beautiful man's nephew. Emperor Xuanzong's uncle, Emperor Zhongzong Li Xian, also ordered his courtiers to welcome the spring together during the Jinglong period, and gave them a ribbon cut and a branch. In the late Tang Dynasty, Emperor Yizong of Tang recruited new jinshi to drink and feast in Qujiang, and gave jinshi flowers to drink, which became an honor for later generations of jinshi. Folk songs say that There are "five honors" for The Son of Dengke, of which the "Imperial Feast Flowers" is second only to the "Two Heavenly Faces" and "The Heavenly Majesty of the Heavenly Ancestors", ranking third in the glory of man.
At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, the emperor gave flowers only at will, not the imperial court etiquette, and the courtiers held the flowers given by the present in their hands and handed them to the attendants to take away, probably not to do the matter of public hairpin flowers for no reason. In the first year of the reign of Emperor Renzong of Song (1038), the nineteen-year-old Sima Guang was given a middle soldier, and Emperor Renzong gave him flowers, saying that Sima Guang did not like ornate decorations, believing that the hairpin flowers "lost the courtesy of the husband", and it was finally the king's order that could not be violated. It was not until the seventh year of the Reign of Emperor Renzong (1047) that the emperor finally had a clear decree: give you flowers, you must put them on me!
At this time, most of the hairpin flowers were officials and scholars, and they were favored by the emperor and had this "beautiful blessing". Slowly in the folk popularity, men's hairpin flowers walking in the streets, is not a new thing.
So, why did the men of the Song Dynasty like the hairpin flowers on their heads?
The first is the influence of the official ethos. The two Song emperors loved flowers. Every time Emperor Huizong of Song traveled back to the palace, he was "wrapped in a small hat, a hairpin flower, and a horse". "The courtiers and guards who follow the driver should also wear flowers to protect them according to their status and dignity, and wear flowers and protect them according to their ranks."
During the reign of Emperor Jiading of the Southern Song Dynasty, after the emperor's surrender, when there was a ceremonial feast such as a great pilgrimage and a holy festival, the lord did not give flowers, but gave the group of ministers flowers and flowers, and gave them according to the official order. For example, the eighteen large flowers given by zaichen and the privy councillors, ten luanzhi flowers (made of variegated flowers), twelve large flowers and six luanzhi flowers given by the scholar of Shiwenge, etc., were gradually reduced according to their official ranks, until the low-level personnel such as janissaries, deacons, and doormen also had a share of the flowers that were given. As a result, the hairpin flower gradually became a personal honor that people longed for, and this exaggerated pride became a universal social psychology.
In addition, the old custom of Chongyang Festival ascent is the head of the plant, and later gradually become "chrysanthemums must be inserted into the head", and then developed, of course, eclectic flowers on the head. Not only Chongyang, every festive festival, with the ceremonial battle of the hundred officials and hairpin flowers flaunting the market, folk men, women and children also wear flowers in response, the scene is considerable.
A "Water Margin" has many grass heroes who wear flowers as beauty: the prodigal son Yan Qing sideburns long inserted four seasons of flowers; Ruan Xiaowu obliquely wears a broken turban but inserts a pomegranate flower; whirlwind Chai Jin, short-legged tiger Wang Ying, living valve Luo Ruan Xiaoqi and so on. The delicate and rough, fragrant and bloody flowers blend with the delicate and rough, fragrant and bloody hair of the good man in the green forest, and the soft flowers have infinite tension.
Later generations have this to say about the scene of the Song Dynasty man's hairpin flower: In the history of human flower culture, I am afraid that no ethnic group can wear the flowers to such a high level as the men of the Song Dynasty.