Xiao Han, the December festival after the winter solstice, is connected with the big cold, corresponding to the hottest summer summer heat and summer heat of the year, and is the coldest time of the year. As the saying goes, "cold is in the three nine", the small cold is during the three nine after the winter solstice.
Wu Cheng of the Yuan Dynasty said that the degree of cold was small when it was cold, and even colder when it was cold, so it was named: "Little Cold, December Festival." The cold at the beginning of the month is still small, so the clouds, the half of the month is big. "In fact, the cold of the small cold and the big cold is often not divided into high and low, and the small cold is often more than the big cold." The people should do a good job in cold protection, supplement lamb, vegetables and rice, eat sugar fried chestnuts, roasted sweet potatoes and so on.
In the seventy-two waiting days of the moon order, Xiao Han is divided into three waits: one waits for yan beixiang; the second waits for the magpie to start nesting; and the third waits for pheasant to start pheasant. By this time the birds and geese in the south had sensed the yang and began to fly north; the magpies had begun to build their nests; and the pheasants had begun to chirp.
The Tang Dynasty poet Yuan Shu (元稹) "Yong 24 Qi Poems • Xiao Han December Festival" chanted: "Xiao Han even Da Lu, happy magpie to build a new nest." Pick up food and look for river bends, and wrap purple around the treetops. The frost eagle (as a goose) is near the northern head, and the pheasant is hidden. No wonder it is strictly condensed, spring and winter are turned over by the first month. ”
Traditionally, the twelve rhythms of the music are matched with December, with the big Lu with the December, because it is called "Little Cold Even Big Lu", the magpie builds a nest, the migratory birds fly north, and the pheasant chirps. No wonder the cold is so severe, it is when winter and spring intersect, and spring is near.
From the beginning of the small cold to the eight solar terms of gu rain, the flower viewing has the famous twenty-four flower trade winds. Flower trade wind refers to the wind that should come from the flowering period. Each festival is divided into three seasons, with three kinds of flowers that bloom in season, a total of twenty-four kinds, from plum blossoms to neem flowers, constantly opening on time, fragrant and fragrant, to welcome the arrival of spring.
This was about the beginning of the Song Dynasty, and the Southern Song Dynasty Chen Yuanliang's "Chronicle of the Ages" quoted the "Miscellaneous Records of the Eastern Dynasty": "From the early spring to the early summer in Jiangnan, the wind of five days is called the flower trade wind." Plum blossom wind first, neem flower wind after, where twenty-four times, thought that the cold is also desperate. (It is often mistaken to think that the flower trade wind originated in the Southern Dynasty "JingChu Chronicle")
Twenty-four flowers and trade winds, full of poetry, poets love to chant, painters love to paint. For example, Fei Yuanlu of the Ming Dynasty had "Twenty-four Poems of Flower Trade Wind", and Cao Yin of the Qing Dynasty had "Twenty-four Poems of Wing Hua Xin". Qing Dynasty painters Yu Sheng, Huang Yu, Ju Lian, etc. all painted the "Twenty-Four Flowers Trade Wind Map". Flower trade winds are also widely used for flower viewing and flower arrangement.
In the small cold festival, there are three seasons of flower trade winds, namely plum blossom first, camellia second, and daffodil three. These three are one of the top ten famous flowers in China and have been deeply loved since ancient times.
The painter Huang Binhong's "Winter Flower Diagram" draws plum blossoms, camellias and daffodils with calm and painful brushstrokes.
Huang Binhong's "Winter Flower Diagram"
Twenty-four flower trade winds are the earliest to bloom in plum blossoms. It is a flower endemic to China and has been cultivated and used about 7,000 years ago. It is not afraid of wind and snow, braving the cold and opening up, ushering in spring, and the wind is awe-inspiring. Its five-petaled flowers have a sweet fragrance, white, vermilion, light pink, green, yellow and other colors, there are 'Jiangmei', 'green calyx', 'cinnabar', 'palace powder', 'jade butterfly', 'yellow incense' (plum), 'heavy leaves', 'Zhaoshui', 'weeping branches' and other famous species.
People regard plum blossoms as symbols of firm chastity, iron bone, spring, new year, plum blossom, five blessings, meishou and other symbols, and call it the three friends of the year with pine and bamboo, and call it the four gentlemen with orchid bamboo, which is mostly seen in gardens, poems, paintings, and flower arrangements. The woody branches of plum blossoms are tortuous, and the poet Lin Kui praises "the shadow horizontal and oblique water is shallow, and the dark fragrance floats in the dusk of the moon", which is also a typical Chinese flower arrangement material, presenting the general line beauty of Chinese painting.
Zhao Mengjian's "Three Friends of the Cold Years"
Chen Hongshou "Bottle Plum Moon Season Map"
Camellia blossoms after plum blossoms.
Camellia flowers were called sea grenades in ancient times, and Sui and Tang poets loved to chant. It can grow into a flower tree more than 4 meters high, and in winter it blooms bowl-shaped large flowers, with single or heavy petals, red, pink, white, white, yellow, purple, ink and other colors, the name of the beautiful tea (Yangfei tea) with light peach, the pink and white child face with silver red halo, the big red five-petal big red golden heart Shu tea, the white snow tower, the golden Guangxi golden flower tea, the red and white agate tea, the eighteen bachelors of various flower colors, etc., as well as the baozhu tea with broken petals such as a round ball in the single petal.
The Northern Song Dynasty poet Su Shi's poem "Camellia" praised: "The East Garden is raining and winding in March, and the peach and plum are scattered and swept away. Only camellia is durable, and the green bushes put several branches of red. "Camellia blossoms bloom in the spring, symbolizing Xinshao, Xiangrui, Shaohua, and are also often used for flower arrangement. For example, Chen Hongshou's "Year Dynasty Map" paintings white plums in ancient bottles, lining red camellias and bamboo leaves. It contains the meaning of New Shao Ruyi, Mei Kai WuFu, and Bamboo Newspaper Peace.
Chen Hongshou's "Year Dynasty Map"
Daffodils are also the flowers of the little cold. It was introduced to China around the Tang Dynasty, and the green leaves and flower leaves were extracted from the bulbs, and the six-petal fragrant flowers bloomed, and the single petal had a white petal gold core of the Golden Cup Silver Table, the White Petal Silver Core Silver Plate, and the heavy petals had a faint yellow Thousand Leaf Jade Linglong and so on. There are also red, purple, yellow and other daffodils commonly known as ocean daffodils, and the flowers are larger, but they are still expensive with a single petal. The Ming Dynasty Chen Jiru's "Rock Youqi Incident" praised, and the Qing Dynasty "Dream of the Red Chamber" fifty-two times wrote that Baoyu and Daiyu's favorite is the single-petal narcissus.
Song Ren 'Narcissus Diagram》
Zhangzhou, Fujian, Chongming Island, Shanghai, and Putuo, Zhejiang (also known as Guanyin Daffodils) are all planted with daffodils for supply throughout the country. It is planted in a flower field, and when it is marketed, the bulb balls are dug up and sold, and they can be raised in clean water to flower.
The Song Dynasty poet Liu Bangzhi thus chanted: "Water can be immortal and strange, and the cold fragrance is lonely and moving the ice muscle." Who has the Fairy Wind Dao Bone now? Lightly sweep the moth's eyebrows. "It symbolizes high quality and purity." In the Southern Song Dynasty Chen Fuliang's poem "Daffodils", the bottle of daffodils also symbolizes the qi of Taihe, the shape of creation, and the blessing of the immortals.
Plum blossoms, camellias, daffodils in the winter with wax plums, Southern Heaven bamboo fruits and other bottles, the color is pleasant, the meaning is far-reaching, welcome the New Year, the auspicious new year.
Jiang Hong's "Bottle Plum Daffodil Diagram"
Suzhou prints "Winter Flower Basket"
(Written by Ma Dayong)
Disclaimer: The copyright of this article belongs to China Flower News, and may not be reproduced or tampered with without permission, and violators will be investigated for legal responsibility. If you need to reprint, please contact this number in advance.