Su Dongpo's life was bumpy and uncertain, so that he issued an exclamation that "life is like a reverse journey, I am also a pedestrian". Reverse travel is the ancient name of the inn, and the inn is the predecessor of the modern hotel, compared with the foreign word of the hotel, the reverse tour, the mansion, the inn has a history of thousands of years in China, in the ancient times of the boat and cart, they are the wanderer to fade the tired shelter. Speaking of the inn, everyone must be impressed by the domestic drama "Wulin Waichuan", whenever there are guests to the door, Lao Bai will warmly greet them: "Guest officer, tip or stay in the hotel?" "So the question is, what does it mean to tip? How did it come about?
First, the reverse travel? Di Shop? inn?
Before we understand how the tip comes from, let's first take a look at the hotels that are closely related to the tip. The origin of the mainland's inns is very early, as early as the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, there have been official and private hotels, the "Book of Poetry, Daya Gongliu" records that "the field of the Beijing Division, at the time and everywhere, in the time of the Lu brigade", here lu travel refers to the place with the nature of an inn. Another example is the "Chinese" recorded that "the father of yang is like a guard, the opposite is Ning, and the reverse brigade is abandoned to the reverse brigade", and the reverse brigade here is an ancient name for the inn and inn.
In the long history of the development of Chinese hotels, official hotels have occupied the mainstream for a long time. After the establishment of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the post road was vigorously built, and the infrastructure such as "Lu, Su, and City" was built along the post road to prepare for rest and meals, and it was called "one city, two accommodations and three Lu".
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there were "princely halls" used to receive envoys and officials from various countries, and there were also guild halls used to raise soldiers, and there were such a pavilion under the famous Four Gentlemen of the Warring States. "Home away from home" was first used in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and by the Spring and Autumn Warring States period had become a maxim for the etiquette of government-run and private hotels, which showed that hotels at this time had developed into a conscious industry.
The offices of a certain institution that we commonly see everywhere now are not inventions of modern people, and there were similar places at the latest in the Qin and Han dynasties. In the Han Dynasty, the county councils set up an accommodation agency called "Di" in the capital for the officials of various localities to go to Beijing to live, which is also "the place where the county and the country are staying, and the famous residence is led by the Beijing division", so the words "didian" originally referred to the official hotel. In the Han Dynasty, there were also classifications of "didians", including "county residences" for officials of a county, as well as "national residences" and "Yi barbarian residences" for people of other countries.
From the Shang and Zhou Dynasties to the Two Han Dynasties, although official hotels have always dominated the mainstream, private hotels are also very active, and the flow of population has led to the rise of the hotel industry. "Han Wu Story" recorded such a story, the fun-loving Han WuDi emperor micro service private visit, to a place called Bai Gu, after dark to stay in a reverse brigade, the owner of this reverse brigade is a thief, not only to the Han Wu Emperor is not inferior, but also want to take advantage of the black to rob han Wu Emperor and other people, fortunately the boss's wife saw the Han Wu Emperor and very human, in time to save the Han Wu Emperor. It doesn't matter whether this story is true or not, but it shows that reverse travel was already common in the Han Dynasty.
Beginning with the Wei and Jin Dynasties, ancient inns ushered in the spring of development. The rulers paid more and more attention to the construction of hotels, and Cao Cao once ordered that "the brigade should be set up against the tide to rectify the merchants". In the Jin Dynasty, a man named Pan Yue once wrote a letter to the emperor for the sake of the inn, saying that the reverse travel had a long history, and also praised the role of the inn as "the walker relies on the end, the resident collects his straight, the trade moves, and each gets what he wants", and finally Pan Yue used the most concise language to describe for us the grand situation of the hotel industry in the Wei and Jin dynasties: "The public and private roads are full, the near radial spokes, and the guest houses are also thick."
The huge interests of the hotel industry even the nobles at that time could not help but be moved, And Xiao Hong, the brother of Emperor Wu of Liang, opened dozens of "di shops" in Jiankang City, and at this time, the "di shops" had been transformed from the initial reception of officials and emissaries into a place for commercial purposes.
In the subsequent dynasties, whether it was the official camp caravanserai or the private inn, it sprung up like mushrooms. Tourism and commerce in ancient times developed rapidly, and the annual examination of scholars promoted the flow of people, and these long-term travelers needed a place like an inn to wash away their fatigue. In the Song Dynasty, the development of hotels was "a few days to compete overnight, the residence is like Yuntun", and there are many large and small hotels in various places.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, it is needless to say that the Tongfu Inn in "The Tale of Wulin" is a good example. In the movie "Dragon Gate Inn", we can find that even in the desert there are inns, although it is a fictional film and television drama, it also contains the historical logic of the ming and Qing dynasties that was widely spread by inns.
Dragon Gate Inn
However, the function of ancient inns is not limited to accommodation and eating, some special hotels will also provide services such as storing goods and saving money. It is worth mentioning that during the Ming and Qing dynasties, there were also a large number of guild halls with clans and townships as the link, and these places became the best places for fellow villagers to contact their feelings and seek help outside.
Second, what is the tipping?
The sharpening we often hear often appears in hotels and other places. But in fact, in ancient times, the word was not only used in inns. In many Ming and Qing novels, we can often see the figure of "sharpening", for example, the fifteenth time in "Dream of the Red Chamber", it is written: "At that time, Qin Zhong was riding a horse with his father's car, and suddenly saw Baoyu's little squatter running and asked him to go to the sharpening." Another example is "The Strange Situation Witnessed in Twenty Years", which reads: "This time out of Beijing, I was sharp in Zhangjiawan and saw an inscription wall poem, and two sentences in it were good." The fourth time in the "Biography of the Children's Heroes" is also cloudy: "On the board, there are many single guests who are buying and selling, and they eat there." ”
Some people even use "sharpening" in poetry, for example, there are two sentences in the anonymous "Yantaikou Zhan": "Dim sum can also block the wind and cold, and people who go out early hit the small tip." There are also sharp stations derived from the tip, and people often call the place where they can stop and rest and eat during the journey as the "sharp station", for example, the fourth time in the "Biography of the Children's Heroes", there is "the tip station is not lonely".
It can be seen that the word tip is not only used in the inn, the ancients will use this word when speaking and creating, and the tip has become a conventional semantic symbol.
The inn in the "Map of the Upper River of the Qingming Dynasty"
The Qing Dynasty scholar Fogg explained that "hitting the sharp" is: "Today's people are in service, and they eat in the japanese and the middle of the day, which is called the sharpening." "The basic connotation of sharpening is to stop and rest for dinner, and there are several different ways to say how the word comes from.
Fogg first refuted that the "sharp" of the sharp point was not derived from the word "between the accommodations" in the middle of the way, but evolved from the "fire". He believes that during the Yuan and Ming dynasties, people dined in restaurants on the way and called it "lighting fire", and the word "lighting fire" was also very common in Ming and Qing novels. For example, feng Menglong's "Yu Shi Mingyan" of the Ming Dynasty once wrote: "Walking hungry and thirsty, I occasionally came to a village to rest my feet and beat a fire." Wang Shifu's "Records of the West Chamber" also once wrote: "Tianmingye, let's go early, and light a fire in front." In the eighty-fourth episode of journey to the West, it is also written: "We have a total of ten brothers, four of whom first came to the house to light the fire, and six of whom borrowed outside the city to rest." ”
Opera "The Tale of the West Chamber"
In the Yuan Dynasty, restaurants and inns were also called "lighting shops". When we compare the meaning of "lighting fire" with the meaning of "tipping", we can find that the meaning of the two is basically the same, plus the glyphs of the two are similar, so Fogg believes that "sharpening" is likely to be a mistake from the word "fire". Since people mistakenly "lighting fire" for "sharpening", they have become more and more accustomed to the term "sharpening" and forgotten the original "lighting".
As for why it is called a fire? Some people think that ten people in the ancient army ate together as a "gang", so it was called "lighting fire". Some people also believe that in ancient times, people would use flint stones to pound each other to make a fire, because cooking is also called "fire".
After Fogg, Li Yuanfu of the Qing Dynasty put forward another theory in the "Chang Tan Series", he believed that the former wooden joints were easy to loosen and fall off, so people often cut wood into small wooden tips and inserted them into these joints to maintain the stability of wooden tools, which is called "tipping". Li Yuanfu speculated that the popular word "hitting the tip" in the Ming and Qing dynasties was derived from this, "the meaning of the degree of tip is said to be halfway through." The belly is weak and weak, and it is necessary to eat the truth, just as the wooden vessel adds the wooden tip also.". Li Yuanfu believes that people eat in the middle of the journey to replenish their physical strength, just like adding wooden tips to keep them running, so "sharpening" has evolved from the original repair of wood to people stopping to eat halfway.
Compared with Li Yuanfu's statement, Fogg's statement is obviously more convincing, so the saying that "sharpening" is a false origin of "lighting fire" is widely circulated. Until modern scholars have put forward another theory, that "tipping" is neither derived from the "fire" error, nor is it derived from the theory of wood, but from the perspective of exegesis, the "tip" of "tipping" should be derived from the sound error of "foot"(originally a word, foot is partial, pronounced can)". "Guangyu Shiyi III": "'Foot, stop', is commonly known as a sharp character." This word is to take a nap, because of the small rest and eat, so the snack is also known as the tip. The ancients said that "foot" is often replaced by the word "pointed", so "playing foot" has become "pointing".
But from the perspective of modern Chinese, why is the jianzi reading jiɑn mixed with the "foot tree" pronounced cɑn? This is because the pronunciation of the ancients is different from that of modern people, and even the ancients are divided into ancient sounds, middle sounds and near ancient sounds. In the ancient pronunciation, the pronunciation of the sharp character is very similar to cɑn, so reading it becomes a sharpening.
The evolution of the word "sharp" is interesting, but it is rarely used anymore. But there is one word that appears in inns as often as sharpening, but has been used from ancient times to modern times, and that is "staying". The meaning of stay is the same as accommodation, and if you want to ask why stay is synonymous with accommodation, you have to go back to the Eastern Han Dynasty.
It is said that there is a man named Xu Xiao in Nanchang in the Eastern Han Dynasty, who is knowledgeable and has a poor family but is indifferent to fame and fortune. Xu Fan, who was also in Nanchang, admired his people and visited him many times, Xu Wei was touched by Xu Fan's spirit and often visited Xu Fan. Xu Fan out of respect for Xu Xiao, specially made a bed for Xu Xiao, usually hung on the wall, Xu Xiao came down to let Xu Xiao sit, the two often talked at night with candles, Xu Xiao slept on this bed. Therefore, "Xu Fan stays" also has the meaning of attaching importance to respecting talents, and "staying" has gradually developed into the meaning of accommodation.
Wen Shijun said
Reverse travel and inns were extremely important to the ancient Chinese people, and its emergence itself was the product of the intensification of population flow and commercial development, and it flourished in the late period of ancient China, so that the rulers could not stop its rapid development. Although the word "sharpening" is very popular in inns, it is not limited to the use of inns, but more has become a conventional group memory circulated among the people, its source is either from "lighting", or from the "sharpening" of repairing wooden utensils, or it may be due to sound errors as modern scholars say. But in any case, it has become a symbol, after all, whenever the traveler steps into the inn, the enthusiastic guy greets him and greets - "Officer, sharpening or staying in the hotel?" The tired body and mind can finally get some comfort.
bibliography
Zheng Xiangmin: "Rheology of Ancient Chinese Hotels", Ph.D. thesis of Xiamen University, 1999.
Ni Peisen, "The Origin of "Sharpening" and "Staying"", Language Monthly, No. 12, 2003.
Hou Xudong, "From the House of the Dynasty to the Shop: The Han Dynasty County Mansion and the Six Dynasties Residence Shop Kaolun", Journal of Tsinghua University, No. 5, 2011.
Mo Sujuan: "Research on the Hotel Industry in Chang'an in the Tang Dynasty", Master's Thesis of Shaanxi Normal University, 2011.
Zhang Xiaoying, "Identification and Interpretation of "Hitting the Sharp"", Journal of Aba Normal University, No. 4, 2014.
Liu Dezeng: "Qin Dynasty Clothing, Food, Housing and Travel", Zhonghua Bookstore, 2015.
(Author: Haoran Wenshi Jingsu)
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