Chinese culture is broad and profound, has a long history, and is all-encompassing, and one of the branches is the colloquialism. There are three characteristics of colloquialisms, one of which is that they are easy to understand, which is the expression of the grounding of the sayings. The second is catchy, which is one of the reasons why the saying is widely circulated. The third is to be concise and concise, which is the value of the proverb.
The saying comes from life, acts on life, the field involved, nature is extremely extensive, today to talk about this saying, is involved in "xiangshu", the so-called xiangshu, is the "xiangren art", it is the same as feng shui, is a folk science with a long history.
The old ancestors recognized people: "The head is small and fluttering, and the feet are long in the bitter road", is it accurate? Is it still useful?
In fact, this saying, the literal meaning, is not difficult to understand, in line with the characteristics of the saying that is easy to understand. "The head is small and fluttery", in short, that is, the head grows relatively small, "the foot is long in the bitter road", in short, the foot grows longer.
Why did the ancients think that a small head is not good?
There are four main explanations: First, there is an idiom, called "thief eyebrow mouse eye", is to describe the facial features of people look like rats, as we all know, rats in nature, the head is also relatively small, therefore, the head grows small, in the ancient impression, similar to "skull eyebrow mouse eyes"
Second, the ancients took it for granted that the size of the mind was associated with man's intelligence and wisdom, and of course, this kind of thinking was of course inappropriate to judge people by their appearance.
Third, in Chinese medicine, the brain is believed to be the house of Qiheng, and the ancients said: "Brain, marrow, bone, pulse, bile, female cells." This six, the theory of earth qi", the brain is in the first place, and the ancients also associated the size of the head with the brain, and then with physical health.
Fourth, in the aesthetics of the ancients, it is felt that if the head is relatively small, it is not good-looking.
Due to the above four reasons, coupled with the Confucian "Mandate of Heaven" preconceived concept, people associate small heads with fate, and think that people with small heads have a rough fate, so there is the first half of the proverbial phrase "head small fixed floating"
The so-called "floating puff" refers to the duckweed floating on the surface of the water, which is a metaphor for the ups and downs of life.
The second half of the proverbial saying, "The foot is long in the path of suffering", what does it mean?
Here we have to mention a bad habit of feudal society - foot binding. According to the data, foot binding began to appear from the late Song Dynasty, and began to rise in the Southern Song Dynasty, believing that the "three-inch golden lotus" was beautiful, of course, this deformed aesthetic was a kind of destruction and oppression of ancient women.
Of course, the ancient feudal society was a hierarchical society, and people were divided into three, six, and nine grades, for example, in the "Zuo Zhuan", it was mentioned: "There are ten days in the sky, and there are ten grades in people."
The "nine streams" in the idiom "three teachings and nine streams" are also divided into "upper nine streams", "middle nine streams" and "lower nine streams".
In ancient times, "foot binding" was to satisfy the feudal scholar's sense of superiority, so in ancient times, only women from rich families such as everyone's boudoir and Miss Qianjin could wrap their feet.
And as a working woman, working at sunrise and resting at sunset, she had to do farm work and did not wrap her feet.
In feudal society, under the suppression of the landlords, the peasants' lives were very hard, so they would say: "In the long and bitter road of feet"
summary:
Folklore, to be combined with the unique social background of the saying to interpret, if you use the perspective of the god of today's people to look at the sayings left by the ancients, it will inevitably be too biased.
Looking back at this saying: "The head is small and fluttering, the feet are long and bitter", it reflects the thinking of the ancients at that time and the social environment in which they lived, and today, the environment in which people live has changed, so this saying is no longer used.
What do you think about this, welcome to comment on the exchange.