On the surface, "Xu Niang is half old" is to describe a woman's old age and decline, the true story behind this idiom is indeed no longer young, but what is even more lamentable is the tragedy of her and her husband hurting each other.
As the name suggests, the so-called Xu Niang is indeed surnamed Xu, fang name Zhaopei, she is not an ordinary middle-aged woman, but the most talented emperor of the Southern and Northern Dynasties - the wife of The Liang Yuan Emperor Xiao Xuan, Xiao Xuan and his brothers Xiao Tong, Xiao Gang and his father Liang WuDi Xiao Yan in the literary world is comparable to the "Three Caos", that is, Cao Cao, Cao Pi, Cao Zhi.
However, the marriage between this talented husband and Xu Niang did not have the poetic feelings of the literati and inkers, and the painting style of their daily life was like this: "Emperor Three and Two Years Enter the Room", that is, Emperor Xiao of Liangyuan only went to Xu Niang's boudoir once every two or three years.
Such a rare frequency of interaction shows that the couple has basically become strangers, and Xu Niang, like many married women, is trapped in a widowed marriage.
But because Xiao Xuan was the emperor with three thousand harem beauties, even without Xu Niang, there would be other beauties to give hugs to her; but for Xu Niang, she only had one husband, so the emotional gap brought about by widowed marriage could only be borne unilaterally by her, and Xiao Xuan could not understand it at all.
But if people are not grass and trees, who can be ruthless? People's yearning for beautiful love is innate, regardless of age and era. Therefore, the second half of the sentence of "Xu Niang is half old" is "still full of affection", which means that even if Xu Niang is no longer young, she is still an amorous species.
The amorous Xu Niang faced her husband who ignored her, and also used various ways to fight and vent, such as because Xiao Yi only had one eye to be sound, and the other eye was blind, Xu Niang only put on half of her makeup to tease him; for example, because she was not favored, she often used wine to dispel her sorrows and get drunk.
Because Xiao Xuan had many concubines who were younger and more beautiful than Xu Niang, and had long lost interest in the fading Xu Niang, these operations of Xu Niang did not cause Xiao Xuan's half pity, but only made Xiao Xuan more disgusted and far away from her. In this way, Xu Niang fell deeper and deeper in the widowed marriage and could not extricate herself.
In the face of widowed marriage, married women in ancient times generally had three ways to deal with their amorous feelings: the first was like Li Feng in "Dream of the Red Chamber" to strangle this kind of love, to be a good family woman who was "like a mallet and her heart was like dead ashes", which was in line with the ethical standards of "three from four virtues" in feudal society, and was generally accepted by people at that time.
The second is to pin this love on their sons, which is a choice that most women in feudal society will make unconsciously.
Because of the absence of the husband, they will give the husband the emotion of a brain transfer to the son, when the son marries back to the daughter-in-law, as a mother-in-law they will feel the invasion of the third party, so we see that the relationship between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in China has been very bad for thousands of years, not so much that the mother-in-law is robbing the son with the daughter-in-law, but rather robbing the husband.
The third is like Xu Niang: neither strangling the love seed, nor transferring this emotion to the son, but pinning the immortal love seed on the man other than the original husband.
If this kind of behavior occurs after the end of the marriage relationship, it is called to find another good person and pursue true love; but if it occurs during the existence of the marriage relationship, it was called red apricot out of the wall in ancient times, and now it is called cheating, and it has been spurned by the world throughout the ages.
Because of the low status of women in ancient times, under normal circumstances, only men divorced their wives, and few women abandoned their husbands. What's more, Xu Niang's husband is the emperor, and it is even more impossible to be abandoned by Xu Niang, only Xu Niang was beaten into the cold palace by her husband.
Therefore, Xu Niang's empathy behavior can only occur during the existence of the marriage, and she is also nailed to the column of historical shame with the notoriety of a slut for thousands of years.
Specifically, Xu Niang's derailment object is more than one person, they are the monk Zhi Yuandao, the poet He Hui, Xiao Xuan's retinue and Ji Jiang, "Although Xu Niang is old, she is still affectionate" is Ji Ji Jiang's evaluation of Xu Niang. These affairs were already intolerable to the world, and when they reached the emperor's husband, they set off a bloody storm.
It is said that after Xiao Xuan heard about this, he forced Xu Niang to commit suicide by throwing herself into a well under the pretext that the death of Lady Wang, the pet concubine, was killed by Xu Niang.
Xu Niang's death did not stop Xiao Xuan's revenge on her, Xiao Xuan fished out her body and returned it to the Xu family in the name of repudiating his wife, forbidding xu Niang to organize funerals for Xu Niang with the specifications of the royal family, and also strictly forbidding Xu Niang's children to run for her funeral, and even personally wrote a poem "Slut Qiu Sifu" to humiliate Xu Niang and make her stink for thousands of years.
Behind the idiom of "half-old Xu Niang" is the tragic epitome of the empathy of married women in ancient times, and the objective reason for this tragedy is that women in ancient patriarchal society did not have the right to actively get rid of widowed marriage, and the reason for women themselves lies in the second half of this idiom: "Still still affectionate"!
And this love is a demon in the husband who no longer loves her, and the man who pays for extramarital marriage is not a woman, morally degenerate, how to place it is not appropriate, after all, it is wrong to pay.
Author: Gao Yuan