In the vast sea of books, the "Labyrinth Detective Pierre" series can be regarded as good, beautiful and interesting. Recently, what has made fans excited is that the video game "Labyrinth Detective" adapted from this set of books has been released.
Although the game is niche, it is born with its own fans, and it is not surprising that it has received 96% praise on the Steam platform. It not only presents the magnificent art style of the book in an authentic way, but also turns the reader's familiar still picture into a dynamic, players can manipulate the protagonist, and create many interesting interactions with people and objects in the maze.
"Labyrinth Detective Pierre: Defending the Treasure of the Imperial Labyrinth Tower", [Japanese] Kamigaki Hirofumi / IC4DESIGN, Maruyama Chihiro, Zhen Chunyu translation, Houlang | Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House, February 2019 edition
For many, the labyrinth is so mysterious. As William Henry Matthews, author of Labyrinth Stories, put it, "Whenever a labyrinth is mentioned, people feel an air of fantasy, passion, adventure and mystery around it." ”
The earliest known labyrinths appeared in Egypt and Crete. Since then, the pattern maze, the church maze, the lawn maze, the hedge maze, the stone maze... A variety of labyrinths are emerging, spanning many eras.
Labyrinth and Maze correspond to words, and although they have been used interchangeably throughout history, some researchers have strictly defined their meaning as follows:
Labyrinth (left) and Maze (right)
Labyrinth has only one winding road but no branches, a stroke; Maze has many forks, loops, and dead ends.
Labyrinth has only one entrance, which is also an exit; Maze has different entrances and exits.
Labyrinth's design focus isn't on getting people lost; Maze can be designed like puzzles with varying levels of difficulty and complexity.
Some Labyrinths have spiritual significance, symbolizing the complex and long path to God; Maze can be used in scientific experiments to study spatial consciousness and intelligence.
Labyrinth Story, by William Henry Matthews, translated by Yu Yingbo, Hundred Flowers Literary and Art Publishing House, June 2010
Whether it's Labyrinth or Maze, or a derivative variant or combination, today the labyrinth has shed its original function and is widely used in many scenes of contemporary life. Landscape, architecture, mathematics, psychology, education, these are the fields that need not be said. Mazes are also key elements in many literary works and popular culture products, such as Borges's novel, the film The Shining, and the game Dungeons & Dragons.
Being attracted to the labyrinth is probably a common humanity. We are immersed in the labyrinth game books we encountered as children, and this reading experience does not expire until adulthood (even if people have long given a universal solution to the maze through mathematical techniques). Whether it is a two-dimensional maze on paper, a three-dimensional maze in real life, or a video game maze with dynamic effects like "Maze Detective", it can make people briefly abandon the vulgar dust, fully concentrate their minds and spirits, and start a wonderful wrestling with the maze designer.
But the labyrinth originated in the West, and for China, it is an imported product. So, is there something similar to a labyrinth that quietly grew up in ancient China?
The labyrinth screen from the movie The Shining
Written by | Zhang Zhe
01
Incense:
A burning two-dimensional labyrinth
Yinxiang, also known as seal incense, is an incense made of Chinese characters or graphic molds for timekeeping, prayer, health maintenance, etc. Out of aesthetic elegance and the need to maximize the use of space, the shape of the mold often twists and turns, which at first glance looks like a labyrinth.
Fill the incense powder into the mold, remove the mold incense powder will form. Light one end and let the incense powder burn sequentially toward the other end. Obviously, no matter what word or drawing is used to make the mold, the burning path must be a stroke. That is, the incense combines the characteristics of Labyrinth (no forks, loops, and dead ends) and Maze (different entrances and exits) and is inherently a labyrinth.
Tang Dynasty poet Wang Jian and others appeared in the works of incense. By the Song Dynasty, the number of related poems multiplied, indicating that incense printing had become quite popular. However, these texts lack a specific record of the incense form system. It is conceivable that the early incense print patterns were simple, such as the auspicious clouds that began to take shape.
Over time, people gradually designed intricate incense print patterns. It is necessary to mention the "New Incense Spectrum", because it preserves a very special incense map: "The Great Yan Seal Map" (also known as the "Great Yan Seal Incense Map" in later records). The exterior of this picture is circular, but the structure of the internal path is quite dense, meticulous, and complex, which is unforgettable.
The Great Yan Seal Diagram included in the "New Incense Spectrum"
The concept of Dayan comes from Zhou Yi, and the designer of this picture probably wanted to use it to express the mystery and complexity of Zhou Yi's philosophy, but in today's view, he mistakenly kneaded traditional Chinese culture and Western culture together. Because at a glance, the "Great Yan Seal Diagram" and the Western-style labyrinth are almost indistinguishable.
Chen Jing, the author of the "New Xiang Spectrum", was active from the end of the Southern Song Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty. The text attached next to the "Great Yan Seal Diagram" shows that the figure was added by others when they copied the book, which was in the second year of the Celestial Calendar (1329), which was already in the middle and late Yuan Dynasty. In the Yuan Dynasty, overseas exchanges flourished, and there were endless exchanges with the West in terms of culture, religion, and trade. If the ancient Chinese began to be widely exposed to the labyrinth patterns transmitted during this period, and to modify and apply them, then the "Great Yan Seal Diagram" recorded in the "New Incense Spectrum" is not an outlier.
Since then, the incense has continued, and the record of incense has become more and more detailed. Several of the incense patterns recorded in Gao Lian's "Eight Notes on Zunsheng" of the Ming Dynasty are more complex shapes. As for Ding Hu's "Printing Incense Drawings" of the Qing Dynasty, it will be specifically mentioned later.
02
gardens:
A three-dimensional labyrinth for viewing
Before the Qing Dynasty, China should not have a real maze of real scenes. The word "labyrinth" is occasionally used in literary works, often such as "labyrinth que", "labyrinth grass" and even "labyrinth sign", which has nothing to do with Labyrinth or Maze. The First Western-style Labyrinth landed in China, it was a Kaleidoscope array modeled after a European labyrinth during the Qianlong Period, as part of the Yuanmingyuan's extensive absorption of the essence of gardens from all over the world. The Royal Palace Garden incorporates Western wonders, but ordinary people have no chance to consume it.
Today's Kaleidoscope was rebuilt on the site in the 1980s, and even the Chinese-style pavilion in the center has been changed to a Western-style pavilion.
Xu Dake pointed out in his paper "Comparative Study of Winding Path Patterns and Labyrinth Patterns of Chinese and Western Gardens and Their Applications" that "the form of Western garden 'labyrinths' is relatively rational and pays attention to artificial modeling, and the overall form has a relatively orderly and orderly law, and designers often design through rational thinking through clear, precise and rigorous gardening forms." And its function, as Tong Liao said in the "Outline of the History of Gardening", is usually to "make the tourists who enter the road to twist and turn, sometimes mistakenly into a dead end, easy to enter and difficult to get out, thinking that it is fun." This is incompatible with the design ideas and aesthetic purposes of Chinese gardens.
Chinese gardens value the beauty and fun of nature. In the Ming Dynasty, Ji Cheng advocated in the "Garden Ye" that the garden should be "made by people, as if it is opened from heaven" and "it is naturally interesting, and it does not bother with the work of personnel". Although some elements of Chinese gardens can also make people feel like a labyrinth, such as the intricate roads of the Lingering Garden, and the unpredictable rockeries of the Lion Grove "like wearing nine curved beads" and "like the eight arrays", they are still two systems with the labyrinth of Western gardens.
Qi Biaojia was a famous gardener in the late Ming Dynasty. When introducing the Yushan Garden, which is full of his own painstaking efforts, he particularly emphasizes the well-designed tour route and the experience brought to the visitors by the cover layout: "Only one step at a time, the toe has reached the top of the distant pavilion, and it is also the shrinking land of the pot." Beside the bridge, the beauty of the southeast rocks is exhausted, and this layer is open and the face is suddenly changed. The meaning is that Pengying is illusory, and it is the move of the mountain of foolishness. Scholar Cao Shujuan pointed out that the moving or static way of visiting and the mask layout of the composition of the scenes produce a sequence, "Tourists visiting Yushan Mountain follow the dynamic sequence, constantly overlapping the scene pictures they have successively watched, and developing aesthetic interest from Zhongxing." ”
Qi Biaojia's ingenuity is enough to speak for Chinese gardens. Those labyrinth-like winding paths, rockeries and plants that create a masking effect, in the final analysis, are all accessories for the behavior of viewing, aiming to make the viewing experience of garden visitors change dramatically. In the process of viewing, the Chinese garden that emphasizes the artistic conception, beauty and fun is difficult to directly incorporate the strict Western-style labyrinth as part of itself. Jin Yong's Guiyunzhuang in the late Southern Song Dynasty "the road turns east and west, twists and turns, and what is particularly strange is that the railing pavilion at the turn is exactly the same, a few turns, where can still distinguish between east and west, south and north", although according to the layout of the Qimen Bagua technique, in fact, the description is closer to the Western-style labyrinth, which cannot meet the obsession of chinese gardens for viewing, so it can only exist in fictional works.
03
Formation:
A labyrinth of fantasy fiction
Jin Yong was certainly not the first to attach gossip to a labyrinth. In the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", the general Cao Ren, who is not outstanding in wisdom, casually laid down a formation, which is the extremely complex "Eight Doors Golden Lock Array". "The Eight Doors, Hugh, Life, Wounded, Du, Jing, Dead, Shocked, open." If you enter from the Gate of Life, the Gate of Jing, and the Door of Death, you will be injured if you enter from the Gate of Wounded, The Door of Shock, and the Door of Hugh; and you will die if you enter from the Gate of Death. The enemy military division Xu Shu used these few words to not only break the entrance and exit, but also outlined the correct moving line.
One side designs the maze, the other side cracks the maze, and the eight-door golden lock array looks the same as Maze. In the same book, Zhuge Liang used the "Eight Arrays" to trap the enemy general Lu Xun, the principle is similar to the Eight Doors Golden Lock Array, except that the use of boulders without soldiers, and with the effect of witchcraft, the layout is also dynamic: from "in all directions, there are doors and households", to "when you are anxious to return, there is no way out". The aforementioned Qing Dynasty Zhu Bingqing compared the rockery of the Lion Forest to the Eight Arrays, which also confirms that the formations and gardens are related to the labyrinth imagination of the ancient Chinese.
The Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms and the Book of Shu does record Zhuge Liang's deeds of "making eight arrays". The Eight Arrays were first seen in the Han Dynasty, and were a kind of military formation against enemies, which had nothing to do with mysterious magic. As the name suggests, "formation" originally refers to the method of arranging military formations, but the mystery of Chinese characters is that once the word "law" makes people associate with spells, the military array is painted with a mysterious color. Since the Tang and Song dynasties, there have been many military experts who have explained and even invented the formation method, but the influence of the five elements bagua, qi men and other doctrines on Chinese culture has long been deeply rooted in the marrow, so that the depiction of the array method is often mysterious and mysterious, so that the Ming dynasty He Liangchen can't help but issue such indignant words as "every yin fu family wears chisels, or pretends to know the name of the soldier, and vainly makes a formation map, which is harmful to the deep".
Later generations of Zhuge Liang's image often came with elements such as Taiji Bagua
This tendency of "good chiseling" and "false soldiers" is the same among novelists. The illustration of the eight arrays is interpreted by Luo Guanzhong as a stone array that confuses the enemy according to the attributes of gossip and makes it difficult for him to escape, and then to the "Eight Doors Golden Lock Array" that can scare people even by name, which can be called qualitative change. Other literati also gave birth to such as the "Nine-Qu Yellow River Array" ("Fengshen Yanyi") of the "Nine-Nine-Qu Creation of Tibet", the "Heavenly Gate Array" ("Yang Jia general Yanyi") and so on.
If this kind of creation is placed today, it can be called "Array Cool Text". They may have been collective attempts by ancient Chinese authors to integrate the labyrinth into local culture, but they often bluff with the help of devious illusions, terrifying atmospheres, and the extraordinary abilities of heroes, lacking a specific and objective description of the layout within the battlefield. That is to say, if these authors are regarded as the designers of the labyrinth, they obviously have too much power over the work.
04
Labyrinth:
The ultimate possibility of a Chinese labyrinth?
The process of exploring the way the labyrinth spread in ancient China is like being trapped in a complex and unpredictable labyrinth. Whether it is incense, gardens, or formations in novels, there seems to be no definite evidence of how the labyrinths have changed their development, and it is difficult to confirm whether the mazes have shown a sense of existence outside these areas.
But what is certain is that the labyrinth did quietly pass in, take root in the brains of some ancients, and subtly affect them. Therefore, the rational imagination of the ancient Chinese labyrinth has become a very interesting and challenging thing. The Dutch sinologist Gao Luopei made a mistake and integrated the Elements of the Western Labyrinth into the Ancient Chinese Background, creating the "Labyrinth Case" of the mystery novel series "The Case of Tang Digong".
In this story, in order to find the true will of the deceased Ni Shouqian, Di Renjie must unravel the labyrinth. The labyrinth actually has two levels, one is a two-dimensional paper labyrinth— a scroll of landscape paintings painted by Ni Shouqian before his death; the other is a three-dimensional real-life labyrinth—a garden he built in the eastern suburbs.
The novel directly presents the former in the form of drawings. This paper labyrinth with the four Chinese characters of the "Void Pavilion" as the pattern is actually borrowed by Gao Luopei from the Qing Dynasty Ding Hu's "Printing Incense Drawings". In this way, the incense, the garden, and the novel seem to magically meet in The Labyrinth Case.
The "Void Pavilion" in Ding Hu's book (left) and Gao Luopei's modified "Void Pavilion" labyrinth (right)
However, the incense must be a stroke, and Gao Luopei's modified paper maze combines the characteristics of Maze and Labyrinth: both a loop, a dead end, and an access path, as well as the goal of "reaching the center of the labyrinth"—because Ni's will is hidden in the center of the labyrinth. The problem is that the central dot and perimeter of this paper maze are completely insulated and there are no pathways to reach. That is, if only the regular Labyrinth solution is used, it is absolutely impossible to complete this maze.
At this point, any reader has been defeated. But Di Renjie bears the aura of the protagonist, of course, it is omnipotent - under Gao Luopei's arrangement, Di Renjie and his assistants brave the eastern suburban villa and finally discover its secret:
First, the pine trees planted on the side of the road are codes that mark the turn here (this design inspiration may be related to the Water Margin, Zhujiazhuang is difficult to attack, one of the reasons is that the terrain is like a labyrinth: "The road is difficult to recognize, and it is all Pantuo paths, ranging in width and narrowness.) But if there is a poplar tree, you can turn, and the square is the way to live, and if there is no such tree, it is a dead end");
Second, some pine trees hide trails that lead directly to the center of the maze. And that's not on paper at all!
There is only one truth, but it must be found in the three-dimensional labyrinth, which is just a cover. Some two-dimensional maze lovers are likely to meet the dew after reading "The Labyrinth Case". They will find that the two-dimensional labyrinth designed by Gao Luopei is not serious, and can even be said to be a fraud. Ni Shouqian's testament puzzle can only be reluctantly established when the path of the three-dimensional labyrinth is abruptly presented in Gao Luopei's written description. It is said reluctantly because this trail is different from other roads in the maze and is not visible in its initial state. That is, it tries to take advantage of the usual shelter layout of Chinese gardens to set the key difficulty for the maze.
In addition to gardens and incense, "Labyrinth Case" also uses Chinese painting as a carrier of maze; coincidentally, "Labyrinth Detective" was labeled as "European version of "Qingming On the River" when it was promoted in China, which also shows the similarities between Chinese painting and maze.
Whether it's Labyrinth or Maze, no matter how complex it is, the path itself should be self-explanatory. Although the maze is a puzzle, the designer and cracker should also stand on a fair platform. Hidden paths can be used in some new forms of mazes (a similar design is used in Maze Detective), but not in Labyrinth. Whether it is a two-dimensional maze shown in drawings or a three-dimensional maze described by text, the hidden path violates the general guidelines of maze design. The labyrinth designer (Gao Luopei behind Ni Shouqian) is omniscient and omnipotent, while the cracker (Di Renjie and the reader) can only feel the stones to cross the river. If the reader acquiesces to this injustice, it is tantamount to giving the author unlimited power, slyly glossing over the past with words of any ill-rational design.
Therefore, this mystery novel in the name of the labyrinth and with the labyrinth as the core puzzle would probably attract such readers, who were eager to see the elements of the indian incense, gardens and novels that might open the "Chinese labyrinth" imagination modulated together to generate a magnificent classic labyrinth, so that the labyrinth crashed into the ancient country of the East like a comet descending from the sky, and triggered a mysterious and dark fire. Unfortunately, Gaulope's efforts did not complete the process in the end.
Some references:
"Labyrinth Case", by Gao Luopei and translated by Zhang Ling, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, May 2019
Labyrinth Story, by William Henry Matthews, translated by Yu Yingbo, Hundred Flowers Literary and Art Publishing House, June 2010
"Labyrinth Fun Stories", by Wu Heling and Mao Wandui, Beijing Institute of Technology Press, February 2007
"Labyrinth Detective Pierre: In Search of the Stolen Labyrinth Stone", [Japanese] Hirofumi Kamigaki/IC4DESIGN, Maruyama Chihiro, translated by Chen Jianping, Beijing United Publishing Company, December 2016 edition
"Labyrinth Detective Pierre: Defending the Treasure of the Imperial Labyrinth Tower", [Japanese] Kamigaki Hirofumi, IC4DESIGN, Maruyama Chihiro, translated by Zhen Chunyu, Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House, February 2019 edition
"Dreams are all in the world: The Garden Interpretation System of "Yushan Notes", by Cao Shujuan
A Comparative Study of Winding Path Patterns and Labyrinth Patterns in Chinese and Western Gardens and Their Applications, by Xu Dake
The Art of Puzzle Solving 3 Labyrinth Supplement, by deducemath, http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_8d1adcb301010apr.html
https://www.diffen.com/difference/Labyrinth_vs_Maze
This article is exclusive original content. Author: Zhang Zhe; Editor: Shen Chan; Proofreader: Liu Baoqing. It shall not be reproduced without the written authorization of the Beijing News.