The lights are like water, crushing the moonlight in the sky, and like the stars falling one after another, floating and sinking in the sea of people. You and I in the sea of people, although we do not know each other, will look at the same lamp. Although I know that all beings under the shadow of the lamp are also bathed in its light, at this moment, at this moment, it is only lit up for you and me.
The lights are amiable because where there are lights, there must be people there. Lights and people are always accompanied by people. Even walking on a deserted wild path weighed down by clouds and dark nights, and seeing a lamp on a lonely boat on the riverbank in the distance, a kind of moving warmth will rise in the lonely heart. On the night of the Lantern Festival, a thousand lights are in full bloom, and the bustling noise of people and lights reflecting each other can make people feel that this is a lively fireworks world.
Each other under the lights will also be close to each other because of this human fireworks. Even if the plague god is still taking an arbitrary step and swinging around, forcing people to close their doors and silence their mouths, the thousands of lights lit on the streets of the Lantern Still give comfort to the hearts of people who are isolated from each other. Once the epidemic shows signs of taming, under the dazzling lights, there will be a noisy crowd like in previous years.
People meet under the lamp, meet under the lamp, and the clothes are dyed with the same light. This kind of bustling feeling of lighting on the world is a rationale for ancient and modern times. The Southern Song Dynasty poet Xin Shuyi's depiction of the Shangyuan Lantern Festival's "Qingyu Case and New Year's Eve" is the most familiar phrase for the Chinese people:
"The east wind blooms a thousand trees at night, and more blows down, and the stars are like rain." BMW carved car fragrant road.
The sound of the phoenix vibrates, the jade pot turns, and the fish and dragon dance all night.
Moth snow willow golden wisps, laughter full of dark incense. ”
In "Qing Ping Le", the Song Dynasty Shangyuan Lantern Society.
The starry rain in the words blows down, and the fish and dragon dance at night, like a dream, but it is not an empty thought, but a portrayal of the true appearance of the Lantern Lantern in Lin'an. In "The Past Affairs of Wulin", Zhou Mi had an interesting place to count the types of the capital city of the Southern Song Dynasty, and the lights were grand, there were "the circle is large, the diameter is three or four feet, all five colors of glass, landscapes, characters, flowers and bamboo, feathers, all kinds of wonderful, as if coloring the face", there is a kind of "boneless lamp", "although the circle bones are all done by glass", there is a huge glass lamp mountain, "its height is five zhang, the characters are stored in the organ activities, the big color building is stored", between the beams and pillars of the hall, there are all kinds of ingenious flower lanterns, "making various color stories, dragons and phoenixes, meandering like life, and the crown of the lamps." The huge Aoshan Mountain, which is composed of various colored flower lanterns, is "golden furnace brain musk, such as the five colors of auspicious clouds, brilliant and dazzling, illuminating the heavens and the earth, thousands of kinds of mountain lamps, extremely new, strange and strange, all-purpose".
Under the moonlight, the city shines brightly, the lights and shadows run rampant, the men and women of the people, Luo Qi is like a cloud, as if this temporary capital city under the coercion of the powerful enemy in the north has forgotten the old capital of Tokyo, which is trapped in the dust, forgotten the perch that staggers to the south, forgets the Jin Ge Rong horse, forgets the sorrow and hate, and just sinks in the peaceful dream of this light and dust.
But the reason why the lamp is a lamp is precisely because it is lit by people, and it is also the hearts of people who are looking forward to the light. It is true that too prosperous lights will make people's minds messy, in the noise of the eyes and ears can not be autonomous, forget the self, but in the intersection of the lights, is also a place to find memories, their own lost memories, like old dreams fading in the night, under the outline of the lights, gradually clear:
"The multitudes looked for him a thousand times.
Looking back,
But the man was in the middle of the night. ”
The crane in "Qing Ping Le" is a marquee.
1. Old dreams
"At that time, there were no electric lamps, and the light source of all lights was either oil or wax, and oil was also vegetable oil, no kerosene; wax was also old-fashioned butter wax dipped in wheat straw, and there was no foreign candle."
Yanjing dreams far away, and the countryside is deep. At that time, "holding the knowledge of the old and the new that I learned in the private schools and primary schools in the countryside, I opened my timid eyes", peeked into Deng Yunxiang, the ancient imperial capital of Beijing, and after deeply tasting the feeling of the waves and the sorrow of the wind and rain, I once again recalled the flavor of the old capital, and I was already sitting under the bright and dangling electric lamp. But as a generation that grew up under the candlelight oil lamp, those old things are like ancient dreams, and the longer the years go by, the clearer they precipitate in the memory. Recall the old-fashioned candles, all calculated by weight, a pound of a few, called "several heads". For example, a pound of four candles is called "four heads". Although there are also dragon and phoenix happy birthday candles with flying golden fushou characters on the red, which can be done to weigh a few pounds, the lanterns, yarn lamps, colored lanterns, glass lamps, filament lamps, etc. on the Lantern Market are inserted with wax below the "four heads". The degree of light is naturally not as good as today's electric lamps, but in Deng Yunxiang's memories, these lanterns lit by faint candlelight "although there is no dazzling light, there is a hazy mood." Therefore, the ancients under the lantern moonlight, admiring thousands of lights, will produce a sense of dream. Just like Deng Yunxiang quoted by the late Qing Dynasty scribe Guo Jiongbai's "Partridge Heaven and New Year's Eve", the old Beijing Lantern Lights:
"The water department lamp is broken for a while, and the story of Chang'an is more known. The spring wind blew up the dream of the end of the world, and only the silver toad quietly entered the door. ”
The Ministry of Water, also known as the Ministry of Works in the Six Parts of the Book of Shang. The Ministry of Works was originally the office that presided over the construction and construction, and there were many skilled craftsmen in the ministry, so the Lantern Lanterns produced were the most gorgeous and exquisite. The "Occasional News of Heavenly Encounters" written by the Qing Dynasty records that "all six have lamps, but the Ministry of Works is the most prosperous, and within the head gate, the lights are four rings, the walls are empty, and they are filled with lamps; false corridors, with lights, and lights are illusory, and lamps are their doors, lamps and rooms, and lamps and their furnishings, and all the courtyards are lamps."
Elizabeth Keith's depiction of the old Beijing Night Market in the 1910s is more bustling and noisy than Keith's night market.
Although the lights of the Ministry of Works were allowed to be visited by the common people during the lantern display period before and after the Lantern Festival, for most ordinary people, the lights of the Yamen were not relatively friendly, even if they were luxurious and exquisite. The lanterns displayed on the street markets that come and go on weekdays make people feel more intimate and cute. Beijing's place name still has the name of "Dengshikou", and the subway and bus also have separate stations here. Take the night train out of the station and look around, the traffic on the road is surging, the shops are flashing neon, the lights of the buildings are lit, and the world illuminated by electric lights is undoubtedly brighter and more dazzling than the shimmer of oil lamps and candles, but it seems to be less exciting.
Feng Zikai," "Ah Da went to borrow rice, begging for lanterns."
After all, light is commonplace in today's metropolises, and our eyes have become so accustomed to being surrounded by ubiquitous lights that we have forgotten the night overhead, and for centuries the dead silence and ignorance of darkness have been planted deeply into the hearts of people, and for thousands of years every household has spent long nights in the dark, and for the vast number of poor people who cannot afford to buy lamp oil and candles, who cannot illuminate the dark room, half of their lives are in the dark.
Therefore, the Lantern Lights made people at that time feel so excited. As described in "The Occasional News of Heavenly Delights", "The first moon rises, the streets are dusty, the soldiers and women are gathered, the children are singing, the sound of the shops is like thunder, the good deeds burn 'water pouring lotuses' and 'one chrysanthemum' each spark on the road, and the viewers are like clouds." The Nine Tracks of the Nine Tracks, even in the evening can not move, the incense car BMW, in the middle of the mistake, the more there is no way out, and the more they continue to advance, the more crazy people in the country will be covered for several days" - the Lantern Lantern festival will be a carnival for the common people, and it is a festival for countless ordinary poor people to compete for the light after a year of darkness. Lantern Festival is the brightest day of the past year.
Deng Yunxiang's nostalgic hometown in the era of electric lights is like an old dream that looks like a real thing, and he believes that it is just because it is dim and unique, which can evoke people's old dreams. For those who live in the era of candles and oil lamps, they may want to be brighter. From the "Book of Sui" in the fifteenth night of the first month of the first month, "torchlight candle world", to the Tang Dynasty Lu Zhaolin's poem "The color is far away, the light is far away from the sky", and then to the Ming Dynasty Fan Wenguang's "Chang'an day charming eyes, do not see the lamp field to see the market" of the Beijing lamp market. The light like daylight is always a miracle that people aspire to create at the Lantern Festival, and the grand scene of the lights is also the old dream of the ancient scribes.
The huge Aoshan in the "Ming Xianzong Lantern Xingle Map".
2. Dreaming
Speaking of dream masters, Zhang Dai can be described as a leader. His "Tao'an Dream Memories" is exactly the old dream that this former dynasty relic has woven for himself by memory. This self-proclaimed "good lantern" of the life home, once had a pithy and straightforward comment on the principle of lighting:
"There are not many lights, always ask for a light."
In "Tao'an Dream", he did not hesitate to describe the beautiful lights he personally witnessed. When he was a child, he once rode on the neck of the old servant in the family and went to the home of Wang Xinjian, the most famous collector in the southern part of the ming dynasty, to see the lamp, "the lamps are all precious and gorgeous, the beaded lamp material is no matter what, that is, the horn lamp also depicts gold fine paintings, and the glitter covers it", and he himself put the lamp, which is "like a rafter", and specially sent people to trim the wick of the burned coal, so as to ensure that "the light bursts out of the wall, everything is seen" - I think he will be ecstatic when he sees today's incandescent bulbs. In Shaoxing, where he lived, the lightscape was famous in the sea. The reason why Shaoxing people are keen on lighting is none other than him, "bamboo low, lamp low, candle low." The untouchable, the old family can do it; the lowly, the old family is ashamed of not being able to light up." Every time at the lantern festival, "from zhuangkui to poor eaves and lanes, there are no lights and no sheds." "Bright snow lights hang at the entrance of the alley, and six small light balls are hung around it," the street is in hundreds, the alley is in ten, and from the alleyway back into the alley, the stacks are stacked, and the freshness is fluttering, which is also moving." ”
It was such a glittering day that became the old dream that illuminated the gloomy evening scene of this old man who had been displaced and displaced in the chaos of the war.
The lively Lantern Festival scene in the Ming Dynasty's "Shangyuan Lantern Color Map".
In Zhang Dai's old dreams that surged into his heart like a galaxy, he specifically mentioned the ten most proud lanterns he had hidden in his life. These ten lanterns also have many twists and turns in their origins, they were originally ordered by a neighbor who was an official in Fujian, and asked the carvers to work very skillfully, which took two years to create, but the inspector who ordered the lamp had died, so the official who wanted to tie the favor with the shangguan but had to take them back to his hometown, and after more than ten years, he heard that Zhang Dai liked the lanterns, so he gave them to them.
Zhang Dai did not describe how "poor and ingenious" these ten lamps were, but said that he rewarded the neighbor with fifty gold, but the value was "not one out of ten.". For these ten lamps, he deliberately spent a lot of money, using burnt beads, material silk, croissants, and yarn to make auxiliary lamps to surround and set off. The more he tried to cover up, the more he aroused people's curiosity about this lantern that had long disappeared in the dust of history and now only had a few cross records.
All kinds of flower lanterns in Fujian.
Although old dreams are difficult to pursue, clues may still be found in reality. Zhang Dai mentioned that these ten lamps were made in Fujian, but they provided a few traces of dreams. Fujian's lanterns, which have been famous since the Song Dynasty, have been famous in Haiyu, and in the "Past Events of Wulin", it is specifically mentioned that when the Southern Song Dynasty Lin'an Chengping was in place, Fuzhou once offered Chinese lanterns to the palace. "Pure white jade, dazzling, like a clear ice jade pot, refreshing to the heart." The Song Dynasty's "Chronicle of the Three Mountains" records the beautiful scene of the lights in Central Fujian:
"The government and the great brakes in the city all hung lamp balls, lotus lamps, hundred flower lamps, and glass screens, and placed pots and burns. The lamp and the diameter of the remaining, the cluster of hundreds of flowers on it, the burning of insects and ge candles more than ten torch pairs, the color of the building to fight the flames. He is also a paper puppeteer, making an elephant of a pole, a rope, a flying dragon, and a lion dance. ”
Such a dazzling and beautiful lantern scene, to Zhang Dai's late Ming dynasty, is even more blue, fujian Lantern will be like a lone step in Zhongzhou. Xie Zhaochun wrote in the "Five Miscellaneous Tricks" that "the grandeur of the yuan lantern candle in the world is beyond the middle of Fujian". The Ming Dynasty's "Fuzhou Fuzhi" records the long time of the Fuzhou Lantern Festival, "from the eleventh to the obscure day, the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth three nights are particularly prosperous, the shadow lanterns like characters, flowers and fruits, poultry and fish, cutting paper and glass for it, the temple brakes driving Aoshan Mountain, and the wooden frame color shed, makeup story, called 'Tai Pavilion'." Haiyou hundred plays, frying the road. Wang Shimao even described the prosperity of the lights in Minzhong in the "Minbu Shu", "a few steps to set up a table, a table to count the lamps, a household connection, brilliant as a pearl". It is almost in comparison with the stars in the sky.
Various kinds of lanterns displayed in the "Ming Xianzong Lantern Xingle Diagram".
If Zhang Dai can personally experience the Lantern Lights in Mindi, he will definitely leave a shining stroke in his "Tao'an Dream Memories", his old dreams are so strange and magnificent, pouring out on his pen and so real and touching, perhaps it will also take today's readers back to the beautiful and prosperous night of four hundred years ago. Although he only recorded the ten lamps made by the craftsmen in Minzhong in the end, what was hidden in the micro-objects was such a colorful and dazzling life. Although they inevitably fade in the smoke and dust of the years, only a few ink soot remain. But through these few words, coupled with careful consideration and imagination, it may still be possible to open a small corner behind the curtain of centuries to peek into that prosperous time.
The existence of the past does not disappear in vain, and the remnants of those who have left behind still provide a cave to reminisce about the past. I remember the night in Fuzhou a few years ago, when the Lantern Festival had passed, but the lanterns in the market had not been completely removed, at night, the lanterns on the market lit up for a while, and the red, green and green swaying flowers and grass figures seemed to be born in another ancient world, and the faces of pedestrians were either smiling or indifferent, as if their joy and happiness, Yan and Concubine had nothing to do with this lamp. But the lights dotted the glitz of the world. Writing about this, I can't help but think of a young friend Wang Tianxiang who died not long ago, and it was in this year that he took advantage of the hustle and bustle of the Fireworks of the Spring Festival in Fujian to shoot the historical short film set in Fuzhou at the end of the Ming Dynasty. He had promised me to stay until the New Year, and he was sure to take me to his hometown of Fu'an to see the Lantern Lantern Lights that fell to the ground like a galaxy and fell like a battlefield flame — and this eventually became a promise that could never be fulfilled, leaving only myself, sitting in the dim light shadow, through the short film he shot that year, to reminisce about the lantern event that I had never been to and could never reach.
The name of this short film is "Three Mountains Old Dream".
Wang Tianxiang, who played Wang Jiansheng in "The Old Dream of The Three Mountains", carries a Ming Dynasty lantern.
3. Dream hunting
Dreams are sometimes the reflection of day and night, sometimes the mirror images of the past in the present, the so-called old dreams, which is exactly the case. Writer Bingxin's old dream about lights, because it was included in the middle school Chinese textbook, is now familiar to everyone. In the essay "Little Orange Lantern", written on January 3, 1957, Bing Xin recalls an old incident twelve years ago, that is, the day before the Spring Festival, she went to visit a friend on the outskirts of Chongqing, but happened to meet a little girl, this little girl was "eight or nine years old, thin and pale face, frozen purple lips, hair is very short, wearing a very worn-out dress and pants, barefoot wearing a pair of straw shoes", which made her feel pity and curiosity. So she bought a few big red oranges at the door, and in the dark fog, she walked on the crooked cobblestone road to the little girl's home.
Bing Xin, Wan Jian painted the comic strip illustration of "Little Orange Lantern", from The Fuchun River Pictorial, No. 12, 1984.
This old dream gradually stepped into a gloomy and cold place: a very small and dark room, sweet potato porridge in a casserole pot that was used as a Chinese New Year's Eve meal, blood stains on the head, and the sick mother of the little girl. "The glimmer of the fire gradually dimmed, and it became darker outside", but just as the darkness was about to engulf the hut, a warm light appeared in the little girl's hand, and she used a knife to cut off a section of the skin on the orange, took out the orange petal, and placed it next to her mother's pillow, and the remaining orange peel was like a bowl. She "took with great agility the large needle in the hemp thread, put the small orange bowl on all sides, like a small basket, and carried it with a small wooden stick, and took a short piece of wax from the windowsill and lit it inside." ”
She handed the little orange lamp to Bingxin and said to her:
"It's dark, the road is slippery, this little orange lamp shines on you up the mountain!"
B station netizen "Beauty Art" made the year of the tiger small orange lamp.
This is the warmest and brightest moment in the dark night, the meaning of the small orange lamp, and the textbook naturally has an obvious standard answer. But few people seem to have noticed that in Bingxin's hometown of Fujian, small orange lanterns have a more subtle meaning. Oranges are originally the specialties of Fujian, the hometown of Bingxin, and the specialties of Fujian Province are introduced in the "Three Mountains Chronicle", there are honey oranges, vermilion oranges, milk oranges, mountain oranges, kumquats, and moon oranges, which are called "Fu Oranges" by the Min people. Min yin "orange" is homophonous with "ji", and "fu orange" is "fu ji". And the oranges just ripen on the eve of the New Year, so they are the most festive things in Fujian. "Lamp" is homophonous with "Ding" in minyin. With oranges as lamps, "orange lamps" are "jiding", which is the meaning of zhao ji tim ding. Liu Cuikui, a Min man of the Qing Dynasty, described this orange lamp in the "Tangerine Branch Words":
"The New Year's Eve family knots the color shed, and the paper cuts and candles shine." Whoever cuts the orange in the air is better than the ten lamps of the lotus flower. ”
Growing up in the ice heart of Fujian, it is natural not to understand the meaning of orange lanterns in their hometown. In chongqing, a fog capital thousands of miles away, in a little girl who has never been born, once again seeing the orange lamp in her hometown, the feeling that rises in her heart, in addition to the calm, brave, optimistic spirit and light symbolized by the hazy orange light, I am afraid that there is also some kind of sign of hope that arises in the darkness because of chance encounters, after all, this is the "orange lamp" and also the "Giding":
"The little girl's father must have returned early." Her mother must be fine too, right? Because we're 'all' good! ”
The meaning of the lamp is also contained here, and what it illuminates is the cause of the encounter between people. Let those who have separated be able to follow this cluster of lights to reunite again. Among the many legends of the origin of lantern lights, one is the most widely spread. In this legend, the witty and resourceful courtier of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty saved a young palace girl who wanted to commit suicide by throwing herself into a well on the way to the palace. It turned out that the Shangyuan Festival was approaching, and this palace lady heard that her parents were sick and had a worried heart, but she closed the deep palace and could not meet, so she wanted to die. Dongfang Shuo heard her cries and had a plan in mind, using divination to spread rumors in Chang'an that "Chang'an is robbing, burning the emperor's que, sixteen days of fire, and flaming red supper". Hearing the rumors, Emperor Wu of Han urgently summoned Dongfang Shuo to seek a way to save him, and Dongfang Shuo proposed to order the people inside and outside the capital to shine brightly and pretend to be on fire in the sky, in order to hide from the Emperor of Heaven. During the day of viewing the lights, the palace lady was also allowed to leave the palace to watch the lights, and finally took the opportunity to reunite with her parents.
The scene of the Lantern Appreciation in the late Ming Dynasty edition of the "Yong Huai Tang New Compilation ten misidentification of spring lantern riddles".
When this legend was investigated in folklore in the 1980s, it was found that the area circulated from North China to Lingnan was found, but there was no record of the historical history books Ye Cheng. Although it may have been produced very late, it may not have no origins. The Lantern Festival, the lights and the palace maid's exit from the palace, the three most important elements in the legend, coincide with a real history.
The "Old Book of Tang and the Biography of Wei Shuren" records a historical event that occurred on the fifteenth day of the first month of the fourth year of Tang Zhongzong's shenlong, on this day, the capital city of Chang'an held a shangyuan lantern festival as usual, tang zhongzong and empress Wei Shiwei traveled to the street market to see the lanterns, and from the palace "thousands of women traveled", and these traveling palace women "many did not return".
Although later generations of literati and historians denounced Emperor Zhongzong of Tang's behavior of viewing the lanterns and indulging palace women as absurd and chaotic government, they were greatly criticized. But for those palace ladies who came out of the palace at the Lantern Festival, this was nothing more than a blessing from heaven. They not only escaped six months later from a huge catastrophe no less than the folklore "Burning Emperor Que" - the "Tang Long Coup" that killed a lot. Freed from the cage of the Forbidden Palace, they do not have to be like the thousands of peers before and after, but they can return to their families and reunite with them again.
"Guan Lantern City", from the Ming Dynasty picture book "Emperor Jian Tu Shu", describes the scene of Tang Zhongzong and Wei Hou weifu Chang'an watching the Lantern Lantern Festival.
Among the many reunion stories of the Lantern Festival, the most legendary is the allusion of the broken mirror and the reunion. On the eve of the death of Southern Chen, Xu Deyan and his wife, Princess Lechang, divided a bronze mirror into two, each holding half of the face, and if the country died, the love affair was not broken, and they hoped to see each other, so they used this half of the bronze mirror as a keepsake. They agreed that if she survived, the princess would sell the half-bronze mirror in the city on the fifteenth day of the first month, and he would find his wife. After that, Xu Deyan went through hardships and came to Chang'an, and finally, on the fifteenth day of the first month, he saw an old servant holding a half-faced bronze mirror for sale. He eventually found his wife, who had been taken captive to yang su's mansion in the Yue State, and the two returned to Jiangnan together, "ending up in old age."
Although the bronze mirror is a relic of the reunion of the two, the Lantern Lantern also threads the needle and lead for the marriage between the two. Xu Deyan and Princess Lechang may still remember their homeland of Nanchen, the former Shangyuan Shengchen mountain lantern "shines on the floating glow, fluttering and falling lightly" and "has a full illumination, shame and Hyosung Lian", and when they reunite in Chang'an, they may also notice the prosperity of the new dynasty capital Shangyuan Night "sounding drums in the sky, burning on the ground, people wearing animal faces, men and women's clothes, advocating excellent acrobatics, and strange aliens".
But no matter how brilliant the lights are, no matter how noisy the lamp market is, for those who meet, they are just the lights that reflect the hearts, the fireworks that meet the causes, the light that lights up the vows, and the one who looks back at the lights.
The heavens and the earth are small, and the dead and alive are huge. Therefore, meeting you is not something I can foresee, but having met, please light a lamp to illuminate this long, deep night for me.
Author | Lee Shane
Edit | Go for a walk
Proofreading | Chen Diyan