Tiger Year, let us relive the legend of the tiger through the poem Saint Du Fu describing the tiger.
A history of artistic refuge
Du Shi is known as the "history of poetry", which can be described as a highly artistic historical record. He highly combines his personal destiny with the fate of the times, and with the compassion of heaven and earth, condenses everything around him and everything between heaven and earth into a great work of art with a somber literary technique. The turmoil of the times cast Du Fu into the treacherous nature, and the great poet historically recorded what he saw and heard. In the process of escaping from the war in Anshi, Du Fu's poems mentioned the tiger eleven times, and these tiger poems were connected chronologically to become a history of Du Fu's refuge, which is Du Fu's personal refuge history, the history of refuge of the country, or the history of art.
Figure 1: The possible appearance of the tiger ancestor, the dragon and the tiger
In the second year of Tang Zhide (757), Du Fu recalled the fifteenth year of Tianbao (755) to escape the war to Baishui County, Shaanxi, and wrote "Peng Ya Xing": "Late at night Peng Ya Dao, the moon shines on Baishui Mountain. ...... The idiot girl was hungry and biting me, crying out in fear of the tiger and the wolf. Cover his mouth in his arms, and the reverse voice will become more and more disgusted. "The family fled to the Pengya Ancient Road late at night, and under the miserable moonlight, the poor little daughter was hungry, biting her father's hand and crying. But even if it is the only cry that can vent emotions, adults do not dare to let their daughters speak out, because they are afraid of being discovered by tigers and wolves. "Tiger wolf" means pun intended, referring to both hungry wolves and tigers and rebellious enemies. The father had no choice but to take his daughter in his arms and cover her hungry little mouth. The poor little daughter struggled, and the whimpering voice was even more miserable! Whoever has no home, who has no love, who reads such a verse, can not be heartbroken! In the second year of De, Du Fu set out from Fengxiang County, the seat of the imperial court at that time, to the north, to The Prefecture of Shaanxi, where his family was located, and composed the "Northern Expedition": "Du Zi will march north, and cang will ask the family room." ...... Looking back at Fengxiang County, the flag was extinguished in the late Ming Dynasty. ...... The tiger stood in front of me, and the cliff roared and cracked. In the winter of the second year of the Qianyuan Dynasty (759), Du Fu's family traveled from Chengji County in Qinzhou (present-day Tianshui City, Gansu Province) to Tonggu County in Chengzhou (present-day Chengxian County, Longnan City, Gansu Province), passing through bafeng Cliff in the south of present-day Xihe County, and composed "Stone Niches": "The bears roared in my east, and the tiger and leopard called me west." I screamed after the ghost, and I cried in front of me. "It was cold, it was dark, surrounded by mountains and the roads were hard to discern. At this time, the roar of the bear came from the east, the trumpet of the tiger and leopard sounded from the west, and not far behind him, somehow it seemed to be a ghost, and the dark shadow in the bushes in front of it shook and the marmoset made a sad cry. People are in this situation, and they are really afraid. At the end of the second year of the Qianyuan Dynasty, Du Fu's family passed through Tonggu County and Hechi County (present-day Hui County, Longnan City) and wrote "Mupiling": "I smelled tigers and leopards fighting again, and repeatedly stumbled on feng shui. In the winter of the first year of Guangde (763), he set out from Langzhong to Zizhou and composed "Fa Langzhong": "Before the poisonous snake and after the fierce tiger, the creek traveled all day without a village dock." "His daughter was sick, and she was living in a different place, and her feelings were very bitter. In the first year of Yongtai (765), from Chengdu through Jiazhou, he composed "Su Qingxi Yi Feng Huai Zhang Yuanwai's Fifteen Brothers's Xu": "Yueming Wanderer is quiet, afraid of tigers and unable to speak. QingxiYi was in Jianwei County, Jiazhou (present-day Leshan, Sichuan). In the first year of the Great Calendar (766), in the town of Yun'an in present-day Yunyang County, he wrote "Guest Residence": "The gorge opens for 4,000 miles, and the hydration is hundreds of sources. People and tigers live together, and each other's injuries will eventually exist. In the autumn of the second year of Yongtai (766), Du Fu was invited by Bai Maolin, the governor of Kuizhou, to live in Dongtun in Kuizhou (present-day Fengjie, Yunyang, Wushan, Wuxi, chongqing). During his time in Kuizhou, he composed 435 poems, accounting for one-third of Du's poetry, and reached the highest peak of his poetry in quality. His "Antarctica" writes about the customs of the ethnic minority areas between Bashu and Shu in Kuizhou: "The Antarctic green mountains are numerous, and the West River is divided into white valleys." The ancient city is sparsely wooded, and the desert is dense and cold. Snakes of the years are common, windy or smelly. After Du Fu arrived in Kuizhou, Bai Maolin asked him to take care of the public land, and Du Fu had a rare stable life. Dongtun Duohu, "Dongtun Moon Night": "Mud leaves tiger fighting traces, and the moon hangs on the guests to worry about the village." "Night Return": "The return of the night rushed over the tiger, and the mountain black family has slept." One of the twelve songs of "Fu Sorrow": "The people are born in a secluded place, and the tiger has traced the new hoof." "The good life of Shi Sheng in Kuizhou continued into the third year of the Gregorian calendar (768). In this year, Du Fu was homesick and anxious, took a boat out of the Three Gorges and left Kuizhou. Du Fu was unable to return to his hometown after all, and in the fifth year of the Gregorian calendar (770), he died in Yueyang.
Second, a legend that occurred in Gansu
The tiger is one of the most powerful and ferocious beasts on land, regarded by the Chinese as the king of the hundred beasts, worshiped by the Chinese nation, and become a symbol of bravery, majesty and justice. Tigers originated in China, and Gansu is the home of tigers. In 2011, international paleontological experts found the oldest fossil tiger in Longdan Village, Nalesi Township, Dongxiang Autonomous County, Gansu Province, and it is estimated that the tiger ancestor lived between 2.16 million and 2.55 million years ago. In the long history of time and space, tiger ancestors migrated in all directions and gradually derived 9 subspecies, of which the South China tiger is unique to the mainland. South China tigers have been widely distributed in the mainland, and in history, there have been South China tigers in the vast areas from Zhejiang and Fujian in the east, to Qingchuan in the west, to Guangdong and Guinan in the south, and to the Yellow River in the Qinling Mountains in the north. The species of tiger in Du Fu's poem should be the South China tiger.
Figure 2: Bronze gilded bronze of tiger devouring sheep in the Spring and Autumn Period (Gansu Museum collection)
The tigers in Du Fu's poems appear in today's Shaanxi, Gansu, Sichuan, and Chongqing, which are involved in the Qinling Mountains, Daba Mountain, and the Sichuan Basin, which have been richly forested and humid since ancient times, and have produced the most tigers in the country. "Guest Residence": "People and tigers live together in half, and each other hurts each other and eventually exists twice", writing about the profound relationship between tigers and people in the Tang Dynasty. In the vast Tang Dynasty, tigers and people were ethnically flourishing, and between Bashu, the number of people and tigers was simply equal. Tigers eat people, people kill tigers, the two invade each other, hurt each other, but in the end they all coexist in the land of China.
After liberation, with the growth of population and the rapid development of the national economy, people reclaimed and logged the mountainous areas, built roads and mines, seriously impacted the living space of the South China tiger, resulting in frequent incidents of tiger injuries. The contradiction between man and tiger began to intensify, and many local governments began to order the elimination of the South China tiger, and since then the South China tiger population has declined across the board. In this context, Gansu also rounded up tigers, and in 1953 the last tiger in Gansu was captured in Huining County, and since then the tigers have disappeared from the land of Longyuan. Today, the potential survival site of the South China tiger is limited to the junction of Guangdong, Hunan and Jiangxi provinces and the Fujian area. Many scientists believe that the wild South China tiger is extinct.
The tiger attracted the ancestors of China and had a profound impact on Chinese culture. Tigers also have a legendary relationship with Gansu. The ancestors of the Qin state lived in Shaanxi and Gansu, and the "Book of History of Feng Zen" says: "The Duke of Qin Xiang was both the Marquis, ju Xi Chu, and thought that he was the main god of Shao Hao, as Xi Hao, the White Emperor of the Ancestral Temple", Shao Hao, also known as Shao Hao, was the leader of the ancient Dongyi tribe, and the ancestors of the Qin people migrated to Gansu from one of the Shao Hao tribes. Legend has it that Shao Hao wore white clothes, and Qin Guo revered him as his own deity. Zhai Bozan's Manuscripts of Chinese History, Volume II: "(Shao Hao) 'White Emperor Crown Bai Wen. He was originally a white tiger, but he was later used as a totem by the Western tribes and worshipped as the god of the West." The totem of the Shaohao tribe was originally a phoenix bird, probably because of the many tigers in Gansu, the majesty of the tiger attracted the Qin people, so the Qin people described the shape of the Shaohao as a white tiger. In addition, legend has it that the son of Shao Hao, Whose Harvest, has the characteristics of a tiger and rules the West and Autumn. "Etiquette and Moon Order": "The Moon of Meng Qiu,...... Its emperor is less than a young man, and its gods are harvested. Zheng Xuan's note: "Harvest, son of the Shao Hao clan." "Chinese Jin Yu II": "Yu Gong dreamed in the temple, there was a god, a white-haired tiger claw on the human face, and a dragon standing in The West ... Zhan Zhi said: "If the king's words are spoken, then the harvest is also harvested, and the god of heaven's punishment is also." With the rise of the Qin state, the qin state's reverence for the tiger also had a profound impact on Chinese culture. Later, the concept of the Five Elements at the time of the Warring States and the Han Dynasty gradually formed, because of the influence of the Qin State in western China, the white tiger was used as the representative of the West, and the stars in the western sky were named the white tiger. Tigers are hidden and fierce, so the West also represents convergence and slaughter.
Figure 3: Harvest in the Classic of Mountains and Seas in the Overseas Western Classic
The Chinese nation has come all the way from ancient times, and its body has long been integrated into the blood and spirit of the tiger. The place where the tiger exists is where human life shines and produces legends. In the historical process of China's rapid rise today, we hope that our nation can inherit and carry forward the spirit and culture of the tiger. At an important moment when Gansu Province is striving to build a Chinese civilization inheritance and innovation zone and a national ecological security barrier, we hope that the sons and daughters of Gansu can innovatively explore the buried cultural resources of Gansu, re-examine and care for Gansu's natural ecological resources, and work hard for the construction of their hometown and the realization of the Chinese dream.
Writer/Writer-in-house Chen Xiaobin