Before the Lantern Festival, there was a heavy snowfall in Beijing. I had planned to go to the Forbidden City, but the tickets were already sold out. Suddenly remembered the Grand View Garden, located in the southwest corner of the second ring road, was built more than 30 years ago for the filming of the TV series "Dream of the Red Chamber", has been wanting to go but failed to make the trip, why not take this opportunity to feel the snow in the Grand View Garden? After all, roasted venison in the snow, Lu Xue'an Lian poem, and Li Cui'an beggar plum are all classic bridges in the novel.
When you enter the garden, the snow is still falling, and when you enter the Li Cui'an, there are indeed many plum trees at the entrance of the courtyard, and the twigs are green, which is an important feature that distinguishes it from peaches, plums and apricots. The buds on the green branches are extremely small, only a little pink is exposed on the tip, but a few wax plums in the courtyard bloom just right.
Wax plum
First, October first open the mountain on the plum
Wax plum is named after the flower golden butter bright as beeswax, because the flowering period and fragrance are similar to plums, it was mistaken by the ancients as one of the plums, and the Southern Song Dynasty Fan Chengda's "Plum Spectrum" included the wax plums. In fact, the two are completely different plants, plum is the rosaceae family, wax plum is the wax plum family, from their very different fruits can see the difference the most.
The fruit of the wax plum
Wax plums can generally bloom in the cold winter waxing moon, so it is also called wax plum. In contrast, plum blossoms bloom a little later, generally until early spring, when the weather warms up. Therefore, although the ancient poems are more than a few chants of plum blossoms, they are not as good as wax plums when it comes to hardiness.
The wild plums in the mountains of Lingnan open in the middle of December
In fact, plum blossoms are not cold-loving things, as can be seen from the opening of the mainland plum blossoms from south to north. Taking the well-known plum viewing land in China as an example, the plum blossoms in Conghua in Guangzhou have opened in mid-December, and meiguan in Guangdong (bordering Jiangxi) in early January; to the Yangtze River Basin, the flowering period of Wuhan plum blossoms is at the end of January, Nanjing, Wuxi and Shanghai are in mid-February, Suzhou and Hangzhou are in late February; and further north to Qingdao, Shandong, it is necessary to wait until the end of March.
The further north you go, the later the plum blossoms bloom. Therefore, plum blossoms "can only be regarded as having a certain degree of tolerance to cold." Plum blossoms generally bloom at six or seven degrees Celsius, and below minus 15 degrees Celsius, plum blossoms may even freeze to death. [1] Therefore, Yaxing, which treads snow and looks for plums, is generally easier to achieve in the Yangtze River Basin. For example, the plum blossoms in Wuhan's East Lake Plum Garden have generally bloomed around the Spring Festival, and if the temperature drops sharply, it may encounter snowfall, as the North and South Dynasties Yin Hao "Plum Blossom Poems in the Snow" wrote: "Although the spring is nearly cold, the meishu snow is still drifting." ”
The earliest to open is generally Jiangmei, Hangzhou open in February
In ancient poetry, plum blossoms and snow are classic combinations, and the Song Dynasty Lu Yu asserted that "there is no spirit without snow in the plum", which seems to be more able to express the character of plum blossoms that are not afraid of the cold. In "Dream of the Red Chamber", when the plum blossoms of Li Cui'an bloom, it is also on a snowy day.
The forty-ninth time "Glass World White Snow Red Plum Fat Powder Fragrant Baby Cut Fishy", the snow fell overnight, the next morning is still "rubbing the cotton", and like everyone else, Baoyu saw the snow is also "very happy", washed and rushed to Lu Xue'an, halfway found that the red plum in front of the Myoyu Gate was opening:
So I walked down the slope, along the foot of the mountain, just turned over, I already smelled a cold fragrance, and when I looked back, there were more than a dozen red plums in the Li Cui Nunnery on the side of Miaoyu, like rouge, reflecting the snow color, which was extremely spirited and not interesting.
It is this snow that gives the roast venison, Lianshi and Begging Plums a suitable atmosphere. When will the snow fall? The fiftieth time "Lu Xue An Controversy Instant Poetry Warm Xiang Wu Ya Made Spring Lantern Riddle", Jia Mu said: "This is October, it is the first snow, and there will be more snow days in the future, and it is not too late to break Mrs. Fei." The day of the Lu Xue'an Lian poem occurred on the eighteenth day of the same month. [2] Generally speaking, the lunar calendar is 20 to 50 days later than the solar calendar, and the eighteenth day of the tenth month of the lunar calendar can be a day between the beginning of November and the beginning of December.
Here we have to wonder, at this point in time, plum blossoms have opened? If it were now, it would only happen in Guangzhou. And we know that although the location of the Grand View Garden has been debated in Beijing, Nanjing and Chang'an, I am afraid that no one thinks that it is in Guangzhou.
Palace pink plum
Could it be that the plum blossoms bloom in October of the lunar calendar are made up by Cao Xueqin out of thin air? One possibility is that it is derived from historical allusions. In the fortieth "Shi Taijun Two Feasts Grand View Garden Golden Mandarin Duck Three Xuanya Tablet Order" in the "Dream of the Red Chamber", Aunt Xue has a sentence "Incense on the Plum Blossom Ridge in October", and the allusion used is derived from the Tang Dynasty poet Fan Huang (about 700 - about 773) "Nanzhong Feeling Nostalgia":
The south road squatters did not return, often phenological dark urge.
At four o'clock, the river head grass will not change, and in October, the mountains will be opened first.
"Lingshang" is the Dayuling Ridge on the border between Guangdong and Jiangxi, where there are many plum trees, so it is also known as Meiling, that is, the area around Meiguan in Guangdong mentioned above. The plum blossom period in Meiguan, Guangdong, is in early January, which translates to the earliest month of November in the lunar calendar, and will not bloom in October.
Although "Dream of the Red Chamber" is a fictional novel, such an important description of the seasons and phenology should be based on actual life, not borrowed from a Tang poem.
According to the author's investigation, the climate of Fan Huang's era coincided with a warm period in the history of the Sui and Tang Dynasties[3], so it is indeed possible that the plum blossoms in Dayuling will bloom in October of the lunar calendar, earlier than now. So, is it possible that in cao xueqin's era, the same as the "first opening of the plum in October", the flowering period of plum blossoms was also advanced due to the warm climate?
Scholars who study the historical climate have found from some poems by Qianlong that "in the nearly 40 years from 1720 to 1760, the autumn phenology in the Mulan Paddock area was advanced by more than one solar term, indicating that the autumn temperature at that time had increased significantly." In addition, "in the 1720s and 1780s, the spring final snow period in Hangzhou, Suzhou and Nanjing was invariably advanced, and the number of days in advance in the three places was 13 days, 8 days and 7 days respectively." This indicates that spring temperatures along the Yangtze River Delta are already higher than in modern times. [4] The period of warming above coincided with the period of Cao Xueqin's life, from about 1715 to about 1763. That's a coincidence!
If the Grand View Garden is located in Jiangnan, due to the influence of the climate, the time when the plum blossoms bloom at that time may indeed be advanced to the tenth month of the lunar calendar. Or in other words, in Cao Xueqin's life experience, he should have experienced the plum blossoms in the tenth month of the lunar calendar, and it coincided with heavy snowfall. Of course, this requires more local phenological data at the time to prove it.
Green calyx plum
Second, the shadow is shallow and shallow
Meihua is one of the four gentlemen of "Meilan Zhuju" and enjoys high praise among ancient and modern literati and scholars. But in the traditional culture of the mainland, it did not have such a high status at the beginning.
Although several poems in the Book of Poetry mention "plum", none of them mention its flowers; the Chu Ci uses vanilla as an example, and takes the mountain and saw the jiahui of the country, but there is no plum blossom. At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, some poets gradually noticed the fragrant and hardy characteristics of plum blossoms, such as suwu's "Plum Blossom Falling" in the Western Han Dynasty: "A tree plum in the atrium, cold leaves are not open." Only the flowers are snow, and there is no incense. "Wei Jin, Sui and Tang successively wrote about plum blossoms, but the number is not much, in the Southern Tang Zhang Yi's "Flower Classic" ranking, plum blossoms are still located in the "four products and six lives".
In the Song Dynasty, plum blossoms were raised to an unprecedented status and continue to this day. This was first reflected in the prevalence of Yongmei poetry, a phenomenon already noticed by the Southern Song Dynasty. [5] According to some scholars, the proportion of plum blossom poems in Song poetry is more than 11 times that of plum blossom poetry in Tang poetry, and the number of surviving Song Dynasty Yongmei poems is 50 times the total number of Yongmei works before the Song Dynasty. [6]
The surge in quantity is one aspect, and the plum blossom is given lofty symbolic significance such as Ling Han's arrogance and indomitability, which is another aspect. The Song Dynasty Yongmei, focusing on the words of the treasure, is typical of "Falling Plum" written by Lu You in Shanyin in the third year of Shaoxi (1192): "The snow abuses the wind and the more awe-inspiring, the highest temperament in the flowers." Obsolete self-integration drifts away, shame to The East Jun more begging for mercy. "It was the third year of the poet's dismissal by the imperial court.
Yang Wanli reviewed the history of Yongmei poetry in "Taohu lake and Plum Poetry Preface", pointing out that plum blossoms to the Song Dynasty were "under the rise of a thousand years, and on top of a thousand years, the main wind and moon flowers and grasses of the summer alliance." In the middle of it, Tao Li and Lan Hui are the first to appear, and the left of the guests. There are those who have suffered from the plum, but those who have not been satisfied at this time. In the Song Dynasty, the left and the right were humbled, and the "left of the residents" is to say that the status of plum blossoms surpasses that of peach plum and orchid, and is the most popular among flowers. The paintings of the three friends of the Han Dynasty with pine, bamboo and plum as the themes also became popular in the Southern Song Dynasty.
At this time, the first "Plum Spectrum" in the history of the mainland also appeared. The author Fan Chengda opened the text in the preface: "Mei, the special thing under the world, does not ask questions, wisdom, foolishness, and ignorance, do not dare to disagree." A scholar must first plant plums, and he will not be tired of many, and whether he spends much or not, he will not be heavy or light. "The world's admiration for plum blossoms, from this can be seen. Therefore, by the time Zhang Qiande wrote the "Vase Flower Spectrum" in the Ming Dynasty, plum blossoms naturally ranked among the "one product and nine lives" and entered the first echelon.
Not only the cultural connotation, the world's aesthetic tendency towards the plum blossom posture is also stereotyped in the Song Dynasty. Referring to the works of the gods imitating plum blossoms in ancient poems, I am afraid that we will all recommend "the shadow is shallow and shallow, and the dark incense floats in the dusk of the moon", which is this link in the hermit Lin Kui's "Little Plum in the Mountain Garden" in the early Song Dynasty, which has had a profound impact on the Yongmei poems of later generations. [7]
In December of the third year of the Yuan Dynasty (1088), Su Shi once talked with his third son Su Guo about the poet's "writing skills", and for Lin Kui's two poems, Su Shi said that "it is definitely not a peach and plum poem"; and for Shi Yannian's "Red Plum" "Recognize that peaches have no green leaves, and distinguish apricots with green branches", Su Shi criticized: "This is the ugly language, gaicun learning the middle body". "Village school" refers to a private school in the countryside. Shi Yannian's two sentences, from the perspective of natural observation to distinguish the difference between plum blossoms and peaches and apricots, are considered by Su Shi to be the level of rural private schools, because it has nothing to do with "Meg". Su Shi later wrote "Three Songs of Red Plum", reiterating at the end of the first poem: "The old poet does not know that Meg is there, but looks more at green leaves and green branches." "Shi Lao" is Shi Yannian, the so-called "Meg", probably su Shi's poem "still lonely and thin snow frost posture" and "jade snow for bone ice for the soul".
Therefore, the posture of "shadow oblique" is worthy of the character and temperament of plum blossoms, and it has gradually become a dominant aesthetic standard. Fan Chengda summed it up in the "Plum Spectrum And Later Sequence": "Mei wins with rhyme, and it is high, so it is precious to the oblique and horizontal thin and the strange old branches." And those who "draw young branches straight up at the age of one year, or three or four feet, such as fermentation and rose generation", are the "air bar" of "meaningless rhyme and grid". He criticized the plum blossoms painted by the famous painter Yang Shuzhi, "roughly all of them are angry." Although the penmanship is strange and steep, go to Meishi far away. ”[8]
The fourth plum blossom scroll (partial) of Yang Supplement is now in the Palace Museum
The Ming Dynasty Wang Xi's "Three Talents Picture Society" summed up the plum blossom four expensive and four not expensive, which is also the same: "Plums have four expensive, expensive and rare are not expensive, expensive and old are not expensive and tender, expensive and thin are not expensive and fat, and expensive is not expensive." In the Qing Dynasty, we finally had the "Records of the Sick Plum Pavilion" that we learned in the language textbooks: "Mei is beautiful with music, straight is without posture; with qi as beauty, positive is without scenery; sparse is beautiful, dense is stateless... And the plums of Jiangsu and Zhejiang are all sick. "欹" [qī] means deflection.
Back to "Dream of the Red Chamber", in the fiftieth time, Cao Xueqin has several close-ups of the plum that Baoyu retrieved from Li Cui'an, from which we can see the influence of the predecessors:
On the one hand, everyone looks at the plum blossoms. It turned out that this plum blossom was only two feet tall, and there was a horizontal branch next to it, about two or three feet long, between which the small branches were divergent, or like cockroaches, or like zombies, or lonely like pens, or densely gathered like forests, and the real flowers spit rouge, and the incense deceived Lan Hui. Each rewards.
The emphasis on "a horizontal branch running out of the side" is a variation of "sparse shadow horizontal oblique"; "cockroach" [pán chī] is a kind of dragon with a curly body, and "zombie worm" is a stiff earthworm, which is a song that describes the branches. The straightness of "lonely cutting like a pen" and the density of "dense gathering like a forest" are contrary to the standards of predecessors. It can be seen that Cao Xueqin did not completely fall into the trap when writing plum blossoms.
3. Folding plums and longtou people
The ancients wrote plum blossoms, in addition to the tradition of the aforementioned zhizhi, there is another tradition - folding plums and sending plums. Its source is a poem from the Southern and Northern Dynasties period, from the Southern Dynasty Sheng Hongzhi's "Jingzhou Record". The Qing Dynasty selected ancient poems and named them "Gifts to Fan Ye Poems", and the popular version in later generations was selected from Shen Deqian's "Ancient Poetry Sources" in the Qing Dynasty:
Fold the plum and send it to the Longtou people.
Gangnam has nothing, talk about giving a branch of spring.
The source of this poem, "Jingzhou Chronicle", has been written in the original book, and the "Taiping Imperial Records" in the early Song Dynasty have three quotations of this poem, and the text is slightly different. The Gushiyuan selects the version recorded in the article "Guobu Seven Plums" in volume 970, and changes the "folded flowers" to "folding plums":
Lu Kai and Fan Ye were kind to each other, and sent a plum blossom from Jiangnan to Chang'an and Ye, and gave a flower poem: "Fold the flowers and send them to the Longtou people." Gangnam has nothing, talk about giving a branch of spring. ”
For Lu Kai in the text, that is, the author of this poem, most of the poetry anthologies are based on the Wei Shu Liechuan XXVIII: "Lu Kai, the character Zhijun, is careful to learn... In the pivot for more than ten years, known for his loyalty... Except for Masahira Taishou, who was in the county for seven years, he was called a good official. Fan Ye (398-445), who is generally believed to be Fan Weizong, the author of the Book of Later Han, was a contemporary of Lu Kai's grandfather Lu Qian (392-458). If the above is true, the age gap between Lu Kai and Fan Ye is really not small.
Although the identity of the protagonist of the story is questionable [9], there is no objection to the main theme of the poem, the folding plum sending friends. And surprisingly, it quickly had an impact in that era.
For example, the Southern Dynasty Liang Dynasty Yu Shoulder Wu "Tong Xiao Zuo Cheng Yong Picking Plum Blossom Poems" "The long way is difficult to send, the sweet fragrance is self-sparing", and the Southern Dynasty Lefu folk song "Xizhou Qu" "Remember the plum under the West Continent, fold the plum to send the north of the river". From the Tang and Song dynasties to the Ming and Qing dynasties, many poets also wrote about folding plums and sending plums, mostly to distant friends. [10]
"Winter Solstice Plum", pictured from the "Atlas of Materia Medica"
Among the many plum blossom poems, "Gift Fan Ye Poem" is one of my favorite ones. Spring to Jiangnan, plum blossoms first opened, the poet met the emissary of the station when folding plums, he thought of his friends in Chang'an, so he decided to send this early spring plum blossom to talk about his heart. However, the road is far away, and even if the plum blossom is sent, I am afraid that it will be a broken flower. But it doesn't matter, what matters is the camaraderie behind it. At that time, the plum blossom did not give the meaning of personification, the plum blossom in the poem, the plum blossom in nature, is the representative of jiangnan spring, he sent is the spring of Jiangnan, what a romantic gift!
"Sick" Jiang Mei
Although this poem has been classicized in later generations, it is not the earliest when it comes to the gift of plums in history. Liu of the Western Han Dynasty recorded in the "Saying Garden" volume 12 "Envoys" that in the pre-Qin Dynasty, the envoys of the Yue state "held a branch of plums to leave the king of Liang", and a person named Han Zi among the liang kings was shocked: "Is there a person who is evil with a branch of plums as the kings of the nations?" He decided to humiliate the emissary of the Kingdom of Vietnam, but found other reasons: "If the king has a destiny, the guest crown will be seen with courtesy; if it is not crowned, it will not be." "Put on the hat, and the King of Liang will meet him with courtesy." The following Zhufa has a wonderful answer, to the effect that if he must wear a hat, then in the future, the envoys of the Liang Kingdom will also need to "cut their hair and tattoo" from the Yue custom. The King of Liang then "was clothed out to see all hair." Order to chase Hanzi. ”
This interesting story does not explain the specific reason for the gift of plums, is it also one of the etiquette of the Country? Is the rationale behind it the same as "Gift fan ye poem"? The State of Liang was in present-day Shaanxi, and it was in the cold winter, and the envoys of the State of Yue sent the first flowers to open in Jiangnan.
Mei, pictured from "Illustration of Famous Objects in the Poetry Classic"
When the earth has not yet awakened and the ice and snow have not yet ended, plum blossoms are the first to stand on the branches, and they also emit a pleasant fragrance, so how can people not love? Leaving aside the cultural meaning behind it that has been given by future generations, just such a flowering tree in early spring will also make us feel surprised and happy. As the Japanese horticulturist Yanagi Munmin put it, "At this time, plum gardens around the country are bustling. Although the cold wind is steep, the plum blossoms can always make people feel the approaching footsteps of spring, which makes the mood also excited. Red plums and white plums bloom together and are full of joy. ”[11]
So, go out of the house to see the plum blossoms, try to know them: jade butterflies, cinnabar, palace powder, illuminated water, green calyx, dragon tour...
[1] Ling Yun, "Everything and Flowers: 24 Humanistic and Natural Lessons", China Workers Publishing House, 2018, pp. 27-28. This article about my north and south plum blossom period refers to pages 32-33 of the book "China Plum Season Chart".
[2] Dream of the Red Chamber, the forty-ninth time "Glass World White Snow Red Plum Fat Powder Xiangwa Cut Fishy": "Li Yi said: 'My idea. I think that yesterday's day has passed, and it is too far to wait for the first day, but it happens to be snowing, so it is better for everyone to make a society..." "Yesterday's day" is sixteen, the day is seventeen, and the next day Lu Xue'an is eighteen.
[3] "Although the climatic characteristics of the warm period of the Sui and Tang Dynasties were mainly warm, there were obvious climatic fluctuations, of which the 800-950 years were relatively cold, and the climatic characteristics were similar to or slightly lower than that of modern times, while the 550-800 years and 950-1050 years were the two warm periods in the Sui and Tang warm periods, and the climate was warmer than that of modern times..." See: Wu Hongqi and Dang Anrong, "Cold and Warm Climate Characteristics and Climate Fluctuations in the Sui and Tang Dynasties", Quaternary Research, 1998, No. 1, pp. 35-36.
[4] Man Zhimin, A Study on Climate Change in China's Historical Period, Shandong Education Press, 2009, p. 289.
[5] The Southern Song Dynasty Zhou Bida's Erlaotang Poetry quotes Chen Conggu's "Plum Blossom Poems Self-Introduction": "At the end of the Han and Jin Dynasties, since Song Baozhao was below, only seventeen people, a total of twenty-one poems, the Tang poets were the most prosperous, Du Shaoling was only two, Bai Lotte was four, Yuan Weizhi, Han Huizhi, Liu Zihou, Liu Mengde, and Du Mu were one each." Such as Li Hanlin, Wei Suzhou, Meng Dongye, and Pi Rixiu, there is no one. To the side of this Dynasty prevailed, and the rest of the day accumulated month by month, the reward and a thousand clouds. ”
[6] Of the more than 55,000 poems in quan tang poems and quan tang poems, mei poems are only more than 90 poems, accounting for 0.16%, while among the more than 254,000 poems in quan song poems, there are more than 4,700 plum blossom works, accounting for 1.85%. In: Cheng Jie, "The Pomp and Circumstance of Yongmei Literature in the Song Dynasty, Its Causes and Significance", Yinshan Academic Journal, 2002, No. 2, p. 29.
[7] "Song Shi Hermit Biography": "Lin Kui married the lonely mountain of Luxi Lake, did not marry a childless person, and planted more plum cranes, because he called his wife Plum Crane." "Wife plum crane" has also become a commonly used allusion. In fact, these two sentences are not the author's original, but are adapted from the remnants of the Southern Tang River in the fifth dynasty: "The bamboo shadow is shallow and shallow, and the cinnamon fragrance floats at dusk." The poems that originally wrote "Bamboo Shadow" and "Guixiang" have become the last songs of thousands of ancient Yongmei poems once they have been changed. Lin Kui left a name for this poem.
[8] "Yang Shuzhi (1097-1169), the word is blameless... Famous for its ink plum. He loved plum blossoms, planted plum trees in the courtyard, 'the big ones are like several houses, the skin is moss, the flowers are like clusters'... During the Southern Song Dynasty, 'Jiangxi people had to make up for a piece of plum, the price was not less than a thousand horses', and after his death, 'thousands of pieces of paper', it can be seen that he was valued by the world. His surviving works include "Four Plum Blossom Rolls" and "Xuemeitu". See: Bo Songnian, History of Chinese Painting, Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House, 2013, p. 327.
[9] The Ming Dynasty Yang Shen suspected that Fan Ye had sent Mei to Lu Kai, and his Sheng'an Poetry "Sending Mei Shi" Yun: "Ye is a Jiangnan person, Lu Kai, the character Zhijun, a Daibei person, when it is Fan Zhilu'er." Kai in Chang'an, Ande plum blossoms? ”
[10] Li Bai's "Sending Friends to Meihu Lake" "Sending a jun to visit Meihu Lake should see plum blossom hair." There are envoys to send me, no order Hongfang rest", Fan Chengda's "Cherish the Flight" "The old man hopes for Jiangnan, and folds plum blossoms to remember each other", Yuan Dynasty Cheng Jufu's "Homeland Sees Mei You Huai Domain Former Colleagues gentlemen because of Cheng Twenty-six Rhymes" "Ling Han folded a branch, and sent Wang Sun with courtesy". In modern times, there is Yu Dafu's "Guangdong for Sending Friends": "If there are pedestrians in the sea and the sky, Yuling plum blossoms send a branch." ”
[11] [Japanese] Liu Zongmin, translated by Cao Yibing: Flowers in Four Seasons, Nova Press, 2017, p. 188.
Photography, graphic editor: Jiang Renren
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