Couplets, also known as Yang Lian or pairs, are one of the traditional Chinese cultures, and their art form of neat and harmonious workmanship is deeply loved by literati and inkers.
According to historical records, the earliest couplet on the mainland appeared in the Three Kingdoms period, and an iron cross was unearthed in Luling, Jiangxi, which read: "The four seas celebrate Anlan, and the iron pillar Baoguang liu cross; the people are huai dazed, and the golden furnace incense is beautiful.
However, with the passage of time, the couplet has also become more and more subtle, and without a deep cultural heritage, it is absolutely impossible to see the mystery.
Xu Wei, born in 1521 in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, was forced to separate from his mother at the age of 10 because his mother was a concubine, and he was sent to the fence for many years.
In addition, although Xu Wei also has a half-brother Xu Huai, but the age difference between the two is more than 30 years old, usually there is no talk, the feelings are not very deep, he has not felt the love of his parents and brothers since he was a child, and his personality has always been very lonely.
However, Xu Wei was a young genius, he was talented and quick-witted, reading at the age of 6 and writing at the age of 9, and his reputation spread throughout the eight townships, and he was named "prodigy" by local gentlemen.
Over the years, Xu Wei has been in a state of "lonely fang self-appreciation", he likes to make like-minded friends, likes to express depression through poetry; likes to play in the mountains and rivers, and feel the vastness of heaven and earth.
Unconsciously, Xu Wei's literary level has been significantly improved, and Shen Lian once said such a sentence: "Close the city gate, there is only this one (Xu Wei). ”
However, Xu Wei's career was not very smooth, he took 8 exams in a row, but he never won the exam.
In the thirty-seventh year of Jiajing (1558), Xu Wei, who had distinguished himself in the War of Resistance Against the Wu Dynasty, was appreciated by Hu Zongxian, the governor of Zhejiang and Fujian, and was recruited into the shogunate as an aide.
According to Feng Menglong's "Outline of Love History", Xu Wei once played in a temple in Hangzhou, but the monks in the temple did not treat him very well, and he was jealous in his heart, so he secretly stole a song Ji's shoes, and then came to Hu Zongxian, saying that the shoes were found from a monk's room in the temple.
In this regard, Hu Zongxian did not doubt that he had him, and he immediately arrested several monks and beheaded them in front of the gate to show the public. Perhaps it was his childhood experience that caused a lot of shadows on Xu Wei, and he became sensitive and suspicious.
One day, when Xu Wei returned home, he suddenly heard laughter coming from the room, and he looked through the window to see that his wife was happy in bed with a monk. Xu Wei pushed the door in anger and directly stabbed his wife to death with a lamp. In this way, Xu Wei was thrown into prison, and if it were not for the rescue of friends, he would not be able to escape death after all.
After being released from prison, Xu Wei woke up to the fact that there were no monks at all, all this was just his fantasy, he killed his innocent wife. Since then, Xu Wei has lived in seclusion and stopped connecting with outsiders, even with his own son.
However, in order to encourage his son to read well, he still painstakingly wrote a couplet: good reading is not good reading, good reading is not good reading. Unfortunately, until Xu Wei's death, his son could not understand it thoroughly, and he always thought that this was his father's ridicule and disappointment in him.
Later, Xu Wei's pair was circulated, and the learned people finally understood Xu Wei's true meaning from the pronunciation of the characters.
It seems that the upper link and the lower link are exactly the same, but in fact, the two "good" words in the upper link are three and a four sound, and the lower link is a four sound and a three sound, so that the original intention of Xu Wei's persuasion is also obvious.
I have to say that Chinese culture is indeed profound, if it were not so, this couplet would not have become absolute through the ages and has been passed down to this day.