The story of "Dream of the Red Chamber" begins with Gusu Zhangmen, "the most popular place in the red dust of the first and second class", which is a landmark building of Suzhou, an important city in the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal, and its existence is indicative of the prosperity brought by canal traffic to Suzhou. At the end of "Dream of the Red Chamber", another canal ferry port, Bilingyi, is mentioned, and its snub Xiao Suo is in line with the tragic atmosphere of Jia Baoyu's worship of Jia Zheng. Starting from a canal city and ending from another canal ferry, the ambiguity of "Dream of the Red Chamber" is that the name of the canal is never explicitly mentioned, but there are always the shadows of the canal, and the Grand Canal is immersed in the cultural life at that time, and the relevant content is like a pearl falling jade plate, dark and understated, but it can be strung together, especially in connection with the author's own family affairs and the background of the times.
The "Old Dream of Qinhuai" pulled by the Grand Canal
In Cao Xueqin's story of the prosperous victory of the wind and moon, there is a very eye-catching feature, that is, the cross-depiction of the chiaroscuro lines between the north and south capitals. We noticed that there was a Zhen family far away in Jiangnan who was far away from the Jia family, and we also borrowed Grandma Zhao's mouth to specifically boast about the wealth of the Zhen family: "And now the Zhen family in Jiangnan, oh yo, good power faction!" He took the ride four times, and if we hadn't seen it with our own eyes, no one would have believed it. Don't say that silver has become mud, by virtue of all the world, there is no one who is not piled up in the mountains and the sea, and the four words of 'sin is a pity' cannot be taken care of. "It just so happens that this Zhen family, whose roots are in Jiangnan and is boundlessly rich, also has a son named Baoyu in the family, whose appearance and temperament are absolutely similar to Jia Baoyu." At the same time, we noticed that although Jia Fu was in the north, the foundation was also in the south, and the Jinling Stone City still had the old jia family mansion of "Zheng Rong Xuanjun", which occupied most of the street, and the old lady of the Mandarin Duck stayed in the south to guard the old mansion, and Jia Mu was angry and wanted to take Baoyu back to the south, that is, back to Jinling's hometown, and Wang Xifeng's sentence also had the sentence "Cry to Jinling and mourn more".
Jia Fu is located in the capital city in the north, and the story mainly unfolds here, but it is relative to Nanjing in the south, through the Mirror Mirror Zhen Family, through the old house of Jinling, through the canal waterway. As for why the author is so lucky, although it is not appropriate to be realistic, I have to say that through the unique relationship between the Cao family and the Grand Canal, we may be able to get some answers.
As we all know, Cao Xueqin was born in the Baoyi family, and the three generations and four members of the Cao family were woven by Jiangning, and the wealth and elegance of Jiangnan laid a deep Jiangnan memory for this family. The Kangxi Dynasty was the period when the Cao family was at the peak of its prosperity, and Cao Xueqin's grandfather Cao Yin was the representative of the Cao family to its prosperity.
Cao Yin's life is closely related to the Grand Canal, he has long served in Jiangning Weaving, stationed in the canal cities of Nanjing, Yangzhou, Suzhou and other places, but also entered Beijing many times, to and from the canal route, and also served as the two Huai salt government, for the purpose of Yangzhou to open the opening of the engraving of "Quan Tang Poems" and "Pei Wen Yun Fu", but also undertook four driving tasks. The Kangxi Emperor made six southern tours and four times stationed in Jiangning Weaving House, all of which were taken over by Cao Yin, who was then the weaver of Jiangning. The southern tour is a grand event, but it is also extremely extravagant, and there was a common song that described the scene at that time: "The three rivers are dry to build the emperor's home, and the abuse of gold and silver is worse than mud and sand". The highlight of the first half of "Dream of the Red Chamber", "Yuan Fei Provincial Relatives", is considered by the critic Li Yanzhai to be a borrowing to write a southern tour, recalling the past and the present. The matter of the southern tour taking over the driving also appeared directly in the novel, and the author specially arranged for Jia Lian Wang Xifeng and his nursing mother Zhao Mama to chat about the "story of Emperor Taizu imitating Shun Tour" and bluntly said that "the silver was spent like the flowing sea".
The prosperity and decline of the Cao family is also closely related to Cao Yin's four driving trips, and the consumption of driving is the main reason for cao Yin's deficit in salt classes. Cao Yin only paid one hundred and fifty taels of silver every year, but Kangxi alone donated 20,000 taels to repair the pagoda palace in 44 years, where did his money come from? In "Dream of the Red Chamber", There is an answer in Grandma Zhao's words: "It is just taking the silver of the emperor's family to the emperor!" Who has the money to buy this hilarity? For his own loss in office, Cao Yin was worried and fearful before his death, and the Kangxi Emperor was also urged to be severe, although Cao Yin did not see the fall of the family in his lifetime, but he always had the idea of "the tree fell and scattered", and walked through his life with such regrets.
After Cao Yin's death, the Cao family, who had lost their protection, walked on thin ice and was eventually convicted in the Yongzheng Dynasty, on the grounds that "Jiang Ning woven Cao Fu, misbehaved, and lost a lot of weaving funds" and "secretly moved the family's finances elsewhere in an attempt to hide". The Cao family was rewarded to Sui Hede in the capital and Jiangning. The in-laws who are closely related to the Cao family, and the Suzhou weaving Li family that has been in Jiangnan for many years, are also doomed.
The Cao family, represented by Cao Yin, has been deeply cultivating and operating between Nanjing and Beijing with the Grand Canal as a link, carrying the glory and glory of the family, and also recording failures and downfalls. In "Dream of the Red Chamber", the Zhen family who "hula is like a building falling", the Jia family who are "a hundred-footed worm, dead but not stiff", one south and one north, the same destination, the Zhen family in Jiangnan fell early in the novel and suffered the tragedy of raiding the family, and also transported a lot of property out and hid it in the Jia family, and finally the Jia family also embarked on the same road. In addition to the chiaroscuro symmetry of the content structure, such a setting is also an expression of the author's complex and real pain. "Yangzhou's old dream has long been realized" "Qinhuai wind and moon reminisce prosperity", Cao Xueqin's family past that was pulled by the North and South ends of the Grand Canal is his untouchable pain, but also an unavoidable old dream, but it has also achieved his rich and tortuous life.
All kinds of women came by the waterway that day
Many female characters in "Dream of the Red Chamber", Lin Daiyu, Xue Baochao, Miao Yu, and later Xue Baoqin, Li Wen, Li Qi, Xing Xiuyan, etc., their appearances are inseparable from canal waterway traffic. Xue Baochao lived in Jinling, and how to go to Beijing did not seem to be clearly explained, but when Wen Xiangling tasted the poem "The desert is lonely and straight, the long river is sunset", he once said: "We came to Beijing that year, and we stayed in the bay at night that day." "It can be seen that they came by water. Miao Yu is a native of Suzhou, as well as the girls purchased in Suzhou, they are all because of the Yuan Fei Provincial Relatives, Jia Fu built and configured the Grand View Garden. Xue Baoqin, who has not appeared for a long time but is extremely outstanding, is even more knowledgeable, and her several nostalgic poems are still mysterious, but they really depict the scenes along the canal, such as "Zhongshan Huaigu", "Guangling Huaigu", "Huaiyin Huaigu" and so on.
Among them, everyone is most familiar with Lin Daiyu's father into Beijing, escorted by Jia Yu Village from Yangzhou all the way to the capital Jia Fu section, the novel describes from Yangzhou to the capital there is a waterway to pass, Jia Mu pity Lin Daiyu no one to take care of, specially sent "male and female ships to pick up", although always not explicitly written, this waterway is obviously the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. Next, Lin Daiyu's description of entering Jia Fu introduces the content of the novel from the prologue to the main text, and unveils the mystery of Jia Fu through Lin Daiyu's eyes, which is well known to everyone because it often appears in high school textbooks and various selected books. It is worth saying that the place where Lin Daiyu abandoned the boat and landed should be in today's Tongzhou Zhangjiawan, which was an important wharf from the canal waterway to Beijing, where goods from the north and south gathered, forming a prosperous place for commercial distribution, and the dignitaries and merchants who traveled along the canal entered and exited Beijing. And this place and Cao Xueqin's family has an indissoluble relationship, after the Cao family was copied back to Beijing, living in Chongwenmen Wai Garlic Shikou Hutong seventeen and a half rooms, the only industry including a pawnshop in Zhangjiawan and 600 acres of classic land, which is also the only point of Cao Xueqin's family after entering Beijing to live a difficult life.
When Lin Ruhai was seriously ill, Dai Yu was escorted by Jia Lian and walked back to Yangzhou to bury her father, and she came and went with the boat many times in her life, drifting without roots. After returning to the capital, Lin Daiyu really became an orphan, and there was no place to stay except for Jia Fu, so Wang Xifeng would meaningfully say to Jia Baoyu, "Your sister Lin can live in our house for a long time." It is precisely because Lin Daiyu always comes and goes by boat, when Jia Baoyu is demented, he will be afraid to come to the boat to take Lin Sister away, pointing to "a Jin Xiyang self-propelled ship" and screaming, "That is not the boat that picked them up, the bay is there." This is a stroke of God, and there is also a bit of bitterness in it.
Cao Xueqin describes these women's diet and living level with the exquisite elegance of the south, and a large number of southern objects are introduced, showing the integration of the north and the south in life after the canal traffic. For example, the hui pattern of the big book in the novel is from the hand of the Gusu woman. When Dai Yu came to Beijing from Yangzhou, she would also bring paper and pencils from the south to give to her partners. Xue Pan went to the south to do business, "The self-propelled man brought from Tiger Hill, the liquor orderer, the little boy who played with the waterbed lamp, the sand lamp..." Various southern earth instruments also caused Lin Daiyu's nostalgia. In addition, rose dew, snuff bottles and other imported products can be seen in Jia Fu from time to time. These goods were imported from overseas in the Qing Dynasty, or from foreign tribute, mostly entering Fujian, Guangdong, and entering the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal by waterway to the north. Wang Xifeng once said: "At that time, my grandfather was solely in charge of the tributes and congratulations of various countries, and all foreigners came to support our family. All the foreign ship cargo in Guangdong, Fujian, Yunnan and Zhejiang belong to my family. "This is also a disguised proof. Looking back at Cao Yin in Jiangning's weaving post, he also came into contact with many fresh imported products, such as glasses, and his poetry collection "Neem Pavilion Collection" has "Glass Fu", and Cao Yin and Li Xu can also see Western artifacts in the list of items donated to the royal family.
Cao Xueqin has given many water village women a beautiful ideal for women, which is probably related to the fact that his aesthetic is deeply influenced by Jiangnan culture. Lin Daiyu is a native of Yangzhou, Xue Baochao is from Jinling, xiangling Fangguan and others are from Suzhou, they are beautiful and have their own characteristics and adhere to the Zhong Lingyu show of the water town. Daiyu's Yuanna, Baochao's dignity, Fangguan's cleverness, Xiangling's delicacy are all unforgettable, Daiyu's funeral flowers, Baochao fluttering butterflies, Qingwen tearing fans, Lingguan painting roses and other famous scenes bring out immortal classic images. The author also constantly reiterates that one of the main purposes of this novel is to "pass on the boudoir". Moreover, the last forty times of the novel also give the fate of some major female characters, and the women who died, including Jia Mu, Lin Daiyu, Wang Xifeng, Qin Shi, Mandarin Duck, etc., were finally buried in the south and ended up with their end. No matter how controversial the last forty times of writing, the women's confession to the South has a beginning and an end. Especially for Lin Daiyu, she went north along the Grand Canal to the capital, and she ended in tears, and the coffin was able to return to Yangzhou, where the soul was tied to the dream, which was also a wish to "come and go clean".
Author: Hu Qing, Associate Researcher, Institute of Dream of the Red Chamber, China Academy of Arts
Planner: Chen Xihan
Editor: Xu Luming
Editor-in-Charge: Li Ting
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.