Spring, autumn, winter and summer, the changes and reincarnations of the four hours, such as the circle of the ring, such as the rotation of the wheel, constitute the beauty of the four hours of Chinese.
Interestingly, the concept of spring and autumn is earlier than the concept of four o'clock, and the reason is very simple, because spring planting and autumn harvest are well, spring planting is the beginning of the new year, and autumn harvest is the end of the old year. In the Shang Dynasty and the early Western Zhou Dynasty, a year was only divided into two hours, spring and autumn, and later derived from summer and winter, saying that a spring and autumn is a year.
Cherry blossom season in The Cherry Blossom Valley of Taihu Lake in Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province. Courtesy of Visual China
In ancient books, it is often said that spring, autumn, winter, and summer are called "four hours, spring, autumn, winter, and summer" ("Mozi Tianzhizhong"), rather than "spring, summer, autumn, and winter" in chronological order. Therefore, spring and autumn are not the festivals of spring, summer, autumn and winter, because spring and autumn itself represent two hours of the year rather than four hours, and the clear division of the four hours of the Han people is about the Western Weekend period, after which the rhythm of spring ploughing, summer yun, autumn harvest, and winter Tibet has been formed, such as the "three hours" of spring, summer, and autumn, which also refers to one of the transitional states.
There are roughly two major views of time in the world, one is linear time (time extends and moves forward) and the other is cyclical time (reincarnation goes on and on and on and on and Needham, a British sinologist who edited the "History of Chinese Science and Technology" emperor's tome, believes that the Chinese concept of time is still based on generalized linearity and supplemented by circulation, but in fact, the two are still combined.
From ancient times to the present, the four seasons have changed, and Chinese have emitted two senses of time: one is the sense of the endless cycle of spring, autumn, winter and summer, and the other side is the feeling that time is gone. This is because," "Ancient China had a circular view of history on the one hand, and on the other hand, there was the concept of linear time between heaven and earth, when everything came and went, and time and yin never returned." Heaven and earth (nature) are eternal and always exist there. Time has no beginning and no end. However, everything (all individual things) appears and disappears, and life does not repeat itself. Even the spring night (a moment on the timeline) in a certain peach garden passed away, and it will not come back. Therefore, that moment = 'now' is very precious" (Kato Monday: Time and Space in Japanese Culture).
The "peach garden" referred to here is the time consciousness in Li Bai's "Spring Night Feast from the Peach Garden", in which the sentence "The heaven and the earth, the anti-journey of all things; the time and yin, the guest of hundreds of generations", just shows the existence of the linear view of time in China.
Chinese poetry and song are full of this kind of temporal exclamation, that is, a sense of existence of the "Spring River Flower Moon Night" that everyone Chinese understands - "Who on the riverside first saw the moon?" When did Jiang Yue shine at the beginning of the year? Life is infinite from generation to generation, and Jiang Yue is only similar every year. I don't know who Jiang Yue treats, but I see the Yangtze River sending water. The white clouds are leisurely, and the Qingfeng Pu is full of sorrow..."
The beauty of the four hours is probably the most abundant in the aesthetic world of Chinese. Earlier poems were given to the four seasons, including the Southern Dynasty Lefu folk song "Midnight Four Hours Song", which was included in the "Lefu Poetry Collection" compiled by Guo Maoqian of the Song Dynasty, which belonged to the "Qing Shang Quci WuSheng Song", which is said to have been created by a woman named "Midnight" in the Jin Dynasty. There are 75 extant songs, including 20 spring songs, 20 summer songs, 18 autumn songs and 17 winter songs.
Let's take an example, beginning with the four words spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
Spring song: The spring forest flowers are beautiful, and the spring birds are sad. The spring breeze is full of emotions and blows me away.
Summer Song: The summer is quiet and windless, and the summer clouds are thin and twilight. Hand in hand under the dense leaves, floating melon sinks Zhu Li.
Autumn Song: Autumn night cool breeze, the sky is high stars and moons are bright. Lan Fang competes for makeup, and the tent is waiting for both feelings.
Winter Song: The leaves of the winter forest have fallen, and every spring has returned. Aoi is born at the bottom of the valley, and the heart is not illuminated.
This four-hour model is not confined to Middle-earth, but reverberates throughout East Asian cultural circles. The most beautiful thing I think is the opening of the Japanese woman Kiyoshi Nayan's "Pillow Grass":
"Spring, dawn is the most." The top of the mountain, which gradually turns white, begins to show a little light, and the purple clouds float lightly on it. Summer is a night. It goes without saying that there is a moon, and in the dark night without a moon, there are also flocks of fireflies flying. If it rains or something, it is more emotional. Autumn is dusk. The sunset shines, close to the mountains, the crows return to their nests, and three, four, and two fly by, adding sentimentality. Sometimes I saw the shadow of the goose as small, and the queue flew over the far sky, especially the style. In fact, after the sunrise, there is still the sound of wind and insects. Winter is the morning dynasty. Needless to say, when the snow falls, sometimes the frost is brown, even if there is no snow, there is no frost, the cold is cold, and it is quite appropriate to build a fire and carry the charcoal fire through the corridor; but unfortunately, at noon, the charcoal in the brazier is gradually covered with white ash, and there is nothing to appreciate. ”
This beautiful description combines the four seasons with the weather of the day, saying that the spring dawn is the most, the summer night is the best, the autumn dusk is good, the winter is the morning and the morning is wonderful, and the feeling of appreciating the weather is written together, subtle and accurate.
East Asian painters, whether in China, Korea or Japan, can best feel the scenery of heaven and earth in different seasons. The so-called "painting mountains are like real mountains, real mountains are like painting mountains; everyone loves real mountains, and I am alone in painting mountains." The description of the great Northern Song Dynasty painter Guo Xi in "Forest Springs Is High" is the most famous, the so-called "Spring Mountain is like a smile, the Summer Mountain is green and like a drop, the Autumn Mountain is clear and like makeup, the Winter Mountain is bleak and sleepy", which is an anthropomorphic description; and then "the smoke and clouds of the Spring Mountain are continuous and the people are happy, the Summer Mountain Jiamu is yin and the people are frank, the Autumn Mountain is clear and the people are solemn, and the Winter Mountain is hazy and silent", which refers to the feelings of people when they face the Spring Mountain, the Summer Mountain, the Autumn Mountain, and the Winter Mountain.
While teaching in Korea, I saw Cho Hee-yong, a great painter of the Lee Dynasty era in the museum. South Korea, as a peninsula surrounded by the sea on three sides, is more concerned about the seasonal changes of seamounts, which is quite brilliant, but it is obviously derived from The Mountain View of Guo Xisi. Zhao Xilong determined that Guo Xichun's exposition of the four kinds of mountains in spring, summer, autumn and winter, "As soon as this phrase came out, the ancient and modern eyes looked at the mountains and were all ruined. Not deep in the principle of painting mountains, it is impossible to penetrate the wonderful realm. Yu lives on the sea, has been two years old, and in the four hours of reading, the sea mountain is very different from other mountains. The spring mountains are like smoke, the summer mountains are as lush as accumulation, the autumn mountains are dragging like streams, and the winter mountains are smelting like iron. In this sense, those who paint the seamounts may be given, but they may not look at the seamounts, and they do not know, although they cannot see the intentions, they have not been able to do so."
Mainland painters look at the spring mountains like smiles, and peninsula painters look at the spring seamounts like smoke; the former looks at the summer mountains like drops, and the latter looks at the summer mountains on the sea like accumulation; the former looks at the autumn mountains like makeup, and the latter looks at the autumn mountains on the sea like streams; the former looks at the winter mountains like sleep, and the latter looks at the winter mountains on the sea like iron.
In fact, this is based on the most personal observation, such as the spring seamount is often surrounded by smoke, so it looks like smoke, and then like the winter seamount is eroded by the cold like stiff cast iron, so it looks like iron. I once felt this way when I saw the northernmost island in China in winter, and only those who have seen the seamounts in winter will remember the thickness of the color and the freezing feeling of the texture. Unfortunately, the Exploration of the Seascape by Middle-earth Civilization has never been as deep as that of the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Isolated Islands. Although Zhao Xilong has repeatedly lamented that he did not travel through the landscape of the Central Plains, his description of the seamounts can be described as quite accurate.
"The Aesthetics of Chinese Life" by Liu Yuedi, Guangxi Normal University Press
The four seasons are not only natural, but have been lived in East Asia, which has formed the so-called four seasons culture. In Japanese urban society, such "forms of life" of the four seasons appear on at least three basic semi-ritual levels: First, in the form of annual rituals. These rituals often serve protective purposes such as warding off evil spirits, longevity, and good luck, and in Japan, many grains and animals are associated with the gods and are seen as bringing well-being to people.
Secondly, the cultural use of nature plays the role of greeting guests, friends or the upper echelons of society on an interpersonal level, and in the interactions formed by flower arrangement activities, seasonal flowers or plants are inserted and attached with the necessary poems, paper and flowers, all of which match the seasonal occasion.
Finally, nature, as a public and socially accepted object of entertainment, is reflected in the act of viewing cherry blossoms, autumn moons, autumn leaves, and snowfall. For example, the famous cherry blossom viewing activities began in the aristocratic circles of the Nara period in Japan, gradually spread to the common people society during the Muromachi period, and later became an integral part of the urban commoner life in the Edo period.
In short, the aesthetic feeling of the four seasons is quite developed throughout East Asia. This four-season aesthetic originated in the land of China and affected the surrounding areas, and the three civilizations are basically the same in the aesthetic temperament of the four seasons.
(The author is a researcher and doctoral supervisor of the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
Source: China Youth Daily client