Memories of Jiangnan
[Tang] Bai Juyi
Gangnam is good, the scenery used to be familiar.
The sunrise river flowers are red and the fire is better, and the spring river is as green as blue.
Can you not remember Gangnam?
Bai Juyi once served as an official in Jiangnan, serving as the history of The Thorns of Hangzhou and the History of the Thorns of Suzhou, and this poem was composed after he returned to Luoyang to recall the scenery of Jiangnan. At the beginning, the author went straight to the point and sighed: "Jiangnan is good." "What's so good about it? A thousand words can not write about the scenery of Jiangnan. As a result, the author recalled a scene that was once the most familiar spring scene in Jiangnan - at sunrise, the flowers on the riverside were more beautiful than fire; the spring river water was extremely green, as if it was stained by bluegrass. Such a good scenery, how can people not remember Jiangnan?
This poem praises the scenery of Jiangnan, but does not describe the scenery in a large way, and the only words that describe the scenery are "the sunrise river flowers are red and the fire is better, and the spring river is as green as blue". These two sentences are neat and tidy, the river flowers are victorious over the fire and the river water is like blue, the red flowers and green water set off each other, and the flower color and water color shine and dye, and the more the color appears full and bright. I have to say that Bai Juyi is really a master of using color, and in just fourteen words, he drew a brilliant picture of the spring sun in Jiangnan. At the end, the poet exclaimed: "Can you not remember Jiangnan? "Once again, he revealed his infinite nostalgia for the spring color of Jiangnan.
Color is not only a visual perception, but also a cultural perception, and the naming of colors is a kind of "common agreement" that human beings have formed for a long time. In ancient times, there was no unified color spectrum, the naming of colors was more dependent on human senses, and most people used similar objects to name colors, such as goose yellow, snow blue, moon white, rat ash, duck egg green, peacock blue... Li Yu, the lord of the Southern Tang Dynasty, called the cloth dyed in the palace "Tianshui Bi", and Zhao Tuo, emperor huizong of the Song Dynasty, praised one color of Ru kiln porcelain as "rain over azure blue".
Ru kiln azure glaze plate, collection of the Palace Museum
However, for modern people living a thousand years later, these gorgeous names are somewhat difficult to understand, and some of the meanings of the names are far from the modern meaning of these words. In order to understand what Bai Juyi describes as "the spring river is as green as blue", we must first know what color the Chinese character "blue" refers to.
In baiju yi word, "blue" refers to bluegrass, also known as indigo blue, is a plant dye that can extract blue. In the Xunzi Persuasion, it is recorded: "Qing, taken from blue, and blue from blue." The meaning of this sentence is that indigo is extracted from bluegrass dye, but its color is darker than bluegrass.
In fact, looking at the animals and plants in nature, blue is an extremely rare color, and we can hardly find blue in the food we eat. At the beginning of the 18th century, before the accidental invention of Prussian blue, blue had always been a rare natural pigment. At that time, the bright, saturated blue color of the painter's pen mainly came from a valuable ore, Afghan lapis lazuli. Lapis lazuli is ground into a powder that can be modulated to produce a stable blue pigment "ultramarine". These precious stones flowed through the Silk Road from Central Asia to Europe and China, becoming a mysterious and brilliant color of the painters. In the murals of the Mogao Caves, we can find this blue color. Because of its rarity, lapis lazuli was once several times more expensive than gold.
What color is the water
If our gaze rises like a bird and looks down on the whole earth, we will find that this is a planet full of water. Oceans, rivers, and lakes are scattered everywhere, and the turquoise blue of the ocean constitutes the main color of the earth.
In the general impression, the ocean is blue. However, when we scoop up a scoop of water from it, the sea water becomes a colorless and transparent liquid. Why is that? The color of water comes from the scattering, reflection and absorption of sunlight by water. Due to different wavelengths, the absorption rate of water to different light waves is also different. When the white sunlight shines into the sea, the red, yellow, and green light in it are easily absorbed by the water and gradually disappear. Blue light is difficult to absorb by water, is most easily scattered and reflected, and can travel far in the bottomless ocean, thus forming the blue color of the sea.
Therefore, the color of the sea extends from the beach to the deep sea, forming a gradient blue band of different shades. The deeper the seawater, the more thoroughly the scattering of blue light, and the deeper the sea blue. In addition, factors such as the color of the seabed and the unexpected coral reefs in the sea will affect the color of the sea.
Compared with the deep and vast oceans, the rivers and lakes on the earth are much more complex. Because of the different geographical environments, the color of the water they present is also ever-changing. Some rivers are turbid in color and full of sediment; some have superior water quality, crystal clear, and can see the stones at the bottom of the water; and some lakes on the plateau, which are even more turquoise and clear than the sea.
The color of water, in addition to being affected by the amount of water, is also subject to the plankton, algae and other impurities contained in the water. These impurities will affect the propagation of light in the water, causing light waves to scatter. The water color of the famous scenic spot Jiuzhaigou often presents a dreamlike color. "The sunrise river flowers are red and the fire is better, and the spring river is as green as blue." Bai Juyi's memories of the Jiangnan water color, how imaginative!
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