Spring is here, it's here again...
What do you think, it's the season of picking mulberries!
Many people may not be familiar with the agricultural work of picking mulberries, but you must have memorized the poems of the word "Picking Mulberries".
Picking mulberry, ancient blind date conference
The spring breeze warms up, the treetops grow new green, and the path under the forest winds, and there is a brisk laughter. Hidden among the branches, from time to time, is a girl who is picking mulberries.
Feeding silkworms with mulberry leaves, waiting for them to form cocoons, and then reeling silk to weave into cloth is a rare female-based production activity in ancient times. "Mulberry picking" is an important agricultural event in the spring and also promotes the socialization of young people. Young men and women swim in the fields and give birth to many beautiful love stories.
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Jiangnan folk song "Wuzhong fine cloth, wide length." I have one end, making pants with Lang", is the mulberry woman boldly and sincerely shows her heart.
Go to pick mulberry and see the little brother by the way
Drawing: Lin Yuchen
Of course, not all encounters on the road to Caisang can develop into love. In the famous hanle province "Mo Shang Sang", The beautiful woman Qin Luoshi, who was inspecting the field, was accosted by the Taishou who inspected the field, and strictly rejected him.
Junsherashi: "Would you rather carry it together?" Luo Shiqian gave a speech: "Make Jun Yi He Foolish!" The king has his own wife, and The king has his own husband. ”
——Excerpt from "Strange Sang"
Although "Mo Shang Sang" is a satirical comedy, it also reflects a system at that time: the government attaches importance to agricultural production, and in the spring when everything grows, local high-ranking officials (TaiShou) must personally go out to patrol the fields and persuade Nongsang.
The silkworm textile industry is one of the highlights of China's ancient agricultural economy, so mulberry picking has become a highly valued agricultural matter in ancient times.
With the development of the textile industry, the mulberry was officially recorded as a major agricultural event, and during the Tang Dynasty, it was even specially written for it, "Yangxia Caisang", which was recorded and praised by song and dance. Later generations intercepted a double-tone small order from it, that is, the word brand "Picking Mulberries".
Flying wire provokes green dust, soft leaves to the lone wheel.
Enter the garden today and look for strong people.
--Tang Yanghu, "Yang Xia Cai Sang"
The candles burn out, and you...
Picking mulberry is the most down-to-earth agricultural matter, and many works under the word plate of "Picking Mulberry" are also light and chic, with the afterglow of folk songs. The middle two sentences of the upper and lower verses are often roughly the same, and the song is sung repeatedly, and there are also slightly altered repetitions between the two songs, similar to the overlap in folk songs.
For example, this song by the Song Dynasty man Lü Benzhong:
Hate jun is not like Jiang Louyue, north and south, east and west, north and south, east and west, only with each other.
Hate the king but like Jiang Louyue, temporarily full of losses, temporarily full of losses, when to stay reunited?
The sweetheart is like the bright moon, if you are about to leave, it is rare to be reunited. This divorce is written in a woman's tone, clear as words, and can be understood without explanation.
The Qing Dynasty Naran Zhide also had a poem "Picking Mulberries" written about the divorce, which is another flavor:
Whoever turns the desolate song of the music house, the wind is also xiaoxiao, the rain is also xiaoxiao, and the thin lights are spent another night.
Don't know what's going on? Waking up is also boring, drunk is also boring, dreams have been to Xie Bridge.
This poem uses more imagery than lü benzhong works, so the volume is heavier. A "lantern flower" is a flower-shaped object formed by the condensation of ashes when the wick is lit. The ancients regarded the explosion of lanterns as an auspicious omen, and Naran, who sat all night, saw that the lights were getting smaller and smaller, the lights were getting weaker, and finally "thinning out", and they could not help but be excited.
Before the Tang Dynasty, folk lighting used oil lamps, at first the fuel was animal oil, and later the development of oil pressing technology, and vegetable oil as fuel. Although candles have appeared in the Qin and Han Dynasties, they were made of beeswax at that time, which was quite rare and only used by the nobility; after the Tang and Song Dynasties, they gradually switched to the use of insect wax to make candles, and candles were popularized to the people and became a common lighting tool. The "lantern flower" written by Naran is also likely to be a candle flower.
When oil lamps and candles burn, the ashes of the wick or candle wick will condense into a lamp flower. Too long a lamp flower will affect the combustion of the wick, so it is necessary to cut it off, which is "cutting the candle". Image source: TV series "The Biography of Zhen Huan"
Teenagers are sad, teenagers are sad
During the Southern Song Dynasty, Xin Abandoned Disease, who was ambitious and returned to the field, also wrote two poems "Picking Mulberries" (some versions are also "Ugly Slaves"):
In this life, I have broken myself and asked questions, and I am alone in the dangerous building. Leaning on the dangerous building alone, I don't believe that there are no worries in the world.
It is the time of sleep, and the king returns to rest. Jun and Hugh said with the west wind one term autumn.
The teenager does not know the taste of sorrow and loves to go upstairs. Fall in love with the upper floor, and worry about giving new words.
And now I know all the sorrows, and I want to say goodbye. I wanted to say that I would like to rest, but I said that it was a cool autumn.
Most of the people who remembered Xin's illness were literary artists, but his ideal was to lead the army to resist the gold and recover the rivers and mountains. He spent most of his life studying the art of war and actively reorganizing his armaments, but he was helpless to be impeached and dismissed from his post, and his ambitions were disappointed.
After he left his post, he idly lived in Jiangxi with the lake, strolled in Boshan mountain one day, and recalled that when he was young and crazy, he always liked to make a fuss about that sentimentality. Now that I have experienced the ups and downs of life and the bumps in the road, I have all kinds of tastes in my heart, but it is difficult to easily say the word "sadness" as I did when I was young. The years of military service and the ambition to restore the country have become old dreams, and only a sigh of autumn wind is as old as the old.
Xin abandoned the only handwriting that survived, "Go to the Country". The reward post was written when he was serving in Jiangxi at the age of 36, and just six years later, he was dismissed from his post and given up to 20 years. Image source: iartdao.com
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