Folding willows, setting wine... Why did the ancients pay so much attention to travel" sense of ceremony

Rituals focus on form and symbolism, which can channel emotions and act as psychological placebos

The traditional Chinese concept of "quiet", "fixed" and "safe", this concept caused a lot of psychological resistance to the ancients to travel, so it also evolved a very rich travel ceremony. Rituals focus on form and symbolism, and there is a certain amount of time to continue, which can channel emotions and act as a psychological placebo.

The ancestral ritual of the ancients was to burn incense, kowtow, and pay tribute to the road gods before going out in order to seek blessings. In addition, after the sacrifice, it is often arranged on the side of the road to set up a banquet for relatives and friends to gather and drink, to feast on it, and to express the feelings of parting from the trip. Therefore, the ancestral path is also called the ancestral food. Hungry walkers, send off with wine and food also. Zu Rao needs a certain amount of expenses, and traveling with more funds can also cope with the unexpected, so the send-off usually does not come empty-handed, which is also a normal way of interpersonal communication and expression of emotions. Judging from archaeological data, the general people of the Han Dynasty often used to be "ten coins", but not necessarily, the "Historical Record" records that Liu Bang went to Xianyang for military service, "the officials all sent money three, (Xiao) He alone to five" . In the Eastern Han Dynasty, liu pet was given the opportunity to be promoted, and five or six seventy-eighty-year-old men agreed to come together to send off his ancestors, and each of them took out a hundred dollars to express their praise for this local good official, which should be a generous gift.

Qin and Han paid attention to interpersonal relations, and many popular rumors at that time showed people's cognition and attention to communication, such as "friendship is not shameful and poor, shame and poverty are not successful", "clothes are not as good as new, people are not as good as the past", "Friendship is getting together, why should flesh and bones be close". The ancestral path, which was originally a ritual to relieve the tension of travel, obviously played a social function in the Han Dynasty. The number of people participating in the ceremony, the location and scale of the banquet, and the amount of gifts and belongings have become a direct reflection of the status and social influence of the traveler, and the ancestral ceremony has become a kind of communication ceremony.

"The Tradition of Food Color", written by Xi Wenqian, published by Zhonghua Bookstore

The religious connotation gradually weakened, and the secular "self-entertainment" function gradually strengthened, and even sometimes became the target activity of unity

In the early farewell ceremony, the sacrifice of the road god was the core content, and the drinking and walking were supporting roles. However, similar to many ancient rituals, although the purpose of "worshiping the gods" and "entertaining the gods" was initially used, as the belief in mysticism gradually faded, the wine given to the gods became thinner and thinner, and the wine for the worshippers became more and more pure.

Therefore, the religious meaning of the ancestral ritual gradually weakened, and the secular "self-entertainment" function was gradually strengthened, and even sometimes became a single target activity. The solemnity of the farewell turned into a lively banquet, and the feast evolved into a pure social event, which is not much different from the banquet we set up in the hotel today. This transformation began at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty.

During the Cao Wei dynasty, You Heng was talented, but his personality was grotesque and arrogant, and many of his colleagues did not like him. Once he went out on a long journey, the people went to the south of the city for his ancestors, and made an appointment, and once You arrived, everyone could not sit still, thus humiliating him. As soon as You Heng arrived, he saw that everyone could not sit up, and immediately sat down and cried loudly. Everyone looked at each other, all dumbfounded, and asked You Heng why did he cry? So he replied, "The seated person is the grave, the lying one is the corpse, and between the corpses, can you not be sad?" The crowd wept and laughed, and there was no answer. In order to humiliate You Heng and be humiliated, the ancestral ritual became a fun social game.

In addition, the WuShu Zhu Huan Biography quotes the Wu Lu as also recording a detail during Zu Rao's banquet: Sun Quan sent Zhu Huan back to Zhongzhou to personally take the zu feast. Zhu Huan said, "When the subject is gone, may his majesty's beard be covered with nothing to hate." "It means that I would love to tuck your beard so that I can wish." Sun Quan then grabbed the case with both hands and reached the front of the table, and Zhu Huan went into front of the table to cover his beard: "The minister can really be described as a tiger beard today." Sun Quan laughed. The details of this narrative are like novels, and it can also be seen that ancestral rituals have been transformed into secular activities. Entertaining the gods became entertaining oneself, and communication with the gods turned into social exchanges between the crowds, and various forms of art and customs to express separated feelings came into being.

For example, Baqiao folded willows, Li Bai's "Remembrance of Qin'e" wrote: "Every year the willow color, The Baling hurts farewell." Wang Wei's "Sending Yuan Er envoy Anxi": "Weicheng is light and dusty in the rain, and the guest house is green and willow-colored." Persuade the jun to drink a glass of wine, and go out of the west to yang guan without a reason. "All paint a picture of life like this. The willow is slender and feminine, "due to the wind knot complex, the dew is soft and long", which is similar to the leisurely entanglement of the love, so it has become a symbol of other feelings.

Baqiao, also known as the Baqiao Bridge, was in the east of Chang'an City during the Western Han Dynasty. In the book "Three Auxiliary Yellow Maps" that describes the geography of Guanzhong during the Qin and Han dynasties, the "Bridge" article in volume 6 has this record: "Baqiao, in chang'an east, crosses the water as a bridge. The Han people sent guests to this bridge and folded willows to bid farewell. "Chang'an City was the political and cultural center of the Han and Tang Dynasties, baqiao was on the eastbound traffic artery, with frequent personnel exchanges, and for a long time it was a specific place to send off people who traveled and express their feelings, so later generations also called it "soul-destroying bridge". Why is parting "soul-destroying"? The Southern Dynasty River flooded with the cloud of "Don't Give": "The intestines of the line are broken, and the feelings of compassion are hundreds of feelings." Youyun: "Those who have lost their souls, only that is enough." "It's a great footnote to this bridge.

Parting is sad and stirs up sorrow, so in ancient life customs, even once the parting "sobbing" was used as a send-off etiquette. Giving someone without tears is a serious act of disrespect. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Emperor Wu of Liang's brother Prince Hou was appointed to Dong County as a magistrate, and when he was leaving, Emperor Wu of Liang said, I am old, but I want to be separated from you, and I am very sad, so I "wept in several lines." However, the prince could not shed tears, had to be ashamed, and even blamed for this, and drifted between the rivers for more than a hundred days, unable to leave the line to go to work. This story is recorded in the "Yan Family Training • Wind Exercise", the author Yan Zhitui is quite dismissive of this custom, believing that "human nature has few tears, although the intestines are desperate, the eyes are still rotten", for such people, can not be blamed. He also noticed the difference between the customs of the north and the south, believing that "the customs of the north are dismissive of this matter." Misguided ways, laughter and laughter." The people of the Northland are healthy, and crying parting is sometimes considered to be a child, too sentimental, so there will never be a custom of crying before leaving.

However, sometimes, crying or not crying when parting is probably related to aesthetics. The early Tang Dynasty poet Wang Bo's "Sending Du Shaofu to Ren Shu Prefecture" Yun: "Nothing is in the wrong way, and the children share the towel." Wang Bo probably admired Gang Jian's sonorousness, and felt that the parting sobs were somewhat delicate and weak after all, so he said this. But people who read the poems can see clearly, and Wang Bo has many feelings in his heart: "Parting from Jun, the same eunuch" "Confidant in the sea, the end of the world is next to each other." Sighing parting from friends, feeling the same as the eunuch. I also thought about this and went to a thousand miles of smoke waves, and I didn't know when we would be able to meet again. He should have tears in his eyes and heart.

If the ritual is out of affection, if too much attention is paid to form and deviates from human nature, there will be more embellishment, less sincerity, and the ritual will lose the soil of existence. But on the contrary, if everything is out of truth, whether it is reasonable or not, whether it is polite or not, it does not matter.

(The author is a professor and doctoral supervisor of Hangzhou Normal University)