Wenhui scholar | Li Yajuan: The Flow of Jiangnan Cultural Aesthetic Fashion

Jiangnan culture can be traced back to the prehistoric Hemudu culture, Majiabang culture, Songze culture, Liangzhu culture, Maqiao culture and so on. Among them, Liangzhu culture is China's earliest form of independent and complete spiritual culture, with the world's most exquisite jade, the earliest large-scale ploughing rice cultivation and China's earliest ramie fabrics. If the Liangzhu culture is described from the aesthetic characteristics, it is the "external expansion weather" of blood courage and martial arts and the "jade weather" of introverted refinement coexist. Liangzhu culture is a collection of cultures in the history of Chinese civilization, which has been identified by archaeologists as the early culture of the Wuyue nation.

At the end of the Shang Dynasty and the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, Wu and Yue emerged in today's Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Anhui, as well as parts of Jiangxi. In the late Spring and Autumn Period, Jurchen Wu was in Gusu, present-day Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, and Yu Yue was in Huiji, now Shaoxing, Zhejiang. Wu was built by the "TaiBo Ben Wu", and was built by the Miao people of Xia and the Jing barbarians. In the land of Wu Guoyue, Wu yue culture gradually matured. The most obvious feature of Wuyue culture is the extreme worship and belief in water. The Wuyue region, with rich waters and fertile soil, blocks the Yangtze River in the front and the sea in the back, and is famous for its water town. As a result, the people of Wuyue, who had been born and raised in Si for generations, naturally developed a fear and admiration for water. The State of Wu built a shrine in Tangpudong to worship the god of the river and the sea, "Eli Chao Xi Shui"; after the Yue King destroyed Wu, "the spring sacrifice of the three rivers, the autumn sacrifice of the five lakes, so at that time, the shrine was erected for it". Like Dayu, who is good at controlling water, in Wuyue has always been used as a god who controls water and is used to worship. At the same time, unlike the Central Plains, where "the body is skinned, the parents are affected, and they dare not destroy it", the land of Wuyue, from the king to the people of Li, is good at "cutting off the tattoo". The "Spring and Autumn Valley Liang Biography" is called "Wu, the country of Yidi, Zhu Fa tattoo". The reason for this is that the people of Wuyue "are always in the water, so they cut off their hair and tattooed their bodies, so that they are like dragons, so they do not see harm." The people of Wu and Yue feared water, worshiped water, and drove boats in the water to make a living, surviving in the struggle with water. In the widely circulated legend of Dayu in Wuyue, Dayu and the dragon god who stirred up the wind and waves fought wits and courage and won victory in the rebellion. The Wuyue culture produced in this environment naturally presents a cultural character of courage and pioneering.

On the other hand, Wu's spirit of courage and outward expansion has also been further strengthened in the historical environment of strife. During the 500 years from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period, the Zhou Dynasty declined, the Lile conquest came out of the princes, and the nations turned to annex each other. In the Spring and Autumn Period, there are five hegemons, and the Warring States column has seven heroes. Frequent wars and the situation of the weak and the strong had a profound and far-reaching impact on the Wuyue culture at that time. Wu and Yue are adjacent to each other, "the same atmosphere and common customs, the position of the landlord, not Wu Zeyue". Wuyue is adjacent to each other and strife. The most famous of these is the story of the Yue King's twenty years of lying down and tasting his guts. Because of the needs of war and the struggle for hegemony in the north, Wu and Yue attached great importance to and were good at casting swords in bronze, and their casting skills were also famous. "The sword of Ganyue, the treasure of zhiye" "The manufacture of ancient weapons, with Wu Yue as the most prosperous.". In this context, it is reasonable that Wuyue culture can contain the aesthetic character of courage to move forward and pioneer new ideas.

In the late Warring States period, in the twenty-third year of the reign of King Huai of Chu (306 BC), Chu annihilated Yue, and Chu culture and Yue culture were formally integrated. In fact, from the middle and late Spring and Autumn Period, Chu culture and Wuyue culture began to communicate with each other. During the period of more than a hundred years of Wu Jin's resistance to Chu, Chu's resistance to Wu, and finally The destruction of Chu, Chu culture gradually progressed to the east. Different from the northern ritual culture of "simple and thick" and "just and serious", the maverick Chu culture is known for its "strange romance", "bold and colorful", "mysterious and mysterious" and "Renda informal". This is epitomized in Chu Ci Chu Fu. After the integration of Chu culture and Wuyue culture, Wuyue culture began to show a new look, the most significant manifestation of which is that Haoyong Shangwu is no longer the most typical existence in Wuyue culture, and "Shangwu culture" and "Chongwen culture" began to meet and integrate.

The Wuyue culture, which was in the initial stage of Jiangnan culture, was still only a regional culture in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. With the continuous southward shift of China's economic center of gravity, cultural center of gravity and political center of gravity, Jiangnan culture has gradually been established. During the Wei and Jin dynasties, the Wuyue regional culture began to enter the category of "China's" Jiangnan culture. Qian Mu believes that "the Eastern Jin Dynasty crossed to the south, and the Yangtze River Basin officially represented traditional China." Talking about Xuan Shangyun's Eastern Jin Dynasty and the "Wei and Jin demeanor" of good medicinal wine, heavy posture, and taste of Shen Yun, the Jiangnan culture at this time injected new characteristics such as emphasizing the artistic conception and seeking remoteness, the flow of affection, the clarity and gravity, and the transcendent and hidden; the "Yuanjia body" with gorgeous words and neat workmanship, the "Yongming body" with exquisite craftsmanship and beauty, and the "Wu Juntian body" that was beautiful and elegant also set up a new aesthetic style for the poetry world; the fresh and lively Jiangnan folk songs of the Southern Dynasty were bold, warm, persistent, and simple, with beautiful and moving feelings and pure and clear charms.

From the Anshi Rebellion to the Song Dynasty's southern crossing, the Jiangnan region developed rapidly, and Jiangnan culture took off qualitatively here, and began to take the initiative in the Chinese cultural pattern. Zhang Ruoxuan's poem "Spring River Flower Moon Night" by "The Fourth Scholar of Wuzhong" overwhelms the whole Tang Dynasty with a single piece, adding a wisp of emptiness, beauty and deep seclusion to the Tang poems. After the Anshi Rebellion, a large number of scribes took refuge in Jiangnan. "It is common in the Qi King's mansion, and Cui Jiutang smelled it several times before. It is the good scenery of Jiangnan, and the flower fall season is also the king. "Under the infiltration of Jiangnan style, the Qi Liang poetry style, which is bound by the ancient literature movement with fine music and clever words, has been imitated again. A leaf knows autumn, which shows the influence of Jiangnan culture in culture at this time. By the late Tang Dynasty, the use of "Jiangnan" from the cultural concept, to refer to the place of "beautiful scenery and people's Xiwufu" has become a conventional. For example, the late Tang Wei Toad's "Sending Lu Pan Shangshu Lingwu" has clouds: "The orchard under the Helan Mountain is formed, and the north of the River is famous." ”

In the Southern Song Dynasty, with the further concentration of cultural talents in Jiangnan, Jiangnan culture experienced another development, especially under the impetus of the Song Dynasty of "flowers as light as dreams, rain as fine as sorrows", "literati art" was launched. Artistic interest, blind enlightenment, and subtle ethereality have become the center of Jiangnan cultural aesthetics. Song Dynasty porcelain with minimalist shape, pure glaze color and rich connotation epitomizes this point. The most concentrated embodiment of the aesthetic character of "literati art" is "literati painting". Literati painting rose in the Southern Song Dynasty and flourished in the Yuan Dynasty, and is a rare treasure in the history of Chinese art. Literati painters such as Zhao Mengfu and Yuan Sijia were all born in Jiangnan. Meilan bamboo stones, landscapes, flowers and birds have become new objects of depiction for literati painting, and the coordination of poetry, literature, painting and printing is also very different from the jin and Tang dynasty figure paintings. Whether it is the landscape of the Northern Song Dynasty with a thick panorama, the exquisite landscape of the Southern Song Dynasty, or the Yuan landscape where ink overwhelms the green mountains and water, the artistic pursuit of "virtual reality is born and intended to be beyond words" is constantly advancing.

From Ming Jiajing to Qianlong, there are many philosophical, literary and artistic schools in Jiangnan, with ups and downs. The developed Economy of Jiangnan, the rise of the citizen class, the emergence of a large number of cultural families, and the propagation and flow of YangmingXinxue have made Jiangnan culture closer to secular human feelings, and seeking "custom" has become the tendency of literature and art to coexist. This is highlighted by the rapid commodification of culture and art. Taking the engraving book as an example, the Private Mill carving in the Qing Dynasty replaced the official carving and the family carving, occupying an absolute advantage, and the books engraved by the Suzhou and Nanjing fang carvings alone accounted for 7/10 of the national total, in order to cater to the preferences of readers, the books printed by them were mainly operas, legends, novels, poems, and miscellaneous books. This kind of civic literature and art is no longer full of moral speeches, but is full of play with the worldly human feelings, admiration for wealth and glory, expectations for the love of men and women, and interest in public cases. The 150 years from the Ming Wanli to the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty were a prosperous period of "script" creation, the representative of Chinese civic culture, from the authors of the four classical masterpieces to the authors of the four condemnation novels of the late Qing Dynasty, most of them were from Jiangnan, and the authors of other novels were also from Jiangnan. In this context, the literati paintings of the Ming and Qing dynasties are also inevitably contaminated with the secular atmosphere brought by the bustling city of Jiangnan. The "Four Houses of Wumen", the Eight Houses of Jinling in the early Qing Dynasty, and the Eight Monsters of Yangzhou in the middle of the Qing Dynasty pushed the painting of secular life to a climax. The maritime painting school at the end of the Qing Dynasty expressed a stronger literary and artistic color of the citizens. All because of the aesthetics in daily life, the Jiangnan food culture, garden culture, qu art, etc. in the Ming and Qing dynasties have reached their own historical high points in Chinese culture.

Author: Li Yajuan (Associate Professor, Pudong Cadre College, China)

Editor: Yu Ying

Editor-in-Charge: Junyi Li

*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.