"The first big player in Beijing" Wang Shixiang, the best life, is to play to the extreme

He is known as "the first big player in Beijing", since he was a child like to play, once was a cynical brother, once hit, he began to wake up, and finally played this thing to the extreme, it can be said that what to play, this person is - Wang Shixiang.

On May 25, 1914, Wang Shixiang was born into a famous family in Beijing, and from his ancestors, Wang Shixiang's family has been an official for generations. His father, Wang Jizeng, worked in diplomacy and served as secretary general of the State Council of the Beiyang government.

His mother Jin Zhang, who studied in The United Kingdom, is a famous Chinese flower and bird painter, and the famous "Goldfish Hundred Shadows" is from the hand of Wang Shixiang's mother, so Wang Shixiang has been influenced by his mother and has always had special feelings and unique views on calligraphy and painting.

Wang Shixiang also has an older brother, two years older than him, from a young age, he hired private school teachers for the brothers, teaching history and poetry, the brother is smart and studious and understands politeness, while Wang Shixiang is naughty and naughty, refuses to study, and causes trouble everywhere, such as going to the house, beating dogs, poking horses and honeycombs, etc.

When he was 10 years old, his brother unfortunately died of illness, and he was the only one left in the family, and his mother inevitably began to spoil him more, but there was a principle that everything that was beneficial to the body was allowed to play, and if it was harmful to the body, it was strictly disciplined and absolutely not allowed.

Wang Shixiang began to like to raise pigeons from the age of 10, and after raising pigeons, he liked to catch cockroaches, played with cockroaches and raised eagles and dogs, and the family also specially got him a house for him to toss.

However, in order to connect him with the world, his father sent him to an American expatriate school, so he learned fluent English, which made people mistakenly think that he grew up abroad.

In 1934, Wang Shixiang was admitted to Yenching University. At that time, Wang Shixiang had the most obvious characteristics of the children of the rich family, and he was very fond of fun, he would come to the classroom one day with a big eagle on his arm, sit down and listen to the lesson without doing anything; he would also come to the classroom with a cockroach, let the whole classroom students learn with the cry of the clams, he was very absurd in the eyes of the teachers and classmates, and he was not doing his job.

It was not until 1939, when Wang Shixiang began to change, that his mother, who loved him the most, died, and this stupid boy seemed to have grown up at once, and only then did he suddenly wake up and feel ashamed of his parenting grace, so he made up his mind to change.

Half because of the strengths and avoid the shortcomings, half because of the mourning of the deceased mother, Wang Shixiang's graduation thesis chose the study of Chinese painting theory, because his mother is good at painting, so he chose to study ancient painting, he after a large number of screening, and finally chose the theme of "Chinese Painting Theory Research", after several years of investigation and writing, he completed a long work of 700,000 words, at the same time, Wang Shixiang also obtained a master's degree.

One day, Wang Shixiang's father said to him: You have reached the age of self-sufficiency, and now that Peiping has fallen, you can no longer stay here. So Wang Shixiang thought left and right, and decided to go to the southwest rear and open up his own other world there.

In 1943, Wang Shixiang broke through the blockade of the Japanese army, and after a long journey, traveled to Henan, Shanxi, Sichuan and other places, and finally came to Chongqing as an assistant researcher of the China Construction Society. During this period, Wang Shixiang became acquainted with like-minded friends such as Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin.

In 1945, the Japanese army surrendered, and after the recommendation of Liang Sicheng and Ma Heng, the director of the Palace Museum at the time, Wang Shixiang was sent back to Beiping to find the cultural relics lost due to the war, and he took on this heavy burden. At that time, because of the war, Japanese and German cultural relics dealers took advantage of the danger of people to buy cultural relics in China at low prices, and then waited for the opportunity to transport them abroad.

After many banquets and exchanges with antique dealers, Wang Shixiang first locked the German Yang Ningshi and determined that this person bought a large number of bronze cultural relics from the mainland, and after several explicit and secret visits, he actually got the catalog documents of the bronze cultural relics bought by Yang Ningshi and successfully recovered 240 bronzes.

In addition to this batch of bronzes, Wang Shixiang also searched through Japan's cultural relics institutions to search for information, in order to retrieve 107 boxes of good books taken by the Japanese, this batch of good books including "Li Ji", "Yongle Dadian" and other treasures of Chinese culture, has immeasurable value, and then Wang Shixiang found 20 boxes of treasures of Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, in Tianjin.

In just one year, he recovered tens of thousands of precious cultural relics for the country, but he did not expect that this merit not only did not allow him to receive commendations, but also allowed himself to suffer injustice, Wang Shixiang was regarded as the object of criticism because of the experience of pursuing treasures, he was detained by the personnel of the relevant departments, although Wang Shixiang later proved his innocence, he was still dismissed.

In 1957, Wang Shixiang was once again unfortunately divided into "rightists", and in the chaos, he was sent to Hubei for labor reform, and Wang Shixiang, who had always dealt with cultural relics, began to do all kinds of dirty work.

In 1966, a large number of his collections of antiques, calligraphy and paintings, books, furniture and other belongings were copied, and it was his "conscious action" that saved most of his collection and was completely preserved.

But even during the Cultural Revolution, in the face of the huge pressure of the political trend, he still did not give up research, he often secretly wrote at night, engraved wax plates, mimeographs, and organized them into volumes, and completed hundreds of thousands of words of writings: "Compilation of Painting Studies", "Compilation of Examples of Qing Dynasty Craftsmen", "Sculpture Collection" and so on.

Devoted to gourds, collecting furniture, carving bamboo lacquerware, and writing books, he was excellent in everything, and he made a living by "playing", but he actually played with his will, and even played "great customs" into "daya", and even played out several "century of learning".

Loving pigeons, he invited pigeon breeding experts to eat and live at home to learn from their experience, and also observed the pigeon genealogy collected in the Forbidden City, which was compiled into the "Ming Dynasty Pigeon Classic Qinggong Pigeon Genealogy"; raising crickets, he found more than thirty kinds of cricket genealogies from all over the country, and used the method of sorting and editing ancient books to compile "Cricket Genealogy Integration"; personally planted gourds, observed and waited, wrote "Reading Daggers", "Chinese Gourds", raising eagles had special articles "Big Eagle Chapter", and dogs had special articles "Badger Dog Chapter".

Wang Shixiang in 1985 successively published the "Ming Dynasty Furniture Treasures" and "Ming-style Furniture Research", when there was no domestic research on Ming Dynasty furniture, Wang Shixiang's book opened a precedent, he almost single-handedly promoted the research and collection of Ming-style furniture around the world, and preserved a large number of precious cultural relics for the world.

In June 2009, the Chinese Ministry of Culture and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage awarded him the honorary title of "Outstanding Figure in the Cause of the Chinese Cultural Relics Museum", which was decades late, at this time he was seriously ill in bed, unable to accept any honor, this poor old man who had spent his whole life playing attentively, playing obsessively, and playing obliviously, went like this.

Wang Shixiang's play is not an ordinary play, there are many fun people in the world, there are few people who can play, others play is easy, he plays but it is a toss, he really realizes his own value, let people look at him with admiration.

The largest player in Beijing, it deserves its name. #王世襄 #