Zhen Shiyin, this person, does not seem to be a protagonist in the whole book of "Dream of the Red Chamber", but the plot of the whole book is started by him and ends because of him.
In the minds of our readers, Zhen Shiyin still has a deep impression, on the one hand, he is Xiangling's father, on the other hand, he is also the first nobleman in Jia Yu Village, and more importantly, his desolate ending, let people deeply feel the uncertainty of life like a dream and the unpredictable.
Zhen Shiyinfu debuted, his identity is quite good, living in Gusu Renqing Lane, the family has quite a wealth, but also married a "lovely virtuous, deeply aware of etiquette" wife, there is a lovely daughter under the knee, although there is no heir is a fly in the ointment, but he has no worries about food and clothing, and his idyllic personality has slowly become a local "wang clan".
What is a Wangzu? It was a gentry and celebrity on the ancient side, although there was no official position, but it had a very high reputation in the people, and even had the possibility of saying a word.
The wealth of Zhen Shi's hermit family is not an ordinary well-off family. The coil he gave to Jia YuCun was fifty taels of silver. Maybe everyone has no feeling about this number, and it doesn't seem to be much.
But from The perspective of Grandma Liu, the daily use of their family of four a year is also more than ten or two silver, Zhen Shiyin casually gives a stranger is three or five years of expenses, compared with our modern people, at least tens of thousands of huge amounts of money, how many people can give people away at will?
Such a rich family, the family has a virtuous wife, originally should be safe and rich for a lifetime, but the disaster fell from heaven, not long after Jia Yu Village left, Zhen Shiyin first lost his precious daughter, and then the family started a fire, and in the blink of an eye, the family was destroyed, and even could only rely on the Yue family.
I don't know why, the original work has a high evaluation of Zhen Shiyin's wife, but there is a cold-blooded and ruthless father-in-law. Zhen Shiyin took his wife to his father-in-law's house, suffered a blank stare, and finally went out of the house alone to become a Taoist monk.
From Zhen Shiyin's appearance to the end, his ending is lamentable, and also allows readers to fully understand the impermanence of good people not being good.
Many people believe that the biggest change in zhen Shiyin's bleak ending is the loss of his most beloved daughter Xiangling, and the subsequent blows can only be worse at best. If his daughter had always been by his side, she would not have fallen to that point. But is that really the case?
Many people actually ignore a small detail in the original work, and it is this detail that hints at the inevitability of the decline of Zhen Shiyin and the entire Zhen family.
I don't know if you remember, where is the Zhen Shiyin House described in the original work? That is in Renqing Lane on Ten Mile Street outside the Gate of Gusu City. A Renqing Lane, obviously, will not only be Zhen Shiyin's family, the most conspicuous and the least concerned by people, of course, should be counted as the gourd temple.
As soon as everyone hears the Gourd Temple, they will immediately think of the story between Zhen Shiyin and Jia YuCun, and later the "Gourd Monk Random Judgment Gourd Case", because those plots are more conspicuous or dazzling, people therefore do not pay much attention to the gourd temple itself.
A very strange phenomenon is that Zhen Shiyin, as a noble family in the Gusu area, has become neighbors with the Gourd Temple, and the description of the original work is probably like this:
This Shi Yin was thinking obsessively, when he suddenly saw a poor Confucian who lived in the gourd temple next door- surname Jia Minghua, the table character flew when he flew, and the person who was nicknamed Yu Village came out.
If you only say "next door", then the zhen family's front and back can be neighbors, but if you say next door, it should refer more to the relationship between left and right. And Jia Yu Village came out of the Gourd Temple, and it fell into the eyes of Zhen Shi at this time as the "next-door neighbor", then we can accurately locate the geographical location of the Zhen family and the Gourd Temple.
First of all, the Zhen family and the gourd temple are left and right neighbors, and it may even be the kind of "common water" neighbors. What is watering? That is, in ancient times, there was a common wall between neighbors, and the roof eaves were connected. The Zhen family is on the side of the gate of the Gourd Temple.
This layout is very weird. People who know a little about traditional customs know a common saying: "Poor in front of the temple, rich after the temple, widows on the left and right of the temple." Si Si is saying that if you settle in front of the temple, such people will be poor, and the families on both sides of the temple will be more likely to be widows, which is probably the meaning of the male master's life. If you must be neighbors with the temple, only the back door of the temple can be.
Of course, in traditional customs, this phrase is only a reminder that it is not suitable for people to build houses near temples. From the perspective of our modern people, the temple as a public place, three religions and nine streams of people come and go, whether it is a public security problem or the probability of infectious diseases are very high, as a residential building is obviously not suitable for the site here.
What's more, the ancients also had a stronger view of feng shui, or an idealistic superstitious view. It is believed that the temple is the place where various gods are placed, and the aura and energy inside are greatly disturbed, thus affecting the ecological environment of people. If you live near the temple, your family will appear lonely, and your personality will be prone to extremes, which can be violent and cruel, or very good, but good people are more likely to be bullied.
The original arrangement of the Zhen family is located around the Gourd Temple, in fact, it is to the reader that the end of the Zhen family must be very good. However, on the surface of the text, it consciously or unconsciously only emphasizes Zhen Shiyin's benevolence and generosity, so that his bleak and sad ending is easy to bring greater visual stimulation to people.
Therefore, Zhen Shiyin went from a rich gentleman, first losing his loveliest daughter, then suffering from fire at home, to his father-in-law's house and repeatedly suffering from white smoke, such a bleak ending, in fact, the details of the original work have been hinted at, but they have been ignored by everyone.