The spring tour of the ancients is a serious thing

In the late spring, the temperature rises, the old and the new, the four fields are clear and full of life. Chinese since ancient times, he likes to step on the green at this time, tracing back to the roots, which is the spring custom of ancient farming sacrifices, which has a far-reaching impact on future generations.

When the spring returns to the earth, the natural world is full of vitality, and people take advantage of the convenience, and the family plays in the mountains and countryside. Coupled with the phenological characteristics embodied in the Qingming and Guyu festivals in this period, as well as the integration of the Qingming Dynasty's festivals and customs for adjacent Shangwei and cold food after the Tang Dynasty, people naturally became more accustomed to and preferred spring travel at this time. Over time, people's spring activities have become more entertaining and secular.

Don Zhang Xuan's "Lady Yu Chun Tu". Courtesy of Visual China

In the early years of the Tang Dynasty, the folk swept the tomb during the Cold Food Festival, and the custom of eating tributes in front of the tomb and outinging in the spring had become a common practice and attracted the attention of the imperial court. In the year of Emperor Gaozong of Tang 's reign (662 CE), the imperial court issued an edict prohibiting the people from drinking together "at the time of funeral dowry" and "funeral".

However, these folk customs of walking around the green during the ancestor worship period did not decay due to the prohibition of the imperial court, but became more and more prosperous. By the twentieth year of Emperor Xuanzong's reign (732), the imperial court saw that the ban was difficult to implement, and reluctantly allowed it to restore the previous mode of etiquette. Du Fu's "Qingming" has clouds, "The flowers are flourishing everywhere, and thousands of people in Changsha are out." Watanabe's green willows are bright and clear, and the hooves of the vermilion are proud of their knees", depicting the lively scene of men, women and children riding horses in boats and enjoying spring at that time.

With the development of productive forces and the evolution of social life, the material civilization of society has gradually enriched, and people's spiritual world has become more colorful. Mr. Chen Yinke once commented: "The culture of the Chinese nation has evolved over thousands of years, and it was created in the world of Zhao and Song Dynasties. In the Song Dynasty, the trend of transforming the customs of spring into secular entertainment was more obvious, "the songs and dancers of the capital city, full of garden pavilions, returned to the twilight" (Song Meng Yuanlao, "Tokyo Dream Hualu"). People often carry wine and food with their families and get close to nature in the suburban garden, which is similar to the atmosphere shown in zhang Zeduan's "Qingming River Map" of the Northern Song Dynasty, which is "full of willows and green smoke on the street, painting the February day of the Qingming Dynasty." It is good that the curtain flowers and trees move, and the girls send swings in a disorderly manner" (One of the five drunken songs of Tang Weizhuang's "Drunken Chanting Outside the City in the Year of Ying Chen").

The late Yuan and early Ming dynasty poet Yang Ji's "Huanxi Sha Shangwei" wrote: "Soft green crown is clustered with begonias, and the shirt is embroidered with cloves." Idle on the water to step on the qingyang", which shows the comfort of people idle and playing in the spring. When people encounter the spring birds and flowers, lush, and are not willing to be "cohesive" in the general situation, but are more willing to go out of the house for social activities, it is also the embodiment of the ancient people's spirit of "the unity of nature and man".

In fact, it has been a common practice for a long time. Zhang Xuan, a painter during the Tang Tianbao period, depicted the spring scene of the nobles at that time in the Shangwei Festival through the "You Chun Tu of Lady Yu Guo", creating a relaxed atmosphere of spring and sunshine, showing Du Fu's "beautiful people" in "the state is far from beautiful and true, and the texture is delicate and even." Embroidered clothes illuminate the late spring, and the golden peacock silver unicorn".

Spring travel goes further, that is, a long trip, which is not an ordinary thing in ancient times when transportation was not convenient. But there are always some ancient people who do not take the usual path and go out of the world.

Compared with the vast spring tour procession of the nobles, the Northern Wei geographer Li Daoyuan's "spring tour" is much more simple. In order to obtain real geographical information, he has visited many places, footprints throughout the Central Plains south of the Great Wall and east of the Qinling Mountains, and has accumulated a large amount of practical experience and geographical data through traveling thousands of miles. In the book "Notes on the Water Classics", most of the geographical data is derived from Li Daoyuan's personal investigation, and there are many inscriptions of the Han and Wei dynasties (most of these materials have been lost), which provides extremely valuable evidence for the study of the history of the development of Chinese civilization.

Li Shizhen, a medical scientist of the Ming Dynasty, successively went to Wudang Mountain, Lushan Mountain, Maoshan Mountain, Niushou Mountain, Huguang, Nanzhili, Henan, Beizhili and other places to collect drug specimens and prescriptions, and worshiped fishermen, woodcutters, farmers, coachmen, pharmacists, snake catchers as teachers, referring to 925 kinds of books on medicine and other aspects of the past, "archaeological evidence, exhaustive study of physics", recorded tens of millions of words of notes, clarified many difficult problems, after 27 cold summers, three drafts, and completed the 1.92 million-word "Compendium of Materia Medica" in the eighteenth year of the Ming Dynasty (1590).

The Ming Dynasty geographer Xu Xiake's life was aimed at four directions, footprints throughout the present 21 provinces (autonomous regions, cities), "the reach of the people is not reached, explore the unknown of the people", wherever he went, explore the mysteries, and create a new direction of field investigation of nature and systematic description of nature. These ancestors and scholars who benefited future generations, who completed the journey of a thousand miles step by step, wrote down the words that promoted human progress with one stroke and one painting, which is the best example of "body and mind are on the road".

Liu Kuili recorded in the "Chinese Festivals" that "during the Tang and Song dynasties, the activities of the Qingming Dynasty were very rich, such as swinging, tug-of-war, butterfly fluttering, picking hundreds of grasses, flying kites, planting willows, planting trees, etc." The customs of the "March 3" (Shangwei Festival) festivals from the Zhuang, Li, She, and Buyi ethnic groups, such as archery, singing, banqueting, bamboo pole dancing, and dancing grounds, have also been included in the list of national intangible cultural heritage items and folklore, reflecting the people's love and cherishing of spring light that has been prevalent in the mainland since ancient times.

It is spring again, and the inheritance and development of the mainland's traditional festivals and festival customs still surround all aspects of our lives. In the spring of each year, people show their living conditions and strengthen their emotional connection with each other, which is an important source of people's happiness, and provides a rich soil for reviving national traditional culture, reconstructing the national festival system, and promoting the internal consciousness of the national community.

(The author is a librarian of the Comprehensive Business Department of the Gongwangfu Museum of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism)

Source: China Youth Daily client