Qi Baishi seal engraved seal
Qi Baishi "Koshiya" Zhu Wenyin Shuzhai is the reading home and spiritual hall of traditional Chinese literati. Like the literati and inkers of the past and the present, Qi Baishi, a generation of giants who have collected "poetry, calligraphy and painting seals", also likes to take meaningful names for the bookstore, and seals themselves, such as "Borrowing Mountain Yinguan", "Jiping Hall", "Eight Yan Lou", "Koshiya", etc., or pinned on his inner feelings, or reflected his attitude towards the world, or highlighted his value orientation, showing his outstanding artistic talent and otherworldly artistic interest.
Qi Baishi's ancestral home was Xingzitang, an apricot tree in Xiangtan, Hunan, and the name of the old house was baishipu, so he took the nickname "Baishi Shanren" and successively proposed to take the names of "Baishi Yinwu", "Baishi Caotang", "Baishi Iron House", "Baishi Painting House" and other study studios. In 1900, Qi Baishi was introduced by a friend to paint 12 six-foot zhongtang "Nanyue Quantu" for a salt merchant in Jiangxi That showed the panorama of Hengshan Mountain. The salt merchant was very satisfied and paid 320 taels of silver as a polishing fee. After receiving this huge amount of money, Qi Baishi shared the Meigong Ancestral Hall and dozens of acres of nearby sacrificial land under the Lion's Mouth and Lotus Village, which were not far from the former residence of Baishipu. Because plum blossoms were planted all around the ancestral hall, "the door was facing Yuxialing, looking up to admire the plum blossoms", Qi Baishi renamed this house "Baimei Book House", and built a study room on the open space, named "Borrowing Mountain Yinguan", and engraved the seal of the book, and from then on here he painted and engraved, read and wrote poetry. The so-called "borrowed mountain" means that this mountain is not owned by me, but borrowed for entertainment. Qi Baishi planted plantains and lotus flowers before and after the "Yinguan", and gave poetry to the heart: "The lotus mountain is green in front of the window, and there are still thoughts after picking up the lamp and rain"; "Wuli New Lotus Field on the road, Baimei Temple to The Apricot Blossom Village", and also gracefully painted a "Drawing of the Borrowing Mountain Yinguan". So that at the age of 70, due to nostalgia, he repainted the same title work "Borrowing the Mountain Yinguan Map", the inscription poem "Borrowing the Mountains and The Four Wild Vines and the Sea, Qiao Mu He Once Recognized as a Flower", and remembered the quiet and good rural life of the old times.
In June of the old calendar in 1903, Qi Baishi went to Beijing with Xia Shoutian for the first time to teach paintings and sell paintings, accumulated more than 2,000 taels of silver, and after returning to Xiangtan, after paying the original tenant 480 taels of gold, the entire house and sacrifice field of Meigong Ancestral Hall were rented by Qi Baishi. In the autumn of 1906, when the six-year loan period expired, Qi Baishi purchased an old house and 20 acres of paddy fields in Rujiachong, Cha'en Temple Town, at the foot of Yuxiafeng Mountain, with nearby trees, lush forests and bamboo, and a pleasant environment. He personally designed the pattern, repaired the old house, named it "Ji Ping Tang", and later derived the self-design and idle chapters such as "Lao Ping", "Ping Weng", "Ji Ping Tang Master", which means that the body is like duckweed and sends to other places.
In September 1909, Qi Baishi named the "Borrowing Mountain Yinguan" that was originally named when he rented the Meigong Ancestral Hall as the Shuzhai in the Rujia Chong Ji Ping Hall, and called himself "Borrow the Mountain Wing" and "The Master of the Borrowing Mountain Yinguan", showing his indisputable mood with the world, being at ease with the encounter, and his love for the name of the "Borrowing Mountain Yinguan". When Qi Baishi settled in Beijing, he still liked to use the names of "borrowing the owner of the mountain yinguan" and "borrowing the mountain weng" to make money and print.
In 1911, Wang Minyun, a famous scribe in the late Qing Dynasty and a famous scholar in Xiangtan, carefully inscribed a plaque for Qi Baishi , "Ji Ping Tang", with dignified pen and ink and simple mao. Qi Baishi later continued to use this name, calling himself "Old Man Ji Ping", engraving his own seal of "Ji Ping Yin House", and inscribing "Written in Ji Ping Tang" on many calligraphy and paintings, sending his endless local feelings.
In 1917, Qi Baishi lived in Beijing and successively named his study studio "Koshiya" and "Regret Wutang". Among them, the "Koshiya" is a study he arranged when he was 61 years old, which contains his own bumpy life experiences. "甑" is an ancient Chinese steaming utensil, which means that the money from the sale of paintings can be exchanged for firewood and rice to support the family.
Qi Baishi loved calligraphy and painting in his early years, but Qing Han's family was unable to provide him with a teacher to learn art, so his grandmother lamented that he was born at the wrong time and born in the wrong family. Qi Baishi later made a living as a carpenter, and in his 20s, under the persuasion and guidance of his teacher Hu Qinyuan, he painted portraits in the areas of Apricot Dock and Shaotang to maintain the food and clothing of his family, so my grandmother happily said that my son's paintings could be cooked in a pot and eaten. After moving to Beijing, Qi Baishi sold paintings for a living, recalled the past, and felt a lot of feelings, so he named the studio "Koshiya", and attached a side note to the chapter he carved on the seal: "Yu Boy likes to write when he is a child, and his grandmother tastes too much: Ru is eager to learn, but when he was born, he went to the wrong person's house." Customary cloud: three days of wind, four days of rain, that (which) see the article boiled in the pot? The Ming Dynasty has no rice, wu'er! When I was more than twenty years old, I tasted the painting money to buy chai rice, and my grandmother laughed and said: "That (which) knows that today's pot is boiling Wu'er's paintings! Suddenly, yu nian sixty-one, as a guest in Beijing, selling paintings for self-sufficiency, often hanging paintings on the four walls of the house, because of its name of the house 'Koshiya', still cook paintings to live for more than a year, painful grandmother can not call Wu'er to eat together! The first month of the decylogen, Shiraishi. "It is sour, sweet and bitter, full of the life feelings of the old man Shiraishi who worked hard to seek a full life, as well as the deep affection of missing his grandmother and the helplessness of "the son wants to raise and does not wait".
Text and courtesy photo/Zhou Huibin