It's about to be summer, and beijing is getting hotter and hotter every day. As a veteran summering artifact, fans are no longer so popular nowadays.
Qing Dynasty Pu woven axe fan
Collection of the Palace Museum
Urban young people have cool spray and portable small fans when they go out, and there are air conditioners, ice cream, and electric fans at home, so the frequency of fans is getting less and less. As everyone knows, in the old age, the culture and fun contained in the fan are quite rich.
Ming Dynasty Tang Yin "Okra Diagram" fan page
Collection of the Palace Museum
People who often listen to the commentaries must be very familiar with this sentence: "Bra bra warrior belly monk Dao collar, book mouth service sleeve media fan shoulder." This sentence is about the actions of different practitioners when fanning the fan, which shows the many rules for using the fan - the rules are set by people, and they have always been formed by "habit into nature".
Ming Dynasty Dong Qichang's "Imitation of Ni Zhan Landscape" folding fan
Collection of the Palace Museum
Zhuge Liang holds a lupine fan, probably one of the most familiar fan images, and the birth of the fan can be earlier than the Three Kingdoms period, probably dating back to China 3,000 years ago.
There are descriptions of "翣shà" in ancient texts, and the function is close to that of the fan we now know - the long-handled lupine in the honor guard. From the glyphs, it is not difficult to understand that "feather" and "concubine" are combined, which means a feather fan standing on either side of the master like a concubine.
It can be seen that the invention of the fan was not simply to cool off, but also out of the need for etiquette. During the Qin and Han dynasties, the class of princes and ministers and scholars began to carry a fan with them as a table. By the Time of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the power of the fan was returned to the hands of the rulers, and only the royal family could use it. And the fan has been popularized by society, from an aristocratic ceremonial instrument to a practical product of life, which is already a later story.
Qing Dynasty white silk ground embroidered peacock lacquer handle tuan fan
Collection of the Palace Museum
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, fans, as a cooling accessory, can be divided into two main types - folding fans and tuan fans. Due to the inconvenience of carrying the tuan fan, most of them are used by noble ladies who do not go out of the gate, and men prefer to wear a folding fan when they go out.
Ming Xuande "Landscape Character Fan" Folding Fan (Zhu Zhanji)
Collection of the Palace Museum
Folding fan is also called "jutou fan", appeared slightly later than the tuan fan, many people think that it was introduced to China from Japan during the Song Dynasty, and we can indeed see the use of folding fans on the utensils of the Song Dynasty. However, there are many accounts of when it originated, and no consensus can be reached for the time being. And the folding fan really spread throughout the north and south of the river in the folk, and it had to be after the Ming Dynasty.
According to records, when Ming Chengzu Zhu Di ascended to the pole in Jinling (Nanjing), he found that the local folding fan was beautiful and practical, so he ordered a folding fan to be used in the palace. Since then, folding fans have quickly become popular throughout the country and have become a must-have fashion item for princes and nobles.
Ming Dynasty illuminated gold folding fan
In 1972, the Ming Tomb of the Wuli Pai 721 construction site in Yueyang, Hunan Province, was excavated
As a place of examination, the world gathered in Jinling, proud to buy Jinling folding fans, and even once "a hard to find". Literati and scholars not only use folding fans to fan the wind in the summer, but also hang them around their waists in winter to show their good heritage.
Ming Dynasty Wen Zhengming "Orchid Diagram" fan page
Collection of the Palace Museum
Until the Qing Dynasty, the demand for folding fans reached an unprecedented peak, and the number of literati officials was counted, and even foreigners began to follow suit. At that time, Guangzhou, as an important port of the Qing Dynasty, exported a large number of exquisite folding fans to Europe for the use of noble ladies, which can be seen from the paintings of the European Renaissance at that time.
Since then, fans have been popularized and sought after by the three religions and nine streams, large, small, round, square, and can be seen everywhere on the market - readers fan chests, martial arts fan stomachs, practitioners fan necklines, storytellers fan edges, uniformed civil servants fan cuffs, matchmakers fan shoulders... And then there's the slip of the tongue that we mentioned at the beginning.
From aristocratic ceremonial utensils to daily necessities to literary entertainment, fans have gradually formed a set of "homework". Whether it is the fan itself (fan surface, accessories, fan bone) or the packaging of the fan (fan bag, fan pendant, fan box) may be designed and customized by the owner himself, unique, and even become a treasure with considerable collectible value. It is said that Mr. Mei Lanfang loves to collect fans, the fan bones are mostly the top Xiangfei bamboo, and the fan surface is mostly the authentic handwriting of famous calligraphers and painters... As many as a hundred.
Guanfu Museum collects a folding fan of the Qing Dynasty sandalwood bone paste with character patterns, with exquisite craftsmanship and rich colors, which are exported to Guangzhou in the Qing Dynasty.
It is composed of sixteen grades of sandalwood fan bones, with large fan bones embossed on both sides of the floral figure pattern; the middle fourteen small fan bones hollowed out the intestines, various geometric patterns;
The paper fan surface, double-sided painting; one side paints the life of the woman in the tongjing official residence, the other side is divided into three pieces of light with painted fish algae patterns as intervals, and the two sides are painted with flower butterfly patterns, and the middle is a women's picture. It can be said that the appearance value is quite wow!