Does the snow wave paper in "Dream of the Red Chamber" really exist?

Liu Cixin's "Three-Body Problem" mentions a magical paper called snow wave paper. This paper is taken from the trunk of the snow wave tree that is more than a hundred years old, the color is as white as snow, natural curl, only obsidian can flatten it, the painting of the ethereal painter, only painted on the snow wave paper has magic.

The ethereal painter shook his head again, "No, my paintings only have magic when they are painted on snow wave paper, and the paper I brought has not been flattened and cannot be painted." ”

Aunt Kuan immediately opened the painter's canvas bag and took out a section of the trunk of the Snow Wave Tree, which had been scraped off its skin, revealing a paper roll with white flowers.

They tried to flatten the paper on the floor, but no matter how hard they tried, as soon as they let go, the piece of paper bounced back to its original form and rolled back.

The description of snow wave paper in the novel is imaginary novelty, romantic magic, and arouses infinite reverie.

After reading the descriptions in the novel, as ordinary readers, we should not examine whether there are really snow wave trees in this world, and the magical snow wave paper produced from the trunk.

However, Liu Cixin's description of this rich imagination in the novel is not completely fictional to the wall, but also has its origin and archetype.

In fact, snow wave paper first appeared in the 42nd time of "Dream of the Red Chamber".

It should be written that Grandma Liu entered the Grand View Garden, praised the Grand View Garden like a painting, and then lamented that if there could be such a painting, bring it back to open the eyes of relatives, it would be worth dying, so Jia Mu ordered Xi Chun to paint the Grand View Garden. The crowd began to discuss and discuss how to paint the garden.

Bao Yu said, "There is snow wave paper at home, big and inky." ”

However, the snow wave paper mentioned here is obviously the same name as the snow wave paper written in Liu Cixin's novel, because Xue Baochao's evaluation of snow wave paper written below is more like a kind of paper that really exists in life, rather than The snow wave paper that Liu Cixin has such divine power.

Bao Chao sneered, "I said you weren't useful!" That snow wave paper writing and painting freehand painting, or the painting of the landscape of nanzong landscape, to ink, forbidden search. Take the painting of this, and do not support the color, and it is difficult to draw, the painting is not good, the paper is also a pity. ”

Although no one in this world has ever seen Cao Xueqin or Liu Cixin's Snow Wave Paper, through a review of Baochao, we still know the main characteristics of the Snow Wave Paper that we have never met: the paper is large, the ink absorption performance is good, and it is resistant to damage; but it also has shortcomings, that is, various colors will be scattered on the paper, blurred and mixed, making it difficult to carefully express the original shape and color of various scenes and objects (and it is difficult to show the color).

Therefore, this kind of snow wave paper is more suitable for ink painting, three strokes and two strokes, it renders the landscape of ink and water. The freehand paintings and Nanzong landscape paintings in Baochao's mouth belong to ink paintings with simple brushes, emphasis on rendering, and relatively low color requirements, and are most suitable for snow wave paper.

Jia Mu liked Qiu Ying's paintings, and her room hung Qiu Ying's "Yan Xue Tu". Qiu Ying's paintings are characterized by bright colors and vividness. Obviously, jia mu asked Xi Chun to paint the Grand View Garden, which is also similar to Qiu Ying's painting style, that is, the fine brush strokes of meticulous strokes, bright colors, exquisite flowers and trees in the pavilions, and realistic forms of the characters.

Therefore, the following is written Bao Chao's painting suggestion to Xi Chun is, "And Feng Ya to ask for a piece of heavy silk, called Xiang Gong Alum, ask him to follow this pattern to delete and supplement the draft, add characters." Even with these turquoise colors and gold and silver, they must also be worthy. ”

However, the snow wave paper that is said in the novel does not actually exist in reality. The word snow wave is more like a word taken from Song SuDongpo's "Return to chaohuan": I dream of a flat boat floating and shaking, and the snow wave shakes the sky for a thousand acres.

Coincidentally, there was also a strange stone in Su Dongpo's courtyard, and the name of the stone was Xuelang Stone, so his study was called Xuelang Zhai.

The soil of Zhongshan Province is stone, gray and black, dry and silent, mixed into quality, and its pattern is more white veins, enveloping like a swirling trend of hemp. ("Yunlin Stone Spectrum")

From stone to paper, the Interpretation Dictionary of the Dream of the Red Chamber interprets the snow wave paper that does not exist in the world as a white rice paper with invisible ripples.

It is further explained that this paper fiber is slender, tightly organized, and has the advantages of uniform, white, tough and other ink absorption.

This is already a kind of explicit classification of snow wave paper that does not actually exist as rice paper.

According to the different processing methods, there are three kinds of rice paper, namely raw propaganda, cooked propaganda and half-raw and half-cooked propaganda. Shengxuan has no special treatment, good ink absorption performance, but wetting is severe; cooked Xuan is based on shengxuan, the paper is glued alum, colored, waxed, and even printed, sprinkled with gold and other processes.

Cooked Xuan and Sheng Xuan, the biggest difference is that the surface has an extra layer of glue alum coating, so the performance of cooked Xuan ink absorption is weak, when painting, ink and color will not be scattered, can be repeatedly colored, can withstand layers of dyeing, the most suitable for hand painting; half-raw and semi-cooked Xuan can play the effect of raw Xuan Wet, but not too penetrating, wrinkles, rubs, points, dyes are easy to master, used for ink freehand landscape painting, the most able to play the artistic effect of ink painting.

In addition, half-raw and half-cooked rice paper is also suitable for writing poetry and lyrics, so the 38th time in "Dream of the Red Chamber" writes that people eat crabs as chrysanthemum poems, and the paper used is Snow Wave Notes.

There was another meal, the twelve questions were completed, each transcribed out, all handed over to Yingchun, and another snow wave note was taken over, and transcribed together, and someone made the bottom of the person's number.

At this point, we can completely conclude that the so-called Snow Wave Paper and Snow Wave Note are just a kind of literary expression of high-grade rice paper, just as Yang Guo's creation of the Eclipsed Soul Palm comes from Jiang Yan's "Don't Be Endowed": The One Who Destroys the Soul, Only The Other.

Not only is the snow wave paper in "Dream of the Red Chamber" a rice paper, but the mysterious snow wave paper in the "Three-Body Problem" novel is actually a literary creation based on rice paper.

Regarding the invention of rice paper, there is a long-standing saying that in the last years of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, there was a young papermaker named Kong Dan.

One day he came to Xuanzhou alone, strolling along the mountain stream, and suddenly saw a large tree lying on top of the stream, the trunk of the tree was soaked by the sun and rain, the stream water was soaked, it had long been cracked, and the snow-white bark, peeling out layer by layer, gently fluttered in the stream.

Kong Dan immediately fished out the white bark that had been peeled off and was already silky, and found that the bark was both soft and extremely tough, and was a good material for papermaking.

Later, Kong Dan met an old woman who lived near the stream, and the old woman told him that the name of this tree was called the green sandalwood tree, and when it grew to a certain age, the white flaky bark would fall off on its own.

Later, Kong Dan accumulated more than ten years of work in this area, using green sandalwood bark and Shatian straw as raw materials, with local unique mountain spring water, after soaking, ash pickling, steaming, rinsing, bleaching, beating and other more than 100 processes, lasted more than 300 days, before making a white, delicate, soft, tough, undamaged, clear ink, mothless and non-rotten new paper, because it was produced in Xuanzhou, so it was named rice paper. This paper lives for thousands of years and is known as the "king of paper".

Compared with the story of Kong Dan papermaking, let's look at the description of the snow wave tree in "The Three-Body Problem":

Aunt Kuan immediately opened the painter's canvas bag and took out a section of the trunk of the Snow Wave Tree, which had been scraped off its skin, revealing a paper roll with white flowers.

In the novel, the trunk of the Snow Wave Tree that Aunt Kuan took out of her canvas bag, the paper roll of the white flowers, and the white sandalwood bark that Kong Dan saw at the edge of xuanzhou Creek that day, how similar to Nair. The only difference is that one takes more than three hundred days of reprocessing and the other directly produces paper.

After thousands of years, thousands of hardships have struck out of the deep stream.

The snow wave paper that is as white as the crescent moon, the high-grade rice paper that has lived for a thousand years, condenses the experience, wisdom and painstaking efforts of countless people, and how much work has been done!

Compared with the mysterious and magical beauty of snow wave paper, perhaps this is the biggest inspiration that snow wave paper brings to us.

Author: Lord of the Afternoon Dream Hall, this article is to read less of the original works of the Red Chamber.