The statements in this article are based on reliable sources of information and are detailed at the end of this article
Text | Gu Xuan said history
Edit | Gu Xuan said history
In 1956, archaeologists discovered the tomb of Yang Yuhuan, one of the four beauties of ancient China, and also very famous in Japan, in Xianyang.
The Japanese know the Chinese Confucius, and the person with the same name as Confucius is Yang Guifei, a beauty in the Tang Dynasty. Yang Yuhuan's fate was very miserable, she was forced to commit suicide in the Anshi Rebellion.
But when the experts found the tomb of Yang Guifei and opened it, they were stunned, this eternal mystery case did not seem to be so simple. [White-eyed]
01
Father-son conflict
Yang Yuhuan is one of the more special concubines of ancient Chinese feudal emperors, she has a lot of controversy in history, some people say that she is a red face and trouble, and the national fortune of the Tang Dynasty turned from prosperity to decline because of her.
There are many people who sympathize with Yang Yuhuan, and there are also many people who spit on Yang Yuhuan. Next to the tomb of Yang Guifei is a corridor from the Qing Dynasty, and the walls are covered with precious poems inscribed by the literati and dignitaries after the Tang Dynasty.
History records that Yang Yuhuan first married Li Longji's eighteenth son Li Mao, when she was only 17 years old, which is the age of flowers.
Li Mao liked Yang Yuhuan very much, and he named her Princess Shou. The two raised their eyebrows and were very affectionate, but what Li Mao didn't expect was that his father Li Longji also fell in love with Yang Yuhuan.
In the second year of Li Mao and Yang Yuhuan's marriage, Li Longji's Concubine Wu Hui died unexpectedly. Li Longji was crying a lot, she was her favorite princess.
However, the death of Concubine Wu Hui also provided an opportunity for Li Longji to regain his happiness, and Li Mao did not know that his father Li Longji had set his sights on Yang Yuhuan.
Because Li Longji had promised to marry Yang Yuhuan to Li Mao before, when the emperor went to rob a married woman, the other party was still his son, which was really unreasonable.
If you encounter a stunned historian again, and you have to record my black history, then how should future generations evaluate Tang Xuanzong.
So Li Longji thought of a clever trick to steal the beam and change the pillar, and in the 28th year of Tang Kaiyuan, Li Longji issued an order to make Yang Yuhuan a monk, the reason was to pray for the Empress Dowager Dou.
The emperor's order could not be violated, and Yang Yuhuan could only cultivate in the Taoist temple for five years, and later Li Longji decided to take Yang Yuhuan back to the palace.
It's just that this time it was not Li Mao who greeted her but Li Longji, and Yang Yuhuan changed from Princess Shou to Yang Guifei. Li Mao's Xinshou princess is Wei Zhaoxun's daughter, and since then there has been no Yang Yuhuan in Shou Wangfu.
02
Pampered and arrogant to eat the consequences
In Li Longji's harem, although Yang Yuhuan is just a concubine, her status is the highest.
Li Longji's love for Yang Guifei even surpassed that of Concubine Wu Hui, he knew that Yang Yuhuan could sing and dance, and specially made a song "Ni Dress Feather Song" and a blonde hairpin for Yang Guifei.
Yang Yuhuan likes to eat lychees, so Li Longji traveled thousands of miles to transport lychees to her. So a famous sentence has been handed down through the ages, and no one knows that it is a lychee when she rides the red dust concubine and laughs.
In addition, Yang Yuhuan also raised a white parrot, this animal is very humane, Yang Yuhuan likes it very much. It's a pity that the parrot died later, and Yang Yuhuan was saddened.
In order to please Yang Guifei, Li Longji immediately ordered someone to give the parrot the entire tomb in the royal garden and named it the parrot mound, which shows Li Longji's care for Yang Yuhuan.
One person ascended to heaven, Yang Yuhuan was favored by the emperor, and her family was also stained. Gradually, the Yang family became arrogant and domineering, and the people complained.
However, the flowers are not red for a hundred days, and Li Longji is mediocre and incompetent after Yang Guifei, and anti-thief forces gradually emerge in the court. In the 14th year of Tang Tianbao, An Lushan launched a mutiny under the pretext of Yang Guozhong's cholera government and decided to seize the Li family.
An Lushan's rebels raised troops from Youzhou and attacked the capital all the way, and Li Longji saw that he was about to be captured by An Lushan. Immediately, he fled to Maweipo with hundreds of civil and military officials, which is now located in Xianyang.
After the defeated army reached Maweipo, the general Chen Xuanli led his soldiers to kill Yang Guozhong, who was in power and opposition, and coerced Li Longji to execute Yang Yuhuan.
At this time, Li Longji had already lost the dignity of the Son of Heaven, and he had to follow Chen Xuanli's request, and there are different opinions in history about the cause of Yang Yuhuan's death.
It is said that Tang Xuanzong gave Yang Yuhuan a piece of white silk and caused her to hang herself. It is also said that Tang Xuanzong rewarded Yang Yuhuan with a cup of poisonous wine, causing her to drink poison and die.
03
The mystery of Yang Guifei's death
The records in the official history are the death of Yang Guifei, but there is also a legend among the people. Li Longji did not have the heart to kill Yang Yuhuan, so he finally found a maid to be a substitute for the dead ghost, and Yang Yuhuan was smuggled to Japan under the arrangement of Tang Xuanzong.
Regarding Yang Guifei's eastward trip to Japan, the ancient poet Bai Juyi once wrote in "Song of Long Hatred", "I suddenly heard that there is a fairy mountain on the sea, and the mountain is in the ethereal space."
Bai Juyi is also a person who has been a big official, and he has close contacts with the Japanese envoys to the Tang Dynasty, and he hints in the poem that Yang Guifei's ending is not groundless.
In 756 AD, Yang Yuhuan and his maids landed in Japan from Tangdu, Yamaguchi Prefecture.
Later, Yang Yuhuan never returned to the Tang Dynasty, and was buried in Japan after his death. Some Japanese writers have also recorded Yang Guifei's eastward trip to Japan, such as Nangong Bo's literary work "Yang Guifei's Biography".
And there is a "Nizun Temple" in Yautani Town, Nagato City, Japan, and the tomb of Yang Guifei is also built in the temple. In 1993, Japan's Yautani Town spent money to ask Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts to carve a statue of white marble Yang Yuhuan and sent it to Erzunyuan as a souvenir.
So how beautiful is Yang Yuhuan? Being able to win the favor of Tang Xuanzong and the Japanese people at the same time, it is recorded in the history books that Yang Guifei is good at beauty and makeup.
In addition to her natural beauty, she is also familiar with all kinds of music and dance, the Tang Dynasty is fat as beautiful, but Yang Yuhuan is plump but not obese.
Therefore, she danced beautifully and movingly, which was deeply liked by Tang Xuanzong. In addition, Yang Yuhuan likes to exercise his waist and abdomen on weekdays, and there are no rich entertainment activities in the ancient court.
The palace ladies often pass the time through games such as wooden horses, climbing rope nets, and pretending wood, although Yang Yuhuan was named a noble concubine, she also knows how to keep her beauty like a flower in order to retain Li Longji's heart.
So she often played games and exercised in the palace, and when she was tired, she asked the palace maid to massage herself.
In addition, Yang Yuhuan, the imperial physician of the Tang Dynasty, could be sent at will, and she ordered the imperial physician to specially prepare some beauty prescriptions and insist on taking them every day.
Combined with dietary therapy, Yang Guifei always pays attention to maintaining a dignified appearance, she likes to eat lychees, and eating this fruit is also useful for skin maintenance.
Yang Yuhuan's beauty method has been valued by later generations, and the Ming Dynasty court beauty book "Lu Fu Forbidden Prescription" has recorded Yang Guifei's invention.
The tomb of Yang Guifei in Maweipo, Xingping County, China, has a small cemetery, and a stele in the cemetery is engraved with the tomb of Yang Xuanzong, the concubine of Tang Xuanzong.
Like Yamaguchi Prefecture in Japan, there is also a statue of Yang Yuhuan in this cemetery, but it is a little fatter than the statue in Yamaguchi Prefecture, which may be the reason why the Japanese do not regard fat as beauty.
And the Huaqing Pond at the northern foot of Lintong Lishan is also famous at home and abroad because Yang Yuhuan came to bathe, and Yang Yuhuan's special bath has the reputation of concubine soup.
04
The legend of the chaise powder
Because she was too famous, Yang Yuhuan couldn't sleep quietly underground after her death. There is such a legend among the people, in ancient times, there was a Zhang Yuanwai who had no son in the family, only a daughter but an ugly appearance.
The man should get married and the woman should get married, and the daughter has reached the age of marriage, but no one has come up to talk to the matchmaker. Mrs. Zhang Yuanwai knew that things were difficult to do, so she dissuaded Zhang Yuanwai from accepting a concubine and having one or two more children.
But Zhang Yuanwai felt that this was inappropriate, and insisted on finding a family to marry his daughter. However, Zhang Yuanwai's daughter was really ugly, and even a few families were unwilling.
Seeing that their daughter was getting older and older, Zhang Yuanwai and his wife were very anxious. After a series of blows, her daughter also became depressed and unwilling to see people.
I wanted to cut myself off, but my parents were too old and no one took care of them, so I had to cry alone at night. In the early hours of one morning, she rushed out of the house and inadvertently came to the cemetery of Yang Yuhuan in Maweipo.
Zhang Yuanwai's daughter wanted to vent the accumulated grievances, but she knelt down in front of Yang Guifei's tomb and burst into tears. One moment beating his chest, the next moment crying and screaming, tears slid down his face and dripped onto the soil in front of the grave.
She complained that Tiangong gave Yang Yuhuan a beautiful and moving face, but let herself be so ugly. As he spoke, he wiped his tears with his mud-stained hands, and before he knew it, it was almost dawn.
Zhang Yuanwai and his wife woke up to find that their daughter was not in the room, and hurriedly went out to look for it, and they found that their daughter was lying in front of the tomb of the concubine, still sobbing in a low voice.
The couple was very heartbroken, and hurriedly helped their daughter's weak body to persuade them to return home. The daughter went back to wash her dark face, and the mother was surprised to find that her face was very white.
Compared with the previous judgment of the two, Zhang Yuanwai and his wife immediately asked their daughter to freshen up and dress up, and then looked at the daughter as if she was a fairy.
Zhang Yuanwai's daughter suddenly became beautiful, which attracted the attention of the surrounding neighbors, and only after inquiring did she know that she had gone to the tomb of the concubine. This news spread from one to the next, and the more it spread, the more amazing it became.
People say that Yang Guifei was white and beautiful before her death, and Zhang Yuanwai's daughter must have been stained with Yang Guifei's light. The tomb of the concubine has a magical beauty effect, and the tomb soil rubbed on a person's face can make an ugly girl beautiful.
Rumors are always in the mouth of people with ulterior motives, and they are becoming more and more evil, and gradually the news about the tomb soil of the concubine can nourish the beauty spread.
As a result, Yang Guifei's cemetery is often frequented, and they come to fetch the concubine soil with beauty effects. However, the soil of the cemetery is limited after all, and if you pack me with a bag of soil, the cemetery of the concubine will become smaller and smaller.
The person in charge of protecting Yang Guifei's cemetery has to fill it up again every day. But there were so many people who came to steal the soil every day that he simply brought in stone bricks to completely wrap up the cemetery, and refused to allow others to take the soil again.
Yang Guifei was favored by the emperor during her lifetime, and after her death, she was also highly sought after by the people, and her reputation even spread to Japan for a time, and she deserved to be one of the four beauties in China.
The Japanese people also respect Yang Guifei very much, and they rank her alongside the three beauties in the world, the other two are Cleopatra and Japanese concubine Ono Komachi.
Ono Komachi was a famous talented woman in the Heian period, and she was also a famous Japanese poet, which shows the Japanese people's love for Yang Guifei.
Resources:
[1] Xingping Municipal People's Government Han style Tang Yun > historical relics scenic spot "Ancient mounds linger incense, poems and monuments shine" Stroll through the tomb of the concubine and feel the Tang rhyme
[2] Ma Weiyi Mist: Is Yang Guifei dead or not? Phoenix.com