Edited by Professor Hu Xiaoming and co-written by more than 10 scholars from various universities in Shanghai, "Jiangnan Dayi" is a collection of Jiangnan cultural studies that is not only open to the public but also has considerable academic connotations, vividly and three-dimensionally telling the historical changes of Jiangnan from ancient times to the present, and presenting the multicultural charm of Jiangnan.
The book takes the concept of "Jiangnan Righteousness" as a clue, starting from the four characteristics of Jiangnan's robustness, profundity, warmth and beauty, and comprehensively excavates Jiangnan's cultural origins, poetry and songs, artistic achievements, and architectural monuments, and expresses the beauty of Jiangnan at multiple levels. In the form of one person and one article, it integrates the latest research results and literature materials in the field of Jiangnan literature and culture, and brings the mobile Jiangnan culture from the academic circle to the majority of readers.
The editor-in-chief of this book, Professor Hu Xiaoming, is not only an academic scholar, but also a scholar of ink painting. The cover, cover and some of the illustrations in this book are all based on Hu Xiaoming's "Mountains and Rivers in Dreams" series of ink paintings. A tree, a leaf, a flat boat, a few brushstrokes, outline the diverse charm of the landscape in the south of the Yangtze River.
The cover of the book is bound in ink style as a whole, and the inner and outer double covers are based on "Mountains and Rivers in Dreams", and the title of the book is stamped in red gold as the finishing touch. The book selects more than 10 classic paintings depicting the scenery of the Yangtze River or painted by the literati of the Jiangnan in ancient times, and designs two sets of color inserts, which are placed in the front of the book and in the text, including Xie Shichen's "Spring Dawn in the West Lake", Tang Yin's "Zhenze Smoke Tree", Wen Zhengming's "Tea Tasting Picture", etc., which are illustrated and illustrated to express the scenery of the south of the Yangtze River.
From the literary place names in the south of the Yangtze River, it can be seen that it is strong, deep, warm and beautiful
Hu Xiaoming, tenured professor of East China Normal University
The earth is a big library. Some people say that if you dig a hoe of land in the south of the Yangtze River, there are stories, poems, and legends on it. Therefore, the cultural significance of the landscape not only has a strong visual experience, but also has a lasting psychological cognition; it is not only a temporary sightseeing experience, but also a collective memory of history; it is not only a written record of documents, but also a vivid emotional pulse; it is not only a trace of the past of history, but also the soul of the nation.
Qu Yuan created Xiangshui, Xie Lingyun created Yongjia, Tao Yuanming created Peach Blossom Spring, Wang Wei created Gongchuan, Du Fu created Caotang, Dongpo created Chibi, and Huang Gongwang created Fuchunjiang. Without these characters, without these famous poets, artists, writers, painters, these places would probably just be a river, a house. On the one hand, poets put their feelings and ideas into a particular landscape, making it a part of the life of a living person. On the other hand, the landscape also preserves the memory of the life and love poems of the poets of the past generations, and can be added in value and can be continuously reproduced. Qian Mu once said that there is a characteristic of Chinese literature, and we can point out every place written in the work from the map. In Western poetry, a large number of stories are fictional. One of the most important sources of Western poetry is the Bible, which derives a lot of its resources from the stories and legends of the characters in the Bible. And Chinese poetry, Chinese literature, it is the writing of the earth, and it can be realistic.
Every literary place name should be a treasure trove of multidisciplinary excavation. Place names include poetry, prose, historical biography, stories, legends, and even opera, gardens, paintings, calligraphy, tourism, food, cultural creativity, leisure, etc. And what kind of style does the place name of Jiangnan contain? To understand this, we must first talk about the spirit of Jiangnan.
What is the spirit of Jiangnan, what are the characteristics of Jiangnan's culture, and what is the "righteousness" of Jiangnan, as mentioned in the title of this book?
There are four righteousness in Jiangnan: the first is "strong", the second is "profound", the third is "warm", and the fourth is "Lingxiu". It seems like a simple eight words, but I think the only one that can collect these eight words and these four beauties in one place is Jiangnan. Why? For example, "strong and healthy" means that there are also strong people in the north, and "the wind is sluggish and the water is cold, and the strong men will never return once they are gone." But what is lacking in the robustness of the north? It lacks "warmth." Jiangnan is warm and strong, whether it is its environment or its people, it is full of warmth. The culture of the Central Plains has thousands of years of accumulation, and of course it is also very profound. But although it is profound, what is missing? "Lingxiu", it is a deep light but not a spiritual show. This place in Jiangnan is very strange, deep and beautiful.
So how do you look at some of the most robust literary place names?
There are many literary place names in Jiangnan with heroic and tragic meanings. Where is the Wu Xiang Ancestral Hall? Where are you going to leave the mound? in Suzhou. What about the tombstone of the five people? It is also in Suzhou, and this story is mentioned in middle school textbooks, telling about the five martyrs of Suzhou in the Ming Dynasty, which is very famous.
Starting from Wu Xiangci, during the Spring and Autumn Period, Wu Zixu's father and elder brother were killed by King Chuping, and one of the standards of the ancients for a good son and a good brother was to fulfill the last wish of his father and brother. After the death of his father and elder brother, what should Wu Zixu do? The only way is revenge, so he went to Suzhou to find the then king of Wu, Lu Lu, and made Wu a great power in the south, and defeated Chu, dug up the king of Chuping from the ground and whipped his body, completing his revenge plan. However, Wu Zixu's fate was also tragic, and he was sent to the cold palace by the later king's husband. He has a deep affection for the state of Wu, so he asked people to gouge out his eyes and hang them at the city gate, and he wants to open his eyes and watch the destruction of the state of Wu.
Because of his loyalty, the people of the entire Wu State later especially respected Wu Zixu, and he was an immigrant, not a native of Jiangnan. Today, many cities in Jiangnan are immigrant cities, and Suzhou has 50% of the foreign population, but its foreign population has created a high value for this place. So whether it's Suzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai, or Jiangnan, it's very inclusive. People from any place can take root here, can contribute your strength here, and Jiangnan people will not forget your merits, Jiangnan especially respects those who have heroic spirit. Wu Zixu is such a person with a very heroic spirit.
The mound is also in Suzhou, and it is now deserted. Yao Li was a short man in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, who sacrificed his life in order to fulfill the master's entrustment to him. One of the biggest characteristics of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period was to emphasize "loyalty" and respect loyal and righteous people. The most important thing for a loyal man is to fulfill what his master has entrusted to him. Because the respect and recognition of the master actually symbolizes a spiritual affirmation and value realization of his own noble personality, he completes the master's entrustment, and also respects his own life, so he wants to avenge his master. He wounded himself and maimed himself, and then lay down on the enemy's ship, and while the enemy was unprepared, he completed his act of revenge. Later, it also became a representative of the memories and commemoration of the Spring and Autumn Righteous Warriors.
Yue Wang Temple, Yu Qian's tomb, and Zhang Cangshui's tomb are all in Hangzhou. Yue Fei: We all know each other. Yu Qian was the hero of the Ming Dynasty's resistance to Wara, the "Civil Engineering Change", and the emperor Yingzong of the Ming Dynasty was arrested. The enemy threatened him that if he did not surrender, they would kill Ming Yingzong. But Yu Qian said very clearly: the people are precious, the community is secondary, and the monarch is light. He would rather let the emperor be killed by them, but he resolutely did not give up the territory, and kept the territory without surrendering.
Zhang Cangshui is also very remarkable, he has to resist stubbornly and oppose the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty under the background of the Qing Dynasty's entry into the customs and has ruled for more than ten years, so he has the national spirit of the Chinese. Other literary place names in Jiangnan also show this national spirit, such as the Chengtian Temple in Suzhou, where a treasure was also found in the well. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, a very important history book was unearthed here, called "History of the Heart", and who wrote this history book?
It's Zheng Sixiao. He painted a picture called "Orchid without Roots", which is a metaphor for the collapse of the country at that time. After the fall of the Song Dynasty, he wrote a "History of the Heart", which means the history of the soul, and packed it in an iron letter and buried it in a well in Chengtian Temple in Suzhou. "The history of the heart of Sonan" was later very famous, this strange book in the well was unearthed in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, which greatly encouraged the righteous people who opposed the Qing Dynasty and restored the Ming Dynasty at that time. "History of the Heart" is equivalent to the spiritual code of a nation, and there is a huge energy in the code, which continues to be emitted after being opened, and has become a classic of Chinese literature. Professor Chen Fukang of Shanghai Outer Chinese University's book "Examination of the History of the Heart" has specifically verified the truth of this book, and some scholars in the field of history believe that the "History of the Heart" was forged by later generations, and Professor Chen Fukang has found a large number of materials to prove that this is a true legendary history book. At present, more than half of the scholars in the field of historiography believe that the "History of the Heart" is real, and the other part of the scholars still do not admit it. But I think that even if it is an iron-hearted history created by later generations under the name of Zheng Sonan, it also contains the spiritual code information of that era, the national memory of that era, and the pain of life in that era. That must be a part of our national memory, in fact, it doesn't matter whether it's true or false, it already contains so many things.
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After talking about Gangjian, let's talk about the depth of Jiangnan.
The literary place names in the south of the Yangtze River are profound, it is really "four hundred and eighty temples in the Southern Dynasties, how many buildings are in the smoke and rain", there are too many things to talk about, such as the ten famous Buddhist mountains, four of which are in the south of the Yangtze River: Jiuhua Mountain, Tianmu Mountain, Putuo Mountain, Tiantai Mountain, these four mountains I have been to, I also live on the mountain, live in the Putuo Mountain to feel the kind of aura, that kind of particularly beautiful sense of emptiness, there is a sense of making people all body and mind wash. There are also four of the top ten famous temples in the south of the Yangtze River: Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou, Daming Temple in Yangzhou, Qixia Temple in Nanjing, and Guoqing Temple in Zhejiang. Every temple and every famous mountain has a very rich story.
Let's start with the story of Leifeng Pagoda. "The Fall of Leifeng Pagoda" is a very interesting literary phenomenon. According to the research of scholar Zeng Qingyu, Mr. Lu Xun's pen has different expressions on this point from the poems of modern poet Chen Zengshou. What Lu Xun's essay "On the Fall of Leifeng Pagoda" means is that China's history is full of changes in dynasties and dynasties, and it is always a partial tinkering. Lu Xun did not advocate reformism, he liked revolution, advocated complete smashing and destruction, and believed that only in this way could we fundamentally save our nation. Lu Xun saw the fall of the Leifeng Pagoda as an opportunity to reinvent Chinese culture.
Chen Zengshou is a poet full of cultural life worries, and his Leifeng Pagoda has three unusual meanings, which are more worthy of our consideration. First, he believes that Leifeng Pagoda is a work of art, a monument, and cannot be easily destroyed and thrown down. After all, it is a part of history, and the older it is, the more it has a verve in it.
Second, Leifeng Pagoda is the "pillar stone" that has endured thousands of years of wind and rain, so it is also a symbol and a symbol of the traditional civilization of the Chinese nation. Why is China the only culture in the world that has not been interrupted? Because there is a balanced relationship between Chinese culture and social order, which can be used as a pillar of thought, a national spiritual identity, and a symbol of spiritual conversion.
Third, it is the "Jinliang" that runs through the ancient and modern people, and there is a subtle connection between Leifeng Pagoda and the readers. Chen Zengshou especially felt the earth-shaking changes in modern China, so he believed that there should be a basic order to maintain the basic values of society, and Leifeng Pagoda existed as the bottom line of civilization and the pillar of civilization. So in "Eight Voices of Ganzhou", he expressed a different view from Lu Xun on the collapse of Leifeng Pagoda.
From the above, it can be seen that a small place name can provide us with different dimensions of thinking, so that we can grasp the different directions of things, and let our thoughts become broad. Once there is only one dimension of the perception of historical phenomena, it creates a kind of rigidity of thought. Therefore, place names are very important, they store the resources of cultural thought, show a possible pattern of ideas, and it is also the poetry written by our ancestors on the earth.
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The depth of Jiangnan cannot be exhausted, and we can only get a glimpse of it. Let's continue to talk about the warmth of Jiangnan.
There are many literary place names with a warm temperament, such as Sanshengshi in Hangzhou, Taoyedu in Nanjing, and Changganli in Suzhou. The tomb of Wumei Village is in Deng Wei Mountain, the best plum blossom in Suzhou, and the saddest poet is buried on the most beautiful mountain to see plum blossoms.
We Chinese have a peculiarity that few people go to see the poet's tomb. We pay tribute to our ancestors during the Qingming Festival, but we basically don't go to see the tombs of writers and artists. But this is not the case in the West, there are three important cemeteries in Paris, the Père Lachaise cemetery, the Montparnasse cemetery, the Montmartre cemetery. The tombs are full of celebrities, important writers, poets, and philosophers, and all three tombs are very large. And to enter this tomb is to enter an important attraction, and you will be given a guide at the door, which is numbered and marked with Balzac, Hugo, Chopin, etc., and you can go to visit and express your admiration for celebrities. These tombs are built in different ways, and each tomb has its own personality, such as the aesthetic novelist Oscar Wilde, whose tombstone has many red lip prints, and I don't know how many people kissed him. In China, in fact, we should also go to see the poet's tomb in this way, the tomb of Wu Meicun is still there, and friends in Suzhou can go to see him.
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After talking about warmth, let's finally talk about Lingxiu.
There is a well-known Tang poem that best reflects the beauty of Lingxiu and emptiness: "Hanshan Temple outside the city of Gusu, the bell rings in the middle of the night to the passenger ship." To this day, there are still people who go to the hotel next to the Hanshan Temple in Suzhou to listen to the bell ringing, and the streets and alleys of the old city of Suzhou are selling calligraphy works of these two poems. Even the Japanese will organize the "Chinese New Year's Eve Bell Listening Group", which is very yearning for our Jiangnan culture.
As mentioned above, the warm beauty of Tiger Hill is also beautiful. There is a stone in Tiger Hill called the Thousand People Stone, and the other stone is called the Nodding Stone. The Thousand People Stone is literally a stone that can seat a thousand people. Tiger Hill often hosts performances such as Kunqu Opera, which are especially grand in the summer, a bit like a music festival held in Greece using ancient theaters. The nodding stone is more interesting, in the past, Buddhism came to China, and the first Buddhist master to come to the south was called Zhu Daosheng, and he preached in Tiger Hill. Legend has it that when he gave a lecture, all the stones nodded their heads. This story illustrates the charm of preaching, and Zhu Daosheng's most important contribution is to emphasize the equality of religion, everyone has Buddha nature, and everyone is equal, which gave many ordinary people in China at that time a great psychological satisfaction and an important spiritual liberation. Later, Zhu Daosheng had a great influence on Zen Huineng, who invented the epiphany of religion and believed that everyone has his epiphany.
Lingxiu, what else can you think of? The most beautiful water town in China is in the south of the Yangtze River. I have been to seven or eight ancient towns in the south of the Yangtze River, and there are many ancient towns in the south of the Yangtze River. Jiangnan people live through waterways: transportation, shipping, logistics, irrigation, the ancients gathered water to live, the water town is a harmonious community of life between man and nature, full of many beautiful things. When we go to the water town, we will feel a special kind of tranquility.
