Source: Yifei ID: efifan
The article is a bit of a title, but between the lines it is still the praise of collectors in the literary and art world, artists among singers, such a positive energy idol, who has been popular for 30 years, must let more people know about it.
Sweep the long song list to the end, and you may see the long-forgotten Zhang Xinzhe.
Now listening to his "Faith" and "Overfire", it is indeed necessary to rely on fate, after all, in the list of "nostalgic songs", Zhang Xinzhe has always been at the top.
He is low-key, rarely appears in the public eye, and it is difficult to see him as a mentor in major music comprehensives.
Therefore, when he appeared on the stage of "The Sound of Life· Treasure Island Season", the power of memory killing was extremely ferocious.
The song "I Really Love You" in the first issue still has the texture of a CD.
The very sensational "Please let me go with you, let me go with you~", which makes people return to the bright 1993 in seconds.
That year, Li Zongsheng's "Love Like a Tide" made him an instant hit, and since then, no one has been able to shake the status of the "Prince of Love Songs".
Zhang Xinzhe can sing, and everyone knows it.
However, few people know that he has another identity besides the singer - collector.
His collection ranges from Ming and Qing dynasty costumes, jewelry, month cards of the Republic of China, cheongsam, to ancient porcelain... The scope is quite extensive.
has been in the industry for more than 30 years, and he has thousands of treasures, in comparison, the singer is just a side job.
What's even more rare is that he is not just an antique dealer, he has studied the history of the field to a staggering degree.
Open Zhang Xinzhe, if you only use the way of "nostalgic songs", it would be a pity.
01
Zhang Xinzhe's collecting road began by picking up rags.
He was born in 1967 into a family of pastors in Yunlin County, Taiwan. My father was a pastor, my grandfather was a carpenter all my life, and my uncle was a thrift collector.
The pastor's family did not have a high income and could not afford to buy furniture from the trading house, so they had to make their own furniture or dig out some decent repairs from their uncle's thrift store.
My father, like my grandfather, was very hands-on, and those discarded windows, doors, and cabinets could always be resurrected in situ after his renovation.
Zhang Xinzhechao likes to help his father, which is the exploration and adventure of father and son.
Influenced by his family, Zhang Xinzhe also began to pick up things, and his family did not reprimand, but would comment every time: "This piece of wood is good... This process is a bit sloppy, not as good as the last one..."
If someone picks up a rare object one day, the grandfather and grandson can be happy for several days.
The feelings for old things have been growing in Zhang Xinzhe's heart since childhood.
This preference is not just as simple as picking up cheap, he has his own aesthetics and thinking about old things.
Zhang Xinzhe grew up in the church, and the seminary attaches great importance to the cultivation of children's music, painting and other abilities.
In addition to violin and vocal music, the teacher often takes them out to sketch, and the art class not only teaches painting skills, but also teaches students how to appreciate these beautiful things while demonstrating.
Obsessed with painting, Zhang Xinzhe was not only satisfied with the class, but his father saved money to buy him an expensive set of Western art history, and he almost slurred every page.
Not only does he copy the knowledge points in the book, but he also learns to copy the good-looking paintings. In addition to the art books borrowed from the library, over the past few years, I have made several large notebooks.
Sometimes, some foreign missionaries come to the church, and they will bring some magazines, books, postcards that are not available in Taiwan... These have opened Zhang Xinzhe's eyes.
Aesthetics are gradually cultivated in it.
(Zhang Xinzhe and his father)
Every summer vacation, Zhang Xinzhe will fly straight to his uncle's house. The mountains of old things sparkled like treasures in his eyes.
Magazines, comics, handmade gadgets... Although it looks dirty, he can taste a different kind of charm from it.
Zhang Xinzhe's teenage years coincided with Taiwan's economic take-off, with old buildings falling one after another and high-rise buildings rising from the ground.
Angry, he was like an old-fashioned faction, and joined many associations to resist the government's violent demolitions.
However, the torrent of the times was unstoppable, and in frustration, he set a crazy plan: to paint the old streets of every township in Taiwan.
Every holiday, he would take the bus and train to various places in the province, first use the camera to take pictures of the old buildings to be demolished, and then go home to calculate the proportions and carefully depict.
The work was very arduous, but he persevered from junior high school to university, and in a few years he painted the old streets of more than a dozen cities.
Unfortunately, the speed of painting could not match the speed of demolition, and many of the elaborate buildings were destroyed in the dust, and by the time I came to my senses, everything was gone.
Later, his hand-drawn drawings became valuable historical materials.
Who would have thought that these works were actually made by a middle school student.
In 1989, Zhang Xinzhe stood out in a singing competition, signed a contract with Rolling Stone, and made his official debut.
In the years when he was unknown, he worked in the company and saw the opportunity to release records.
In the intervals, he would drive the company's small broken car all over Taipei to "pick up the rags".
Colleagues laughed at him for being a young old man, only he knew what he had picked up.
02
In Zhang Xinzhe's collection, weaving and embroidery is the largest category.
His first collection was a pair of embroidered shoes from his maternal great-grandmother.
My maternal great-grandmother was a centenarian and very old-lived, and she came slowly from the old days, wrapped in a three-inch golden lotus.
Don't look at this palm-sized shoe, the pattern on the upper is never ambiguous, flowers, fruits, birds, beasts, insects, fish... Different patterns correspond to different meanings, dexterous and exquisite.
After the old man died, according to custom, her relics were to be burned, but Zhang Xinzhe refused to live or die, he said that he would keep them as a memorial.
That was the first time he had seen his great-grandmother's fine clothes pressed at the bottom of the box, and he was amazed by the silky silk and gorgeous embroidery.
These embroidered clothes made Zhang Xinzhe have a strong interest in Chinese weaving and embroidery.
After the album became a big hit, he started a crazy acquisition with no shortage of money.
Many years ago, at an auction in the United States, he took a fancy to a dragon robe of Cixi, on which was Cixi's favorite "Twelve Chapters" pattern.
The 12 patterns of the sun, moon, stars, mountains, dragons, Chinese insects, Zongyi, algae, fire, powdered rice, yellow, and black are embroidered all over the body.
The "Twelve Chapters" pattern was originally exclusive to the emperor, but who is Cixi, she used this dragon robe to show her dignity in a high-profile manner.
Zhang Xinzhe only spent 50,000 US dollars to take this dragon robe, firstly, because he really liked it, and secondly, he didn't want the national treasure to go overseas.
Today, the value of this treasure has already multiplied several times, and the vision is unique and ruthless.
Not to mention the dragon robes worn by Qianlong and Jiaqing, which are even more valuable.
In addition to the emperor's gorgeous clothes, he also collected more than 300 pieces of excellent court embroidered clothes, up to the middle of the Ming Dynasty, down to the early years of the Republic of China, and his appetite was really not small.
Zooming in on the details of the clothes, the characters on them are only about three centimeters, but their facial features, demeanor, and movements are all embroidered vividly.
The details of the official's clothing are more worthy of touching, different ranks, different colors and ornaments.
Compared with the clothing of the Manchu people, the clothing of the Han nationality is not so formal, and even if it is worn by women, it is more in the style of tops and bottoms, which is more convenient for activities and more lively for women.
There is also a wide variety of accessories to go along with the outfit.
His favorite is the Tongguang period, a certain aristocratic woman's Tianzi, royal blue dignified atmosphere, and it is even more exquisite when you look closely.
The bat represents good fortune, and the butterfly represents longevity, which shows the status of the owner and the thought that the craftsman has put into it.
When "The Legend of Zhen Huan" was on the air, Zhang Xinzhe was also busy chasing the drama, but he didn't watch the infighting of the girls, but kept an eye on the characters' clothes.
Although this drama was violently blown into convincing, Zhang Xinzhe was still quite uncomfortable watching it:
"Zhen Huan is a character in the Yongzheng period, but the actresses in the play wear clothes from the Tongzhi and Guangxu periods;
In Zhen Huan's era, there were no long clothes for both women's and men's clothes, and the tins they wore on their heads were also only available during the Daoguang period;
There is nothing wrong with the emperor wearing a dragon robe, but the dragon of the Yongzheng era does not look like that..."
A drama is chased down, and the details are full of loopholes, he can only comfort himself and say, after all, it is a serial drama, why bother to be so serious.
In order to show the beauty of traditional weaving and embroidery, his collection has been held several times.
"These clothes truly reflect the highest aesthetic colors in China at that time," Zhang said.
03
In October 2020, Zhang Xinzhe held a special exhibition at the Aurora Museum in Shanghai.
The exhibits are beautiful month cards and antique costumes from 1910 to 1950, and the curator and collector are himself.
It is said that this exhibition is special because the category of month cards is too niche.
The so-called month card, many people are familiar with, it is born in Shanghai commercial advertising painting.
With the opening of Shanghai in 1843, it became China's largest port of foreign trade, and the latest trends and goods poured into the city.
In order to compete for commercial territory, advertising was born.
The protagonists of the month card are all beautiful women, who wear the most foreign clothes and endorse all kinds of trendy goods.
These hand-drawn drawings are printed on the wall calendar, which is both practical and can be used as decoration, and is very popular with the common people. Even in Taiwan, some old objects can often see the illustration of the month card.
Why are things so common now?
Precisely because it is so ordinary, it is greatly underrated, and few people have a special collection. Even photocopied copies are rare on the market, let alone originals.
For this reason, Zhang Xinzhe always travels to various inconspicuous small auctions.
At that time, the Internet was not developed, and if you wanted to consult the information of the month card, you could only go to the library to flip it one by one, and even came to Shanghai to visit experts and painters.
After decades of collecting, he now has only about 100 original manuscripts.
By arranging the month cards chronologically, we can see the history of China's trend changes very intuitively, and we can also see how Chinese women are moving towards liberation and independence step by step.
In the beginning, the beauties in the month card were still wearing traditional clothes and wrapped tightly around their bodies.
Gradually, they put on cheongsams, dresses, and high heels.
The wrapped feet were released, the arms and calves were exposed, and the slits of the cheongsam were opened higher and higher, until they wore swimsuits, and women finally had the freedom to be sexy.
In terms of lifestyle, they have gone from being husbands and children to playing golf, flying airplanes, and even smoking.
Because of excessive commercialization, the artistry of the month card and the historicity it carries are ignored by the public, but in fact, the painters of the month card are Xie Zhiguang, Zheng Mantuo, Hang Zhiying, Hu Boxiang and other famous artists.
In order to show the creation process of the month card more intuitively, Zhang Xinzhe once invited students from the university who specialize in studying and restoring rubbing strokes to help, but the final effect was not as good as the original manuscript.
If you don't have super drawing skills, you really can't show the unique charm of the month card.
However, the painters of that time were very unconfident in their works because of the world's contempt for business.
The more he understands the story behind it, the more Zhang Xinzhe wants to help this group of painters correct their reputation.
In order to bring the month card into reality, he also selected a cheongsam similar to the one in the painting for display.
These cheongsams are all clothes from the 1910s and 1940s in his collection, and the fabrics, cuts, and styles are all of the highest quality.
Zhang Xinzhe has more than 1,000 such cheongsam.
In the final analysis, his love for moon cards and cheongsams comes from his Shanghai complex.
The city of Shanghai, full of contradictions and possibilities, has achieved earth-shaking changes in just a few decades, and this rapid iteration is very similar to the ancient town of Xiluo, Taiwan, where he grew up.
The times are rushing forward, and modernization is brutally crushing the traditions that have lasted for thousands of years, and the shadows of the old times can only be carefully found through the cracks.
When pearls are spilled on the ground, someone has to pick them up one by one, string them together, and show them to the world as they are.
Zhang Xinzhe is the one who is happy to string.
04
"He likes old things, old people, old friends, old clothes, old sneakers."
In the eyes of his friends, Zhang Xinzhe is such a nostalgic person.
He still carries his schoolbag when he was a student, and the furnishings at home have not changed for decades, and he still goes to the vegetable market to buy groceries, and gets along with "old friends" every day, which makes him feel very at ease.
Getting along with the old has taught Zhang Xin's philosophy to examine the modern and the present.
In this way, we will not be overly arrogant.
Is something new necessarily better and better? Not necessarily.
If we don't go back in time, it's really hard for us to believe that the aesthetics and craftsmanship of our ancestors have reached such a high level.
And many of the so-called "hipsters" today are just repeating what their grandparents have done.
It is precisely because he is soberly aware of this that when the public runs forward regardless of it, Zhang Xinzhe has the courage to go against the grain.
He called this complex "root", knowing where he came from, he would not be lost in the big world.
People who are easy to get lost mostly go with the flow.
Although he has collected a lot, Zhang Xinzhe never thinks that these things belong to him, and he is only fortunate to keep them temporarily:
"It's a shame to keep these things in my house, and I will donate all the collection to the museum in the future."
Those who come from history must eventually return to history.
Resources:
"The Tide of the People's · - The History of the Image of the Moon Plate", edited by Zhang Xinzhe and Zhang Yi'an
"Kanban People" interview with Zhang Xinzhe;
"Spicy Tianhou Palace, Breaking the News of Bad Friends" Zhang Xinzhe;
"Me and the World" series · Zhang Xinzhe | Collection, encounter another time and space;