The bats in the cave gently flapped their wings, causing a storm that swept across China in 2020. Although he single-handedly sealed the virus for a thousand years, went out day and night, and tried to play a role that did not look like a food, he still did not escape the fate of being preyed upon by humans.
Piaf is innocent, but he is guilty. Today I want to talk to you about bats, not as a "living virus reservoir", DNA repair power comparable to Wolverine's biological sense of the bat, but in the Chinese traditional cultural life soared for thousands of years of "bat".
Shanxi folk paper-cutting
Chinese like "bats" because "bats" are "blessed". The image of the bat became one of the auspicious totems representing "Fu". From the emperor to the general, down to the common people, they are happy to portray the image of the bat into their own lives, and the bat pattern is widely used in all aspects. Bats are versatile in traditional culture. Five bats = five blessings, red bats = Hong Fu or Hong Fu, bat + deer = Fu Lu, bat + shou peach = Fu Shou, bat + coin = Fu in front of you...
Shanxi Wangjia compound brick carving "Five Blessings and Longevity" illuminates the wall
Shanxi Qiao family compound bat wood carving
The ancients were fascinated by bats because of their longevity. Due to the low level of ancient medicine and quality of life, coupled with various natural and man-made disasters, the life expectancy of the ancients was much shorter than that of modern people. In ancient times, 47 years old is called "late way", because the average life expectancy of the ancients is not very long, and the average person is called old after 40 years old. Du Fu's "Three Songs of Qiangcun" in the "Late Age Forced to Steal Life" and Su Shi's "Jiang Chengzi Mizhou Hunting" of "Old Husband Talks About Juvenile Madness", the former is 46 years old, the latter is 38 years old, the same is true. During the feudal society, the average life expectancy of the ancients was 30-35 years old, when bats often lived under the same roof as people, and people soon found that bats lived longer than anyone, and a bat could often accompany several generations.
Another reason why the ancients did not hesitate to love bats was to drive away evil spirits. It is not superstition here, but bats do play a role in driving away "evil spirits" Chinese life and spirit.
On a summer night, Pu Songling once gave a "Mosquito Repellent Song", which highly affirmed the "anti-mosquito" function of bats: "Ande bats are full of nature, and they are a poison-removing tribe and an qun people." Bats have been people's natural mosquito repellent lights since ancient times. The "Compendium of Materia Medica" also recorded that bats that can see at night have the effect of treating night blindness, and are named "luminous sand". Luminous sand clear liver through the real heat and eyes, has the effect of dispersing blood stasis, eliminating chancre accumulation, in the "Shennong Materia Medica" listed as a medium product.
Spiritually, the traditional Chinese door god paintings that drive away evil spirits and guard houses carry the mythological imagination and good wishes of the Chinese people for thousands of years.
Zhong Kui and bats in the Woodblock Prints of Daizhou
Among them, in the famous Shanxi intangible cultural heritage Daizhou woodblock new year paintings, bats often appear with the door god new year paintings of gods such as Zhong Kui. In the era of agricultural culture in which Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, the popularization of belief in ghosts and gods, and the worship of ancestors prevailed, all the gods in heaven and on earth performed their duties according to people's will and needs, and people personified them. The occasion of the New Year is pasted inside and outside the house, creating a peaceful, happy, prosperous atmosphere, and also carrying the memories of the old times.
Bat decoration in Shanxi Kang Wai painting
Not only that, but bats are also found in the Kang Wai paintings, another intangible cultural heritage that appears in northern China, especially in rural households in Shanxi. Tu kang, for many Shanxi people, is a warm word. How many people are born on that warm clay kang. From learning to toddler, he spent his entire childhood, or even a lifetime, on that plate of clay kang. The Kang Wai painting is the decorative painting on the wall around the Tu Kang, commonly known as "Kang Wai Zi". Zhang Guolao, who is often selected as a drawing material in KangWei paintings, is regarded as the embodiment of white bats, and bats are also painted on them as decorations.
Our ancestors were also convinced that by eating bats, they could become immortals, especially white bats that were more than five hundred years old. In the Taoist classics of the Immortal Scriptures, bats are called "meat mushrooms" and "eaters of life". However, it is also recorded in ancient books that Li Shi continued to "Naturalist" Yun: "Tang Chenzi really got a white bat, as big as a crow, and he died one night..."
For modern people, there is one saying and one, the old ancestors who can eat have tasted it for you, and the rest can not eat the heart is not a little... Counting?
Shanxi Wutaishan Foguang Temple
In fact, we and bats could have lived together on this earth without incident, and perhaps there will be some good stories that have been passed down through the ages, just like Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin when they discovered foguang Temple. In search of the year of the building, when Liang Sicheng and his party climbed up to the attic, they found that there were thousands of bats lurking inside, and groups of them gathered above the ridge. They seem to be like this ancient temple of the Tang Dynasty, standing proudly in the middle of the green sea of Cangshan and waiting quietly for a thousand years.
If you don't love, don't hurt; if our story can't be passed on through the ages, please don't leave it behind for eternity.
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