Hu Yanyun (Speculative Fiction Writer)
In the old days, scolding people was the most ruthless "a thousand knives and a thousand knives" and "five thunderstorms in the sky", but after careful tasting, the two seem to have slight differences in usage, the former is mostly used on "outsiders" who have nothing to do with themselves, although it is a curse, but they take the road of "rule of law"; the latter is often used on the opponent who has a relationship with his relatives or neighbors, because of his crimes or negligence, due to various reasons, the government cannot punish them in time, so the prayer is "heavenly retribution".
Carefully turning over the ancient notes, "five thunderstorms in the sky" have a "special love" for a certain kind of behavior, that is, filial piety.
First, lightning strike daughter-in-law: "feces bacon" to the mother-in-law to eat
Ancient Chinese science and technology developed, lightning has a very early understanding of lightning, Liu An of the Western Han Dynasty wrote in the book "Huainanzi" that "yin and yang are thunder, and excitement is electricity", which is really concise and concise. Unfortunately, one of the characteristics of the authoritarian society is to monopolize the real knowledge in the hands of a very small number of people, and to adopt a policy of foolishness for the vast majority of the people, which leads to the existence of science and no science popularization, and the people can only use the most simple way of thinking to understand the phenomenon of lightning: thunder and thunder are the anger of the heavens, and the flashing of electric light is to knock down those who violate the way of human morality.
In fact, in the notes before the Qing Dynasty, there are also many cases of lightning knocking down or injuring people, but the connection with filial piety is rare, but it is often used to show a certain bravery and composure of officials. For example, in the "New Language of the World", it is written that Xiahou Xuan leaned on the pillar to read, "when the rainstorm, the thunderbolt broke the pillar, and the clothes were scorched", while Xiahou Xuan's look was unchanged, and the reading was as it was. The "Book of Southern Tang" writes that Lu Zhaofu, the assassin of Changzhou during the Kaibao period, sat in the official hall with his subordinates one day to deal with political affairs, "the thunderstorm suddenly arrived, and the electric light was like a golden snake around the case and the officials were all shocked servants", but Lu Zhaofu looked at ease, and blamed the case for interfering with government affairs, and the result was "thunder and lightning scattered"... Similar to this kind of record, it can probably be regarded as praising the official's momentum of Taishan collapsing in front of him and not changing color.
But in the late Ming Dynasty, especially in the Qing Dynasty, lightning became more and more a "special medicine" for the exclusive treatment of filial piety, especially for unfilial daughters-in-law. The reasons for this are very complicated: on the one hand, the relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law is not easy to get along with, living under the same roof, it is inevitable to bump and bump, quarrel with each other; on the other hand, with the continuous strengthening of feudal etiquette, the standard of determining "filial piety" is becoming more and more stringent, and even the face is not good-looking can be regarded as disobedience, and the mother-in-law has a backer, and sometimes deliberately harasses the daughter-in-law, causing the contradiction between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law to intensify at every turn. With the increasing complexity of various social relations, young women not only have to undertake the internal affairs of the family, but even have to help their husbands take care of various external affairs, the ability is strong, the temper is bigger, and it is not easy to be controlled by the mother-in-law... Therefore, if you only look at the records in the ancient notes, the "unfilial daughters-in-law" of the Qing Dynasty are endless and the hearts of the top ones are black.
Among such notes, the most representative is the "Lightning Strike Against women" recorded by the Qing Dynasty scholar and painter Yu Jiao in the "Dream Factory Miscellaneous Works":
Dreamworks Miscellaneous
There is a person surnamed Guo in longqiuhu town village in Zhejiang Province, who sells cloth for the business, and there is only a wife and wife in the family, "the wife is quite fierce, not filial to the aunt (mother-in-law)", and the mother is old, deaf and deaf, living and eating every day, Guo is afraid that his wife has a place where she is not well taken care of, and she must take care of it herself. One day, "Guo was anxious to go to the county", before leaving, he told his wife Qian Ding Wanwan: "I am going out for three days this time, my mother will not feel full if she does not eat meat at every meal, I have bought meat in the kitchen, the weather is getting hotter and hotter, so I salted it, enough to eat for three days." When the husband was gone, the daughter-in-law hung the meat on the top of the pit, smoked it stinky, and took out each meal and steamed it for the mother-in-law to eat.
The matter with the surname Guo went smoothly, and when he came home early, he saw that his mother was eating and asked her if the meat was delicious? The mother frowned and said: "Where did you buy this meat, how do you smell a smell of feces, you can only swallow reluctantly..." The surname Guo quickly added a piece of chopsticks and put it in his mouth, and at that time he was smoked by the smell of dung and vomited. He went to the kitchen and found no meat, but after looking around, he found that the meat was hanging on the pit and smoking it, so he asked his wife what was wrong. The wife is unreasonable and refuses to admit her mistake, so she can only scold her husband and scold her mother-in-law. Her voice was loud and her words were rude, which attracted the whole village, and everyone was kind enough to explain it, but she still scolded her.
At this moment, "the thunder was loud, the black clouds were like ink", and the wife seemed to sense that her behavior had angered God, so she ran to the back garden and found a large urn to put on her head as a lightning rod. Only to hear a thunderbolt, a huge thunder strike, a crack in the bottom of the urn, the wife's head through the crack exposed outside, as if wearing a shackle, the sharp crack cut her neck bloody, pain she "like a wailing". The mother-in-law could not bear it, and wanted to break the urn to rescue the daughter-in-law, and the onlookers all said: "This heaven's condemnation of the woman is also against the heavens and ominous!" "As a result, the next day my wife died.
Second, thunder against the woman: a basket of shrimp as a birthday gift
Coincidentally, there is a record in the "Luyuan Congzhi" written by the Qing Dynasty scholar Qian Yong, which can be called the "sister article" of the above article:
"Walking in the Garden"
There is a peasant woman in Dingtao, Shandong, who has always been known for abusing her mother-in-law. The mother-in-law was blind in both eyes and wanted to drink a mouthful of sweet soup, and the peasant woman scolded and grinned while giving the mother-in-law a sweet soup mixed with. The mother-in-law did not know, and only when she drank it in her mouth did she feel that the taste was not right, but she could only swallow her breath, "Suddenly thunder and lightning, a thunderbolt, the woman turned into a pig." The pig ran straight to the toilet to eat, and the people nearby heard about it and flocked to watch, as many as a thousand people, and then the pigs marched in the filth all day long, and when they saw human dung, they ate it... The Northern Song Dynasty scholar Qian Yi wrote the "New Book of the South", and there is a more bizarre record: "The woman in The county of Sour Jujube in Henan province is not filial piety, and if someone intercepts the woman's head, and continues it with a dog's head." ”
Daughters-in-law are not filial piety and will become pigs and dogs, if it is a biological child who abuses her parents, then it is indispensable to fight five thunderbolts in the sky.
In the "Dream Factory Miscellaneous Works", it is written that there is a woman surnamed Li in Lanxi, the family is very rich, it is considered to be the richest man in the local area, and when she celebrates her fortieth birthday, she "kisses her neighbor Biji and gives her legacy to Fenglong". At the climax of the birthday banquet, the mother of the woman surnamed Li came, the old lady had white hair and a dragon bell, her clothes were tattered, she was on crutches in her right hand, and she was holding a bamboo basket of river shrimp in her left hand and said to her daughter: "Your father unfortunately died early, leaving me alone and poor, living far away from you, today is your birthday, I have nothing else to give you, this morning in the small river outside the village to catch this basket of river shrimp, it is a dish for your birthday feast!" ”
The guests present were shocked, and they did not expect that the woman surnamed Li had a solid family, wearing gold and jade all day long, but she was so unfilial that the old woman was so poor. The woman surnamed Li probably also felt humiliated and conspicuous, and couldn't help but get angry, pointing at the old woman and scolding: "You are an old immortal, my father has been dead for so many years, you still can't go down to accompany him, stay in the world as a beggar, my face has been thrown away by you!" "Then he grabbed the bamboo basket and threw it on the ground, and the live shrimp were scattered on the ground, still jumping around alive."
"The mother was speechless, bowing her head and weeping."
Some of the guests persuaded, some looked up and sighed, and some walked away silently. Seeing that her birthday feast had been stirred up, the woman surnamed Li scolded even more fiercely.
"When the sun is noon, the sky is cloudless", the originally clear sky suddenly heard a faint thunder, "Russia and clouds suddenly closed, heavy rain poured, violent shock, there is no way to cover the ears." The woman surnamed Li did not seem to realize that the catastrophe was coming, and was still cursing, when there was a huge thunderclap, and the woman "suddenly fell to her knees and died"! In punishing filial piety, Lei Gong absolutely does not distinguish between men and women, and treats all people equally. Ji Xiaolan recorded in the "Notes on Reading Wei Caotang" that in the year of Qianlong Pengchen, "on the bridge outside the West Gate of the River, Lei Zhen died alone." The man had been struck by lightning and maintained a very strange form: he was kneeling, holding a paper bag in his hand, and the powder inside was tested as arsenic. The official government was inexplicable, did not know what was going on, Russia, the wife of the deceased rushed to see this scene, did not shed tears, but just laughed bitterly: "Retribution, retribution, I already knew that he would have such a day..." It turned out that the deceased often insulted and abused the old woman before he died, and last night he suddenly had evil thoughts, went to the market to buy arsenic, and prepared to poison the old woman in the meal, who knew that God had eyes, and "advanced" a step to kill him.
Third, the thunder police are not filial piety: the seal character is a lightning injury
There is also the most ruthless, the family abuses the elderly, lei gong is "totally destroyed.". "LuYuan Cong" records the year of Guang Gengyin, "On May 19, a thunderstorm, Gaoyou Xingong flooded and killed three people on the Taiping boat, and pedestrians gathered to watch." On closer inspection, the three deceased were Zhuo Ling'a, the alternate prefect who had traveled from Beijing to Guangdong, his wife Guan Shi, and one of the ship's helmsmen. Zhuo Ling'a's servants said that Zhuo Ling'a was very unfilial to his mother, lived in a branch, and never visited the old lady, and his wife Guan Shifu sang with her wife, and was also very cold to her mother-in-law. After the news that Zhuo Ling'a was going to Guangdong reached his mother's ears, the old lady sent someone to say to Zhuo Ling'a: "Our mother and son have not seen each other for many years, this time you go to Guangdong, the road is far away, I am older, I don't know if there will be a chance to see you again in the future, if you have nothing to do, come and see me." And Zhuo Ling'a and his wife also ignored it, set off as usual, and finally were killed by lightning on the way, but unfortunately the helmsman was also unlucky, and followed them to eat melons...
... However, the author thinks that the behavior of Zhuo Ling'a and his wife may be called filial piety, but it is not the same as the previous cases of rebellion and abuse, and it is too "heavy" to be condemned by this heaven. In fact, the Lei Gong in the ancient notes did not give a dead hand at any time, and often gave some warnings to those who were "less serious" - such as "engraving" on the skin.
The Qing Dynasty scholar Wang Daoding wrote in his notebook "Sitting on Flowers and Fruits" that there was a certain Jia in Jiangxi who drove ducks for a living, and his father was old and tall, and A Jia was often insulted. One day "when there was a sudden thunderclap, Tijia knelt in the courtyard, and the township looked at him, and saw that his eyebrows and pants were burned by thunder and fire, and his spirits were all confused, and he did not move." Someone found that a line of "Zhu Shu Seal Text" appeared at the bottom of his family's pot, which was identified as "Lei Police Not Filial Piety", and when A woke up, he changed his past wrongs and did not dare to disobey the old father anymore.
"Sitting Flowers and Fruits"
In fact, when lightning hits a person's body, there are often burn marks on the body surface, and in ancient times, when science was not very developed, people often regarded it as an inscription left by Lei Gong, especially this kind of thing rushed to the body of the unfilial son, and it became the iron evidence of the "Heavenly Thunder Newspaper". For example, the famous Northern Song Dynasty scientist Shen Kuo recorded several such things in the "Mengxi Pen Talk": "Because of the earthquake in the Shichuan Lake and Xiangjian, there are three characters of the ghost god book 'Xie XianHuo' on the wooden pillar, and its words are carved into the wood, and the book is inverted; Huating County, Xiuzhou, also because of the thunder earthquake, there are words on the roof pillar of the Tianwang Temple, and also the book cloud: 'Gaodong Yangya Sixteen People Fire Order Chapter.'" The words 'Fan Eleven Characters', the inner 'Lingzhang' are particularly powerful, resembling Tang calligraphy, and are still there; when Yu was in Handong, the Qingming Dynasty Thunder Shock killed the two in the Zhou Shou Garden, and each of them had two words on the threat, such as ink strokes, Fu Shu class Bai Ye, I don't know what word..." Shen Kuo is still like this, let alone others. It was not until the Southern Song Dynasty that Song Ci, in the "Collection of Washed Grievances", clearly stated that this was just a normal corpse phenomenon caused by "thunder shock death": "All those who died by thunder shock ... Chest, neck, back, chest or similar seal marks. However, most of the Ancient Chinese people were always wrong and unrepentant in the choice of science and metaphysics, for example, the Qing Dynasty scholar Xuanding still recorded in the "Night Rain and Autumn Lantern Record": "My neighbor Cha's house, in the summer rain, thunder and thunder around the wall, looking at the wall a brick, to powder and ponder, Zhu Shu 'Ling' word, more than four inches in diameter, Xiu Jian like Zhao Wenmin's penmanship." ”
Regarding the "thunder and filial piety" that appeared in a large number of ancient notes, Zhou Zuoren believed that most of these were some kind of spiritual victory method of the literati with narrow hearts--"Those who see that they are not comfortable want to correct the two views, or if they are not asked by the law, and their strength is not enough, they will punish them with yin and talk about happiness." In fact, if you count all the people who have been killed by lightning, I am afraid that you will find that only a small number of "unfilial sons" are counted, and the vast majority are kind and simple unfortunate people. However, the ancient Chinese always liked to make a set of "causal relations" between heaven and man, and put the cases that could prove this "causal relationship" into a bunch, while the cases that could not be proved were selectively ignored, and then they secretly rejoiced that they had understood the Heavenly Dao, so that a thousand years passed, the thunder was still thundered, the ones who were split were still split, the unfilial ones were still not filial piety, and the ones who stole joy were still stealing joy.
This article was published in the Beijing Evening News, and the surging news was reprinted with the author's permission.
This issue is edited by Xing Tan