The fifth prince of the Daoguang Emperor, Prince Huan, wrote an inscription to Bao Yuanshen's folding fan
There is a famous calligraphy of the old age at home, which I randomly rolled up and put in the cupboard, although it is not damaged, it is old and wrinkled, the quality is really not good, and the problem is not here - there is a story behind this word, I have not known what to do with it.
Some time ago, I met Mr. Zeng, a painter who runs a framed painting and framing shop. There are not many people who can frame calligraphy and painting in the United States, plus he himself is an artist, and there are not a few calligraphy and paintings that he has seen and even collected, so I took the opportunity to ask him to frame two paintings for me, bring this family heirloom to him, and tell him the story at the same time... As soon as he heard it, he said it was interesting, and framed the word for me.
It was like the disheveled lady suddenly dressed up, I carefully examined this "beautiful woman" for half a day, and couldn't help but take a picture of the "sea land prince". I have always admired his appreciation of calligraphy, and the few ancestral characters in the family have been photographed and shown to him. But this one, I had a mischievous idea, and I wanted to share the story behind the word with him in a roundabout way.
This is a banner (pictured above), the size of the base paper is about 138×36 cm, the text of the text is fifty-five words: "The embrace of the knot is not one sight can not be solved, also see the exhortation to write poetry, there is no solid self-laziness as a waiting insect when the song sounds and self-sounding, what profit and loss do not have to do not have to do not have to do also like one or two see the sending of the second rhyme", the section of the "MuTang Xueshi Shi Da Ren Shu He Shaoji"; the two sides of the plutonium seal, the Yang text "He Shaoji seal", the yin text "Zi Zhen".
I found the source of the main text, which is quoted from the book "Forty-Seven Songs of Thirty-four" written by Su Shi to his cousin Cheng Zhengfu (Cheng Zhicai, grandfather of the Southern Song Dynasty poet Cheng Yuan): "So-and-so re-qi." Accepting the edict, the memory is weeping, and the elder brother is also exempt from such a knotted nostalgia, not at first sight, and finally can not be solved. See exhortation to compose poetry, ben is not solid, lazy to be er. So when the insects are waiting, they are only self-singing, and what gains and losses do not have to be done, and there is no need not to do it. My brother made one or two articles to see and send, when the rhyme..."
He Shaoji (1799-1873) was famous for his calligraphy, and his fame was naturally not to mention; and this "Mutang Scholar" of the "Genus Book" was my fifth generation of Gaozu Bao Yuanshen (1811-1884, zihuatan, number Mutang). I don't know much about this old ancestor, the couplet hanging on the living room wall of the Taiwan family when I was a child was "like Lance Xin Ru Song Zhi Sheng; Linchuan Intended to Clean Yang Hua Si Chong" (above), the pen is full of ink, but the young me is neither able to understand nor treat it as a baby, and the person who did not pay attention to the inscription in the next paragraph is also surnamed Bao - my original surname. Until the first time I returned to the mainland to find my roots and came to shanghai Yu Garden "Hexu Hall", the person who inscribed the plaque was Actually Bao Yuanshen (pictured below), the same as the name on the couplet at home! My biological parents in Shanghai told me: Bao Yuanshen is my fifth generation of ancestors. I remembered that a long time ago, my father, who brought me to Taiwan, mentioned to me the old ancestor of the Bao family, so I began to be interested in him. Later, the Internet developed, and "Google" or "Baidu" could find several entries about him. To put it simply, my ancestor gaozu was a native of Anhui Hezhou (present-day Hexian County) (no wonder that since I was a child, I was taught to fill in a place I had never been to: "Anhui Hexian"), Daoguang Twenty-seven Years (1847) Jinshi; during the Tongzhi Years, he successively served as a five-part attendant and many other clans with an undeserved official title, and served as the Governor of Shanxi in the Tenth Year of Tongzhi (1871). During the previous Xianfeng years, he also served as a "waiter" for the prince of the crown prince, so there was also a folding fan in the family that the fifth prince of the Daoguang Emperor gave him with an inscription. Guangxu resigned in the first year (1875) and died of illness at the age of 73. The biography says that he was "good at calligraphy and works with poetry" and wrote "Supplementary Bamboo Xuan Poetry Manuscripts" and so on.
Since He Shaoji's book was given to Mutang Bao Yuanshen, and it was handed down from my family rather than bought from outside, what problems would there be?
I took a photo of the word and passed it on to Lu Gongzi, attaching this passage: "Handed down from the Shanghai family, when I returned to China many years ago, my father in Shanghai gave it to me. He Shaoji gave me the character gaozu Bao Yuanshen (Mu Tang), and my family did not care about it, and I kept throwing it aside. You know why? ”
Lu Gongzi replied: "Good word! I can't see where the mystery is. "It's really worthy of Lu Gongzi, so gentle and courteous, using the word "mysterious" instead of saying "problem" - of course he knows that I am selling Guanzi. So I said the story of this painting:
Zhongcheng Gong (the elders in the family all call this old ancestor) ranked the descendants of the descendants, and set eight characters of "filial piety and family, poetry and etiquette"; my grandfather was the "chuan" character generation, and my father was the "family" character generation. Of course, Zhongcheng Gong left a lot of calligraphy and painting treasures, but three generations and several "rooms" were shared, and Grandpa's income was limited. Dad is Grandpa's only son, Grandpa's several ancestral treasures, Dad is roughly clear, helpless in 1949 Dad took Mom, Grandma and I to Taiwan, a large camphor wood box contained a family of four necessities, outside of how many things can not be put aside. Therefore, in childhood memories, the couplet hanging in the living room seems to be just the pair of the old ancestor (somehow the above paragraph was written but not sent out), and Wu Xizai (1799-1870) sent him a pair of "Spring Flowers Landing Idle Public Case; Wild Birds Crying Branches Little Debate" (below) taking turns to hang.
Back to The Words of Ho Shao-ki. One day, I suppose, when Dad was very young, Grandpa ordered Dad to take out the text and frame it. When he took it back, Grandpa's face changed drastically when he looked at it.
"The framer bullied you young and didn't understand, and you did it!" Grandpa sighed to Dad.
It turns out that there is a thick kind of rice paper called "sandwich propaganda" or "double propaganda", and skilled craftsmen can uncover the paper in two layers. Legend has it that the framer who mastered this technique can cut a word or painting into two, this kind of rice paper has strong ink absorption, the ink penetrates the back of the paper, even if it is not inferior to the lower layer, it is identified as authentic. Therefore, the art of bold and unscrupulous craftsmen, when encountering valuable goods, they "up and down their hands" (this is an appropriate pun), leaving the upper layer in the future for real profit, and the lower layer is framed and "returned" to customers who cannot see the beginning.
Such a thing really happened to Grandpa! In fact, even if you are an expert, if you only look at the lower level, you really can't find any flaws, but Grandpa must have already observed that painting well in his chest, and the ink color of the pen is not the same as the difference, and he can see the strangeness, plus he is well-informed, and he knows that there is this craft figure in the jianghu; unfortunately, he can't come up with evidence, so he has to take it as a lesson for his son.
So this calligraphy, which is "considered to be authentic but not the only authentic", has been beaten into the cold palace ever since. Of course, Dad would not bring this "heirloom" that made him lose face to Taiwan; and the grandfather who remained in the mainland had a rather sloppy life later, and before his grandfather died in the ten years of chaos, there was nothing left —except for this word.
After his grandfather, who was beaten back to his "hometown", died tragically in the countryside, his daughter, who lived in Shanghai, my biological mother, collected a few relics, including this one, and took them back to his home in Shanghai.
More than a decade has passed. Suddenly, one day, Grandpa's daughter received a notice that her biological daughter, who had been taken to Taiwan by her brother and sister-in-law in 1949, was now back from the United States and was coming to find her roots.
This "biological daughter" who was taken to Taiwan and then to the United States was me.
After that, I often went back to Shanghai to visit my biological parents. One day, my biological father took out a piece of paper from the old paper pile and said apologetically, "After all these years, the family has not been able to give you a decent thing." But this word, there is a story of the Bao family behind it, you can bring it back to the United States to do a thought. ”
The father who brought me to Taiwan was my biological mother's brother and my biological father's brother-in-law; in addition to this layer of in-law relations, my father and my biological father were classmates and friends of Fudan University, and my father must have told this story of being deceived as a joke to my biological father; and the version I heard from my biological father in Shanghai was already the second layer of paraphrasing many years later, whether there were discrepancies or exaggerations in it is unknown, but the words are authentic, and it is estimated that the age should be about one hundred and fifty years and there will not be much error. I only thought it was funny, and when I brought it back to the United States, I put it in the cupboard and almost forgot about it, until I accidentally turned it out not long ago, and I took it out and framed it with great thoughts, so that this one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old thing could be seen again.
After listening to the story, Lu Gongzi told me that Deng Youmei's novel "In Search of Painting Han" has such a number one character. I found a novel to read, and sure enough, "Painting Han" is a master of this way, he will reveal the calligraphy and painting in two, and once encountered a scam with a malicious intention, this hand saved him, otherwise it was a disaster that not only damaged face but also hurt Lizi. I read this short story with relish, and I knew that "face and inside" are all authentic, but the vermilion of the lower plutonium is slightly lighter. Turning back to spread out the words again, I silently apologized to it: I have wronged you over the years!
Lu Gongzi said that this story is quite funny, do you want to write it? I thought well, with the original picture, maybe the upper "double" will appear to recognize the relatives.
Words have a body, but people lack skill. For my parents who brought me to Taiwan and raised me as adults, I was their daughter under the knees of Cheng huan; and when my birth mother and biological father entrusted me to their brothers and sisters-in-law, they thought that they would not be reunited for long, and they never expected to see each other thirty years later, and my father was no longer alive. The turmoil of the times made me have two pairs of parents, but they were the only one daughter.
Time passed, and both of my parents had left me one after another. Dad left first, then the birth mother, then the mother, and the biological father was the last to go. In the face of this picture, I remembered the apologetic expression of my biological father when he handed it to me, and how many of them were regrets and helplessness as a father who did not grow up with me. Whenever I think of them, of the love they have given me, far more than any treasure in the world, my heart is filled with gratitude. Looking at this word that is not an heirloom, I also think of the grandfather of the "chuan" character that I "saw" in my infancy; and the high ancestor Bao Yuanshen, who was born two hundred years ago. They have left me with countless invisible and priceless legacies – memories, cultures, family ties, inheritances... My life my roots.
May 2019, Stanford, California, USA
Author: Li Li
Editor: Wu Dongkun
Editor-in-Charge: Shu Ming
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.