Water Painting Garden has always been the first scenic spot in Rugao, and Chen Congzhou, a modern gardener, said that it is "both beautiful and elegant, with water as precious, and the reflection is particularly good". The water painting garden does not have walls, all by the water network through, the north looks at the city wall, the south of the city well, the garden outside the scenery is integrated, the landscaping and borrowing scenery complement each other, this semi-open pattern is unique in the ancient private garden, the garden in the small language stream, the washing bowl pond, the moon pond, the white wave is vast, the meaning is endless.
River mussel painting Qing Dynasty water painting garden.
Originally a site that the Ancestors of the Mao family had always placed, the Water Painting Garden was gradually built since the Ming Dynasty, and eventually perfected in the hands of Mao Peijiang, becoming the main place for him to live in seclusion. After the decline of the impostor family, the water painting garden changed hands many times, was rebuilt several times, became a college after the middle of the Qing Dynasty, became a college after liberation, and was converted into a county guest house after liberation, and only after the 1980s was it restored to its old appearance under the guidance of Chen Congzhou. The water painting garden is different from the cramped downtown gardens in Suzhou and Hangzhou, such as the northeast of Gaocheng was originally a wasteland, which can be landscaped and borrowed at will. The concept of the water painting garden has changed from artificial simulation of nature to embellishment in nature, and more than ten landscapes in the garden, such as The Mysterious Fragrant Forest, Yi Mo Zhai, Pillow Smoke Pavilion, Hanbi Hall, Wash Bowl Pond, XiaoyuXi, Heyu Island, Xiao Sanwu, Boyan Yu Pavilion, Xiangzhong Pavilion, Shilang Slope, Mirror Pavilion, and Biluolulu, all follow this principle. At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the Impostor family gradually went into decline, and the water painting garden was simple in architecture, mainly winning with natural and cultural interests, and was a typical Jiangnan literati garden.
The gate of the water painting garden.
Statue of Xiang Xiang.
Born in the thirty-ninth year of the Wanli Calendar (1611), Mao Peijiang studied under the guidance of his grandfather Mao Mengling in his early years, and at the age of fourteen he published a collection of poems "Xiangli Garden Occasional Existence", which is a child prodigy-like existence. Later, he went to Nanjing many times to take the exam but failed repeatedly, at this time the Ming Dynasty had reached the end of the crossbow and the dynasty was declining. In 1636, he joined the Fu Society, a political and literary group with Jiangnan scribes as the core, with Donglin succeeding him, advocating political reform and caring about the sufferings of the people. In the Fu Society, he was very close to Chen Zhenhui, Fang Yizhi, and Hou Chaozong, and was known as the "Four Princes". They are of similar ages, like-minded, or travel together, or sing poetry and wine, or criticize the castration party, or discuss the government, hoping to reform politics and save the peril.
Calligraphy.
Dong Xiaowan's original name was Dong Bai, the word Qinglian, the name and the word are derived from Li Bai, originally the Book Xiang Mendi, and later fell in the middle of the family road, falling into the wind and dust, and Chen Yuanyuan, Liu Rulai, Li Xiangjun and so on as "Qin Huai Bayan". In 1639, The Township Trial Leader Mao Xiang and Dong Xiaowan accidentally met in Bantang, Suzhou, when Dong Xiaowan had just returned from going out and drank high, but he still fell in love with Mao Xiang at first sight and was surprised by the "stranger", and Mao Xiang had already belonged to Chen Yuanyuan and had made a "marriage contract".
A portrait of Dong Xiaowan painted by this person.
The following year, when he passed through Suzhou and visited Chen Yuanyuan again, it was people who went to the building. In the winter of that year, under the mediation of Liu Ruyi, Qian Qianyi came forward to redeem Dong Xiaowan, and then hired a ship to send him to Rugao. She wrote in a poem to the frontier: "Although the intestines have broken off their feelings, life is not subordinate to death." Fight for your life to reward your confidant, and chase after Wu Bochen to be a ghost male. "Act hot and proactive. Mao Xiang began to worry about the attitude of his wife Su Yuanfang and his father, and set her up in the "Water Painting Garden Yanyue Building" as a "separate room". Unexpectedly, his parents and wife both acquiesced to his relationship, and by April of the following year, he officially established Dong Xiaowan as "Lady Ru", usually calling him Aiji. This year was the sixteenth year of Chongzhen (1643), Dong Xiaowan was 20 years old, and Mao Xiang was 33 years old.
Water Painting Garden Moon Lake.
The Mirror Pavilion in the Moon Lake, where Dong Xiaowan used to play the violin, was later restored.
Today, we can fully understand the life of Dong Xiaowan from Mao Xiang's "YingMei An Memoirs", which is the first memoir-style prose in China's history, with clear words and true writing, and later works such as "Six Records of Floating Life" have been influenced by this.
Dong Xiaowan's work, "Autumn Girl's Words" fanface.
After Dong Xiaowan married into the impostor family, most of their emotions were pinned on art and literature. Dong Xiaowan was originally very able to drink, but he was not good at drinking, so Dong Xiaowan also changed to drinking tea, and the two often sat in the garden under the moon to taste tea or comment on the tea, with similar interests. At that time, Mao Xiang was compiling and sorting out the "Four Tang Poems" (Early Tang, Sheng Tang, Middle Tang, Late Tang), Dong Xiaowan was responsible for sorting out and transcribed as an assistant, she was puzzled about the poems, and often had unique insights, sometimes asleep, still holding a book in her hand. This is what the text says: "In the middle of the night pillow, there are dozens of "Book of Tang" and lying down." Dong Xiaowan not only likes to read poetry, but also can write poetry and painting, especially good at playing the piano. Mao Xiang said that she "can make small bushes of cold trees, pen and ink ChuChu, when on a few stones to write their own pictures, so in ancient and modern painting, there is no special." Dong Xiaowan's "Color Butterfly Diagram" is now in the collection of the Wuxi Museum, and the Guqin Platform in the Shuiming Building today is also her beloved object of that year.
The Guqin Terrace in the Shuiming Building, the Shuiming Building was built for the middle of the Qing Dynasty, when the garden was no longer a puppet family, and some of the relics of the impostors were preserved inside.
The Shuiming Building in the garden was built in the 23rd year of the Qianlong Dynasty (1758).
Unfortunately, this kind of fairy-like poetic life lasted only more than a year, the next year the Chongzhen Emperor hung himself on the southeast branch of the coal mountain in Beijing, the Ming Dynasty fell, and soon the Qing army marched south, and the rich families in the city fled to Jiangnan with their children, and for a time the Rugao people went to the building, and finally only the fake family was still floating out of the cooking smoke. In this critical situation, Mao Xiang hid his parents and wife outside the city, and only he and Dong Xiaowan were the only two people in the family to pack bags and separate clothes and paintings. At this time, there were thieves in the city, robbing and killing people in the hundred days, and the whole family had no choice but to flee to Jiangnan to avoid disaster. In order to prevent robbery on the road, Dong Xiaowan packed two cents of scattered silver into more than a hundred bags, and each package stated the weight of the quantity, in case it was used in a hurry. Even Xiang Xiang's father was very surprised to see it, and did not know how she did it in a hurry.
Mao Xiang's work "Tree Singing Surprise Open Picture".
In the following three years, the impostor family fled all over Jiangnan, and more than thirty members of the family were plundered and killed, and finally only eight people were left, and their belongings were scattered. Later, the family was hungry and cold, and almost lived on food, "creeping into the city, telling the friends that they were anxious, and begging for rice and bundled with each family." At this time, Xiang Xiang was seriously ill again, and it was all up to Dong Xiaowan to serve carefully. "On this one hundred and fifty days, Ji Ji only rolled up a broken mat, stretched across the edge of the bed, embraced when cold, whisked when hot, and caressed in pain." The Mao family returned to Rugao around 1647, when the Ming Dynasty was dead and the Qing Dynasty was founded, and the situation at home was not as good as before. After the invasion of Xinjiang, he suffered two major illnesses in succession, three times critically ill, and did not gradually improve until 1649. Due to the previous difficult life, the difficulty of eating and drinking, coupled with the hard work of taking care of her husband, after the illness of The Frontier was cured, Dong Xiaowan could not afford to be ill, and the family sought medical treatment from all sides, and it was difficult to make up for it. In the first month of the following year, Dong Xiaowan died at the age of 27.
Xiangzhong Pavilion is the tallest building in the Water Painting Park.
After experiencing the destruction of the country and the death of the family, the loss of chaos and displacement, the death of Aiji, and the many critical illnesses, he has changed from a gentleman who wields a lot of courage to an indifferent celebrity, showing the integrity and discipline of the literati. After the Qing soldiers pacified the whole country, Chen Mingxia, a member of the Qing Restoration Society, wrote to him from Beijing, calling him "Zhu Xia of the Sky, the White Crane among the People" and asking him to recommend him. However, his attitude of non-cooperation did not come out of thin air, but was based on what he had seen and heard during several years of exile, so his birth was more practical, not a simple literati Qinggao.
Yi Mo Zhai is a place to take the risk of Traveling to Collect Elegant Collections and Practice the Skills of Poetry and Books.
During the Kangxi Dynasty, the Qing court opened the Erudite Hong Confucian Branch and issued an edict to "hide in the mountains and forests". Mao Xiang also belonged to the list of conscripts, but he regarded it as a footing and insisted on not going. He presented himself as a remnant of the Ming Dynasty and continued to show an attitude of never being clean. He added Biluolu to the Water Painting Garden to commemorate his friend Dai Jian, who died on hunger strike during the Ming Dynasty, and also funded the adoption of Donglin, Fushe, and the orphans of jiangnan anti-Qing zhishi.
Biluolu has been restored in recent years.
After Dong Xiaowan's death, Su Yuanfang, the wife of Xiangzheng, "painted a will, sealed the palace, and ordered the two children to worship and worship it in the Spring and Autumn Festival." "Su Yuanfang is from a famous family, has a warm and kind temperament, and also has the talent of calligraphy and painting. She was the same age as Mao Xiang, and she was betrothed at the age of three, and later gave birth to three sons and a daughter for Mao Xiang, and eventually grew old together. After Dong Xiaowan passed the door, Su Yuanfang treated her sincerely, taught her to learn female workers, and drank two sips together every night. Later, when the impostor family's economy became increasingly tense, Su Yuanfang adopted and cared for her friends' orphans and the descendants of the clan together with her husband, and never complained. It seems that Mao Xiang is indeed charming, whether it is the wife of Qingmei Zhuma, or Chen Yuanyuan and Dong Xiaowan, who are dead set on loving him. Even in the down-and-out situation of his later years, there is still no shortage of confidants with red faces around him. No wonder many people believe that he is the prototype of Jia Baoyu in "Dream of the Red Chamber", saying that Su Yuanfang and Dong Xiaowan are Baochao and Daiyu.
Water painting garden because of the tree building.
In the tenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1671), Su Yuanfang died, and at this time, Mao Xiang also reached the end of the year. Due to the attitude of non-cooperation with the Qing court, the impostor family cut off the source of income, and in his later years, the impostor's life in Xinjiang was poor and poor, and he could not make ends meet. Real estate such as the Water Painting Garden was also sold one after another, and the family was forced to live separately, and finally risked that they could only rely on selling words to survive. He wrote to himself after the "Attached Book shao gongmu shi brother see shou poem": "The tomb field is full of pride, so that the fourth family cannot be reunited." The two sons were exhausted, and they could not provide for the support of dogs and horses; they moved to the house, and they were alone in the dark alleys, still unable to release their hands, laughing and entertaining themselves. Every night under the lamp write fly head small letters thousands, towards the rice wine. ”
Portrait of His later years.
The red-faced confidant in the former water painting garden has passed away, and the life of tasting tea and folding flowers and compiling books and playing the piano is gone, and one winter night in the thirty-second year of Kangxi (1693), he risked poverty and died at the age of eighty-three. The life of the frontier is like a legend, and the life in his later years has a tragic temperament, all great tragedies have initiative, and he chose to live in a dark alley and be poor and destitute for the rest of his life when he could have entered the career path. Chairman Mao once commented: "Among the so-called four sons of the late Ming Dynasty, the one who really possessed national integrity was to take the risk of breaking through xinjiang, and after the Qing soldiers entered the customs, he lived in seclusion in the mountains and forests, and did not do anything to the Qing Dynasty. ”
Water Painting Garden overlooks.
Further reading:
Water painting Rugao (1) Rugao Old Town on the outside circle and inner circle, the smell of fireworks on the East Street
Water painting Rugao (2) • From Jixian Li to Maojia Lane, the concentration of cultural families