Urgent! Urgent! Urgent! Tomb-Sweeping Day's prose!

A Qingming poem and a Qingming painting

Li Guowen

Every time I go to Tomb-Sweeping Day, I think of the poems written by Du Mu in Chizhou, Anhui. "It rains in the Qingming period, and pedestrians on the road want to break their souls. Where can I ask the restaurant? The shepherd boy pointed to Xinghua Village. " It is said that as soon as this poem came out, there were at least seven or eight places in the country called Xinghua Village, claiming that Du Mu wrote about their village. In fact, it is doubtful whether this poem was written by Du Mu. But apart from business and tourism considerations, everyone came to claim this poem because it is really good, meaningful and charming. Fortunately, the last sentence "the shepherd boy refers to the walk" gives readers a lot of imagination. It is precisely because it is a good poem that it has been circulated through the ages and is widely known. It is because it is a good poem that you are winning glory for your country, right?

There are many poems about Qingming, and there are many good poems about Qingming. However, Tomb-Sweeping Day's paintings are rare, and Zhang Zeduan's The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival in the Northern Song Dynasty is even more unique. However, during the Qingming Festival, it is easy for people to think of Du Mu's Qingming poem, but seldom think of this Qingming painting of Zhang Zeduan collected in the Forbidden City. This painting and this poem, written in the Qingming Festival, are cold and hot, heavy and noisy, depressed and excited, low-key and high-spirited, leaving people with absolutely different feelings.

Perhaps it is because of all the poems written by Qingming, because of the cold food, because of the sweeping, and because the weather is warm and cold in late spring, the poet's pen inevitably reveals a touch of sadness and shallow sadness, which is the mental state of "pedestrians on the road want to break their souls." However, we can have a look at the riverside map on Qingming Festival, which is based on the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty. That's another kind of Tomb-Sweeping Day that is extremely sunny and pleasant. Not only will it never be "dead", but it will be attracted to Kaifeng City in the Song Dynasty and put into a carnival-like festival. Everyone writes clearly, but poetry and painting can make people feel different, which is probably the charm of art.

This picture is five meters long and 0.24 meters high. It is now in the Palace Museum in Beijing, and it is a rare book. After ten years' work, the painter presented this northern song dynasty region with developed economy, rich people, prosperous mountains and rivers and colorful flowers to your eyes with a high degree of artistic generalization. Its patchwork composition, proper layout, complex changes in the picture and free changes in the scene make you dazzled and amazed. Painter Zhang Zeduan, we only know that he used to work in Hanlin Painting Academy, and he is a native of Zhucheng, Shandong Province. We know nothing else. However, his paintings have made him immortal.

The most respectable person, Zhang Zeduan, as a royal painter, set his sights on the streets of Kaifeng in the Qingming Festival, jumped out of the red tape of the imperial court and entered the ordinary world of citizens. It can't be said that this is an innovative measure with a unique vision. He took numerous people as the main line, urban life as the script, river boats, road and bridge cars, street tourists, shop vendors, teahouses and pubs, pawn shops, residential courtyards, trees and flowers as the background, and combined all kinds of people such as riding horses, riding sedan chairs, carrying loads to drive donkeys, selling tea and wine, and fortune telling into such a rich content, huge scale and form.

Along the picture scroll of this painting, from the suburban scene in spring, to the busy Bianhe pier, and then to the busy downtown block, we not only heard the cries of boatmen and trackers fighting against the rapids, but also heard the voices of mules and camels walking in the market, as well as the cries of vendors and storefronts, and the shouts of guessing fists and drinking in restaurants and hotels. We not only saw pedestrians and onlookers whispering. So the historical value of this painting lies in its vivid portrayal of social life in China a thousand years ago. No matter in China or in the history of world painting, it is a unique treasure.

How did Kaifeng people live in Song Dynasty? We can learn a thing or two from Yuan Zhen's Dream of Tokyo and Lian's Records of Bianjing Ruins, but the written records are far less than Zhang Zeduan's paintings to provide you with an intuitive image. Thanks to this painter, we have witnessed the face of the capital city of Bianliang in the heyday of the Northern Song Dynasty from 1 1 2nd century, and it is also the most vivid, smart and true montage picture. Then let's learn how Kaifeng, a world-class city with a population of1million, was rich, prosperous, developed and civilized at that time.

The purpose of literature and art has always been divided into "for the ego" and "for the ego" (or "for the ego"). Although there is no distinction between "for the ego" and "for the ego" (or "for the ego"), those who "for the ego" usually pay attention to the vicissitudes of the times, the complexity of life, the vagaries of society and the fall of the world before their own joys and sorrows. And "for the ego" (or for the ego), always consider personal joys and sorrows, or some people's love and hate. Because of the difference between primary and secondary, the weight of exertion, the breadth of vision and the different pursuits, the concept of time and space of "for greater self" is relatively broad and grand, so we can climb high and see far, but we can carry it forward, so the works of "for greater self" will always bring us spiritual shock. This kind of atmosphere, heroism, courage and vitality of people who are "for the big ego" is not available to people who are "for the small ego" (or "for the self"). Similarly, the exquisiteness, exquisiteness, exquisiteness and exquisiteness of "for the ego" (or "for the ego") can usually bring us emotional buzz, and these places are also easy to become the weak links that "for the ego" does not take care of and scrutinize.

The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival is not only a panoramic production, a grand scene and an epic work, but also a work with meticulous details, seeking truth from details and sparing no effort in details. This is a perfect work. According to Qian Zhuo Tang Wen Cun cited by Baidu Encyclopedia, The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival has 1659 characters and 209 animals, which is 1638+095 people in the classical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms and 975 people in A Dream of Red Mansions. And all are lifelike, all are lifelike. Therefore, it has been regarded as a treasure of China culture by China people for thousands of years.

Du Mu's poem Qingming is elegant and beautiful, which is an indispensable part of literature. Zhang Zeduan's Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival has a strong sense of the times and a profound sense of history, which is exactly what this ancient China with cultural connotations needs. It should be said that a country and a nation, from the perspective of literary history, always spend flowers and plants, but there is no dry city, always sing lightly, but there is no yellow bell and big Lu, always wretched, but there is no resentment, always very much in love, and no conscience of home and country. I'm afraid the consequences are really worrying.