How to appreciate ancient classics?

A cultural institution in Hong Kong recently held a "most popular Tang poetry" election. As a result, voters selected ten of thousands of Tang poems with fairly concentrated votes.

At the top of the list is Meng Jiao's Ode to a Wanderer: "The thread in a loving mother's hand makes clothes for her wayward son's body. Before leaving, I had a stitch for fear that my son would come back late and his clothes would be damaged. But every inch of grass is a little sentimental, and it is rewarded with three chunhui! "

Everyone knows that this is a poem praising mother. But why does this poem with simple language still have the strongest appeal after thousands of years of chanting? To understand this mystery, we must realize that life is alive-in a broad sense, no one is not on the journey. During the journey, people certainly focus on the future, especially the tangible benefits, but they will inevitably miss something. They can't help but keep a warm heart, and they can't forget their own righteousness and lose their conscience and humanity. Therefore, the image of "loving mother" transcends the narrow sense of biological mother, symbolizing all external factors that guide our individual lives, making us yearn for the harmony between individuals and others and groups, and triggering practical efforts.

The ten Tang poems selected by Hong Kong people this time are the most common short poems in all kinds of anthologies, which are easy to read literally. In addition to Ode to a Wanderer, the other nine poems are:

The second song is Du Mu's "Tomb-Sweeping Day": "It rains in succession during the Qingming Festival, and pedestrians on the road want to die. Ask local people where to buy wine? The shepherd boy pointed to Xinghua Village. " Why is this poem the runner-up? Just because the scenery is picturesque, bright and fresh? I think it also contains a warm humanity, and in the affinity between "pedestrian" and "shepherd boy", it embodies a healthy pursuit of life fun. People who can enter this poem, inside and outside, who has the heart to kidnap the shepherd boy for their own selfish desires?

The third song is Li Bai's "Thinking about a Quiet Night": "There is a bright line at the foot of the bed, and there is no first frost? . Looking up, I found that it was moonlight, sinking again, and I suddenly thought of home. " The love of homeland is the basic nature of human beings. Hometown often determines a person's own national attribute, national blood relationship and family pedigree. The love of hometown will make us realize the inheritance relationship between individual blood and others and groups, and "hometown folks" constitutes a fixed vocabulary. It is hard to imagine that people who have some feelings for Li Bai's poem "Homesickness" will live in a fancy house to eat delicious food and drive their parents to the pigsty to throw leftovers!

Fourth, Wang Zhihuan's "Climbing the Crane Tower": "The mountains cover the daytime, and the ocean drains the golden river. But as long as you go up a flight of stairs, you can broaden your horizons by 300 miles! " The realm of life should be so broad.

The fifth song is Li Shangyin's "Le Garden": "I have a sunset shadow in my heart, driving in the Le Garden. To see the sun, for all his glory, buried by the coming night! " While appreciating that life has a floor, I also know that life is limited, and I keep a degree of advance and retreat with a thorough mentality. Those who thoroughly understand the essence of these two poems, who will be so short-sighted as to disregard shame and forget it for the sake of immortality?

The sixth song is Meng Haoran's "Spring Dawn": "I wake up easily on this spring morning, surrounded by birds singing. But now I remember that night, that storm, and I want to know how many flowers were broken. " The seventh song is Bai Juyi's farewell to ancient grass: "The vast grass crosses the plain and comes and goes with the four seasons." Wildfire can't burn it out, but the spring breeze can revive it. Weeds and wild flowers are all over the ancient road, and the end of the grass in the sun is your journey. Oh, my friend's prince, you left again, and I heard them sigh behind you. " The eighth is Li Shen's "Compassion for Peasants": "When weeding is noon, sweat drips down the soil. Who knows that Chinese food is hard! " I think that a person who can feel pity for the most common creature-fallen flowers, care for the lowest thing-withered grass, and cherish the beautiful feelings of the most ordinary workers from these poems will never rudely hurt the lives of lively children!

The last two songs are "Early Release of Bai Di City" by Li Bai: "Say goodbye to Bai Di in the morning and return to Jiangling one day. The apes on both sides of the strait can't stop crying, and the canoe has passed Chung Shan Man. " And He Zhangzhi's "Letter from Home": "When a teenager leaves home, an old friend returns, and the local accent remains unchanged. When children meet and don't know each other, they smile and ask where the guests are from. " One is to lead us into the magnificent embrace of nature, and the other is to lead us into the simplest human feelings in the world and recite such clear and beautiful poems repeatedly. Even if there is thick dust and dirt on our souls, we can always clean some truth, goodness and beauty, right?

I think many readers will wonder why I want to record all such common Tang poems, but these ten Tang poems are often memorized and often new. Even if they are recorded once, the soul always has an unspeakable joy! If some readers can't memorize these ten Tang poems one by one, or even read them for the first time, then I implore them to memorize these ten Tang poems. In a sense, these ten Tang poems condense the most precious and inherited essence of our Chinese cultural tradition, and also reflect the height that our Chinese nation must look up to in the process of pursuing beauty. Are you too busy at work? Too many things? Must we make money quickly? Singing karaoke, playing mahjong, dancing in discos, practicing qigong, asking fortune-telling, walking birds, raising fish and feeding cats and dogs, is there no leisure? Of course, who can force who? People arrange their own lives, but I still want to call on people to read a little Tang poetry, recite a little Tang poetry and know a little Tang poetry in their busy lives-not too many, ten poems are enough!