Q: Teacher Xu, congratulations on the publication of another masterpiece, The Art of Couplets. What is the consideration of the book "The Art of Couplets"? What is the connection with the current Chinese studies education?
Xu Chao: This book is not a monograph on couplets, but a reading material to guide traditional culture lovers to understand couplets culture and learn to create couplets. From the popularization effect of TV programs about traditional culture, such as riddles, Chinese characters writing and idiom contests, I found that "participation" and "training" seemed to arouse everyone's enthusiasm and interest.
For a long time, I have been thinking about a question, that is, why is the cultural tradition of China people, especially the tradition of literature and philology, so prosperous and enduring? I think this may be related to the long-standing traditional education in China. The most typical examples are the education and training of "Shu" (whose basic content is writing and language) in the Six Arts, and the poetry education and training that lasted for 1000 years on a large scale, among which the education and training of "Duijie" is the most popular. Class pair is also called class pair and genus pair, commonly known as "pair pair", which is the education and training of double conjunctions. In my opinion, any knowledge and ability must be acquired through the subject of study, research and practice.
Professor Du Zexun from the Institute of Advanced Confucianism of Shandong University said in her communication with me that the student training plan of Nishan School is in urgent need of teaching materials related to the cultivation of Chinese studies, which also gave birth to the book "The Art of Couplets". This book has been used as a textbook for Nishan School.
Q: The education and training you just mentioned seems to have been noticed by the ancients from the time of enlightenment education.
Xu Chao: There are many such stories. In Qing Dynasty, Liang Zhangju recorded in "Bridge to Record" that during his illness, he liked to teach his young grandchildren to have proper entertainment. At that time, his grandchildren were twelve and nine years old respectively. One morning, when I was taking a bath, I ordered her a "copper basin" and the older one answered "Jade Jue". It was also ordered to "wash eyes with mulberry leaves", the small ones should be "stuffed with apricot flowers" and the big ones should be dyed with willow juice. On the day of the vernal equinox, the answer is "day and night", and the short answer is "Fengyun Meeting". One day, someone said that "peony flowers are rich", and the big answer was "pine, cypress, leaf, Changchun". A little speechless, just as the girl next door heard it, reminded me: Why didn't you answer "Maple is weak?" Liang said that these are not coincidences. "However, childlike innocence is not lost, and boudoir affairs cannot bear to be forgotten", so I remembered it. Of course, this is just an informal enlightenment education within the family. School classes are more formal and serious, and there are many ways.
This kind of education and training not only received extensive attention in the long-term imperial examination era, but also continued into modern times, and quite a few educators advocated implementing it in Chinese education for young people. For example, Cai Yuanpei believes that class instruction "is not only the beginning of composition, but also the basis of poetry" (my educational experience). Well-known scholar Chen Yinque is more practical. In the joint entrance examination of Chinese for freshmen in Tsinghua University 1932, he actually wrote a test with "Sun Walker" as the upper part for students to do the lower part. When advocating vernacular Chinese, this kind of "perversion" was strongly questioned, and he had to make an explanation, saying that this move could not only test whether the candidates could distinguish the actual situation and application of Pingyi characters and words, but also test the number of books they read, the richness of words and their ideological order.
Q: The simple "duality" contains such a profound mystery. Can you explain it a little?
Xu Chao: China educator Zhang Zhigong has fully expounded this. He said: "Genre pair is a practical training in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, including both rhetoric training and logic training." This kind of training practice can "flexibly integrate grammar, rhetoric and logic training, and closely combine it with composition" (a preliminary study of traditional Chinese education).
Bing Xin's Yi Xian Ji Yi Zhen Duo: "In Datong, there was a receptionist named Qu. (Zheng) Zhen Duo said with a smile, "This name is very interesting" ... and said with a smile, "This name can be used in Zhang Fengju. "(Professor of Peking University at that time) We all laughed." "Feng" and "Qu" are ingenious: not only "Feng" and "Long", "Ju" and "Shen" are equal, but also the surnames "Zhang" and "Qu" are equal. But in a sense, this is not the result of one person's efforts, but the result of more than a thousand years of traditional culture and traditional education in China. The training in the class improved the level of composition and poetry writing, laid the foundation for writing couplets, greatly promoted and popularized the culture of couplets, and finally made couplets a unique comprehensive art in China.
Q: Why is it "unique to China"?
Xu Chao: First of all, judging from its basic rhetorical devices, it takes the dual rhetoric that requires balance and harmony to the extreme, and it is a literary genre and language art with the most dual significance. Secondly, China's calligraphy art. Finally, it is an art that is often accompanied by various national crafts. It can be said that couplets are a kind of comprehensive works of art that integrates poetry, calligraphy, seal cutting, binding or other related skills.
To say that couplets are unique to China culture means that couplets are unique in the world. Some countries in the cultural circle of Chinese characters also have it, but it originated in China, because the "basic materials" used in couplets are Chinese and Chinese characters. Without Chinese and Chinese characters, no matter how to organize and arrange words, it is impossible to make couplets. If you don't believe me, please ask Shakespeare and Tolstoy to translate our couplets into foreign languages and see what kind of "foreign couplets" can do this! So I say that couplets are a unique comprehensive art in China.
From the application point of view, couplets can meet the daily spiritual and cultural needs of people from all walks of life to the greatest extent, such as celebrating festivals, celebrating success, housewarming, closing business, weddings and funerals, etc. Almost all of them are used. And some couplets full of cultural elegance are deeply loved by literati: for personal use, gifts can be used to express friendship, lyric can be enjoyed, study courtyard can be decorated, and landscape gardens can be beautified. This cultural feature, which integrates Chinese characters, calligraphy and literature, makes it a unique art of "dancing and writing ink" in China, and even an art of "having an imperial palace above and a common people's thatched cottage below", an art fascinated by literati and loved by ordinary people, and an art of every household and all walks of life.
It is the artistic effect of couplets to suit both refined and popular tastes, but fundamentally speaking, China people have a special liking for couplets because of its unique national cultural characteristics and its inherent quality, that is, it integrates Chinese characters, literature, calligraphy and decoration, and can show our profound cultural traditions and national spirit in an extremely subtle and elegant artistic form.
Q: xu teacher's words made me understand that couplets are the essence of China's traditional culture. But why does it feel that this essence is drifting away from us?
Xu Chao: Indeed, in our kingdom of couplets, we can see many indisputable facts: First, there are fewer and fewer wonderful new works, and many of them do not meet the requirements of couplets; Second, many couplets on the street are upside down (however, this is probably related to the horizontal writing from left to right). The author once wrote a passage "Reading couplets and offering doubts" for me, focusing on what I call "rotten couplets" and "couplets" that are not couplets. Most of the examples come from calligraphers, even "influential" and "famous", and some problems still appear in articles devoted to writing couplets. Although we can also see many excellent couplets and couplets in recent decades, and we can also see the legacy of the previous generation of couplets and traditional couplets culture, it is very different from the past in terms of the whole society and overall level.
The more important reality is that we have lost the cultural background that lasted for thousands of years, and the extremely popular enlightenment education and training model in the old society has never appeared again. Nevertheless, our cultural blood for thousands of years is eternal, and so is that splendid cultural treasure house. The worry of Qi people is that China's extremely heavy couplet cultural resources are far from being fully understood, let alone fully excavated and utilized, and some places are still "excavating" shallow culture. Shallow culture is not the representative of China's traditional culture, but attaching importance to culture will give people an elegant and uplifting spirit to cultivate and enjoy, especially embodying the essence of China's traditional culture. What we have to do is to take the essence and discard the dross, and strive to excavate, sort out and spread those classic cultures and elite cultures.
Q: What can cultural educators and scholars do?
Xu Chao: For example, the preservation of ancient books in China, social circulation and the extremely rich couplets culture in places of interest all over the country need to be comprehensively sorted out. Take the hot cultural construction of tourist attractions at present. On the one hand, we can adapt to the cultural background and connotation of new and old scenic spots, select traditional excellent couplets for them, strive to create more new couplets with the characteristics of the times, and create a brand-new cultural environment for couplets. We can also strive to create conditions to popularize and spread couplet culture in different ways and improve the appreciation level of the public. We hope that in the era of building a strong cultural country, we can pay more attention to protecting the local rare culture and elegant culture in inheritance and inheriting it in protection. In this era of globalization, we should pay special attention to spreading an authentic national quintessence culture to the world.
In a word, in the only kingdom of couplets in the world, we still have a lot to do in carrying forward and inheriting couplets culture. Fortunately, in recent twenty or thirty years, a large number of couplets have been published, and the creation and writing of couplets are unprecedented. The creation team of couplets is also expanding and the level has been greatly improved. My hope is to make greater progress in this respect, at least not to let couplet culture decline in our generation.
Q: Your book The Art of Couplets includes an introduction to couplets, appreciation of couplets, examples of self-written couplets, examples of self-compiled sentences, examples of couplets calligraphy and so on. Among them, self-written couplets, self-collected sentences, couplets, calligraphy and other chapters contain a lot of your own creative experience, which is particularly precious.
Xu Chao: Due to the changes of the times and society, I have never been trained to write modern poems since I was a child, nor have I taken any classes, so I dare not write modern poems at will. Although I like couplets very much, my energy has been spent on professional teaching and related research for a long time, and I seldom take the initiative to create couplets. The separation of couplets is mostly due to the needs of the times. It is estimated that people who write couplets and those who want to learn to write couplets are generally my hobbies. In this way, my creative experience has a broad meaning, that is, my "self-presentation" may be more beneficial to beginners, and my humble work may be more practical than learning those classic couplets or those that can only sigh at the top of the mountain and are out of reach.
In addition to writing, I also mentioned the rational transformation of old couplets, and beginners can also start from this aspect. There are examples in the book. Here, I want to say that the transformation of the old couplets is to meet the new use now. In order to make the theme clearer, sometimes you can add a paragraph to explain it. For example, the couplet inscribed by the author for the Scholar Building of Shandong University recently was made by slightly modifying and adjusting the old couplets of the previous sages. Li Anyun:
Qiu Chunhua Shi Xue race,
Louis Li Men Jun Zi Bureau
"Chunhua Qiushi" is a cliche, but its deep meaning is unknown. For the convenience of readers, I added the following paragraph:
Yan Zhitui in the Northern Qi Dynasty said, "Scholars still plant trees. Spring is gorgeous, but autumn is actually. Talking about articles, Chunhua also; Self-cultivation and benefit, autumn also. " This is a good theory.
Yan's language can be found in Yan Jiaxun Mianxue, which expounds the relationship between article knowledge and self-cultivation practice. Together with this passage, it has played a great role in readers' understanding of "the species of snowman with spring flowers and autumn fruits" and is conducive to the promotion and popularization of traditional culture. "Righteousness" and "Mencius Gaozi Shang": "Benevolence, people's hearts are also. Righteousness, people are also on the road. " "Under Zhang Wan": "Fu Yi, Lu Ye; Ceremony, door also. Only a gentleman can take the road, and access is the door. " "The Analects of Confucius Zi Han": "Zi wants to live in nine cities. Or "what about being humble?" Confucius said, "Where does a gentleman live? How can he be modest?" "From spring flowers to autumn fruits, from righteousness to propriety, the order of becoming a scholar is exactly the same as the causal order of spring planting and autumn harvest. The first half is clearly embedded with the name of "scholar", and the second half is "gentleman's residence", secretly cutting "building"
I would also like to say here that sometimes the old couplets can actually be copied, but the special meaning of the new title of Wen Dian Ming should also be considered. For example, Shanghe County, Jinan, Shandong Province, recently built some cultural attractions, including a pavilion. Shanghe was called Maiqiu in ancient times, and there is a story about the idea of governing the country that has been passed down to this day. This story is found in Han Shi Zhuan and Xin Xu, so it has a different meaning from general folklore. Because I wrote "Three Wishes for Maiqiu" (a marble landscape wall with the story of three wishes for Maiqiu engraved on it) for another nearby scenic spot, I named the pavilion "Three Wishes Pavilion", and the pillars under the pavilion should be inscribed with couplets. But I am puzzled by the inscription on the couplet: if I wrote it myself, it might be more convenient to tell the story of "three wishes" in the couplet, but it is difficult, so I thought of transforming the old couplet. See a group of ancient couplets by Zhang Qing and Wen Tao on the embankment;
Good governance is auspicious, and the gas should be rainy;
Raising sages leads to joy, and Lu is like a spring.
Zhang Wentao,No. Chuanshan, a poet in Qing Dynasty, was a magistrate in Laizhou, and he had a good idea. This couplet is a collection of old sayings, Yilin Dahua: "Kirin Phoenix, good governance and good luck." "Biography of Han Poetry" Volume 8: "(Phoenix) is bright, moving in the eight winds, and the gas should be rainy." "Yilin Magazine Small Livestock": "Those who are benevolent and virtuous are happy." The same book "Litigation": "The emperor built Yuan, and Wen De was in the body. Lv Ruoyang's name is Lv Jun. "Although it was written in the Qing Dynasty, it coincides with my Search, and it is the same as what I did for Zhu Santing, so I immediately decided to write this couplet. However, in order to let readers and tourists clearly understand the story of Mai Qiu's three wishes, I added the following passage:
Qi Huangong's field is in wheat autumn, and it has already realized three wishes. Duke Huan said that he was kind and asked him to return to China, be polite to the DPRK and help him become a tyrant. The so-called "three wishes" is actually an exhortation to love the people, value morality and be good, which embodies the basic concept of Confucian governance. Maiqiu is today's business river. I named the newly-built pavilion Zhu Santing, inscribed its amount, and re-recorded the collection of Zhang Chuanshan, the magistrate of Laizhou in Qing Dynasty, in order to praise it.
This makes the story, meaning, context and meaning of couplets clear. I think this practice is worth a try. Interestingly, this work is for Shanghe County. Considering the audience, I wrote a running script. Later, I tried to write a bronze inscription. In an exhibition at the end of last year, this inscription was stolen by someone who probably liked it very much, and it has not been broken yet. It shows that this kind of thing is still popular.
Q: Interesting. Xu teacher's exposition of couplets and calligraphy is also very incisive.
Xu Chao: The marriage with calligraphy makes the couplets find their best way to survive and develop. It is calligraphy that makes couplets brilliant and perfect. Because it embodies the cultural tradition of China people and adapts to the noble spiritual and cultural pursuit of China people. The ultimate pursuit of his spirit is to endow language, Chinese characters and China's calligraphy with supernatural power, which I try to analyze and discuss.
Q: I've read more than 30 pairs of couplet ink you wrote in Chapter 8, including gold inscriptions and running scripts, all of which are wonderful.
Xu Chao: This is ridiculous. Although most of them are temporary attempts to create "hasty chapters", they also reflect my pursuit of "Jimei Art". These couplets, whether created by me or collected by me, are all traditional cultures with Chinese studies as the main body. Literary forms are couplets, condensed metrical poems and pocket-sized classic culture. Calligraphy is an elegant bronze inscription and a typical temple culture. Paragraph text is a commonly used running script. Obviously, such works can be more compatible with and express rich cultural information, and can show the shocking power of traditional culture and art more intensively. These are all manifestations of my pursuit of "Jimei Art", which may not be achieved or done well. My attitude will always be "study hard and make progress every day". I will continue to work hard.