In traditional culture, there are many things to describe the love between husband and wife, such as mandarin ducks, geese, harps, flounder, emu, love branches, and now "love birds".
Different from Yuanyang goose, winged bird is a legendary creature that no one has ever seen in reality.
In ancient times, there were many records about love birds, not only in various documents, but also in various poems and songs.
However, at first, this did not symbolize love for love birds, but represented disaster.
Shan Hai Jing ·Xi· Shan Jing: There is a bird on the mountain that worships me. It looks like a bird, but its wings and eyes are flying. It is called "Man". When you see it, the world is flooded.
People in ancient times couldn't explain a series of natural phenomena, so they blamed the gods, and the winged bird didn't know why. Every time it appears, it is during the flood.
Over time, people thought that love birds caused the flood, and they also named it "Man".
For the appearance of the lovebirds, the records in ancient books are also relatively clear.
Shan Hai Jing Overseas South Jing: Two-winged birds are in the east, which is blue-red, and two birds are in the wings.
Generally speaking, there are two kinds of love birds: blue and red. They all have one eye and one wing. They look like wild ducks. They often appear in pairs, and only when the male and female birds get together can they fly with me.
Interestingly, Erya Dish recorded five "comparative" strange creatures:
There is a kind of flounder in the east, which is no better than nothing. Its name is sole.
There are flying birds in the south, which are called cockroaches.
There are beasts in the west, people in the north and a two-headed snake in the middle.
These five "compared" creatures all act in pairs, while flounder and lovebirds, collectively called "emus" by the ancients, are used to express good wishes and describe their extremely loving appearance.
In Qi Lu Deng written by Liang in the Southern Dynasties, the story of Lian Zhi and two-winged bird was recorded.
According to legend, during the Three Kingdoms period, there was a man named Lu Dongmei in Haiyan County, Dongwu, who married a wife named Zhu. The wife is beautiful and dignified, and the couple have excellent feelings. Usually they are inseparable in pairs, and people call them "people on a par".
Unfortunately, Zhu died early, and Lu Dongmei went on a hunger strike to double suicide. After they were buried together, two intersecting catalpa trees grew on the grave, and they grew into a tree, where a pair of big birds often lived.
After learning about this, Sun Quan named this place "Bi Shouli" and named the tomb of Lu Dongmei and his wife "Twin Tomb". Since then, Lu Dongmei's son and wife Zhang are also very loving, and people call them "Little Bi Shouli".
In the Yuan Dynasty, Yi Shizhen's Tianku Story recorded that there was a phoenix in the south, which flew around without drinking or pecking. The male was called "wild king" and the female was called "taboo", which was always called "long separation". This bird can cross fate and come back from the dead. It must be somewhere.
In the Yin and Shang Dynasties, people thought that this kind of bird looked strange and was regarded as a sign of flood, but in the Zhou Dynasty, people began to think it was a symbol of affection.
The image of a lovebird originated from Shan Hai Jing, and many creatures in Shan Hai Jing look strange and unlike things in the world. Love birds may be a bird imagined by ancient ancestors.
In addition, it may be that some birds in nature were artistically processed by the ancients, and finally the image of a lovebird was formed.
The ancients used things like the lovebird as symbols of deep feelings, such as the lovebird, the flounder, the ambition of love and so on, especially to describe the beautiful feelings between husband and wife.