This is a riddle circulated among the people. After a little thinking, it is not difficult to guess that its answer is fans.
When it comes to fans, we always think of their contribution to the cool breeze in hot summer days.
However, do you know the history of fans in our ancient civilization?
China is the hometown of fans, who have a long history in China. A long time ago, ancient craftsmen began to make fans, and the styles of fans are constantly changing because of different times.
The original fan was called feather fan, which was made of bird feathers. Craftsmen collect bird feathers, select long and beautiful ones, and match them according to color to make handfuls of beautiful feather fans.
Cui Bao of the Jin Dynasty once recorded in Notes on Ancient and Modern Times: "Shun is five, and Yin is difficult to fan the tail."
But when the feather fan was first born, it was not used to fan the wind, but was held by the waiter to shelter the emperor from the wind and rain, and sometimes it was used as a ceremonial ceremony.
It was not until the Han Dynasty that feather fans were used today.
After the feather fan came into being, it quickly became the favorite of literati and Confucian generals.
In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the resourceful strategist Kong Ming often waved a goose feather fan lightly in his hand and handled it skillfully in the curtain. This goose feather fan is a kind of feather fan.
Su Dongpo described Zhou Yu in his words like this:
The nylon scarf of the feather fan is talking and laughing, and the grid is gone.
A few words painted a romantic image of the governor for us. It can be seen that feather fans have been widely used in the Three Kingdoms period.
Around the end of the Han Dynasty, a new kind of fan-round fan appeared.
Use bamboo or animal bones as handles, use bamboo or metal wires as rings, and wrap them with white silk and paper.
Smart artists write poems and draw pictures on the fan, and the round fan is even more exquisite.
There is a poem called "Xiao Fan Wang" in Autumn Evening written by Du Mu in Tang Dynasty, and the "Xiao Fan Wang" here should refer to this kind of fan.
With the development of history, round fans have gradually become pets belonging only to ladies and gentlemen.
The fan in Xue Baochai's hand in A Dream of Red Mansions is this kind of fan, but the pattern on the fan is embroidered with colorful silk.
The patterns on the round fan, flowers, birds, insects and fish, or ancient ladies are all exquisite handicrafts.
Probably in the Tang Dynasty, folding fans were introduced to China from North Korea and began to be loved by some officials, nobles and literati.
This kind of fan is made of bamboo, wood, ivory, etc., and is covered with paper or silk. It can be folded. It is 30 cm -40 cm wide when opened, only 2 cm -3 cm wide and about 30 cm long when folded.
It is durable and easy to carry, so it has a long history, and we still mostly use this kind of fan today.
There are dozens of folding fans, the most common of which is paper with poems, paintings or poems and paintings on it.
Painting on fans is a custom in Song Dynasty.
Guo, a painter in the Northern Song Dynasty, painted a landscape painting on a fan in his later years. Later this fan was acquired by Su Dongpo.
Su Dongpo marveled at Guo's painting skills and wrote poems with his own handwriting, which became a much-told story in the Song Dynasty.
With the development of fans, fan art came into being and developed.
Tang Bohu, a painter in the Ming Dynasty, often inscribed poems on fans, and his fan with poems became an artistic treasure of later generations.
In modern times, many painters also held fan exhibitions.
Mr. Zhu Kongyang is an outstanding painter and calligrapher in modern China.
While performing in Shanghai, he and Mr. Tao Lengyue jointly organized a fan exhibition.
Mr. Tao painted and Mr. Zhu wrote. "Tao Zhugong sells fans" became a beautiful talk for a while.
In addition to the above fans, the working people in our country also use the stems and leaves of plants to make fans.
Such as sunflower fan, cattail fan, palm tung fan, etc.
Although these fans can't be "elegant halls", they are cheap, durable and can be made from local materials, so they are widely loved by people.
Fans in our country are not only various, but also beautifully made, many of which are exquisite handicrafts.
Among them, the black paper fan in Hangzhou, the sunflower fan in Xinhui, Guangdong, the feather fan in Huzhou, Zhejiang and the bamboo fan in Zigong, Sichuan are known as the "kings of fans" and are deeply loved by people all over the world.
With the development of science and technology, electric fans have entered thousands of households.
But in summer, fans are easy to carry around, which is irreplaceable by electric fans.
At the same time, the production of fans embodies the wisdom of the working people in ancient China, and the art of fans is also a part of the excellent culture in ancient China.
Seeing this, aren't you proud of the wisdom of the people of the motherland?