In the fifth year of Xining in Song Shenzong (AD 1072), Su Dongpo wrote a poem for his good friend Sun Juejian. There are two sentences in the poem: "Ling Du's storytelling is expensive and thin, and this theory is not supported by the public." Short, long, fat and thin have their own states. Who dares to hate Yuhuan Yan Fei? Su Dongpo means that Du Fu thinks calligraphy is "thin and hard", but he doesn't think so. Short, long, fat and thin in calligraphy have their own postures, just like Zhao, they are all beauties. In this way, in fact, the word "fat" in Su Dongpo's original text describes calligraphy strokes, not Yang Yuhuan. But later, these two poems were simplified as "circling fat and swallowing thin" to describe beauties with different postures, and people thought that Yang Yuhuan was fat.
From Yang Guifei's "Fat" to the whole Tang Dynasty, everyone has strengthened the saying that fat is beauty in the Tang Dynasty. But this view is actually not correct, at least not completely correct. The Tang Dynasty is divided into four stages in history: early Tang Dynasty, prosperous Tang Dynasty, middle Tang Dynasty and late Tang Dynasty. In these four stages, except for the prosperous Tang Dynasty, there are still some problems, and other periods are not dominated by fat. From the works written by many poets in those periods, we can see that the beauty they appreciate is slim waist and light posture.
In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, the concept that fat is beautiful also came from the paintings of some plump ladies at that time. Of course, some people will carry out the sentence in "The Legacy of Kaiyuan Tianbao" to the end: "The imperial concubine has the name of meat." It seems that Yang Guifei's posture is recorded, but Wang Renyu, the author of this book, lived in the Five Dynasties, so he has never seen Yang Guifei, and what he recorded is "other people's words".
In Du Fu's famous poem "Two Ways" in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, the beauty described is "flesh and blood cannibalism"; When Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty sent Gao Lishi to choose concubines for princes, he also asked for "slim and fair people", which shows that fat is not a beauty in the prosperous Tang Dynasty.
Yang Guifei was a famous person at that time, and many poets had seen her with their own eyes. However, Li Bai's three Qing Ping Tunes did not describe her as a fat man, nor did Bai Juyi's Song of Eternal Sorrow. Perhaps in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, there were more plump aristocratic women, but this situation does not mean that fat was the beauty at that time. Yang Guifei should not be considered "fat" and be good at dancing. Where can she be fat? Yang Guifei is described as "glamorous" in New Tang Book, which is estimated to be a little fuller than that kind of thin woman.
Similar to Yang Guifei, there is Zhu Yuanzhang. Zhu Yuanzhang's portrait is widely known, and his face is unique, which makes people laugh. However, among the portraits of Zhu Yuanzhang circulating now, there are also images with very correct faces. Then let's take a look at how Zhu Yuanzhang looks in the history books.
"Tai Zu Ancestral History of the Ming Dynasty" records: "Bigger than others, with outstanding appearance and strange bones." It looks normal, nothing special. However, some clues can be found in A Dream with a Loose Window by Hans Zhang, an official of the Ming Dynasty. The author said that he had personally seen the portrait of Zhu Yuanzhang preserved in the palace, which was not only normal, but also "very different from the image in folklore." This sentence shows that the portrait of Zhu Yuanzhang circulated among the people is very strange.
Why is this? Moreover, it seems that Zhu Yuanzhang's "grotesque" is very common. In fact, the emergence of this situation has a lot to do with Zhu Yuanzhang's own personality-Zhu Yuanzhang is unwilling to let many people know his appearance. Amin Tan Qian talked about this problem in Zazao. He thought that Zhu Yuanzhang liked traveling incognito, so he published many "suspicious images" for his own safety.
Moreover, Zhu Yuanzhang's image is strange, which is actually inseparable from his own inspiration. Zhu Yuanzhang was the founding emperor, and like many other emperors who changed dynasties, he made a big fuss about his appearance. Natural eyesight, purple gas and red light are indispensable, which are clearly recorded in the Ming history, indicating that Zhu Yuanzhang's mother not only got the medicine given by the gods, but also had a "miracle" when he was born. Therefore, Zhu Yuanzhang and the later rulers of the Ming Dynasty were happy to see the folk saying that Mao looks strange, which added a lot of mystery and authority to him. But there is another saying that Zhu Yuanzhang's strange image was deliberately spread by the rulers of the Qing Dynasty in order to discredit his image.
References:
Sun Xin's old man's poems about finding ink and wonderful pavilions
new history of the tang dynasty
Mingshi