Ni Zan, named Yunlinzi, was born in Yuanzhen. A great painter and poet of the Yuan Dynasty, he was born in Wuxi in the fifth year of Dade of Emperor Chengzong of the Yuan Dynasty. Ni Zan was a noble and distinguished scholar with a withdrawn and arrogant personality. The world called him "Ni Zan". In his youth, he had made friends of all kinds and lived a frivolous life; when his elder brother passed away and he was left to manage the family property, Ni Zan was unable to run the family business and had to avoid extortion and exploitation by tax officials. So at the age of fifty-one, he dispersed his family wealth, fled Wuxi, and began a rafting career of more than twenty years.
Ni Zan, who wandered around the five lakes and three lakes, had no fixed abode. He wandered around Taihu Lake in Yixing, Changzhou, Wujiang, Huzhou, Jiaxing and Songjiang, still chanting with the "unruly people fishing in the smoke and boats in the rivers and seas". They wrote poems and paintings, sang to each other, and discussed Taoism and Buddhism. On the 11th day of the 11th lunar month in the seventh year of Hongwu, Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, Ni Zan, who was staying with relatives in Jiangyin, ended his noble and miserable life due to illness. He was sixty-nine years old. Now reading his "Magpie Bridge Immortal: The Rich Man Can Rest in Peace", one can understand his feelings: The rich man can rest in peace. The hero rests. Once prosperous. Why did the magpie nest borrow a dove to live in...
In the history of Chinese painting, Ni Zan is world-renowned for his famous Taihu landscape. The artistic conception of his paintings is desolate, cold and empty, and his style is desolate and elegant. It is said that in the Ming Dynasty, a new standard for judging elegance and vulgarity quietly emerged among literati—whether there were Ni Zan paintings hanging in the home. In addition, his mysophobia is even more talked about by future generations. He usually wears white robes and is spotless, and everything in his living area is cleaned.
Ni Zan's residence is called "Qingmi Pavilion". The pavilion is kept spotless at all times, and hundreds of pairs of guest shoes are prepared outside the door. All guests must change their shoes when they visit. But except for a few friends or celebrities, Ni Zan did not receive the general visitors. He needs to change several basins of water every day to wash his face, and the turf, trees and stones in the courtyard also need to be cleaned and washed frequently.
It is said that Ni Zan once stayed with a guest overnight and heard the guest coughing and spitting in the middle of the night. After the guest left the next day, he immediately asked his servants to search thoroughly to find out where the guest had spit. The servant searched for a long time, but there was really no trace. But he was afraid of being scolded by the master, so he pretended that the guest had spit on the sycamore tree in the courtyard. As soon as Ni Zan heard this, he immediately ordered people to clean the sycamore trees. It is said that Ni Zan not only washed the parasol trees, but also painted the "Picture of Washing the Parasol Trees".
In fact, the act of washing Tong and the title of the painting have their own symbolic meaning. Wutong, also known as Qingtong, means green, clear, and clear, and is connected with the personality and spirit of a clear mind and a dust-free world. Later generations extended this, so that Ni Zan, a noble scholar, "washing Tong" was not only for his own The noble image has been blessed, and "Xitong" has become a symbol of literati's purity.
Cao Shancheng, a great hermit in the late Yuan Dynasty, admired Ni Zan's idea of ??washing the paulownia trees and built the Wutong Garden. Hundreds of parasol trees were planted in the garden and they were washed day and night, so it was also called the "Wutton Washing Garden". Cui Zizhong, a great painter from the late Ming Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty, had a clear and unconventional painting style. He was a fellow painter of "Ni Zhen", who was known for his high standards of purity. He also painted "Washing Tongs in the Clouds"; Wang Shizhen, a scholar and painter in the Qing Dynasty, painted "Washing with a Qin". "Scroll of Tung Pictures"; even Emperor Kangxi had a seal "Washing Tongshan House"; there is also a wood carving of Ni Yunlin's "Picture of Washing Tongshan" on the threshold of the Liuyuan Garden in Suzhou. In short, there are countless paintings and sculptures about Xitong in later generations. From this point of view, Ni Zan's mysophobia has really led the trend for generations and has not faded.