Mi Fei, a great painter and calligrapher in the Northern Song Dynasty, has quite peculiar behavior and many unique quirks and hobbies. Therefore, people speculate that he may be a descendant of ethnic minorities in the western regions, and some scholars have also conducted detailed argumentation. However, it is still speculative and there is not much conclusive evidence. So why is Mi Fei so weird? It's really puzzling.
Mi Fei's calligraphy
Mi Fei (151 ~ 117), whose first name was Fu, had a character stamp. After the mother served Xuanren, she made up the official with her old kindness, and learned about the counties and armies through the calendar. In Song Huizong, he was called as a doctor of calligraphy and painting, and he was appointed as a foreign minister of the Ministry of Rites. Poetry and prose are strange and dangerous, and they don't follow the path of their predecessors. Wang Anshi tasted his poems on the fan, and Su Shi also liked them. Especially good at calligraphy and painting, he is a famous calligrapher, painter and connoisseur in the Northern Song Dynasty. His calligraphy and cursive brushwork are bold and unconstrained, and he is one of the "Song Sijia" in the history of calligraphy. Although people who draw landscapes learn from Dong Yuan, they do not create new works, but mostly use ink and wash, emphasizing interest rather than detail, and being naive and revealing, creating a freehand brushwork method of overlapping horizontal points, which is called "Mi Dian Shan Shui" or "Mi Shi Yun Shan". He is also good at appreciating and appraising, and is good at collecting ancient stone artifacts and famous paintings and calligraphy, especially fond of strange stones. He has written 1 volumes of Mountain Forest Collection, as well as History of Books, History of Painting, History of Inks, Collection of Treasures and Engravings, and Interview with Treasures and Chapters.
Mi Fei's outstanding artistic achievements and his position in the cultural history need not be discussed. However, this person is eccentric and often different from ordinary people. He is known as "Mi Dian". For example, The History of the Song Dynasty originally told him: "The crown serves the people of the Tang Dynasty, and Mi Fei, the wind god, is scattered, and his voice is clear, so people who come here gather to watch it. And good clean into addiction, not to towel with people. There are people who can laugh when they are different. There is a huge stone in Wuwei Prefecture, which looks very ugly. When I see it, I am overjoyed and say,' This is enough for me to worship!' Worship him with clothes and call him brother. There are also many nicknames: Lumen layman, Xiangyang Manshi, Haiyue Waishi, Huaiyang Waishi, descendants of Huozheng, and descendants of raccoon. Some people also call them "Minangong", "Mi Xiangyang" and "Mi Haiyue", which shows that they are different from ordinary Central Plains people. What is the reason?
Cha Caizhao's Epitaph of Mr. Mi Haiyue, a Yuan Wailang of the Ritual Department of the Song Dynasty, and Deng Chun's Painting, etc., Mi Fei's family lived in Taiyuan (now Shanxi), then moved to Xiangyang (now Hubei), and finally settled in Runzhou Dantu (now Zhenjiang, Jiangsu). Mi Xin, an illustrious minister in the early Song Dynasty, was his fifth ancestor. Because Mi Fei lived in Runzhou for a long time, he was called "Wu people" in the original biography of History of Song Dynasty compiled in the early Yuan Dynasty. So, is Mi Fei a Han in the Central Plains? According to various indications, some people suggested that Mi Fei might be a minority in the western regions, but the evidence was insufficient due to the lack of relevant information about its ancestral home, which was not recognized by most people.
In p>1988, Luo Shaowen's article "An Examination of Mi Fei's Descendants from the Western Regions" re-examined this issue in detail and put forward ten reasons:
First, there was no Mi surname in the Central Plains before the middle of the Tang Dynasty. In the future, those who occasionally have the surname of Mi, such as Mi Jiarong, Mi He, Mi Duzhi, Mi Sui, etc., are all Hu people in the Western Region and are not included in the surname spectrum. There is no rice surname in all kinds of surname books from Han to Tang. It was not until the Song Dynasty that the surname Mi appeared in Zheng Qiao's Annals of Surnames and Deng Mingshi's father and son's Book of Ancient and Modern Surnames. The cloud says: "There is a country of rice in the western regions, and later generations take the country as their surname." Therefore, the Mi people in the Central Plains are all descendants of the Hu people in the Western Regions. "Surname Lue" thought that there was a surname of Mi after Chu State, which was also quoted in other dictionaries. This was due to the misunderstanding of Mi Fei's imprint. Mi Fei bears the stamp of "Mi Fei Yuan Zhang of Chu State" and the title of "descendants of the bear", and the bear is the ancestor of Chu State, so "A Brief Surname" says: "Song Mi Fei took rice as the empress of Chu State." In fact, this is just that Mi Fei stayed in Xiangyang, the old capital of Chu.
second, the issue of "fragrant countries". Ming Maozi's Jin Collection "Hai Yue Zhi Lin" contains that before he died, Mi Fei invited the county officials all over again and held up the Buddha to show the public, saying, "All fragrant countries come in, and all fragrant countries go in." Throw a Buddha and cross your hands and die. The so-called fragrant country is the name of the Buddhist worship in the western regions.
the third is the seal of "fire is the successor". There are more than 1 seals in Mi Fei, one of which is "the seal of the descendants of the fire". This is Mi Fei's revelation of the religion he and his ancestors believed in-Fire Zoroastrianism. Nine surnames of Zhaowu, including Miguo, believed in Fire Zoroastrianism at the beginning of the Tang Dynasty. Mi Fei compared him to a descendant who believed in Vulcan by the official name of the Han nationality "Huozheng". During the Song Dynasty, Zoroastrianism in the Western Regions had already been replaced by Islam, and Mi Fei's move was a nostalgia for his hometown and its religion.
the fourth is Mi Fei's unusual cleanliness. When Dr. Ren Taichang was a doctor, the boots were held by others and washed repeatedly, resulting in damage; The algal fire decorations on the sacrificial clothes were worn away by frequent washing, and they were also degraded for this reason. He often wears a high-brim hat, and his sedan chair is hindered by the top cover. He would rather remove the top of the sedan chair than give it to a slave, so that the top cover of his sedan chair is removed and Mi Fei sits with his hat exposed. Mi Fei washed his hands with silver as a bucket and a long handle. The servant held the water in his hand, and the two hands patted each other until they were dry, without wiping them with a towel. There are countless examples, which should be the traditional habit of the fire jacket believers and the United States.
Fifth, repeat the writing of Tian Ma Fu. Mi Fei's small letters are too expensive to write more, but he has written "Tian Ma Fu" many times, repeating at least four books. The reason is that Tianma comes from Dayuan in the Western Regions, the United States is adjacent to Dayuan, and Mi Fei is homesick for seeing things.
Sixthly, there are different manners and customs of burying relatives. According to Hai Yue Zhi Lin, Mi Fei buried his relatives in the mountains of Runzhou, and did not gather soil for graves or erect tombstones. According to Swing Heding's Travel in the Hinterland of Asia, the cemetery of the fire jacket believers is also a "flat tomb". The Tongdian quoted Xifan Ji as saying: "Take the bones and bury them, and there is no coffin outline." Similar to Mi Fei's funeral customs.
Seventh, Mi Fei's "crown serves the people of the Tang Dynasty". The characteristic of the Tang Dynasty's clothes is to imitate Hu Fu, or Mi Fei in the Song Dynasty still wore Hu Fu, so that "people gather to watch it", which is strange. In fact, Tang clothes are not unfamiliar to people in the early Song Dynasty, and what people are curious about may be Mi Fei's appearance. "Wei Shu" and "Northern History" once recorded that the characteristics of people in the western regions are "deep eyes, high nose and many beards". And the portrait of Mi Fei in Wang Qi's Collection of Three Tales is really deep-eyed, high-nosed and bearded.
Eight is the American spirit of "treachery and unfaithfulness", which is reflected in Mi Fei. Mi Fei loves painting and calligraphy. Whenever he sees famous books and ancient paintings, he always takes them by various tricks and seizes them for himself. For example, in Qingbo Magazine, Mi Fei threatened to throw himself into the river and fall into a boat, and got Wang Xizhi's copybook from Cai You. Or borrow ancient paintings for extension, and after the completion, at the same time, return them to the real and fake ones, so that they can choose without distinguishing. In this way, Mi Fei skillfully took many ancient paintings. It is said that this is related to the traditional educational spirit of good businessmen in the United States.
Nine is the stamp and name of Mi Fei. Han people often take the ancestral home as the name, while Mi Fei takes all the places where he has lived as the name, and the number is large, which actually denies that he is from any place in the Central Plains.
Ten is the general outline of Mi Fei's ancestors moving into the Central Plains. According to "A General Examination of Literature and Classics", Mi Fei "was a military attache in his last life, and he was also the first minister of Gaiguo after Mi Xin." According to Mi Xian, the third Sun of Mi Fei, there seems to be only eight generations of pedigrees from Mi Xin, which was not clear before Mi Xin. It can be inferred that the Americans moved eastward to settle in the Central Plains, partly with Shatuo Turks, and partly as "military attache" of Shatuo Qinwang Army invited by the Tang Dynasty. This was from 883 to 947, when Mi Fei's ancestors moved to the Central Plains.
The above analysis is indeed quite thorough, but many places are still just guesses, and they are based on the anecdotal notes of the literati. In particular, the eccentric personality of some artists also links it with the customs of western countries hundreds of years ago, which is probably far-fetched. Among them, the first reason is the most important. China's surname often comes from many sources, but whether Mi's surname disappeared completely before the mid-Tang Dynasty, and then only came from the United States of America in the western regions. It seems that to draw this conclusion, we need to do more in-depth research.