This is an impromptu work about welcoming the New Year in ancient times. Based on folk customs, it sensitively absorbs the typical materials of ordinary people during the Chinese New Year and grasps the representative details of life: setting off firecrackers, drinking Tu Su wine and changing peaches, which fully shows the happy atmosphere of the Chinese New Year and makes life colorful. It expresses the author's thoughts and feelings about political innovation and is full of cheerful and positive fighting spirit.
"Firecrackers are one year old, and the spring breeze warms Tu Su." Setting off firecrackers on holidays is an ancient custom that continues to this day. In ancient customs, every year on the first day of the first month, the whole family drank Tu Su wine, and then wrapped the dregs in red cloth and hung them on the doorframe to "exorcise evil spirits" and avoid the plague.
The phrase "every family goes to heaven" inherits the previous poem, which means that every family is bathed in the light of the morning sun in early spring. The last sentence describes the forwarding discussion. Hanging peach symbols is also the custom of the ancients. "Always replacing new peaches with old ones" is a sentence pattern of compression and ellipsis. The new peach omits the word "character" and the old peach omits the word "peach", so they are used alternately because of the limitation of words per sentence.
Poetry is a human voice. Many critics have noticed that the artistic conception and reality expressed in this poem also have their own metaphorical symbolic significance. Wang Anshi's poems are full of cheerful and positive spirit, because he was the prime minister at that time and promoted the new law. Wang Anshi was a famous reformer in the Northern Song Dynasty. During his tenure, just as people replaced the old ones with new peach symbols, he abolished the old politics and implemented the New Deal. Wang Anshi is full of confidence in the New Deal, so it is particularly cheerful in his poems.
The main influence of Wang Anshi
From the literary point of view, Wang Anshi's works have made outstanding achievements in poetry, prose and ci. The poetry innovation movement in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty was vigorously promoted by him, which contributed to sweeping away the glitz and splendor that was all the rage in the early Song Dynasty. However, Wang Anshi's literary thought overemphasizes "practicality" and often underestimates the role of art forms.
Many of his poems often show that the elements of argument and reasoning are too heavy, thin and stiff, and lack image and charm. There are also some poems about Buddhism and Buddhism, which are obscure and dry, but they do not lose everyone's demeanor.
In order to realize his political ideal, Wang Anshi closely linked literary creation with political activities, emphasizing that the role of literature first lies in serving the society, emphasizing the practical function and social effect of articles, and advocating the unity of literature and Taoism. On the whole, his prose has carried out his literary ideas, exposed current malpractices, reflected social contradictions, and has a strong political color.
Wang Anshi's essays, aiming at current political or social problems, have distinct views and profound analysis. Long horizontal but not simple, short awkward but not thin. They expounded political opinions and opinions with rigorous structure, thorough reasoning, concise language and strong generality and logic, which played a positive role in promoting the political reform and consolidating the achievements of the poetry innovation movement in the Northern Song Dynasty.