Zhang Mujun of Hebei
"after the war-fires of three months, one message from home is worth a ton of gold." This is a poem from the great poet Du Fu's Spring Hope. Letters, full of deep affection and friendship, make relatives who are thousands of miles away from Qian Shan meet like a plane, so they are particularly precious.
Since ancient times, letters have been closely linked with daily life, and people have given it many interesting names, giving it a good taste. "Guests come from afar, leaving me a pair of carp. Call children to cook carp, and there is a book in it. " What a wonderful poem, what a touching situation!
Is there really a "geometer's book" in the fish's belly? Letters of the ancients were often written in white silk, about a foot long, and they were called geometrics, so letters were called geometrics books. The white ruler often forms the shape of a pair of carp, and there is a saying in the ancient Yuefu poem: "The ruler is like a remnant of snow, forming a pair of carp. To know what's on your mind, read the book in your stomach. " Therefore, "double carp" is synonymous with letters. The "cooking carp" in the poem quoted above is not really cooking, but a vivid metaphor.
Many people know the story of Su Wu's herding sheep. He once tied a letter to the feet of a wild goose and brought it back to the motherland. This is what people call "the letter passed by a wild goose". Therefore, letters are often collectively called "fish geese". For example, in ancient poems, "There are no fish geese in the Yangtze River to send lovesickness dreams into Qin".
before the invention of paper, the ancients used bamboo and wood chips as writing materials besides silk and silk, which were called slips, letters and slips, so letters were sometimes called "letters", "letters" or "letters and slips". Like plain silk, the length of bamboo slips is about one foot, so letters are also known as "ruler letters", "ruler letters" and "ruler books".
after the invention of paper, people made a kind of small and exquisite paper, which was specially used for writing poems and letters, and used it as a synonym for letters. Yan Shu has a saying: "If you want to send colorful stationery and ruler, you can know where the mountains are long and the waters are vast!"
who sent the brocade book in the cloud? When the word geese returns, the moon is full of the West Building. Flowers drift and water flows. One kind of acacia, two places of leisure. -Li Qingzhao