Catkins first appeared as an image of spring. As a spring scenery, catkins are a symbol of spring. They often appear in Wing Chun poems, such as "The catkins are pink and white, and the sun shines and the wind follows" (Liang Yu Jianwu's "Spring Poems"), "The catkins are drunk when the catkins are drunk, and the plum blossoms suddenly come in" "Clothes" ("Huang Chunri Poems by Liu Shang" by Xiao Yi, Emperor Yuan of Liang Dynasty), catkins here are the same spring scenery as peach blossoms and plum blossoms. In the Yuefu "Folding Willows" from the Six Dynasties to the early Tang Dynasty, catkins, as an important part of willows, have received widespread attention. For example, Zhang Zheng saw "Broken Willows": "The willows are half hanging in the sky, curling up in the middle of spring. The branches are sparse, Dong Ze's arrows, and the leaves are broken by Chu Chen's bows. The color reflects the long river water, and the flowers fly high in the tree wind. Mo Yan limits the palace, but does not close the Changyang Palace. "This poem provides a comprehensive description of the branches, leaves, colors, flowers and overall posture of the willow. It does not highlight the catkins, but directly describes the catkins without using any rhetorical techniques. Mr. Jiang's "Breaking Willows": "Thousands of willows are knotted even if there is no sound in thousands of miles. I don't realize that I am advocating garden flowers, but they are as far away as the snow in the sky. The heart of spring is so vast, and the spring trees are climbing and folding. *** I rely on love, but I have no choice but to say goodbye every year. "Here, the catkins are in a more conspicuous position like the willow branches, and a metaphorical rhetorical device is also used to describe the catkins as white snow.
In the mid-Tang Dynasty, poems dedicated to catkins appeared. Bai Juyi and Liu Yuxi made great contributions to the development of willow themes. They not only pioneered the creation of the Yuefu poem "Willow Branches", but also wrote poems specifically about catkins. Liu Yuxi has four poems about catkins, namely "Three Poems on Liuhua" and "Catkins". Bai Juyi has one poem "Catkins", which comprehensively depicts the color, posture and charm of catkins. After Liu Bai, there were more and more works that sang about willow catkins, such as "Yang Hua Luo" by Yang Juyuan (also known as Zhang Qiao), "Yong Liu Hua" by Xue Neng, and "Yang Hua" by Zhang Hu, Wu Rong and Qi Ji. , Yang Ning, Yong Yuzhi, Li Zhong, Luo Ye and Xue Tao each have a "catkin", as well as Sun Li's "catkin chant". By the Song Dynasty, the theme of poplar and catkins had made great progress. There are about 22 poems about willow catkins in the Tang Dynasty, accounting for 5.6% of the nearly 400 poems about willows in the Tang Dynasty. There are about 54 poems about willow catkins in the Song Dynasty, accounting for nearly 250 poems about willows in the Song Dynasty. Twenty-one-six percent, both in relative and absolute terms, there are far more catkin poems in the Song Dynasty than in the Tang Dynasty. Moreover, the poems about catkins in the Song Dynasty are also more profound than those in the Tang Dynasty. This is mainly reflected in the fact that the imitation of poplar catkins no longer stops at the relatively shallow level of identifying the charm, but develops to a deeper level, exploring the poplar catkins. The personal significance of the catkins is to pay attention to the catkins with the concept of virtue and derogate the catkins as "the flower of romance" and "the flower of madness". In the Song Dynasty, there also appeared special poems praising poplars and catkins, many of which are classics, such as Su Shi's "Water Dragon Yin? Second Rhyme Chapter Zhifu Yanghua Ci", which not only captured the biological nature of poplars as "like flowers but not flowers" It also vividly depicts the tragic charm of Yang Hua as she misses her wife. After the Song Dynasty, through the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were about 80 poems about catkins, which is quite a lot. There are many works in Chinese classical literature that sing about willows and catkins, forming an indispensable part of the literature about willows. Some excellent works about willows and catkins have become classics in Chinese literature.
Looking at the catkins chanting works of the past dynasties, people’s aesthetic attention to catkins mainly focuses on two aspects: first, catkins as spring scenery, a symbol of spring, and a sign of late spring; second, catkins as flowers, The literati's aesthetic grasp of its color, shape, posture, and charm. People's aesthetic understanding of catkins has gone through a process from "similarity in form" to "similarity in spirit".