What is a "branch"? Literally, "branch" means "branch", and "head" is an additional suffix in Chinese compound words, which has no practical significance. However, this meaningless "head" is not completely meaningless. When it meets a "branch", the situation is very different.
"Shuo Wen Jie Zi": "Branches, trees do not produce strips." It means that a branch is another branch that grows from the trunk. Here is the "branch" again. Peel, branchlets also. However, compared with the "branch", the "branch" not only has one more word "strip", but also brings a soft, dense and moist feeling, which is easy to sag. He's "Singing Willow" is evidenced by "a tapestry of thousands of strands of green silk hanging down". The image of "branch" mostly belongs to spring and willow, graceful and charming, just like a girl. For example, in the Tang Dynasty Yuan Zhen's Xizhouyuan, he said, "There are willows in this wind and thousands of branches." Wang Anshi's Travel Notes on the Spring Festival Evening: "In February and March, there were green fireworks and snow in front of the willow door."
Compared with "branches", "branches" are slender, but they have no flowers or leaves and are thin and lonely; Even withered and damaged, such as the idiom "dead branches and leaves", wisdom is more like an old man who has experienced vicissitudes. Cao Cao wrote in "Short Songs": "Turn around the tree three times, what branch can you lean on?" The "branches" here create a bleak artistic conception, reflecting the loneliness that no one understands in the poet's heart. It is precisely because "Zhi" is such a helpless image that poets can't help adding modifiers when using "Zhi". For example, in Qu Yuan's Li Sao, there is a sentence "ashamed to fold branches" and the word "Qiong" is written, which dispels the dry meaning of branches and adds noble aesthetic feeling to them, but still retains the image of "slender" and "slim", and the image of "Qiong Zhi" conforms to Qu Yuan's aesthetic pursuit. Another example is Su Shi's "Buji Huangzhou Dinghui Garden Residence": "If you pick up all the cold branches, you won't live, and the lonely sandbar is cold." Su Shi, who was demoted because of Wutai poetry case, survived, but when he first arrived in Huangzhou, he fell into a trough in his life and his friends and relatives were cut off. How lonely and desolate he is! Therefore, the image of "branch" belongs to autumn and winter. Even Xin Qiji's "Xijiang Moon", "The bright moon surprises the magpie, and the breeze knows at midnight", although written on a summer night, it can't help but make people feel a little lonely because of "branches". It is precisely because "zhi" is such a single and thin image that people simply regard it as a quantifier. Even with leaves, flowers and moisture, it still gives people a feeling of "slender", such as "spring rain on pear flowers", "plums in the corner" and "when those red berries come in spring, they wash your southern branches" and so on.
Let's talk about "branches" again. "Zhi" is a complete image. Although the word "tou" is only a suffix, it is meaningful in Chinese use. For example, only "stone" is meaningful, and "stone" is something with a sense of image. If we compare it with "stone" and "stone", we will find that "stone" is big and round (round here means smooth, not angular). The same is true of "branches", so it is a complete image. At the same time, "head" refers to a part of the human body, which is located at the top of the human body, so "branch" also means "bit", especially the top of the branch. So the "branches" are all sticking out and easy to see; It is full of leaves and flowers; Even bees and butterflies flock together, and birds sing here. In this way, the "branch" is inclusive, and at the same time it is as harmonious as the philosophical realm pursued by Confucianism-more without chaos. Song Qi's "Red Apricot Branches in Spring" is a typical example: the branches are full of apricot flowers, bees and butterflies are flying, and birds are singing, which is not noisy, but a vibrant sense of harmony. Therefore, "branch" is inclusive, harmonious and lively. From this perspective, the image of "branches" belongs to spring and summer. For example, the word "spring on a branch" in Shi Yiweng's "Partridge Sky" in the Song Dynasty, only the word "branch" brings people rich association and imagination about spring: spring comes, the east wind blows, and the branches are full of flowers overnight. Using "branches" in autumn will be another kind of emotional appeal, such as Wu Wenying's "Butterfly Loves Flowers" in the Song Dynasty: "The branches of the bright moon are fragrant all over the road. In the past few days, the west wind has been like rain. " The "branches" are full and the "falls" are thin, which is in sharp contrast, showing the ruthlessness of the "west wind". Another example is Zheng Sixiao's "Cold Chrysanthemum" in the Song Dynasty: "It is better to hold incense in the branches and die than to blow in the north wind." The image of "branches" makes us seem to see that even if the chrysanthemum dries up, it still sticks to the branches, which does not make the "branches" become such a lonely image, which shows the firmness of the chrysanthemum.
The language of poetry is suggestive, that is, in addition to its direct meaning, it has been inherited, developed and created by generations of poets in the process of application, which has rich associative significance. "Zhi" and "Zhi" are almost the same in concept, but they have different meanings in the field of artistic image.