The Qingming Festival is approaching, everything is old and new, and the earth is full of vitality. It is a good time for spring outings.
Our country has a long tradition of outing. The ancients were much more sensitive to seasonal changes than we are. After the cold winter, the oncoming warmth and brightness always made them happy and excited.
When Bai Juyi was 65 years old, he still thought about spring outings and wrote a poem praising the joy of spring outings:
When you are seventy, you only have five springs.
If you don’t play in spring, you may be a fool.
Taking advantage of the beautiful spring weather, let’s talk about the spring outings of the ancients.
Spring outings in the pre-Qin period were famous for their romance. Spring was a season of relaxation for people at that time.
Many poems about love recorded in the "Book of Songs" all happened during spring outings. For example, when you go out of its east gate, there are women like clouds. Although it is like a cloud, I want to save it. It is said that the people of Zheng State love spring outings. When they go out of the east gate of the city, they can see beautiful women outing like flowers. It is a good time for men to fall in love.
Especially by the Qin (zhēn) and Wei (wěi) waters of Zheng State, young men and women sought out their loved ones in the name of traveling in the mountains and rivers. Some were wearing orchids, and some were holding peonies in their hands. When a young man fell in love with a girl, he would give her a sprig of peony as a token of love. This is what the Book of Songs Zheng Feng Qinwei said: Qin and Wei are in harmony with each other. They joked with each other and gave him a spoon of medicine.
Even Confucius highly praised spring outings. In the "Advanced Chapter of the Analects of Confucius", it is said: If the spring clothes are ready, there will be five or six people who are crowned, and six or seven boys. When people bathe in Yi, the wind dances with the urns, and they return home singing. , What a joyful and harmonious scene of spring outing.
At that time, the country also specially set up a spring outing festival, Shangsi Festival, which was held on Si day in early March, which can be called the oldest Valentine's Day in China. p>In the Wei and Jin Dynasties, people respected nature and had the custom of indulging in mountains and rivers. Spring outings were more popular among literati.
However, unlike the romance of spring outings and falling in love among the pre-Qin people, people in the Wei and Jin Dynasties valued spiritual mystery. Traveling. They drank tea, drank wine, and wrote poems in the mountains and rivers, gaining insights into the mysteries of nature and cultivating their sentiments.
The most well-known scene among contemporary people is probably the scene where Wang Xizhi wrote the "Preface to the Lanting Collection". Spring outing. In the ninth year of Yonghe's reign, at the beginning of late spring in Guichou, I wrote more than 300 words about the festivities in Shanyin, Kuaiji, allowing future generations to have a glimpse of the beauty of the landscape and the joy of the feast. /p>
The so-called evil-doing thing refers to the tradition of offering sacrifices during the Shangsi Festival. People hold sacrifices by the water to wash away dirt and pray for blessings.
As the originator of the landscape poetry school. Xie Lingyun was also very good at traveling. Because he often traveled to famous mountains and rivers, he invented the Xie Gong clog, an outdoor shoe specially used for hiking. This shoe was still a must-have for travel in the Tang Dynasty. Li Bai wrote in " It is said in "Dream Wandering Tianmu Yin Liu Farewell": Wear Xie Gong's sandals and climb the Qingyun Ladder.
In the Tang Dynasty, spring outing became more popular, and Shangsi Festival was designated as a legal holiday.
According to "Chronicles of Tang Poems", the emperor often took his concubines and bureaucrats on spring outings to the Liyuan Garden and to the Wei River for sightseeing and worship. Zhang Xuan, a famous lady painter of the Tang Dynasty, depicted his favorite concubine Yang in "The Picture of Lady Guo Guo's Outing in Spring". The scene of the grand outing of Mrs. Guo, the third sister of Yuhuan.
The imperial examination results in the Tang Dynasty happened to be the day before the Shangsi Festival. The emperor would invite new scholars to attend the famous Qujiang Banquet, where the emperor, princes and ministers would attend. , Xinke Jinshi enjoys the spring scenery by the Qujiang River, tastes delicious food, and recites poems from time to time. It is so comfortable.
With the leadership of the upper class and institutional guarantees, spring outings have become commoner, and they pay more attention to material enjoyment. , the trend of eating and drinking was popular.
Wealthy families would bring cooks with them, while ordinary families would bring a suitcase, which was equivalent to today's picnic basket. A picture of a banquet in the Weishi family tomb in the Tang Dynasty. In the mural, the rectangular low table in the painting is filled with various kinds of food, which is exactly the scene of the spring outing and picnic of the wealthy people in the middle Tang Dynasty.
Du Fu's "Beauty's Journey" describes the grand occasion of spring outing: The weather was new on March 3, and there were many beauties by the waterfront in Chang'an. Chen Zi'ang's "A Banquet at the Pavilion of Wang Ming's Mansion on March 3rd" also contains: In the late spring, the moon is full, and the sun is shining. A group of public servants were drinking together at the shore of Luo. Yiyi is a charioteer and a charming person. It can be seen that spring outing was an entertainment activity with high public participation at that time.
In the Song Dynasty, people began to choose the Qingming Festival more practically for spring outings, worshiping their ancestors and taking an outing.
The Shangsi Festival and the Qingming Festival are close to each other. As a result, the Shangsi Festival seemed a bit redundant, so it gradually declined in the Song Dynasty.
"Tokyo Menghualu" records that during the Qingming Festival every year in the Northern Song Dynasty, Kaifeng citizens would go out of the city to enjoy the spring. The surrounding fields were like a city, and they would often arrange cups and plates under the fragrant trees or among the gardens to persuade each other. Remuneration. The songs and dancing girls of the capital fill the gardens and pavilions, returning home at dusk.
Looking at Zhang Zeduan's "Along the River During the Qingming Festival", it intuitively demonstrates the richness and grandeur of people's spring outing activities at that time.
After the Song Dynasty, the content of spring outings of the ancients became diversified and became more simple, and sports and fitness exercises became popular. In Lu You's poem "Feelings of Late Spring", there is a young man riding into Xianyang, with his body as light as a falcon and as mad as a butterfly; tens of thousands of people are watching Cuju on the sidelines, and the spring is busy under the swing flag.
It can be seen that Cuju and swing were common sports at that time.
By the Ming and Qing dynasties, spring outings had become very rich in recreational activities. Flower viewing, willow shooting, swinging, and kite flying were like a large-scale garden party.
In the Ming Dynasty, Qingming Festival was even directly called the Swing Festival, which shows the prosperity of the swing custom. The palace servants and concubines invited each other to play and enjoy the wonderful spring scenery. The clothes are fluttering and the apricot flowers are flying. It is really a rare beauty.
People in the Qing Dynasty liked to fly kites and write down various disasters and diseases they were afraid of on the kites. After the kites took off, they cut the strings, so that they could let go of bad luck and eliminate disasters.
The beautiful scenery along the Surabaya River is breathtaking.
Easy to recognize the east wind, colorful colors are always spring.
"Spring Day" by Zhu Xi of the Song Dynasty
In the beautiful spring scene, there are many beautiful poems and chapters left by the ancients. Reading it makes people feel like the wonderful spring is before their eyes. This is not only a cultural inheritance, but also the emotional resonance of ancient and modern people when facing the beautiful spring.
Spring outing, because of this emotion passed down from generation to generation, has become an everlasting and unique historical memory of the Chinese nation.
Right now, the willow branches are flowing and the spring flowers are blooming, but there is not much spring left. Are you ready for an outing?