Li Bai’s Jiangyou

The first time I came to Jiangyou was twenty years ago. At that time, I followed Brother Jingxuan, the chief poet, to pay homage to the Immortal Poetry. As an ignorant person, I realized that Jiangyou was the hometown of Taibai, and I immediately developed respect for this city. I quietly observed Taibai Hall and Fenzhu Tower, read the calligrapher's ink, and took a photo with Jingxuan beside the inkstone washing pool to remember him. Later, when I looked through the photo album, Jiang You's impressions were mostly blurry. He only remembered an unusual name "mountain" and the inkstone washing pond that left a mark on the photographic paper. Recently, I revisited my old place, and some memories were awakened again. However, brother Jingxuan has also traveled westward, and it is quite sad to see the old place again. The water in the pond is still the same, things have changed. Li Bai's tomb contains only one name, while his brother Jingxuan, the poet, has also become a bowl of ashes. But then I thought again, although life is like a pool of water washing an inkstone, it will eventually be washed away without a trace, but the ink on the paper remains. As long as the great poems are there, the poet will not die.

Jiangyou is a small city. Compared with other cities, there is no big difference. Its fame is because of Li Bai. It is not uncommon for a city or a building to become famous throughout the ages and become a household name due to the poems and articles of famous writers. For example, Fan Zhongyan's "Yueyang Tower", Wang Bo's "Preface to Tengwang Pavilion", and Cui Hao's poems about Yellow Crane Tower are all like this. Li Bai, like Qu Yuan, is listed as a world cultural celebrity. His hometown, Jiangyou, is undoubtedly the nurturing place of genius and the source of brilliance. No wonder Li Zhi of the Ming Dynasty commented on Li Bai and said that he was "prosperous where he was born, prosperous where he died, prosperous where he was exiled, and prosperous where he was imprisoned."

Writing this reminds me of the story of six foreign cities competing for the poet Homer. The ancient epic is the cohesion of a national spirit and the source of philosophy, religion and moral ethics. Six cities competing for Homer are also competing for the birthplace of a national spirit. Homer is a symbol of the sacred soul. Great poets are national treasures, just like Hugo is to France, Shakespeare is to England, Pushkin is to Russia, and Li Bai is to China. Their importance cannot be overstated. Just imagine, there are many emperors and generals, but who can be known to the world? Li Bai's "Moonlight in front of the Bed" can be recited by children who are learning to speak.

Although there are many researches on Li Bai's birthplace, there are different opinions and no consensus. However, there seems to be no doubt that Li Bai's exiled residence in his previous life was recorded in historical biographies as "Tiaozhi", "Zuiye" and "Western Region". According to the preface to the historical biography, Li Bai once "wrote a letter to the Tibetan people" and "curated a letter to the Tibetan people." "Cao He Fan Shu", it is a fact that he knew Turkic characters, and Li Bai's sons were named "Ming Yue Nu" and "Po Li", which seem to have the meaning of the Western Regions; Wei Hao's "Preface to the Collection of Li Hanlin Thatched Cottage" stated that Li Bai's His appearance was "bright-eyed and trembling like a hungry tiger". From this, some people suspected that Li Bai had Hu ancestry. Naturally, this is just a guess, but he was influenced by the culture of the Western Regions and received a dual education of Chinese and Western languages ??at an early age. Hu Feng was good at talking, was fond of swordsmanship, learned Taoism, read poetry and books, and indulged in drinking and singing. This is a reflection of his survival. Therefore, Li Bai was born in Whether Sui Ye entered Sichuan at the age of five or was born in Sichuan, it would be good for him to be nurtured by two regional cultures.

From this, I thought that although human character, temperament and poetic style are generated by many factors, the influence of regional culture is probably one of the important factors. Perhaps, his wildness, heroism, and alcoholism should be the legacy of the Western Regions, while his unique and elegant immortal style, his classics, swordsmanship, and elegant poetic thoughts should be given by Shu.

In Jiangyou, you will feel that the mountains, rivers, scenery, folk customs and customs here seem to be soaked in the soul of Li Bai's poetry. Longxiyuan in Qinglian Township is known as the birthplace of Li Bai. Pingba, located on the bank of Panjiang River, was once covered with dense Parmao. It is said that the poet once herded sheep here when he was a child. As for the Fenzhu Building where Li Bai's sister lived, because of the full moon, makeup and powder were poured down from the building every day after dressing up. Over time, the green bamboos downstairs were covered with a layer of powder, so the building was called Fenzhu Building. Not far from his former residence, there is Li Bai's tomb of clothes. Next to the tomb is a strange-looking boulder, which is said to be a meteorite from the sky. It seems that in the legend, Li Bai was from the lower realm of Taibai Venus, with a meteorite as his body, and only his clothes are left in the tomb. It's an interesting idea.

There are many folk legends about Li Bai in Jiangyou, from his mother eating red carp and becoming white, to the old woman grinding needles with an iron pestle, to Shizhen Shiniu, washing pens and inkstones in the well, bravely fighting the white dragon, Kuangshan sword practice and so on are all consistent with the poet's name of "relegated immortal", and are also full of the respect and love of Li Bai by the people in his hometown. Analyzing the origins of some legends, Mr. Xu Hongquan once pointed out: After the founding of the Tang Dynasty, Taoism was revered as the state religion and achieved the status of the first of the three religions. It can be seen that Li Bai's obsession with Taoism was also caused by the consciousness of the prosperous Tang Dynasty. The legend of Li Bai's birth also uses the legend of Lao Tzu's birth: Lao Tzu's mother "was pregnant by a meteor", while Li Bai's mother "was frightened by Jiang Jiang's eve, Chang Geng fell into a dream"; Lao Tzu received the "spirit of heaven", and Li Bai received "The Essence of Taibai"; Laozi refers to the plum tree as his surname, and Li Bai was born as "the complex refers to the plum tree". This shows that Li Bai was transformed into a saint in the legend.

Kuangshan is the place where Li Bai studied and learned swordsmanship. The young Li Bai lived here for ten years. Kuangshan is named after its shape like the word Kuang. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Daming Temple and Kuangshan Academy were built. According to records, "The original buildings of Daming Temple and Kuangshan Academy include more than 100 rooms, eight patios, and lofty towers and pavilions. They are majestic and majestic, all hidden among the towering ancient trees. There are clay sculptures and wood carvings of Taibai in the temple. Their postures elegant". Today, the old traces of Kuangshan are no longer there, but the beautiful mountains and spiritual springs remain. When looking at mountains and caves in Jiangyou, you will be fascinated by the green mountains shrouded in clouds and mist in the distance, and you will also be fascinated by the shallow blue clear pool nearby.

Just as the poet wrote in "Bie Kuang Mountain" when he was young, the dawn peaks are picturesque, the shadows of vines are swaying in the wind, dogs are barking on the wild trails, and the ancient trees and apes are crying. Li Bai, the immortal poet, should be "only in this mountain, nowhere to be found in the depths of the clouds".

In Kuangshan, Li Bai once became a disciple of the Taoist Dong Yanzi and saw the "Penglai Ten Zhang Flower"; he also studied and practiced swordsmanship with the hermit Zhao Rui. Ziyun Mountain is one of the birthplaces of Taoism, and both Dong Yanzi and Zhao Rui are famous Taoist priests. At that time, Li Bai's study of Taoism was closely related to the Tang Dynasty's high regard for Taoism and the poet's romantic temperament. His reading of Confucian poetry was also dominated by the concept of actively joining the world and eager to make contributions. In the end, I'm afraid Li Bai just took a "shortcut to the south" that was promoted by those in power.

Li Bai left Shu when he was more than 20 years old and went on a long journey to fight with his sword. But after all, Li Bai grew up in the countryside of Shu. The intelligence of the Shu people, the green mountains and clear waters of Shu, and the sky ladder and plank roads would nourish his soul and give his poems fantastic imagination and transcendent desire. There are many strange talents and arrogant people in Bashu, and Jinguan City is a place where gold is sold, wine is consumed and sensual pleasures are emphasized. This place where "you are forty-eight thousand years old and not in the vicinity of Qin Sai" gave him ample opportunities. A space to express one's individuality. A family has no genealogy, no family registration, and even the real name cannot be confirmed. People with the compound surname Tianzhi are later referred to as people who read strange books, observe hundreds of schools of thought, learn from knights, miscellaneous Confucianism, Taoism, Zongheng, etc. A person who is full of thoughts and specializes in the use of heroic spirit will eventually become a madman who "drinks and sings in vain, flying high and domineering to be the hero", and a poetry immortal who "writes when the wind and rain tremble, and the poem becomes weeping ghosts and gods".

Maybe it has something to do with the poet's unrestrained and wild character, maybe it has something to do with the spiritual cultivation of foreign cultures and the influence of Ren Xia, Lao Zhuang, Wei and Jin metaphysics, maybe it has something to do with the prosperous Tang era that embraced all things ancient and modern. A poet who "brothers Confucius in song", he lived a free and natural life, and his poems were uninhibited. He rarely wrote verses that were bound by meter, but he was good at music and music. When the ancients discussed poetry, they mostly talked about comparison, and did not advocate speaking things in poetry. But one of the characteristics of Li Bai's poems is words. Nowadays, the new poems of contemporary poets, after being tired of the manipulation of lyricism, symbolism, and imagery, have also returned to clarity, narration, and the capture of details. This reminds me of Li Bai's "The beauty is rolling up the beaded curtain, sitting deep in the eyebrows, but seeing wet tears, I don't know who I hate." It seems that the poet more than 1,300 years ago was in the simplicity, transparency and detail of the narrative. has provided a model for today's poets' exploration. Of course, Li Bai's poems are more of positive romantic works that present bold, free and easy, enterprising and elegant. As for some of his wonderful works, as Wang Guowei said: "Taibaicun is won by its weather. 'The west wind is shining, the mausoleum of the Han Dynasty', with only eight characters, has closed the door to the ancients."

When talking about Li Bai, we cannot leave out poetry, women and wine. This elegant and aloof poet has more than a thousand poems, of which more than 170 are about drinking, and more than 130 are about women. Therefore, those who slander Li Bai say that "a white person sees dirty things, and nine out of ten poems talk about women." and wine”.

As far as wine is concerned, everyone knows that Sichuan has a lot of fine wines. Five of the top ten famous wines in China are produced in Sichuan, known as the "Five Golden Flowers", and they are all produced on the edge of the Sichuan Basin. I think Li Bai's alcoholism must be related to the abundance of fine wines in Sichuan, and Jiangyou and Mianyang are also one of the famous wine producing areas. In fact, the creation of wine is quite similar to the creation of poetry, that is, both are the purification of the essence. Of course, the birth of wine does not seem wonderful. It is because the juice flowing out after the fruit rots drunken the apes and became the earliest fruit wine. When the rice went rancid, the white wine was produced, and rice wine was born. As Akhmatova said As the saying goes, "Poetry comes from garbage", it seems to be dirty, but it is a new qualitative generation that is completely reborn. Someone once compared prose to rice and poetry to wine. Rice is a food to satisfy hunger, while the function of wine is intoxication, and intoxication is precisely the highest state of aesthetics. The wine in the Tang Dynasty should be rice wine, because liquor was only produced in the Yuan Dynasty, so rice wine, which is between rice and wine, is called prose. The writing state of poetry is also quite similar to that of a drunkard. As Goethe said: "Only when entering the unconscious can a genius become a genius." The unconscious is a "translucent spiritual night that hides all the soul." "The source of power", in which the power of intellectual imagination, desire, love and emotion all participate in this fundamental activity, allowing the poet to capture more things than philosophical dreams, which is the freedom of a creative spirit. As for the women involved in the poem, in my opinion, it was not Li Bai who really saw the dirty work, but the slanderer. I would like to ask, how can I have you without a woman? Moreover, poetry is the most emotionally intense literary form. It is incomprehensible if it does not express love, family affection, and friendship. The quality of the work's style lies in the use of language. Comparing the poems made of blood and fire with the embroidered words, one can see the difference between solemnity and frivolity. Liu Xizai pointed out in "Introduction to Art": "Taibai's poems talk about good things, immortals, wine, and women. He especially borrows Yuefu's body and ears. Readers may recognize him as his real body. Isn't it just a superficial appearance?" I think this is a good way to slander Li Bai. the best answer.

Of course, drunkenness and prostitution were caused by the prosperity and extravagance of the Tang Dynasty. At that time, "whether it was the imperial minister or the local shepherd, it was the sons of literati who watched prostitutes dance and play with prostitutes. The trend of traveling is prevalent." The Ming Dynasty's "Green Ni Lotus" says: "Prostitutes are skilled. They only play silk, bamboo, dance, chess, cuju, and hooks." From this point of view, prostitutes in the Tang Dynasty are the general name for singing and dancing artists. According to "Tang Huiyao", Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty once issued an edict: Officials of fifth rank and above can keep bamboos in their homes to raise prostitutes. Prostitutes and entertainers were called palace prostitutes in the imperial court, camp prostitutes in the palace, official prostitutes in local government offices, and domestic prostitutes if they were kept privately.

They belong to Leji and are managed by the Jiaofang Division. It is natural that Li Bai was unavoidable in the social atmosphere of the prosperous Tang Dynasty. It is natural for poets to write works with this theme. But what matters is not what the poet writes, but how he writes.

Li Bai grew up in Shu. Later, he traveled far across the country, passing through Dongting in the south, Wuyue in the east, and settled in Anlu; then he went north to Taiyuan, to Qilu in the east, and moved to Rencheng. The poet always missed him. In my hometown, I kept writing poems and writings with Zhao Rui, my teacher and friend in Kuangshan. Mr. An Qi once pointed out that the poem "The Road to Shu is Difficult" was written in the 18th to 19th years of Kaiyuan when Li Bai first asked to be appointed as Chang'an and was about to leave. He also believed that Li Bai "had difficulties step by step for nearly a year. "I hit walls everywhere, suffered from hardships, and suffered from frustration." "I used the hardships of the Shu road to write about the ups and downs of the world and express the resentment in my heart." But some people believe that in the depth of this emotion, what beats is Li Bai's longing for Shu. The magnificent and wonderful Shu myths that are striking in his poems use metaphors to express Li Bai's potential psychology of his bumpy career and his frustrated return. His homesickness was even more tear-jerking in his later work "Seeing Rhododendrons in Xuancheng": "The country of Shu has become a Ziguan bird, and azaleas are still seen in Xuancheng. They cry and break their ileum, and they recall three springs and three months." bar".

When Li Bai was in bed, he was recommended by the Taoist priests Wu Jun and Princess Yuzhen, and was ordered to enter the capital by Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty. Three years later, because of his talent and arrogance, he was regarded by the emperor as "not a temple utensil" and "gifted" "Golden Release". In fact, in essence, the poet is not a temple tool, but the discerning eye of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty. Let Li Bai be such a "royal servant" and write a few poems praising the imperial concubine, just for entertainment and fun. How is it different from those "palace prostitutes"? Perhaps, Li Bai's return from official career just made him a poet. The so-called "poems are poor and then come later" "Worker", "The country is unfortunate and the poet is lucky". If there were no bumpy official career, An could have written great poems such as "The Road to Shu is Difficult"?

Writing this, I thought of Li Bai's "Qinglian layman" again origin. Most people think that the poet named himself Qinglian layman because of the name of his hometown, Qinglian. In fact, Qinglian Township was originally called Qinglian Township. The "Zongshu" states that Qinglian Township was named after the Lianquan in ancient Changming. The green lotus flower comes out of Xizhu, and is called the Ubala flower in Sanskrit. It is pure, fragrant and unstained by dust. Taibai's self-titled name is suspected to have this meaning. Li Bai studied Buddhism and Zen in his middle age, which was probably his spiritual sustenance after his career failed. The change of Qinglian Township to Qinglian Township probably occurred after the Ming and Qing Dynasties, probably because the hometown commemorated the poet.

It has been more than 1,300 years since Li Bai’s death. Today, not only can people still feel the inexhaustible artistic charm, the spirit of the prosperous Tang Dynasty and the poet’s pursuit of humanity in his poems, but also in Li Bai’s hometown, people You can also see the beautiful mountains and rivers that nurtured this talented poet and its unique regional culture, and you can also appreciate the context of some poems that still exist today. In Jiangyou, people look up to the universe and commemorate the soul of poetry. The mountains on the moon are named after him, and the "Taibai" tourist train on the earth is named after him; while the Li Bai Memorial Hall, Taibai Stele Forest, Taibai Park, Da Kuang Pavilion, Taibai Building, etc., have also been completed or are under planning. In the small town of Jiangyou, there are Li Bai's relics everywhere, Li Bai's poems and legends everywhere. It seems that Jiangyou should be called Li Bai's Jiangyou.

When I paid a visit to Li Bai in Jiangyou, I wrote a poem in ancient style called "Li Bai's Clothing and Crown Tomb", which I have copied as follows. This is the conclusion of this article -

Poems hidden in proud wine contain immortals. It is difficult to know the road to Shu in the countryside of Shu.

The layman has already gone to Qinglian, and there are only old clothes in the tomb.