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Under the book storage window,

People and flower hearts are fragrant

-Talking about traditional Chinese literati arranging flowers

Flower arrangement is a good way to eliminate worries. Being with natural things will be moved by the energy of life. In modern city life, there are few opportunities to get in touch with mountains, rivers and nature, but even if you insert a bottle of flowers that represent emotional images and a plate of landscape flowers that describe natural scenery indoors, you can immediately forget the current troubles and get the relaxed joy of returning to nature in an instant. Flowers are powerful. They are the language of nature, and they contain the meaning of life in the universe. Read a flower, you can read a world. Science and technology decode knowledge of nature from it, while literature and art decode human stories from it.

Looking at the history of ancient literati arranging flowers in China, it is not difficult to see how the literati in the past dynasties used the "art of life" as the carrier of their expression, telling the reflection between themselves and nature, between themselves and the times, and between themselves and the world.

The Song Dynasty's Nan Gezi by an anonymous writer: "Although the pavilion is not big, there is nothing vulgar about it. There are several bamboos at the bottom of the window. Exhibition of Jiangnan Mountain Scenery, two or three. Yi Ding burns a special fragrance, and the gallbladder bottle is inserted with tender chrysanthemum. However, there is nothing to worry about, and everyone is playing chess. In the lyrics, we can see the elegant taste of people's living conditions in the Song Dynasty. Bamboo under the window and chrysanthemum in a bottle are the shadows of flower arrangement art in life.

Poems and songs of past dynasties are also full of flowers, or they are dedicated to chanting flowers, or they express their metaphors by borrowing flower symbols in lyrics and songs expressing their feelings.

The arrangement of flower arrangement is not only elegant and elegant for women, but also lies in the aesthetic interest of literati and the presentation of the mind of scholars. The figure and posture of flowers is also a state of moral cultivation. Most of the time, the literati's chanting of flowers is not a deliberate aesthetic, but a heartfelt chant.

Up to now, people generally have a misunderstanding that flower arrangement is just a "technology" to advocate the interest of life, which has nothing to do with art, and is at most an "artistic ability", but a fun activity for women (usually women) in their leisure life. Or a "professional skill" that will only be used at weddings, conferences and ceremonies. It has long since ceased to be compared with Tao. It is even impossible to distinguish the similarities and differences between "Chinese traditional flower pattern", "Japanese flower pattern" and "Western flower arrangement".

Mr. Huang Yongchuan, the founder of Taiwan Province Chinese Flower Culture and Education Foundation, once wrote in the book "The History of Chinese Flower Arrangement": "Flower arrangement is an art of life, and it rises and falls with the ups and downs of political and economic development. Therefore, although it was conceived in the Six Dynasties, Sui and Tang Dynasties and prospered in the Song and Ming Dynasties, it never recovered after the Qing Dynasty. Until modern times, although the atmosphere was prosperous, what we saw today was all Japanese schools. How can it not be embarrassing! (History of Chinese Flower Arrangement)

People don't know that flower arrangement, as a life style of literati, has been closely linked with literati since the Six Dynasties. There were Geng Xin in the Southern and Northern Dynasties and Seven Sages in the Bamboo Forest in Wei and Jin Dynasties. To the Tang Dynasty, Wang Wei, Lu Hong and Lu Yu were all highly accomplished in arranging flowers, appreciating flowers and chanting flowers. In the Tang Dynasty, there was an atmosphere of loving flowers throughout the whole era. Poems were full of the beauty of flowers and trees, and there were even more brilliant works on flowers, such as Li Zan's Flowers and Trees, Jia Dan's Hundred Flowers Spectrum, and Luo Qiu's Flowers and Nine Tin (the representative works of flower arrangement in Sui and Tang Dynasties), which were numerous and could not be fully described.

Ouyang Zhan, a famous person in the middle Tang Dynasty, once wrote the poem "Ode to Spring Dishes", saying, "A beautiful woman is troubled, and she makes land with a fake dish, and she thinks it is precious to embroider it. The jungle is beautiful, and a hundred flowers strive for new things. It shows that at that time, there was a formed philosophical concept and aesthetic characteristics of flower arrangement, and sufficient consideration was given to the form, color, flower device, flower material, line, conception and methods and techniques to maintain flower life. If we can get a glimpse of its grand occasion with a Tang poem, it is probably Juyuan Yang's sentence: "If you stay in the beautiful forest, you will be a flower watcher when you go out.". The fashion of Tang people who love flowers can be seen.

by the time of the five dynasties and ten kingdoms, due to the social division and long-term war, the literati's feelings had changed from a magnificent and free-sighing atmosphere to a euphemistic expression of their feelings and aspirations by borrowing things. The form of flower arrangement that followed the literati also turned to wildflowers and grass, local materials, informal forms, and handy because of the chaotic life style of the people. At that time, people advocated returning to nature, such as Tao Yuanming's "picking chrysanthemums under the east fence and seeing Nanshan leisurely."

Fortunately, at that time, the foundation of the prosperous Tang Dynasty had been laid, and people had a systematic understanding of the situation and character of flowers, as well as the experience and research of flower seeds, flowers and flowers' fate, so the most famous flower works in history were born-The Flower Classic by Shu Han Zhang Yi, which simulated the official rank of human society according to the color, aroma, character and temperament of flowers. This is also a typical symbol of literati's self-metaphor with flowers, replacing words with flowers, and pinning their ideal personality on it. For example, in The Flower Classic, the flowers rated as one with nine lives are: orchids, wintersweet, peonies, flowers, and purple flowers (Daphne odora). They are the most elegant, elegant, rich and powerful flowers. What kind of flower is inserted, what kind of person is, and the evaluation and understanding of flowers in the heart also reflects a person's inner world.

Besides, Li Yu, the empress of the Southern Tang Dynasty at that time, was the founder of the traditional Chinese flower pattern to the artistic peak. He was not only the inventor of the "tube flower" among the "six big flower devices" in later generations, but also the earliest and grandest flower arrangement art exhibition in history.

in the song dynasty, Song Taizu made great efforts to make peace in the city, and the atmosphere of flower arrangement in various places warmed up and improved. "arranging flowers, hanging pictures, burning incense and ordering tea" was regarded as the four arts of life and became an indispensable artistic accomplishment in everyone's life, even servants. At that time, the most famous "Flower Show" was a grand flower viewing banquet held by the Song people on the "Flower Festival" (February 15th of the lunar calendar). In the seventh year of Yuan You (186), Luoyang Prefecture held the Flower Festival, and "ten million flowers were used at a time", which was denounced as "wasting people and money, reaching the extreme". The works of flower arrangement handed down to later generations in the Song Dynasty are even more abundant, including Zhao Xihu's Clear Cave, Lin Hong's Clear Offering of Mountains and Waters, Su Dongpo's Theory of Gewu Xun, and Zhou Mi's Miscellaneous Knowledge of Gui Xin and so on. At that time, the most famous articles, especially Zhou Dunyi's "Love Lotus", Zeng Duanbo's "Ten Friends of Flowers", Huang Yu's "Ten Guests of Flowers" and Zhang Minshu's "Twelve Guests of Flowers", have become the aesthetic criteria for later literati to arrange flowers and enjoy flowers.

Later, in the Yuan Dynasty, when the society was in chaos and the war was not extinguished, the literati class sought peace of mind to protect themselves from foreign oppression, so the style of emphasizing sensibility and expressing the ethereal state of mind became the mainstream of flower arrangement for the literati class. Free and wanton mental image presentation and willful and frank self-expression make flower arrangement once again become another lip of literati, telling their minds that they can't speak clearly.

until the Ming dynasty, when the style of writing was at its peak, the literati's flower arrangement was completely divorced from political ostentation and extravagance, forming a specialized academic type of world art, and a complete system of works on flower patterns came out. The aesthetic style sought after by the whole era was all "literati flowers".

The most noteworthy work is The History of the Bottle by Yuan Hongdao in the Ming Dynasty, which is the most academic and systematic classic in the history of flower arrangement. Later generations scrambled to translate it and regarded it as the norm. It has a far-reaching influence on the spread of flower arrangement art in later generations and overseas. Other classic works on flower patterns compiled by other scholars include Zhang Qiande's Orchard of Flowers, Chen Hongshou's Painting of Bottled Flowers, Wang Shimao's Flower Sparse, Chen Jiru's Yan Qi You Shi, He Xianlang's Flower Case, Gao Lian's Three Stories about Bottled Flowers, Grass Flower Spectrum and Wen Zhenheng's The Position of Qing Zhai. It was an era in which literati aesthetics became the mainstream aesthetics in society, and it was also a golden age in which folks were scrambling to follow suit and pursue the realm of literati flower arrangement.

In the Qing Dynasty, however, the national situation was gradually declining, and academics went to the road of textual research, with the decline of scholars and flowers, and the people paid less attention to the beauty of nature, or their aesthetics became increasingly vulgar. The systematic traditional flower pattern in China declined together with the Great Qing National Games until it slowly disappeared.

of course, the historical relationship between literati and flowers is not only covered by such a superficial overview, but also the intertwined connection between them, which is worth writing in many pages.

Yuan Hongdao in the Ming Dynasty said in his book "The Orchid of Flowers" that flowers were formed by "the subtle qi of heaven and earth". The word "shrewd" contains a sense of personification, just like flowers are animals, with perception, emotion and spirituality. Flowers are indeed the most outward expression of life of all plants. Gather the essence of plants. Bai Juyi once wrote: "There is a quintessence between heaven and earth, and all kinds can get it, but most people, among them, literati get it." The elites of the human world use the flowers condensed by the "essence" of nature as a metaphor, and the gesture in the middle is also worth pondering.

I often think, what should be the practical significance of Chinese traditional flower patterns? After all, this is not a skill related to food and clothing, and it is not an art that people just need in their lives. In the past, its existence, in addition to the high-level need for life aesthetics, had a higher meaning of "enlightenment and helping others". Now, does it still have such a role?

in an article, Mr. Zi Zhongyun casually mentioned: "Pursuing truth, goodness and beauty and hating falsehood, evil and ugliness should be an ordinary human nature, but after too much experience and entering the WTO, the aesthetic nerves may become numb ..." I think the so-called "life aesthetics" is precisely here. The function of beauty, however subtle, is a subtle inner education. Therefore, Mr. Zi also said, "If you have enough perception of beauty, it will be unbearable to sigh and laugh at the ugliness of those who are not surprised and indifferent, such as drowning in the throat."

and this kind of rare "like a fish in the throat", I think, is not only for "beauty", but also the bottom line of "truth" and "goodness".