Guide to Traveling through the Northern Song Dynasty.

Chapter 1208 Epilogue : When the False is Made True, the True Becomes False
"The geese are coming, the geese are coming!"

Early in the morning, several men came to the door with wild geese.

Xie Shizhang went to check personally and found that there were six geese in total, and only one of them had obvious scars on its feet.

"Not bad, not bad," Xie Shizhang smiled and praised, "Raise them all, and then pick the fattest two as betrothal gifts."

Xie Yiqin immediately paid a high price to buy it and gave each of the men a reward.

Gold, silver, jewelry, silk, and satin were just additions to the betrothal gifts for the royal family. The real core betrothal gifts were the phoenix crown, wedding dress, and a pair of wild geese - the princess's wedding dress, which needed to be purchased by the consort's family and sent to the palace as a betrothal gift.

Back in the house, Xie Shizhang said, "There isn't much money left at home. Is it enough for the wedding banquet? If not, I will swallow my pride and go find some old friends to borrow some."

Wang Yitong said, "Don't worry, father. The wedding banquet in Luoyang will be funded by the royal family, and we only need to send the betrothal gifts. The wedding banquet in my hometown doesn't need to be too grand."

The wedding banquet in Luoyang was held at the princess' home, and all procedures were handled by the Zongzheng Temple. In particular, who should be invited to the wedding banquet required the emperor's approval.

The prince consort can also hold a party in his hometown, pay for it himself, and invite the guests himself, and the time can be postponed. Of course, the prince consort and the princess will definitely not appear, it is purely for the people in the hometown to have fun by themselves.

Xie Shizhang had only two brothers, but he had several cousins ​​and clan brothers. His brother, who was a Jinshi official, died of illness while serving as the governor of Yingzhou, and several of his children and grandchildren stayed in Yingzhou (Kyushu Island, Japan) to settle down.

Xie Yiqin has many brothers and sisters in his generation!
After all, there is a love-star dad.

However, the only one who passed the imperial examination and became an official was Xie Yiqin.

Among Xie Yiqin's brothers, one was a government official in Shandong, one was a county official in Hebei, and one was a shipowner in Duliu Town. Several other brothers were either government officials or village school teachers.

The rest of the brothers make a living by farming.

I no longer have much contact with my cousins ​​who moved to Yingzhou.

The shops in the town and the land in the countryside were handed over to the fifth brother, who was the only son of the famous prostitute in Baoding.

According to common sense, the family business should be managed by Xie Yiqin's younger brothers. However, the capable younger brothers went to Shandong to work as government officials, and the rest were incapable of managing the household.

Xie Yan has even more cousins ​​in his generation.

Wang Yitong only gave birth to three sons and one daughter, ranking the eldest, second, sixth and thirteenth in the family.

With so many descendants, all of whom are studying, the family's small business can no longer support them. Xie Yiqin and his brothers who can make money are the only ones supporting them. If the family continues to grow, they will split up sooner or later, and some of Xie's descendants will soon become self-employed farmers.

(Also, don’t question why the eldest and second brothers are still unmarried. If you look up more information about the Jinshi in the Song Dynasty, you will find that there are many who are still unmarried at the age of 25 or 26. They just want to get fame before talking about marriage.)
It would be meaningless if too many members of the Xie family came to the wedding in Luoyang, so the main purpose was to stay in their hometown and hold a banquet to celebrate.

……

Xie Yan was reading his grandfather's music score. He couldn't understand the musical terms, but the score contained a lot of text descriptions.

"Grandfather, is your Guangling San real or fake?" Xie Yan expressed serious doubt.

Xie Shizhang answered ambiguously: "If I think it is true, then it is true."

Xie Yan understood: "When the false is made to be true, the true becomes false; when the non-existent is made to be present, the existing becomes non-existent."

Xie Shizhang laughed and said, "Your two sentences are interesting!"

Old liar!
"Did you write all the piano scores for Guangling San yourself?" Xie Yan asked again.

Xie Shizhang said: "I don't have such a great ability. When I was 42 years old, I was invited by a friend to travel around Liaoning. At a used book stall in Liaoyang, I found a guqin score that had been soaked in water. The handwriting was blurred and there were missing pages, but based on the score that could still be seen clearly, it can be basically determined that it was "Nie Zheng Assassinating the King of Han" from the Sui and Tang Dynasties."

Xie Yan only knew that "Guangling San" was awesome, and asked curiously, "Since it's "Nie Zheng Assassinates the King of Han", what does it have to do with "Guangling San"?"

Xie Shizhang's smile was a bit sarcastic: "The so-called music scholars of the Ming Dynasty, based on the description of the "Qin Book" in the pre-Song Dynasty, and using Cai Yong's "Qin Cao", a suspected fake book, to verify, they insisted that "Nie Zheng Assassinated the King of Han" was "Guangling San". There are dozens of related papers. They are so sure, so I will follow their story."

"Can't these two piano pieces really be one?" Xie Yan asked.

Xie Shizhang said: "The Qin table only started to appear in the Tang Dynasty and became popular in the Song Dynasty. How could Ji Kang, who sat cross-legged on the Qin at that time, play the sound of "violent and violent, spears and swords crisscrossing" described in the "Qin Book" of the pre-Song Dynasty? And Ying Qu of the Cao Wei period wrote clearly in a letter to a friend that what he heard was Guangling Qingsan. The sound of Qingsan is rich, broad, quiet and distant. How could it be a song of assassination?"

Xie Yan smiled and said, "So, those music scholars of the Royal Society were wrong?"

"When I was young, I wrote a paper on rhythm to refute the claim that the two pieces of music were confused," Xie Shizhang said with even more sarcasm in his tone. "That paper was ignored, and they didn't even send me a rejection letter. Come to think of it, if my paper could be published, wouldn't all their dozens of papers become a joke?"

Xie Yan felt the same way.

Xie Shizhang was full of evil thoughts: "I won't refute it now, and I will compile Guangling San according to their preferences. They will definitely treat it as a treasure. Hehe, before I die, I will print hundreds of copies of the paper and send them to those low-level music scholars who want to make a name for themselves!"

Xie Yan was quite speechless. The old man was just sulking here.

I have submitted my visiting card today, and in two days I will be able to visit the music master Yang Linzhi, the one who successfully calculated the twelve-tone equal temperament and composed the "Ming Taizong's Breaking Formation Music".

Xie Yan asked: "When Grandfather was young, he must have been quite famous in Luoyang, right?"

Xie Shizhang said proudly, "I made friends with the then Prince Tao, who was the sixth brother of Emperor Dingtai. It was my first time to go to Beijing for the imperial examination. Although I unfortunately failed, I impressed the audience with my zither skills. A scholar introduced me to Prince Tao, and I stayed in his mansion for three months. When I left Beijing, I was awarded 2,000 strings of precious coins."

"Awesome!" Xie Yan praised.

Xie Shizhang said: "Because I have the title of Juren, Tao Wang was not in a position to hire me privately, so he recommended me to the Hanlin Academy as a zither player. At that time, I was still thinking about taking the Jinshi exam, so I politely declined. There was also another reason. The bastard who advocated that "Nie Zheng Assassinated the King of Han" and "Guangling San" have the same name but different tunes was the chief zither player of the Hanlin Academy at that time. I didn't want to associate with him. Now I think it was stupid. I should have gone to the Hanlin Academy to fight him!"

"What happened next?" Xie Yan asked.

Xie Shizhang sighed, "When I went to Beijing for the second time to take the imperial examination, Prince Tao had already passed away. I regarded Prince Tao as my soulmate, so why did I continue to play the zither in Luoyang when he was dead? I only played one piece in front of Prince Tao's mausoleum, and then returned home sadly."

This old man is still a man of temperament. Two days later, Xie Yan took his grandfather to visit Yang Linzhi.

Yang Linzhi's house was twenty miles away from the western suburbs of Luoyang. He didn't want to live so far away, mainly because he couldn't buy a house closer even if he had the money.

“I’m sorry for not welcoming you in person. I’m sorry for not welcoming you in person!” Yang Linzhi bowed with a smile.

After Xie Yan greeted him, he introduced: "This is my grandfather. Grandfather, this is Yang Hanlin."

Xie Shizhang bowed and said, "I am Xie Shizhang from Cangzhou, with the courtesy name Wencai, nice to meet you, Hanlin Yang!"

"Thank you for your courtesy, brother. Please come in." Yang Linzhi always felt that the voice sounded familiar, but he didn't think about it any more.

I sat down in the living room and the maid brought me some tea.

After a few pleasantries, Yang Linzhi smiled and said, "I received an imperial decree two days ago that I will play the zither to entertain Mr. Xie at his wedding banquet."

Xie Yan really didn't know this, so he quickly bowed and said, "Thank you, Yang Hanlin, for condescending to me."

Yang Linzhi waved his hand and said, "Since I am a musician in the Imperial Academy, I will do my best for the princess' wedding."

Xie Yan took the opportunity to take out the music score: "My grandfather also studied the art of playing the zither a little bit, and compiled a book of music scores. I would like to ask Yang Hanlin to correct it for me."

"I don't deserve it, it's just a discussion." Yang Linzhi took it with both hands, seemingly very serious, but actually he didn't take it seriously.

As a folk musician, he didn't even get a bachelor's degree, and at most he was just famous in his hometown.

The title of the book is unremarkable, it is called "Du Liu Pu".

The preface is also very simple, saying that he learned to play the qin at the age of seven, and began to collect qin scores when he was nearly 30. This book contains three lost ancient pieces, completes seven incomplete ancient pieces, and records twelve self-composed qin pieces.

"Ok?"

Yang Linzhi frowned, and the main text began with "Guangling San".

This thing is too famous and has been lost for too long. Every now and then, there are speculators who claim to have discovered "Guangling San", but without exception, they are all fakes.

This poem by Prince Consort Xie’s grandfather is probably also a fake.

Yang Linzhi began to think about how to deal with it. He could not offend the future prince consort, but also could not take a fake work seriously.

Oh, it’s difficult!

When Yang Linzhi saw the music score of Guangling San, he suddenly became interested again, because he found that this fake work also took a lot of effort and even had a proper tune.

The so-called "tune" is an untitled piece of music, whose function is to indicate the style, mode and tuning of the formal piano music.

Some of the music scores even have lyrics to accompany the tune.

Yang Linzhi raised his head and looked at Xie Shizhang.

Xie Shizhang smiled in response, but his sarcasm was even stronger. He spent 23 years composing the tune of Guangling San, revising it dozens of times in detail, and everything was written according to the characteristics of ancient music.

He wanted to see whether Yang Hanlin could tell the truth from the falsehood.

Yang Linzhi was really frightened, and he didn't even bother to watch the main song of "Guangling San". The melody before the main song was enough to study slowly.

The meaning of this tune was so real that Yang Linzhi couldn't understand it for a while, so he had to take out his guitar and play it repeatedly to appreciate it.

He put down the music sheet and asked, "Excuse me, brother, have we met before?"

Xie Shizhang smiled and said, "Prince Tao's Mansion."

Yang Linzhi instantly remembered and stood up and bowed again: "Excuse me, excuse me. Your Highness Prince Tao was known as a music fanatic in his time. He entertained countless famous musicians throughout his life. You are the last musician Prince Tao ever entertained."

"Alas, the old friend is gone." Xie Shizhang didn't know whether he was sighing for King Tao or for his own past time.

Yang Linzhi asked: "Is this song "Guangling San" real? There is a murderous spirit in the tune, I am afraid..."

Xie Shizhang said firmly: "I say it is true!"

Yang Linzhi left the music score behind, saying that he wanted to study it slowly, so Xie Yan said goodbye with his grandfather.

After the grandfather and grandson left, Yang Linzhi took out his zither and played it repeatedly according to "Guangling San". He basically concluded that this was an ancient song, but he was doubtful whether it was "Guangling San".

Xie Shizhang completed the missing parts so perfectly that Yang Linzhi couldn't tell that they were completed by later generations.

It was not until he saw the three words "added by the author" in brackets after the music that a look of surprise finally appeared on Yang Linzhi's face.

Outside Yang's house, on the carriage.

Xie Shizhang took out another copy of "Duliu Pu" from his bosom, threw it to his grandson and said, "Take it as a betrothal gift and put it on the gift list."

"No, Grandfather, how many books did you bring?" Xie Yan said speechlessly.

Xie Shizhang smiled and said, "I copied 10 or 20 copies. If I don't copy a few more copies of my life's work, what will happen if it gets burned or soaked by water?"

Xie Yan sighed: "That makes sense!"

(End of this chapter)