The big man has a living father

Chapter 43: Plum Blossoms and Snow
In front of the entrance of Huo’s Paper Industry, a group of people were having a great time.

Soon, a large number of idioms were selected, and many allegorical sayings were also created.

Although some of them are very stiff, I believe that after being passed down for a long time, there will always be classics that will emerge.

Huo Hai was having a great time. Sima Xiangru said, "Hey, Huo Hai, have you forgotten that there is a third measure in this cultural movement?"

Everyone stopped.

Everyone was having a blast playing with these idioms and proverbs. They were really fun. I never thought that words could be used for fun, nor did I ever think that I could take part in the creation of history.

Is there a third move now?

Huo Hai suddenly realized: "Right, right, right!"

Sima Xiangru: "In this case, allegorical sayings are just like idioms. After you create allegorical sayings, you can also submit them to us. If you submit them to me, please submit them to the Imperial College. Then we will set up a special mailbox."

"If you want to submit your manuscript to Mr. Huo, please submit it to Huo's Paper Industry."

The reason for setting up two submission offices was that Chang'an City was too large, and the Imperial College was closer to the residential areas in the north. Separating the submission into two places would shorten the distance and increase the enthusiasm for submission.

Huo Hai continued: "Then let's talk about the third one, which is new poetry."

"There were poems in ancient times, which were turned into the Book of Songs. But hundreds of years have passed. How can we still transmit poems from hundreds of years ago? We are also scholars and intellectuals. So we can't create poems?"

Sima Xiangru: "I was also inspired by Huo Hai. That day in the court, Huo Hai wrote a poem called "Viewing Mount Lu". From the side, it looks like a ridge; from the front, it looks like a peak; from different distances, it looks different in height. I cannot see the true face of Mount Lu because I am in it."

"This kind of rhythm is very similar to some of the poems in the Book of Songs, but it also has its own rules, and it's not just about rhyme and format, it also has rhythm."

Huo Hai: "So I studied it with Sima Gong and came up with some rules of rhythm that would make the reading smoothest and most rhythmic with a certain number of words."

"It includes the rhyme of the verses, the distribution of tones of each word, and other rules."

Sima Xiangru: "This is much more difficult than idioms and two-part allegorical sayings, but it also represents the talent of a writer. After all, in the past, writing poetry and prose was long and elaborate, but now it has to be shortened to a few dozen words."

Huo Hai smiled and said, "The rules are here. Everyone can choose any subject to create new poems."

Someone asked: "What does it mean to choose a subject?"

Huo Hai: "After all, poetry has few words, so it is impossible to cover everything, nor can you write too much content. You can only choose one theme or one or two themes and integrate them into this small space."

“And I call it expressing emotions through scenery.”

"For example, the most beautiful white scenery in the world is snow..."

Sima Xiangru interrupted: "Wait a moment!"

Huo Hai was suspicious: "What?"

Sima Xiangru: "The most beautiful white scenery in the world is plum blossoms!"

Huo Hai was not convinced: "What's so good about plums?!"

Sima Xiangru: "What's so interesting about snow?"

At this time, many people saw through the trick. Huo Hai was from Pingyang County, a northerner, while Sima Xiangru was from Chengdu, a southerner.

It doesn't snow in the south, and plum blossoms are their childhood memories. Of course, they won't agree with you that snow looks better.

Sima Xiangru rolled up his sleeves and said, "Okay, okay, let's fight!"

Seeing that something was not right, the people around him immediately grabbed Huo Hai. Huo Hai, who was being pulled, kicked forward and said, "Come on, I'm not afraid of you! Bring me my big gun!"

The scholars in the front row were afraid of getting blood splattered on their faces, so they hurriedly stopped him: "Hey, hey, hey, Mr. Sima, Mr. Huo, we are all educated people, we should compete in literature, why in martial arts?!"

"Aren't we writing poems? Why don't we each write one and see who writes the better poem? Or why not compare our marksmanship?"

Huo Hai and Sima Xiangru looked at each other and said, "That makes sense!"

At this time, two tables were set up, and both sides started writing poems.

Of course, it was just a play that the two of them had agreed on.

No matter how talented Sima Xiangru was, he only knew the rules of poetry rhythm. How could he possibly compete with Huo Hai?
So in fact, Huo Hai made up a poem and asked Sima Xiangru to say that he wrote it himself, just for show.

The reason for this is the same as the idiom and allegorical saying, which is to promote paper consumption.

Nowadays, people buy paper to educate the next generation, and have not yet developed the wonderful uses of paper. If we want to promote consumption, it is useless to just develop ways to play with it.

You also have to "provoke" and "opposition".

The dispute between Mei and Xue is the biggest controversial topic in cultural history and the most suitable topic for debate.

The story of the dispute between plum blossoms and snow can be traced back to the migration of northerners to the south.

When the Western Jin Dynasty fell, a large number of scholars moved south.

This includes the Xie family.

Wang Xizhi's daughter-in-law, Xie An's niece, the famous talented woman Xie Daojun, was the leader of the younger generation of the Xie family.

The Xie family that moved south quickly became the top family in the south, and an incident in the family spread throughout the Eastern Jin Dynasty.

When Xie Daoyun was a child, the Xie family was playing at home and it started snowing. Xie An asked, "What does the falling snow look like?" His nephew Xie Lang immediately replied, "It's similar to salt being sprinkled in the air."

The niece Xie Daoyun thought for a moment and said, "It's not as good as the willow catkins that are blown by the wind.

This story is very contagious and interesting, and it also allows people in the south to experience what snow, which they have never seen before, is like.

So it spread throughout the Eastern Jin Dynasty in a short time.

Snow, as a symbol of romance, has been spread throughout the South for two hundred years!

Two hundred years later, when the Southern and Northern Dynasties were in a state of hostility, Lu Kai, a humble man in the North, was a friend of Fan Ye of the Southern Dynasty.

However, Lu Kai and Fan Ye kept communicating secretly, telling each other their views and indignation on the current situation. Lu Kai put a plum blossom in a letter bag and secretly sent it to his friend Fan Ye in Jiangnan. Fan Ye opened the letter and saw a plum blossom inside, along with a poem: I met a postman while picking plum blossoms, and sent them to the people in Longtou. I have nothing in Jiangnan, so I give you a branch of spring.

Soon, this poem spread throughout the world.

The phrase "a branch of spring" opened the precedent for poetry to remind people of people when seeing things, to express emotions through objects, and to always remember emotions through objects.

So a branch of spring began to represent homesickness.

Just imagine, when southerners talk about romance, the concrete symbol they use is the seldom-seen snow in the south, which many southerners will never see in their entire lives.

When northerners talk about homesickness, they also mention the plum blossoms, which rarely grow in the north and which northern poets will never see in their lifetime.

How could the descendants of both sides, generation after generation, accept this?

Don’t think that the dispute between the North and the South started in the Internet age. Did it start with sweet and salty rice dumplings and sweet and salty tofu pudding? In fact, everything has long been buried in genetic culture.

A war that spanned a thousand years and lasted from the birth to the heyday to the end of the entire poetry world has begun.

Battle of Meixue!

A fateful duel between two flowers.

Romance and nostalgia, one represents imagination and the other represents reality.

One represents the North and the other represents the South.

The ultimate showdown.

However, the fate of this confrontation was already determined.

The story of snow comes from the Han people who were forced to move north to the Southern Dynasty, while the story of plum was written by a Hu person who entered the Central Plains from the Northern Dynasty to his Han friends.

After hundreds of years of running-in, fighting, blood, conspiracy, friendship, and everything else, the north and the south finally became one.

Although the North and the South have united, the poetry war continues and will go on forever.

When Huo Hai mentioned the poem, he quickly thought of replicating this fight.

Sima Xiangru wrote a poem and the people behind him read it.

"Homesickness", I picked plum blossoms and met a postman, and sent them to the traveler in the north. I have nothing in the south, so I will give you a branch of spring."

The southern scholar, who had never seen anyone express emotions through objects and had not seen plum blossoms for many years since arriving in Chang'an, immediately raised his head and looked at the sky at a 45-degree angle, afraid that tears would fall.

But the tears still fell.

The crying could not be stopped.

As for those who had just arrived in Chang'an, they didn't miss their hometown that much. However, when they heard others crying and remembered the many things they were not used to in Chang'an, they also started crying.

A branch of spring, a traveler in the north.

What you are using is not a plum blossom, it's clearly a knife.

On the other side, the scholar behind Huo Hai also started reading:
"A Poem for My Host in the Suburbs of Chang'an on a Snowy Night"

At sunset, the mountains are far away, and the cold white houses are poor.

I hear a dog barking behind the wooden door, and a man returns home on a snowy night. "

When the northerners see it, they immediately see their own home, their own house, and they themselves become the masters of the poem.

We are hospitable!
It’s so beautiful on a snowy day, everything is white and the sky and earth are clean.

When the scholars in the South saw this, they felt even more sad.

You failed to stay in Chang'an, so you have to stay in the suburbs of Chang'an, right? Pick me, right? !

Suddenly someone in the crowd shouted, "Hello, Mei."

Then someone shouted, "Bullshit! The snow is good!"

Both sides began to take sides.

You should know that the weather now is not as cold as in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. In fact, it does not necessarily snow in winter along the Huaihe River or even in some places further north.

So all those south of there are from the South, and they are all members of the Mei Party.

The other side is full of snow party members.

The number of people on both sides is almost the same!
At this time, both sides automatically took sides, those who supported Xue stood behind Huo Hai, and those who supported Mei stood behind Sima Xiangru.

The war is about to break out, crush them!

Some people even picked up sticks.

Sima Xiangru: "Hey, everyone, snow or plum blossoms, we are all literati, we must have a bottom line, we must admit which one is better! If we can't compare, we can write better poems to compete again!"

Huo Hai gnashed his teeth and said, "Am I afraid of you?"

What kind of advice is this? It's clearly adding fuel to the fire.

Both sides were very excited, and some people even wanted to start writing on the spot.

Huo Hai and Sima Xiangru looked at each other and knew that the war would soon continue.

However, in the Internet era, Shu did not participate in the north-south dispute because Shu people eat spicy food. But now Shu is participating in the plum blossom and snow dispute? Sima Xiangru's fellow villagers from Shudu pinched their chins and wondered: Does Sima Gong have poor eyesight? On a sunny day, standing anywhere in Chengdu, can't you see snow-capped mountains if you look west? Why do you have to like plum blossoms but not snow? Could Sima Gong be pretending to be a Chengdu native?
As soon as the two sides started arguing, Huo Hai and Sima Xiangru ran away.

In the carriage, Huo Hai presented himself with the award: "My performance today deserves to be the best actor. My acting skills are amazing."

Sima Xiangru didn't know what the leading actor meant, but he knew what acting meant: "You acted in an exaggerated and contrived way. You were able to fool people because they were young and naive. If acting well means you are the best leading actor, then I deserve it."

(End of this chapter)