The garden is full of spring scenery, and a branch of red apricot comes out of the wall
Walking in Suzhou
Lu Wenfu
I love Suzhou, especially Love its quiet alleys. This is not because "the Forbidden City has less free space and more water alleys and small bridges", but because it is often easiest to see the great changes in life and the rebirth of the city in the alleys, which gives rise to a sense of pride and joy.
The alleys in Suzhou are full of flavor. It is clean and deep, with many twists and turns. The alleys are paved with marble stones, and there is no gray sand in the spring. Just after the summer showers, you can wear cloth shoes without getting your feet wet. There are high courtyard walls on both sides of the alley. The walls are covered with ivy and wisteria; occasionally branches decorated with flowers poke out from the walls. Deep in the courtyard, the sound of looms can be heard here and there. The rustling is weaving silk and satin; the squeaking is woven velvet. I have seen Suzhou's silks, satins and velvets, like colorful clouds embedded in the blue sky, like the morning sun, like sunset, like the light smoke rising at dusk. You would never think that these world-famous silk fabrics were born in the alleys where tens of thousands of households live together.
In the alley, the door is always open. In the open door, you can often see the mother and daughter leaning on a stretcher, quietly embroidering. They split a very thin silk thread into eight pieces and used hundreds of stitches to embroider flowers, birds, insects, fish, figures, and landscapes. The live shrimps of Qi Baishi are embroidered; the galloping horses of Xu Beihong are embroidered, and the splashes of ink, watermarks, and expressions can be accurately expressed.
Sixteen years ago, I also saw "Su embroidery" and "embroidery girls" in Suzhou. In the quiet alleys of Keye night, it is common for them to embroider from late at night to dawn under the dim light. They rush to Guxiuzhuang to change money, and then line up at the entrance of the rice store, where people use chalk to weave numbers on their shoulders and point. Affordable rice.
Today, we can not only see "Su embroidery" in alleys and in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing; we can also see Suzhou girls performing embroidery at international exhibitions. Residents of London once asked to see the embroidery girl's hands to see what secrets they held and why the embroidered flowers could confuse butterflies! Who knows that the only secret is the hard work of these hands, which is the respect our society has for hard-working hands.
Before liberation, in a dilapidated ancient temple in Suzhou, there lived a beggar woman with white hair and dirty face and severe eye disease. She was the famous "Embroidery Girl" Shen Jingfen. She devoted all her youth to "Suzhou embroidery", and she knew hundreds of ingenious stitches. When she was young, she embroidered countless dragons and flying phoenixes for the daughter of her boudoir, and earned a lot of profits for Gu Embroidery Village. In the end, he ended up living in a ruined temple, begging for a living. The technique of "Suzhou embroidery" was trampled upon by others along with her, and was carved into pieces in the wind and rain like a ruined temple!
Now, in a small garden, on the flower path, and next to the curved bridge, people met Shen Jingfen, the consultant of the embroidery workshop. Her hair is still gray, but her eye disease has disappeared, her complexion is rosy, and she is full of energy. She is guiding a group of lively young girls to plant flowers, paint, and embroider, pushing traditional skills to new heights: sending messages on paper Residents, the secrets in the hands of Suzhou girls can be found here.
In autumn, the whole city is filled with the fragrance of osmanthus. As you stroll forward smelling the fragrance of flowers, you will be introduced to ancient gardens. The gardens are like flowers scattered by goddesses, distributed in the streets and alleys of Suzhou. There are more than a hundred records of them. As for those who dug a pond, built a mountain, and built one or two small pavilions in the middle, there are countless people. "Wu Feng Lu" records: "Although Lu Yan's carvings (note) are also decorated with small mountain basins for birds to play with," this shows the universality of Suzhou gardens. On the basis of such universality, craftsmen and masters of the past dynasties have left behind a large number of exquisite masterpieces.
Among all the gardens, I love "Lingering Garden" the most. Like all artistic masterpieces, it carries deep implications. A plain corridor at the entrance, an ordinary courtyard. The pools, terraces and pavilions in the middle of the forest can be vaguely seen. When I passed through the "Hanbi Mountain House" and stood on the balcony near the water, I saw a group of rockeries rising up. The rocks were intertwined. The hexagonal "Keting" towered above the rocks. There were three small bridges high and low. Lying on the mountain stream. Looking from a distance, it is winding and winding, as if there is no bottom. When you get here, you feel that you are in the painting, but you cannot see the whole picture.
Climb up the mountain-climbing verandah and walk into the "Smell the Sweet Osmanthus Fragrance Pavilion", and all the scenery in the middle of the garden will appear before your eyes.
To the east and west are pavilions, pavilions and waterside pavilions hidden by ancient trees and strange stones. To the south are corridors and flower walls. The small "Mingse Tower" towers over all buildings. In front of the building is a pool full of clear water, reflecting the entire scenery to the south, creating a Wonderful scenery outside the park. In the middle of the pond, there is a small island called "Xiao Penglai". The bridges and pavilions here are all level with the water. Climbing up to "Xiao Penglai" feels like standing at the bottom of the lake in the middle of the lake, and you feel like you are surrounded by mountains on all sides. After passing "Xiao Penglai" and arriving at the bottom of "Quxi Tower", the scenery in the middle part can be seen at a glance, and it's time to come to an end. However, there are many brick frames and leaky windows next to the "Quxi Tower". They are like viewing frames, condensing the scenery in the garden, making people feel lonely and changing their views every step of the way. Looking up to the west, in late autumn, the bright red maple leaves are spread on the undulating cloud walls, which makes people nostalgic. Endless aftertaste.
The "Liuyuan Garden" before liberation actually became a stable for the Kuomintang army. Trees were cut down, pavilions collapsed, and ruins, rubble and bricks were everywhere. Today's "Lingering Garden" is full of splendor and splendor. Looking back at the outside of the "Living Garden", I saw tall chimneys standing everywhere on Huqiu Road and on both sides of the canal. The factories built after liberation were blowing out thick smoke day and night, painting the peaceful blue sky with thick ink. There machines are roaring, metal is colliding, and life is boiling. From the alleys and ancient gardens all over the city, there are people who have fully rested day and night, walking towards the boiling place with a light brush.
Reading paper in Shitang
Braving the drizzle and humid mist, I walked into Qianshan Shitang. This is a thousand-year-old ancient town known as "Little Suzhou" at the foot of Wuyi Mountain. It is also the hometown of the world-famous Lian Shizhi.
The old street paved with cobblestones and bluestones is like a thick thread-bound book, leading me to its interior along the veins of thousands of years of history. As I walked, I looked at the lives of people in Shitang, tried to figure out the prosperous history of paper, and touched the texture, which is "as thin as cicada wings and as white as snow, as light as silk and as silent as silk".
I think Shitang is a dreamland exuding the smell of old incense paper. Dense shop numbers, majestic ancient buildings, exquisite stone carvings, fluttering guise in the rice shop, coir raincoats and bacon hanging on the wall, blacksmith shops that are still open today, troughs, floating ponds and floating ponds left behind by papermaking. The water barrier appears and disappears, swinging between reality and illusion. The more than 50 alleys in the town are mysterious, deep, and twists and turns. The names are also nice: Xiajie Street, Kengbei Street, Qipan Street, Chamber of Commerce Alley, Luohan Alley... There are many paper shops in the alleys, such as "Fushengyuan", "Luo Shengchun", "Jin Hongchang", "Tianhe" and "Cha Shengquan" "Laijia Paper Shop", "Songtai Shop", "Shanshan Guild Hall", "Raozhou Guild Hall", "Fuzhou Guild Hall", etc. are connected in a row. The splendor of the courtyards of wealthy households was a symbol of the rich industry and prosperous business of paper merchants in those days. Due to the passage of time, it now looks a bit lonely and haggard: the walls are moss-covered, the doors are gray and shabby, the stone roads are uneven, the patterns of the stone tablets are blurred, and the carved columns have long since peeled off. There are high courtyard walls on both sides of the alley. Occasionally there are a few loquat trees leaning outside the wall, full of small golden fruits. Occasionally there are ivy or flower-studded branches sticking out from the wall, adding a bit of vitality to the alley. , somewhat elegant, the bunches of decaying grass on the walls of wealthy homes cannot cover up the former splendor and prosperity.
The ancient town has a beautiful scenery of small bridges and flowing water with people living in it. In Guanzhen, built in the Ming Dynasty, the water in the canal is crystal clear. As you walk slowly along the canal, you will meet women doing laundry from time to time. Because it was a rainy day, small groups of people set up small tables on the street, and bamboo chairs lined both sides of the lane, playing cards, drinking tea, and chatting. They are just like the bluestone slabs they step on. After years of tempering, they appear more peaceful and peaceful, disdainful of publicity, and maintain the leisurely style of working at sunrise and resting at sunset. They stubbornly stayed in this thousand-year-old town, and time passed by them in such a hurry that they were unaware... As long as they stayed, the ancient town had the power to resist the noisy attack of modern life.
I wonder if this town cultivated Lian Shizhi? Or did history create this town?
Paper was once the most colorful chapter in the life of the ancient town of Shitang.
Because of paper, Shitang has the bustle of the city and the bustling businessmen; because of paper, Shitang has a colorful description of the papermaking culture; because of paper, countless dignitaries, wealthy businessmen, and businessmen work tirelessly to The soul is haunted by Shitang; it is also because of paper that Qianshan County has become one of the "five major handicraft areas" in the Jiangnan region of my country. It is closely related to Songjiang's cotton textile industry, Suhang's silk weaving industry, Wuhu pulp and dyeing industry and Jingdezhen's The porcelain industry is famous all over the world; because of the paper, the scene of Shitang Street in the past can't help but appear in my mind, always like "Along the River During the Qingming Festival"; because of the paper, Shitang is known as "the most important Luoyang" ; Because of paper, Shitang allowed our descendants to see a lot of information about social life and aesthetic customs at that time.
Once time lets go, yesterday in Shitang is like a child on a twisty skateboard. In one fell swoop, it slipped through a thousand years and arrived at the present. I came to read Shitang and read Shitang’s paper.
Lu Zhijian, an old man who lives in Shitang, is enthusiastic, cheerful and energetic. He is over 60 years old and has gray hair, but he is much younger than the town. It is said that the town is more than a thousand years old. In front of the ancient town, all living people are children. Mr. Lu is a carpenter and has lived here for generations. He likes to write articles and serve as a tour guide for tourists. Talking about the history of Shitang papermaking and the ups and downs of the ancient town, it is a treasure trove. From his narration, I learned about the glorious history of Lianshi Paper and the process of papermaking.
Old man Lu said that Qianshan County is rich in green vegetation. Bamboo forests have been planted all over the mountains and fields since ancient times. The gurgling streams all year round provide abundant water sources and power for papermaking; the firewood all over the mountains and fields provides cheap fuel for papermaking. Fuel; various paper chemicals used as papermaking glue and lime, auxiliary materials for papermaking, etc. can all be obtained locally. All this provides good conditions for the development of the paper industry.
It takes 60 days to make a piece of history paper from bamboo to finished product. The entire hand-made process generally goes through more than 20 processes such as bamboo cutting, whitening, dipping, cooking, turning, papermaking, and paper drying. Each process is closely linked and meticulously crafted.
The young moso bamboo is cut into strips, dried in the shade on a mountain, soaked in stacked ponds, floated in clear water, stripped of bamboo silk, and washed and dried to become bamboo and linen silk. The paper needs to be finely stamped with your feet or beaten with a mallet in order to make paper. The most difficult part of the production process is papermaking. Papermaking, also known as paper fishing, is a process that most tests the craftsman's skills. To produce high-quality paper, it usually takes two or three years of training for papermakers to evenly copy the thickness of the paper.
Hundreds of years have passed, and with the continuous advancement of industrial civilization, purely handmade Lianshi paper has lost its competitiveness due to high production costs. With the mass production of machine-made paper, the demand for handmade earthen paper in the market has declined. Therefore, the Shitang paper industry, which has been glorious for more than 400 years, has gradually declined and is not what it used to be. Only small-scale manual production remains. Even history paper’s former glory of being “hard to find” is long gone. Later generations can only vaguely imagine the prosperity of the past from the ancient buildings and the font sizes on the lintels.
The pages of ancient thread-bound books hidden in the exhibition hall, and even the samples of historical paper, after reading all the vicissitudes of life, today, they are no longer the concept of paper, but heavy. The cultural history of the paper industry is the historical memory of the rise and fall of historical paper. As valuable cultural relics, they are not only the mark of time, but also the last words of time.
When I read Shitang, I read the last words of the years. Today, when keyboards are rapidly replacing writing, the last words of time will not be the last words of paper, right?