Cao Xueqin wrote Jiao Da's Drunkenness and Scold, which is a gorgeous text in A Dream of Red Mansions that makes the gods cry. After the novel "Jiao Da" was "overturned and tied" by the pages, he also screamed and screamed:
I'm going to the ancestral temple to cry. Now there is hope to give birth to these animals! I don't know anything about stealing dogs and playing with chickens and climbing ashes every day and raising a brother-in-law in my brother-in-law. Let's "hide our arms in our sleeves!"
There are two words "climb" and "pick" in this swearing. The cloud "Notes on Fast Tang Xue" is commonly known as "gathering dust"; "Chang Tan Lu Cong" said that people who are addicted to their children are ashes. This may be the source of "crawling ash".
Jiao scold ning's "crawling", of course, refers to Jia Zhen's incest. The early manuscript of A Dream of Red Mansions,No. 13, aims at "Mourning the Tianxiang Building in Qin Keqing" and describes the details of Jia Zhen's "collecting ashes". Later, the author was ordered to delete. Jiao Da's scolding is undeleted, and the author intends to keep it, so he wrote it without writing it. Although Jiao Da's stomach is full of horse manure, the horse mane still gives his master the willies. Xifeng scolded Baoyu, and the elf-like housekeeper naturally knew who Jiao was cursing. With a sharp scalpel in his hand, Cao Xueqin showed people the ugliness hidden behind the gentle veil, so that people with discerning eyes could not only see whether Jiao Da was really drunk, but more importantly, the moral decay of the "poetic" family.
Picking up ashes, also known as climbing ashes, is a word to describe incest, which specifically refers to the incest behavior of father-in-law and daughter-in-law having sexual relations. There are many stories and legends about the origin of the word "collecting ashes". Personally, what is more interesting is about Wang Anshi. The story tells that once Wang Anshi passed by his daughter-in-law's room and saw her sleeping in a bed covered with transparent gauze curtains, her eyes lit up. After all, Wang Anshi is a poet, so he wrote a sentence on the dusty wall: "There is a pipa in the satin account, and I want to play it." After writing, hide aside and observe the daughter-in-law's movements. Seeing her father-in-law sneaking around outside, the daughter-in-law came out to see what his father-in-law had written on the wall. As soon as she saw his father-in-law leave such a message, she immediately understood what it meant, so she added, "I want to borrow my father-in-law to play a song, especially to leave Feng Shui at my house." Wang Anshi was secretly happy when he saw his daughter-in-law's words. I didn't expect my son to appear at this time, so he quickly wiped the handwriting off the wall with his sleeve. The son was surprised and asked his father what he was doing. Wang Anshi said he was collecting ashes. Another expert said that the word "picking up ashes" was not from Wang Anshi, but from Mr. Su Dongpo, a college student, but the story was similar.
"Wu Lian" explains its origin: "Weng secretly married his daughter-in-law, commonly known as picking up ashes. People know little about its meaning. According to the past, there were temples, incense was very prosperous, tin paper was burned in the furnace, and the dust accumulated over time, and its tin was exhausted, and the market was profitable. After the neighbors in the temple knew it, it was common to pick up its ashes and steal its tin. Picking up dust and stealing tin. Tin and his daughter-in-law are homophones, which are code words. 」