Lu Xun famously said that tragedy is to destroy beautiful things for people to see. Adhering to this cruel purpose, we have to see what Chang 'an was like before the Anshi Rebellion and how beautiful and prosperous the imperial city was in the prosperous Tang Dynasty.
When Li Yuan and Li Shimin were established, Chang 'an was a very new city, and almost an empty city was handed over to the Li Tang Dynasty. Although Chang 'an was the capital of China before the Western Han Dynasty, it moved to Luoyang from the Eastern Han Dynasty. Then why is it called the Eastern Han Dynasty? Because Luoyang is in the east of Xi. After the collapse of the Eastern Han Dynasty and the era of the Three Kingdoms, Wuhu and Sixteen Countries, various regimes north of the Yangtze River were staged by you.
By the time of Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty, Chang 'an had been ravaged by reconstruction and burned many times. Moreover, the water supply is insufficient, the water quality deteriorates, and the city is not suitable for living at all. In fact, according to the existing historical data, Guanzhong area was unable to support the capital of a country in the Han Dynasty.
Therefore, Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty and Yang Guang's father and son of Sui Dynasty had a grand ideal of rebuilding the new capital of this country. They don't want Chang 'an Old Town in the Han Dynasty at all, but try to build an ideal new capital which is most in line with China's traditional imperial geomantic omen according to the records in Kao Zhi during the Warring States Period.
The Sui Dynasty prepared to do a great job and named the new capital Daxing City, which was the embryonic form of Chang 'an. As a result, the new city had just been built for a few years, and when it reached Emperor Yang Guang and Yang Di, it died. In addition, Yang Di's later idea was to move the capital to Luoyang, the center of the Grand Canal, and there was no serious plan to build the Guanzhong area. He loved Jiangnan all his life, and even spent the rest of his life in Jiangdu, now Yangzhou.
Therefore, Chang 'an is equivalent to a brand-new empty city that Tang Gaozu and Li Shimin took over after the founding of the People's Republic of China. This is simply too lucky. In the history of China, there really has never been a regime with such a good foundation just after the founding of the People's Republic of China as the Tang Dynasty. For example, when our new China was founded, it was really poor, the national economy was on the verge of collapse, and there was nothing. When the Tang Dynasty was first established, the capital was just repaired and a brand-new xiong'an new area was built.
The Grand Canal has just been built, and the water conservancy between north and south is smooth. So this Li family really took advantage of the Yang family.
Of course, after the founding of the Tang Dynasty, Daxing City could no longer be called Daxing City. The so-called new dynasty and new atmosphere, coupled with Tang Yuan and Li Shimin's father and son eager to consolidate the legal status of the Tang regime. So with a stroke of a pen, Daxing City was renamed Chang 'an, which was of great political significance. Therefore, although Chang 'an is an ancient name, when the Tang Dynasty was established, this Chang 'an city was brand new, not like Chang 'an in the Han Dynasty.
Let me add here. From the Tang Dynasty, the Song Dynasty, and even to the hands of the Golden Maiden, the official name of Chang 'an has always been Jingzhaofu. Because it was almost always the capital of the Chinese empire during the Han and Tang Dynasties, even if the later Song and Jin regimes were not actually here, they would move to Kaifeng. But formally, the name of Jing Zhao Mansion in Chang 'an remains unchanged, which implies that its own regime has inherited the previous legal system.
In the Yuan Dynasty, Mongols didn't buy it. They renamed "Jingzhaofu" as "Fengyuan Road" to serve Feng. In the Ming Dynasty, it was renamed "Xi 'an House" and the name "Xi 'an" was opened.
There is a street across the north and south in Chang 'an city, called Suzaku Street, also called Tianjie Street. This Suzaku Street is actually a central axis, which divides the capital into two counties, namely Wannian County in the east and Chang 'an County in the west. When reading together, according to the reading order of the ancients from right to left, it is called Wan Nian Chang 'an, which means that the country is always peaceful. Therefore, China's highest political ideal in ancient times was actually eight words: good weather, peaceful country and people.
In the imperial era of more than two thousand years, these eight words were the ultimate pursuit of farming civilization. A city has two counties, Wannian in the east and Chang 'an in the west. Both counties are under the management of Zhaofu in Beijing. From this organizational system, we can see the balance of legalists' ideas of governing the country. But from the royal family to the common people, it is customary to call this capital Chang 'an. Therefore, we saw that many poets or political celebrities in the Tang Dynasty wrote on their resumes that they were Jingzhao Wannian people or Jingzhao Chang 'an people, but they were actually Chang 'an natives.
Therefore, I must correct it. Don't mistake Wannian County for a place like Tongzhou in Changping, Beijing. I hope it is outside the Fifth and Sixth Ring Roads. Or only Zhao Jing Chang 'an is the registered population who really lives in Chang 'an. In fact, Wannian County was equivalent to Dongcheng District of Beijing, and Chang 'an County was equivalent to Xicheng District of Beijing, both of which were in the city. For example, Wei was a great poet after the Anshi Rebellion in the Middle Tang Dynasty, and Wei Zhuang, a poet of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, was his great-grandson.
Their ancestors were all from Wannian County, Jingzhao County. Translated into modern Chinese, I was born in the east of Chang 'an Street and lived in Dongcheng District. It is actually a social habit to use Chang 'an to refer to the capital Jingzhao House and the whole Chang 'an City. After all, it sounds good. For example, there is a poem in Huang Chao called "Tianxiang permeates Chang 'an, and the city is full of golden flowers". The word Chang 'an enters the poem, which is beautiful. If you want to say "the fragrance of heaven permeates for thousands of years, the city is full of golden flowers", it is not pleasant to listen to and it is easy to cause ambiguity.
Suzaku Street, which divides Chang 'an into two, must be emphasized. This street is too important. No matter from the political significance or cultural significance, it is the first street in China, which is equivalent to our present Chang 'an Street in Beijing. This street is150m wide. Come in from Mingdemen in the south of the city and go straight to Zhuquemen in the imperial city. So it is Tianjie.
There is no intuitive effect in saying this. It is strongly suggested that if there is an opportunity, you can go to Tiananmen Square to feel the psychological shock brought by such a wide road. In a word, it is four words: great country weather. Since the Tang Dynasty, the word Tianjie has appeared frequently in the poems of Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the place name Tianjie has become an image and symbol.
This image represents Chang 'an, and then extends to the prosperous scenery in the prosperous times. In Tang poetry, there are many stories about Tianjie, such as "Showing Eighteen Members of Zhang Shui Department in Early Spring" by Han Yu.
The rain in Tianjie is as slippery as crisp,
The color of the grass is close in the distance, but not at all.
The biggest advantage is that one spring,
It's better than the smoke willow in the imperial city.
In addition, Zhou Bangyan (in the Northern Song Dynasty) wrote a song "Sauvignon Blanc", which began with "The night is fine, the sky is like water, and the wind is slightly cold." If you don't know what Tianjie means, you may think that he wandered to the Tiangong Chang 'e at the beginning of the word. But in fact, he wrote about the night scene of Kaifeng, the capital of the Song Dynasty.
By the Ming Dynasty, Wen Zhiming had a poem "Niannujiao Mid-Autumn Festival to the Moon", which said that "osmanthus flowers float on the jade, and the streets are full in the first month, and the night is as cool as washing". It also means the night in the capital in the first month, but at this time the capital has become the present Beijing city.
Until the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, Wang Guowei still used Tianjie to describe the main road of the capital in literary language. Wang Guowei has a poem "Bodhisattva Man", which is actually about eating instant-boiled mutton in winter, but people pay attention to people, and the small things are particularly elegant after he poetizes them, saying:
The jade plate is broken, and the onion buds are tender.
The guillotine carefully cut the sheep's shoulder.
The smell of urine is not disgusting, and it will be adjusted by itself.
The red furnace (process) is dull, and drunkenness slows the mink.
Going home is crazy, the street is frosty.
Wang Guowei, a first-class poet in the Republic of China, wrote a poem on earth. This word is translated into vernacular, that is to say, cut the onion and put it on a plate, and then cut the mutton (the jade plate breaks the onion and the bud is tender, and the Luan knife cuts the sheep's shoulder thin). I'm not afraid of mutton brisket, because you personally mixed the sesame sauce (I dare not be sick, Yuan Jun personally mixed it). The hot pot is getting hotter and hotter, and my face is red and I'm a little drunk.
I was a little drunk on the way back, and my feet were frosty when I walked on the streets in Beijing at night.
Therefore, the poetic or cultural symbols in China's system have always been highly inherited, which is rare in western poetry. Perhaps in other literary genres, it has become a form, such as fable. According to the biblical story, the devil became a snake, and the snake lured Adam to eat apples, which led to human beings. Therefore, western novels and oil paintings from the Renaissance, in which snakes or apples are mentioned, imply either the devil or enlightenment and wisdom.
But, after all, this is not the same as the system in China. The conception of China's poems is often a high combination of specific historical environment and literary creation. This phenomenon is very common in China's poems.
It can be said that poetry is an artistic projection of China people polished by countless generations in historical time and space, and a holographic image of China people's emotional experience in another time and space. Therefore, the more you read traditional poems, the deeper you dabble in China's history, the more you know about China's cultural symbols, and the more emotional information you can receive from poems, so you can have a wonderful emotional vibration with the ancients in a wider range.