Letters in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period were all written on bamboo slips. In order to prevent others from peeking, they were covered with boards and tied with ropes. That rope is called Feng. When we say "shut my mouth" now, we mean to seal it up and tie it up. Later, the envelope was sealed with sealing mud, and then the sealing mud was stamped, indicating that the letter had not been opened. The characters on the pipa are the pipa characters studied by linguists now.
Letters have many names, such as letters, calligraphy, letters, letters, letters, letters, letters, letters, letters, letters, letters. Celebrity letters before the Tang Dynasty, later called posts, attached importance to their calligraphy. The Reply Post of the Palace Museum, the treasure of the town hall for the 80th anniversary celebration, is a letter from Lu Ji in the Western Jin Dynasty to his sick friend. These nine lines of 84-character cursive script are China's earliest calligraphy works and celebrity's notes.
History records: "It is said that the king of Chu sent a letter to the minister." Shi Shuo Xin Yu Liang Ya: "Xie Xuan believes in Huai Shang, but he doesn't say anything when reading." Ancient Yuefu poem: "There is a letter to send a book, but no letter to remember." Zi Tongzhi Jian: "It is advisable to change the book urgently." Yue Jue Shu: "The more food you lose, the more loyal you are, and the more Wu Zhirong you get." Wait a minute. The "letter" in the above article is the messenger, which means the messenger. The "book" in the text is the true letter.
"A letter from home is worth a thousand pounds of gold", "writing a letter to a friend", Lu Xun's "book of two places" and "book" in the idiom "Hongyan delivers a book" which is still in use today all mean letter.
Since "book" means letter, what did ancient books generally replace?
Ancient "books" were carved on bamboo or wood chips. The book carved on bamboo is called "Jane" and the book carved on wood chips is called "Big". The "Jane" and "Da" here, as well as the "books" that bind them into volumes, are all ancient books.
When the ancients wrote letters, they were also written on boards at first. The board used to write letters is about a foot long, so it is called "letter", which is an ancient letter. In order to distinguish it from bamboo slips, people call letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters letters.
The delivery of letters is an important way of human communication. There are several ways to spread ancient letters:
Yubang is a letter with feathers. Yan Shigu's note: "Those who use wooden slips as books are two inches long and need to be recruited. If it is in a hurry, it will be inserted by a bird hair to show urgency. " It means that in ancient times, when the war was urgent, feathers were inserted into letters, which was called "feather state".
Feather book is an ancient conscription document. The ancients thought that birds could fly, and under the conditions at that time, the fastest way was to fly, so inserting or sticking bird feathers on letters meant that things were urgent and must be delivered quickly.
One of the ancient feather books in "Chicken Hair Letter" is to stick chicken feathers on letters, so it is also called "Chicken Hair Letter". This method of delivering letters has been used until War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression's time. The Wa, Lahu, Jingpo and other ethnic minorities in southwest China still sent letters in this way until the eve of democratic reform.
Carrier pigeons deliver letters. In ancient times, homing pigeons delivered letters. This way of delivering letters has a long history. When Zhang Qian in the Western Han Dynasty and Ban Chao in the Eastern Han Dynasty successively sent missions to the Western Regions, they all used homing pigeons.
In ancient times, bamboo tubes were used to deliver letters. This method began in the Tang Dynasty. According to Tang Yulin, when Bai Juyi was a secretariat in Hangzhou, he lived in a different place with his friends, so it was inconvenient to communicate with each other, so he put the written poems in a bamboo tube and sent them to each other. This kind of bamboo tube is also called "mailbox". From the Tang Dynasty to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, bamboo tubes played a role in protecting and transmitting letters, similar to today's envelopes.
A way of transmitting emergency military information in ancient times, commonly known as "passing the gold medal". Beginning in the Song Dynasty, it was called "Chicken Feet Shop" in the Yuan Dynasty. Legend has it that Yue Fei got 12 gold medals from Song Gaozong one day in a row, which made him retreat. This is a gold-lettered signboard.
In ancient China, letters were different. Books refer to letters, believers. Later, letters were generally called letters. In other words, modern letters were usually called "books" in ancient times. "Zuo Zhuan" records: "The uncle made the son produce books." Famous letters, such as Sima Qian's Letter to Ren An. In modern Chinese, "book" still retains the meaning of "letter", such as "letter from home". The nicknames of ancient letters are introduced as follows:
Before the brief invention of papermaking, China used bamboo slices cut into long and narrow strips as writing materials. People call this kind of bamboo chip Jane. The bamboo pieces used to write letters are called bamboo slips.
The thin and small wood used for writing in ancient times was called bamboo slips. When writing bamboo slips in the Han Dynasty, the width of imperial edicts was less than 3 feet, while the width of ordinary letters was only 1 foot, so letters were called letters.
In ancient Cambodia, Cambodian bamboo slips were very common, including letters, business cards and posts, such as invitations, greetings and books.
In ancient times, white silk was called plain silk. Letters written in white silk (or silk) are called geometry, and later "geometry" became synonymous with letters.
Stationery was originally a beautiful piece of bamboo for people to write poems or draw pictures. General stationery is also called stationery, and later it is synonymous with letters.
The letter originally refers to the envelope of the letter. In ancient times, letters were sent in wooden boxes, which was called letters. Later, letters were called letters, such as letters, letters and official letters.
Zaza refers to ancient letters and public and private documents. According to "Selected Works" and "Nineteen Ancient Poems and Seventeen Poems", there is such a poem: "Guests come from afar, leave me a book." Zagreb originally meant small wooden slips used for ancient writing. The word "letter" is still widely used.
The nicknames of the above letters are all related to the materials used in writing letters in ancient China. In addition to the above nicknames, there are some nicknames in ancient letters. In ancient times, there was a saying that Hongyan handed down books. This allusion comes from Wu Zhuan: "The son of heaven shoots at the forest and gets a goose, which is covered with silk books and speaks eloquently in a river." So, later, red rocks were used instead of letters.
Carp also refers to letters. This allusion comes from the poem "Drinking Horses in the Great Wall Cave" written by Han Yuefu: "A guest came from afar, left me a pair of carp, called boiled carp, and there were letters in it." There are several ways for carp to call letters. One is called Pisces. For example, in the Song Dynasty's "Butterfly Loves Flowers", "There is nowhere to ask if the butterfly flies, and the tall buildings are separated by water, and the Pisces are broken." The other is called "double carp". Liu Yuxi's poem "Send Cui out" says: "Acacia looks at the Huaihe River, and double carp should not be rare." Han Yu's poem "Send Lutong" also includes the poem "Send Long Bearded Carp". In Li Shangyin's poem "To Secretary Hu Ling", "Song and Shu have been away from home for a long time, and the two carp are separated by a piece of paper." Some of them are directly called "fish books", and the poem "Recalling Yu Di" by Wei Gao, a poet in the Tang Dynasty: "There is no fish book in the Yangtze River, and it is like a piano to send acacia." Because carp is often used instead of letters, the ancients often made letters into carp shapes. In the poem "Han Yuefu", there is a saying that "the ruler is like a remnant of snow, forming a pair of carp. You should know well and read the books in the curtains. "
Letters also refer to letters. Letters originally refers to the mailbox of letters. After ancient letters are written, they are usually found in a bamboo tube or wooden tube and then sent out. There is a phrase in Li Bai's poem, "Peach and bamboo calligraphy, elegant writing". Later, the book tube also became synonymous with letters. For example, there is a saying in Zhao Fan's poem in the Song Dynasty: "I am afraid that there will be no geese in Hengyang, and the book container will not disturb people."
Eight-part essay is also another name for letters. In the past, letters had eight lines per page, so they were called eight-part essays. Li Xian quoted Ma Rong's "Zhang Dou Shu" in the Book of the Later Han Dynasty: "Meng Ling's slave came and gave him a book. He saw the handwriting ... Although there are two books, eight lines of paper and seven words." Wen Tingyun wrote: "Eight lines, a thousand miles of dreams, flying in the south."
On the territory of Gu Mo, Luoyang, the capital of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty in the Bronze Age, is the center, with Qilu in the east, China in the west, Zhao Yan in the north and Wu Chu in the south, extending in all directions and connected by post roads. A tactful counselor, with a fish-gut sword and plain Tsing Yi, rode the dust, carrying simple letters and symbols, shuttled between the cities of the vassal states, climbed mountains, crossed plank roads and galloped away. Eight hundred urgent letters, crimson vermilion seals, colorful feathers, vigorous brushwork, such as birds bai ling, meteors whimper. Officials play newspapers, lobbyists write letters, and White inserts them backwards. It's a sapphire paper with a sand pen, which burns for three thousand miles and flies to the newspaper. The messenger on horseback flew out of the gate of Yan State and bypassed the moat. The millet and wheat were reflected in the downtown lanes of Wang Fu mansion, restaurants and tea shops, and the clouds and green hills went straight to the southeast.
In ancient times, books spread thousands of miles. During the Warring States period, letters or articles were carved on bamboo slips and sent to the public urgently. Correspondence between Yan, Zhao and Zhao. Qilu counselors, men and women, wrote documents, made speeches, gave orders, took long-sleeved cases, rubbed ink and painted books, wrote sapphire, waved wolf's hair, walked by Jeff on land and water, the emissary wore Tsing Yi, wore cufflinks, rode thousands of miles alone, and spread the word in the post station for a while. In Qin dynasty, the bamboo slips used the big seal script and the small seal script, the blessing biography used the seal script, the seal script used the Miao seal script, and the banner used the bird script. Flaming war horses flying in the mountains, different colors of cloud flags, the sound of hooves like gongs and drums on the battlefield, pedestrians in the Mulberry Garden and Guandao Street Post Station in Guo Cheng, Shan Ye, have evaded, which is a mess. Colorful brocade, Mighty High, Fengyun hooves, bonfire smoke, emissaries mounted their horses lightly, and sent the silk script of Peacock Purple Feather to the marching camp.
From Bashu to Guanzhong, Micang Mountain and Daba Mountain valley fluctuate, and Guanshan Mountain is blocked. Messenger runs along Mashan Road, passing Dujiangyan, steep Jiange, Jiamengguan, Yangpingguan, Woye and mountains. Sichuan has thousands of miles of fertile land and fertile soil. The fragrance of oleander and rice floated from the valleys and hills along the way, and the book in the messenger's arms and the sword in his bag were soaked with this fragrance. Guanzhong rice is fragrant, and Jiangnan lotus seed is red. An ancient messenger always shuttles between Qinling and Dayu's tomb, Guanzhai and Chengsai. Silk books like cicadas and affectionate letters from home are like kites flying from the wings of window cabinets, colorful wings and light wings, flying on the map of Han Dynasty. Peacock feathers are lined with gorgeous and colorful clothes, elegant lines and quaint tailoring on stationery. The bright moon shines on the messenger flying on horseback, surrounded by orange rice, dark yellow rape flowers and citrus fruits. When you are hungry, stay in the horse and drink water, chew a piece of dry food and walk thousands of miles. The messenger got dressed and rode to Beijing. On the distant post road, the messenger has been poisoned by flowers and plants and bewitched by birds flying in the mountains. After delivering the letter, I enjoyed rice and silver in the Korean granary, bought wine, pepper, ginger and leek, and was drunk for three days.
Letters of the Han Dynasty and imperial edicts of the Qin Dynasty were copied by official script. Gaotang commanded, arranger straight to the east side. Simple bamboo slips and silk books are all wrapped with silk thread. If it is an emperor's handwritten letter, it is carefully packed with gold thread. Cooking in the middle of the night, on the road in the middle of the night, the experienced and mature messenger rides the flying horse of Yueyue with a small yellow flag on his back. By the moonlight in the early morning, they passed through the busy camellia shops, barbecue stalls and antique shops in Beijing, bypassed the street corner, traveled 400 miles a day and spread the letters to the southeast state capital. As for letters from home, there are different ways to write them, using strange ink, little by little, daubing them, using pen vigorously, and using Feifeng carefree. There are scrawled letters from home, hasty conclusions and messy brushstrokes, which remind people of the writer's anxiety and make people frown. The letters of wooden slips, like homing pigeons, went straight into the sky and arrived in Jiangling from Wuguan via Nanyang. They bumped and dusty all the way.
The ancients wrote letters, paying attention to sending feelings for thousands of miles, and the words were true. Between the streets, Pegasus suddenly came to report, enter the topic, hand books to relatives and friends, and say goodbye to each other. The cursive script on the letterhead is as big as raindrops, hooked like a spider web, scratched or intoxicated. The calligraphers in Wei and Jin dynasties are vigorous in writing and got the message. The credit they wrote was wrapped in a red ribbon, as if it could fly thousands of miles away. Chinese characters on paper are like rice grains, fish scales or clouds, with wings and feathers, eyes and ears. The messenger galloped and roared by, and the silk book in his arms was as nervous as a rabbit, jumping up and down and hiding in the clothes of the messenger. The road from Beijing to the frontier fortress is dusty, and the post roads from the Yellow River to the south are all traces of thieves and wolves.
During the war, the arrow was fired, and the fierce mountain king who rose to take the mountain as the king intercepted business trips, searched for silver mines and robbed jewels. He can't say, he told his minions to get back to the cabin. Dangerous wild animals appeared in the barren hills, and the minions came to report. As soon as the messenger from Tsing Yi rode over the ridge, King Shan told everyone to shout and rushed down to stop the messenger. However, the stupid and fierce Mountain King never intercepted the messenger of Pegasus, asked the way to the strong man, respectfully handed his fist and toasted each other. The messenger gulped it down, and everyone laughed and went back to the village. Strong men flatter and spur, and go straight to the southeast with letters from home. When I return to Beijing next year, I will bring my 20-year-old daughter Hong from the altar of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and my minions will get drunk.
Liu Gongquan, the champion of Gobang in Tang Yuanhe for three years, has a strong skeleton, restrained and stretched, and is clean and neat. Liu Gongquan's fine-print letters are profound and lasting. The elegant paper is even and hard with a pen, steadily chasing Weibei, and the stippling is crisp and beautiful, soft and vigorous. There is a red seal of cinnabar on the letter from home, so I ordered the book to March quickly and return to China to report good news. Lang, the top scholar in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, preferred red mane horses and cursive scripts when delivering letters. He was proud of his spring breeze and hurried to spread the news of high school to his hometown. When he returned to the posthouse, he quickly asked the confused scholar to wait on him with pen and ink, rolled up his sleeves, dressed himself and wrote with long sleeves. The New Scholar was edited by Liu Pin imperial academy. He drank an altar of Zhuangyuan Red for eighteen years, drunk and swaying. The ink was dark, the aroma was overflowing, and the paper was white. The fresh regular script was intertwined with the green dew in the field and the quaint brush marks, such as mullet and swift, dazzling and horizontal. The handwriting on the paper is very scrawled, which makes people feel that the ancient literati are quick and full of strokes. The mare with galloping hooves, glass eyes, pearl emerald color, sparkling and moving. The horse's bones and muscles are strong, broad, radiant and fast, and it raises a dust on the mountain road, and only its shadow can be seen from a distance. Along the way, Shan Ye geese and red foxes accompanied him. They flew, played, jumped and made noise with horses. Outside Lin 'an, the messenger on horseback rushed into the city gate, dismounted from the saddle and wrote a letter to announce the good news. Their movements are as agile as swallows. Letters arrived in the south, spring came, plants sprouted, and the news that gifted scholars passed the exam spread all over the village, and relatives and friends rushed to tell each other and bowed and drank.
A letter from the Han Dynasty is a kite. In the Han Dynasty, bamboo sticks were tied into a bird-shaped skeleton, a rectangular hard bamboo board, and pulled into a tile shape from the back, either vertically or horizontally. The painting is simple and clear, with bowstring tied on his back and strong wind, flying into the sky, running around and buzzing. A kite with peacock feathers and purple gold ornaments floats across Duji Road in Songtingguan, taking migratory birds to the south full of peach blossoms and rice. A warm home is written, which is a beautiful woman's book and a beauty's promise. In ancient times, candlelight filled the courtyard at night. After bathing, the scholars burned incense and cleaned their hands, sharpened their pens, rolled up their sleeves, and thought of their bosom friends who copied letters in the bookstores in Zijingguan and Taoyuan Mountain. Ten miles a pavilion, thirty miles a place, letters like kites, flying over the posthouse guest house. Brocade in the clouds, geese flying thousands of miles, scholar stationery is like a paper kite in the Han Dynasty, dancing in the clouds.
The kite is made of red silk tapestry, bamboo sticks hold up the skeleton, and thin sandpaper or printed rags are used to decorate the wings. The ancients used red silk thread to bind stationery and notes when flying pigeons handed books. The kite turns over and the pen turns over, telling the gains and losses of predecessors and the length of family background. Both gossip and running accounts are sent by messengers riding bordeaux horses and Qing horses across the mountains. Red silk thread, apricot stationery, from Beijing to Shuntianfu, Jinling, cold frost and rain, autumn wind and heavy snow, several boxes of paper kites have broken their threads and broken their wings, and the spring scenery of paper and pens has faded several times. The mountain road was dangerous, and the hungry messenger was robbed by the road, lost his way, soaked the writing paper, and sometimes came back helplessly. Or ask for directions, or stay in the ancient temple in the barren hills. The post horse is lost and the property is abandoned. The letter in your arms seems to chirp and sigh, mumbling about the length of this post road. A lost letter from home is like a kite with a broken thread, and there is no reply.
The kite broke its feathers and was picked up by a woman who painted it red and sewed it with a needle and thread. The rich girl playing in the ancient private school fooled the old gentleman and climbed into the corner with a kite. There are exquisite bamboo-bone kites, Suzhou embroidered handkerchiefs and stacks of peach blossom paper in the drawer, with the cyan of lotus seeds and the goose yellow of sour apricots on it. There were many bookstores and restaurants in the capital of the Ming Dynasty. Within the blue wall, there are women who are good at embroidery and poor scholars who write letters to their families.
Rich children in blue robes and printed cloth shoes are studying in Jubao Zhai, enjoying silk embroidery, gilded pots, glass bowls and lapis lazuli, fighting crickets and kicking shuttlecocks in the backyard, watching flowers and plants in downtown areas, turning over scrolls mounted with silk, eating pickled fish and drinking carved flowers with a smile. Poor scholars studying in Beijing are hiding in their study, trying to copy books. Copied stationery is generally ink, paper and notes are rouge, brown and blue, soft like willow branches in the south of the Yangtze River. Between the lines, or give way, or write a thin glass of wine, talk about Qin sacrifices, or praise Yi 'an, without adding a word. Between the lines, they are happy and worried about the young elves in Wan Ren Xuanyuantai. Or irony, or worship, or ask relatives, or humility, a colorful letter, elegant and exquisite pen and ink, half an hour later, in the moonlight at the window, the pen was sent to Huaxi Building, Shibanqiao Street, Zoumaqiao, Shaoxing, thousands of miles away. While the girls in the private school are eating water chestnuts, biting sour Xinger, writing fine print, stabbing Su embroidery, pulling red silk kites, and looking at the tea shop of the restaurant and the neat grey tiles paved with silver rice from the roof.
Zuo Fengyi, Yu Bicheng and Zhu Quexing always have talented women who are full of poems and books to make kites and write letters in spring. Jin people write posts after the rain, and when the snow is fast, the posts are clear, which is called fast and pleasant. The delicate small letters of the boudoir women are also exquisite and vivid. The stationery is sandwiched in a thread-bound book and wrapped in blue printed cloth and Suzhou embroidered handkerchief. There are mahogany slips hidden in the thread-bound book, which is the love of childhood. Palace books in Ming and Qing dynasties were mostly dressed in yellow silk to show their dignity, while letters written by literati in the south of the Yangtze River and women in boudoir with red makeup were soft and delicate, oblique and fat, and had the soul of childhood friends. You don't need an ivory water board, and the decree punishes the official. Even cursive scripts are naive and affectionate. Peach letters are sandwiched between letters, and the green of colored petals and sleeves has the freshness of day lily. In Old Master Q in the Qing Dynasty, the peach carpenter in the Song Dynasty did not understand that this small embroidery of Shu embroidery was embroidered with random needles, needles, gold rings, mixed needles, needle rollers and needles, and each needle was wrapped in thread-bound books and cursive paper. The boudoir girls in Yangzhou don't think about the skills of the court cooks, but read the scarlet letter of the wine brand, twist handkerchiefs, hold the thin thread of paper kites in the city walls and houses, and yearn for the paper kites floating outside the city.
Spring has gone, and spring has come again. Paper kites made of Shu embroidery tapestry landed in Fangcaozhai and Yuhua Building. Cricket-fighting children crossed the Qing Palace of Prince Mi and the apricot glazed tiles of the Royal Garden, watching paper kites fly over the lonely smoke in the village. This strange kite is a charming swallow to them, flying lightly over Yangzhou Salt Road and the high wall of Wang Fu. Tough bamboo, sandpaper, dense needle and thread, five-colored gold thread, peacock feathers, cuckoo wings, black centipede, beautiful snake, butterfly, jade unicorn, Pan Xiaolong, and paper kites of different shapes flew over the world of flowers and flowers of the princes and nobles. It has colorful wings, a hundred feet of hairspring, and only eats mushrooms, tender grass, leaves, emerald kites, clouds are its clothes, and aquatic carp. It lives in green Huang Shang stationery, winks, sends the spring breeze, crosses fields and picks lotus seeds.
The kite in the cloud is a kite in the Tang Dynasty or a bluebird in the Han Dynasty. It has a colorful crown and bright blue or green feathers. Outside the ancient city walls and palaces, there are cornices, colored paintings and Zhu Zhu Jin Ding, embroidered with a Sichuan mandarin duck. The yellow flag is embroidered in the clouds, and in the phoenix bird tattoo, the wings of the paper kite are tattooed with gold thread by ingenious women, which is the peacock like a spring begonia in a thread-bound book. Away from Beijing, it brought letters from teenagers to their sweethearts. The red ribbon between the white clouds is the daughter book in the arms of the emissary. An organ made of silk or bamboo flute, which sounds when the wind blows, is the crow of a kite. Pearl peacocks made of paper kites, under the guidance of thin fingers, are flying over the willows in Fuzhai and drifting towards Shan Ye of Pegasus. I don't know when the letters decorated with Beijing embroidered ribbons will arrive in Beijing, and I don't know when the readers in Beijing will finish writing exquisite and beautiful lower case letters and fly kites to deliver letters.
Send you a colorful brocade book, a snow-blue kite with mandarin duck embroidery and red silk thread; Insert peacock feathers, write in fine print, fly directly to the southeast thousands of miles, and swear in the book that this life will not be separated.