Lantern Festival in Jin Ping Mei and A Dream of Red Mansions
Jin Ping Mei and A Dream of Red Mansions are the two most outstanding novels about the world in the history of Chinese ancient novels, and the relationship between them is very obvious. Many scholars in Qing Dynasty thought that A Dream of Red Mansions was born out of Jin Ping Mei and was a reflection of Jin Ping Mei, that is, the so-called "theory of birth" and "theory of reflection". Jin Ping Mei, for the first time, shifted the focus of the novel from the legend of ghosts and gods and historical romance to daily family life, describing the rise and fall of the Ximen Qing family. A Dream of Red Mansions inherits this theme and depicts the process of Jia’s prosperity and decline. In the two books, there are many descriptions of festivals, and the Lantern Festival is the most important one. From the description of the Lantern Festival, we can not only see the difference in family status between Jia Fu and Ximen Qing, but also see the reference and inheritance of A Dream of Red Mansions from Jin Ping Mei in terms of structure and plot.
Ximen Qing’s "Rich" and Jia’s "Expensive"
Ximen Qing is the son of a well-to-do family in Qinghe County. His father started a drugstore, and he was promoted step by step by buttering up various officials, so he became a nouveau riche from scratch. Jia Fu was not only a founding hero, but also became a relative of the country after Yuan Chun entered the palace. By Baoyu’s generation, he was already a noble family. Comparing the descriptions of the Lantern Festival in the two books, we can clearly see that Ximen Qing’s family highlights the word "rich" on holidays, which shows the financial resources of the nouveau riche everywhere, while Jia’s family is rich in financial resources, but the details show its status and position, highlighting the word "expensive".
Talking about the flower viewing lamp in the fifteenth episode of Jin Ping Mei. It is an important tradition of Lantern Festival since ancient times to watch lanterns. Lanling Xiaoxiao was born in this time, and the Lantern Festival was beautifully written, and there were only a dozen kinds of lanterns mentioned. Extract a paragraph for your reference:
"The rocks wear Ssangyong to play in the water, and the clouds reflect the sky alone. The golden screen lamp and the jade floor lamp see a piece of pearl; Lotus lanterns and hibiscus lanterns are scattered around thousands of places. Hydrangea lights, bright and clean, snowflake lights, blowing one after another. "
The fifteenth illustration of Jin Ping Mei, Lantern Festival Lantern Festival.
In A Dream of Red Mansions, Princess Yuan visits her relatives at the Lantern Festival, and this time it is also full of colors. Jia Fu spent a lot of energy up and down, decorated with lanterns, and hung lanterns in Ningrong Erfu. "All the lanterns compete for glory up and down, which is really a glass world, and jewelry is dry." There are also all kinds of exquisite bonsai lights, beaded curtains and embroidered curtains on board, and it goes without saying that ". Yuan Chun "sighed silently about the extravagant expenses".
In the 87th edition of A Dream of Red Mansions, when Yuan Fei was on her mother’s visit, the imperial wives of Jia Fu lined up to greet her.
Although Ximen Qing has lanterns hanging at home, he still focuses on the street lantern market. Jia Fu is a noble family with strict manners. The women in Jia Fu can’t show their faces in the market like Simon Meng Yulou and Pan Jinlian, etc., for character to play with. Plutocratic family, the second residence of Ningrong, is decorated with lanterns. It is as lively and colorful as the street lantern market, and it is full of aristocratic style.
The two families are different, and we can see a thing or two from go to the opera. Go to the opera is also one of the customs of the Lantern Festival. In the fifteenth session of Jin Ping Mei, Li Pinger once invited a play to sing lanterns for everyone, and Ximen Qing specially let the maids at home learn to play and sing. In the 24th episode, four maids, Chun Mei, Yuxiao, Yingchun and spearmint, were asked to play lanterns at home.
In Jia Fu, Yuan Fei taught Jia Qiang to buy twelve girls from Gusu before mothering, but made room for pear fragrance court to make these twelve girls sing in operas at home. In addition to the family troupe, there are three special stages in Jiafu, namely, Daguanlou, Rongqingtang and Dahua Hall, among which the stage in Daguanlou will only be used when Princess Yuan returns to the province.
In addition, from the perspective of the whole book, there are also great differences between Ximen’s family and Jiafu’s singing content. According to scholars’ research, there are many descriptions of operas in Jin Ping Mei, including operas, miscellaneous operas, cantata and quyi. Pan Jinlian said, "I don’t listen to plain music in every ear, but only listen to meat." Acting in Jia’s house is mostly a more elegant and delicate Kunqu opera.
Fireworks are one of the reserved programs of the Lantern Festival. In the section "Setting off fireworks in front of the luxurious house" in Jin Ping Mei, Lan Ling smiles and shows the upstart of Ximen Qing to the fullest. Simon’s house set up fireworks early, and set off fireworks in the street center. Ximen Qing and others watched it upstairs, and the citizens who heard the news downstairs came to watch. "I don’t know the number of people who watched it." It is said that the great government of Ximen is setting off fireworks here. Who will not come to watch? "
Finally, Jia Fu and Ximen Jia have different tastes in food. There are many Yuanxiao foods mentioned in Jin Ping Mei, such as "four dishes of soup, one jar of wine, one plate of peach and one plate of noodles", melon seeds, "high-topped sugar, fresh fruit", "a box of Yuanxiao, a box of sugar crisp" and so on. Although there are many delicious foods, most of them are common in the market. However, Jia’s family is often ingenious in food, which is more exquisite than luxury. For example, in the section of mothering in Yuan Chun, the palace gave a dessert called "steamed crisp cheese with sugar". In the fifty-five chapters, we also mentioned "Duck Porridge", "Jujube Rice Porridge" and "Almond Tea". From the names, we can see the exquisite intentions, not to mention the famous dishes such as "eggplant" and "sour bamboo shoots and chicken skin soup".
It can be said that both the "wealth" of Ximen’s family and the "expensive" of Jia’s family are very lifelike and have their own characteristics.
Preventing the Festival after the Lantern Festival: Inheritance and Metaphor
As mentioned earlier, A Dream of Red Mansions and Jin Ping Mei have an obvious inheritance relationship. Scholars in Qing Dynasty said that A Dream of Red Mansions was born out of Jin Ping Mei, which is also reflected in the arrangement and writing of the Lantern Festival in the book. Lantern Festival is not only a festival model depicted in two books, but also an important node in the structure, which contains profound metaphors of prosperity and decline.
From the structural arrangement, the position of Lantern Festival in the two books has an amazing correspondence. In Jin Ping Mei, Ximen celebrated the Lantern Festival for the first time in the fifteenth cycle, while in A Dream of Red Mansions, it was in the seventeenth to eighteenth cycle.
After the Lantern Festival, Ximen Qing began to build his garden, and made a private life with Li Pinger. He not only acquired the property of Li Pinger, but also quickly ingratiated himself with Cai Jing. This is the important node of Ximen Qing’s successful official career.
The fifteenth chapter of Jin Ping Mei
It was around the Lantern Festival that the Grand View Garden was completed and became the residence of Jia Baoyu and his sisters. It is an important event for the Jia family to be a princess, and it can be seen from the following text that the conferring of Yuan Chun as a princess is the last important event for the Jia family to improve its status. Before that, the author had already explained the embarrassment of Jia’s lack of internal capsule through Leng Zixing and others. Similarly, Yuan Chun’s death was accompanied by the final decline of Jia’s family. Therefore, the Lantern Festival, when Yuan Fei was visiting her mother, happened to be the last short-term rise of Jia’s family before it completely declined.
The structural significance of another Lantern Festival is more obvious.
Forty-two to forty-five chapters in Jin Ping Mei depict a Lantern Festival in detail. Before that, Ximen Qing’s beloved concubine Li Pinger gave birth to his son Guan Gang, and he himself was promoted to official position. His family career was satisfactory, and when Simon’s family was in its heyday, the Lantern Festival also had a good time. However, after that, it was soon written that "Monk Hu appeared to apply medicine", which laid a clue that Ximen Qing died of sexual indulgence, which was the turning point of the book’s prosperity and decline. We soon saw that Ximen Qing lost something he was proud of, and the Ximen family could never have such a prosperous Lantern Festival again.
The forty-second chapter of Jin Ping Mei
Similarly, A Dream of Red Mansions has arranged such a grand festival celebration near the middle of the book. The author used fifty-three and fifty-four chapters to describe a grand celebration of cooking oil with flowers and bright fire. Before this time, several new sisters had just arrived in the Grand View Garden, and this Lantern Festival was also the one with the largest number of people in the Grand View Garden. However, even in such a grand celebration, the plot of Wu Jinxiao’s tribute still shows that Jia’s supply is not as good as before. After the Lantern Festival, Xifeng, who was in power in Jiafu, had a physical crisis. In less than half a year, by the time of the Mid-Autumn Festival banquet, the characters were scattered and the scene of decline appeared. As the fifty-three Hui Dynasty fat group said: "The first half of put in order, the second half of Xiao Luo, alternating shades." Fifty-three or fifty-four Yuan Xiao banquets are the turning point from prosperity to decline.
87 version of "Dream of Red Mansions" stills, Rongguofu Lantern Festival Banquet
So, why is the Lantern Festival?
In addition to the important position of Lantern Festival in ancient China, and its unique entertainment and celebration nature, as Andrew H. Plaks pointed out in "China Narratology", novelists in Ming and Qing Dynasties prefer to describe Lantern Festival, and arrange the hottest scene in the coldest season of the year, which can be regarded as a fable of life’s ups and downs, which contains the dialectic of ups and downs in China’s philosophy. Both Jin Ping Mei and A Dream of Red Mansions tell readers in the most prosperous festivals that this is just the appearance of the desolation of life. The more lively the banquet, the more it reminds readers that there is no banquet that never ends, and the prosperity will inevitably be scattered and desolate. The fog of sadness is all over Hualin, and the white earth is the truth of life.
As Cao Xueqin told us in the first time in A Dream of Red Mansions, it is time to prevent the smoke from going out after the Lantern Festival. After the prosperous Lantern Festival, both books ushered in a long and grand curtain call. Those beautiful or dirty, fresh or dull will fade away step by step. Whether Ximen Qing, Jia Baoyu or you and I are immersed in them, we will finally face the truth of life.
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