◎Brilliant Ancient Literature

There have been many influential writers and works with eternal charm in Baoding.Notes on Water Classics by Li Daoyuan of the Northern Wei Dynasty is not only a comprehensive geographical work,but also a pioneer of travel notes describing the beautiful rivers and mountains with exquisite words.Yang Xuanzhi’s The Monasteries of Luoyang is a historical record of ancient Chinese Buddhism,which tells stories of historical figures and combines history,geography,Buddhism and literature.This book and Li Daoyuan’s Notes on Water Classics have always been regarded as the twin masterpieces in the literature of the Northern Dynasty.

During Sui and Tang dynasties,poets of Baoding created many famous works.Lu Sidao,a poet between the Northern Dynasty and the Sui Dynasty,was good at and pioneered in seven-character poems in the early Tang Dynasty.His representative works included Joining the Army.Lu Zhaolin,one of the“Four Great Masters in the Early Tang Dynasty,”created his representative work Chang’an City: Ancient Themes,which was also one of the representative works of seven-character poems in the Early Tang Dynasty.Liu Yuxi,praised by Bai Juyi as the“Chivalrous Poet,”was known for poems with popular language and elegant and bold style.His Bamboo Branch Song,Willow Branch Song and other works feature concise and tactful presentation and elegant words.Lines such as“The sun shines in the east,the rain comes on in the west.Is it sunny or rainy?”have won universal praise.His The Scholar’s Humble Dwelling has only 81 words,each of which was perfectly selected.However,few people know that this famous work was written by Liu Yuxi at one sketch.Many lines from his poems,such as“By a boat,half-sunken,a thousand others are sailing; myriad woods in spring are growing beyond this tree ailing,”“the new leaves in a green forest urge the old leaves to fall,and the front waves in a running river make way for the rear waves,”are all famous lines that have been passed down through the ages.Jia Dao,a representative of the“Assiduous School,”was famous for his poems featuring assiduous scrutiny of words.One day,he thought of two lines when riding a donkey,“Birds nestle in the trees by the pond,a monk knocks at the door awash in the moon.”He wanted to replace the word“knock”with the word“push.”After repeated thinking,he started reciting on the donkey’s back,stretching out his hand to push and knock,until he got the advice from Han Yu and decided to use“knock.”Then,the word“Tuiqiao”(meaning push and knock in Chinese) became an allusion to scrutiny about problems and repeated modification of words.

Yuan Qu plays an important role in the history of Chinese literature,and Baoding is also home to many famous writers and immortal works of Yuan Qu.Guan Hanqing,Wang Shifu and others were all masters of Yuan Qu.Guan Hanqing created a large number of works reflecting social life,condemning the ruling class’s arrogance and disregard for people’s lives,and showing deep sympathy to the fate of the working people and women at the bottom of society.Wang Shifu achieved his position in the history of Chinese drama with his play Cui Yingying Waiting for the Moon in the Western Chamber (Romance of the Western Chamber),which was unprecedented in the history of Chinese drama in terms of structure and scale.It broke through the convention of normal works and showed the full picture of the tortuous and moving love story of Cui Yingying and Zhang Sheng in the form of an epic,allowing for plenty of room for the plots and the portraying of the characters,which was a pioneering attempt of Wang Shifu.