Original title: Spring outing of ancient people is a serious thing

In late spring, when the temperature rises, you can breathe out the old and welcome the new. Since ancient times, Chinese people have liked to go hiking at this time. Tracing back to the origin, it is the ancient farming ritual of welcoming the spring, which has a profound impact on later generations.

When spring returns to the earth, the nature is full of vitality everywhere. People take advantage of their advantages to have fun in the mountains and countryside. In addition to the phenological characteristics reflected by the Qingming Festival and the Guyu Solar Term in this period, as well as the integration of Qingming Festival and customs for neighboring Shangsi and cold food after the Tang Dynasty, people naturally became more accustomed to and preferred spring outings at this time. As time goes by, people's spring activities tend to be more entertaining and secular.

In the early years of the Tang Dynasty, the custom of people sweeping tombs on the Cold Food Festival, eating tributes in front of tombs, and having outings in spring has become a common practice, and has attracted the attention of the court. In the year of Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty, Li Zhilong Shuo (662 AD), the imperial court issued an edict forbidding people to drink together when they are "marrying at the funeral" or "at the time of funeral".

However, these folk customs of outing during ancestor worship did not decline because of the imperial court's ban, but became more and more prosperous. In the 20th year of the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty (732), when the imperial court saw that the ban was difficult to implement, it had no choice but to permit the restoration of the previous mode of festival customs. According to Du Fu's Tomb Sweeping Day, "It is a day when we are busy with flowers, and thousands of people come out of Changsha. At the ferry, the green willows are bright and the eyebrows are bright, and the pride of the red hooves gnaws at the knees." It depicts the lively scene of men, women and young people riding by boat and enjoying spring outings at that time.

With the development of productive forces and the evolution of social life, social material civilization is gradually enriched, and people's spiritual world is more colorful. Mr. Chen Yinque once commented that "the culture of the Chinese nation has evolved for thousands of years, and has been perfected in the era of Zhao and Song." In the Song Dynasty, the trend of the transformation from customs in spring to secular entertainment was more obvious, "the songs and dancers in the capital were everywhere, and they came back at dusk" (Records of Dreams in Tokyo, Song Dynasty, Meng Yuanlao). People often bring wine and food with their families to the suburban garden to get close to nature, which is similar to the atmosphere shown in the Qingming River Map by Zhang Zeduan of the Northern Song Dynasty. It is "full of willows and green silk smoke, painting the February day of the Qingming Festival. It is good that flowers and trees move across the curtain, and girls are confused to send swings" (one of Tang Weizhuang's "Five Drunk Songs outside the City in the Cold Food Season of the Third Anniversary").

In Huanxisha Shangsi written by Yang Ji, a poet at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, he wrote that "soft emerald crowns are clustered with crabapples, rolled shirts are embroidered with lilacs, and when you are free, you can step on the water and step on the green sun", which explains the comfort of people's leisure and travel companions in spring. When people meet birds singing and flowers blooming in spring, they are not willing to "gather" in the general situation, but prefer to go out of their homes for social activities, which is also the embodiment of the ancient spirit of "harmony between man and nature".

As a matter of fact, it has been a long time since I went hiking. Zhang Xuan, a painter in the Tang Tianbao period, described the spring outing of the nobles at that time in Shangsi Festival through the Painting of the Spring Outing of the Madame of the Guo State, creating a relaxed atmosphere of spring and sunshine, and showing the fusion of spring scenery in Du Fu's "Beautiful People's Walk", which "looks thick, elegant and true, with fine texture and even flesh. Embroidered clothes reflect the late spring, and the golden peacock and silver unicorn".

Spring outing goes further, that is, traveling far, which was not an ordinary thing in ancient times when transportation was not convenient. But there are always some ancient people who have gone out of the ordinary way and have gone out of another world.

Compared with the magnanimous spring outings of the nobility, the "spring outings" of Li Daoyuan, a geographer in the Northern Wei Dynasty, are much simpler. In order to obtain real geographical information, he has visited many places and traveled all over the Central Plains to the south of the Great Wall and the east of the Qinling Mountains. In the book Shuijingzhu, most of the geographical data are derived from Li Daoyuan's personal investigation, and there are many steles in the Han and Wei dynasties (most of these data have been lost), providing extremely valuable evidence for the study of the history of the development of Chinese civilization.

Li Shizhen, a medical scientist in the Ming Dynasty, went to Wudang Mountain, Lushan Mountain, Maoshan Mountain, Niushou Mountain, Huguang, Nanzhili, Henan, Beizhili and other places to collect drug specimens and prescriptions, and paid homage to fishermen, woodcutters, farmers, rickshaw drivers, drug workers, snake hunters. He referred to 925 books on medicine in previous dynasties, "archaeological evidence of the present, study physics", and recorded thousands of words of notes, After clarifying many difficult problems, after 27 years of cold and summer, three changes of the manuscript, the 1920000 word Compendium of Materia Medica was completed in the 18th year of Wanli (1590) of the Ming Dynasty.

Xu Xiake, a geographer in the Ming Dynasty, has always been ambitious, covering 21 provinces (districts and cities) today. "He has never reached a place where people can reach, and he has explored the unknown". Wherever he goes, he has explored the mysteries, creating a new direction for field investigation and systematic description of nature. These ancient scholars who benefited later generations completed their journey of thousands of miles one step at a time, writing down the words to promote human progress one stroke at a time, which is really the best example of "body and mind are on the road".

Liu Kuili recorded in the "Chinese Festival Code" that "during the Tang and Song Dynasties, there were a lot of Qingming outings, such as swinging, tug of war, catching butterflies, picking grass, flying kites, planting willows, planting trees, etc.". The archery, antiphony, banquet, bamboo pole dancing, dance hall and other "March 3rd" festival customs from Zhuang, Li, She and Buyi have also been included in the national intangible cultural heritage project folklore category, reflecting the widespread love and cherish for spring in China since ancient times.

It is another spring, and the inheritance and development of our traditional solar terms and festival customs are still around all aspects of our life. In the spring of each year, people show their living conditions and strengthen their emotional connection during singing, dancing and outing. This is an important source of people's happiness, and provides a rich soil for reviving the traditional national culture, reconstructing the national festival system, and promoting the internal consciousness of the national community.