A beauty is broken before she gets old.
The pace of life in ancient times was slow, and the ancients came up with many things to pass the long and boring daily life. Burning incense, ordering tea, hanging pictures and arranging flowers are four things of ancient literati, all of which are elegant with "four mountains and four waters". Among them, China Xiang culture has a long history and reached its peak under the impetus of the literati class.
In ancient times, almost everything originated from "ceremony". It is a ceremony of mutual respect between relatives and friends, a ceremony of going to court, and a ceremony of holding orchids with fragrance.
Incense has always existed in China's etiquette. Officialdom holds orchids to burn incense, and the Dragon Boat Festival burns incense packages, and worships ancestors and worships gods to bathe and burn incense. Incense is everywhere.
"Book of Rites" records: "Men and women who are not crowned, the first crow of the chicken, the washing of the salty alliance, the brushing of the horns, and the tassels are all smelly." In the pre-Qin period, teenagers should wash their hands, arrange their hair and skirts, and tie sachets to avoid offending their elders.
After that, "Xiang" gradually drifted away from the court etiquette system and was full of personal color. This was mainly because after Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, the literati class gradually became independent, divorced from blind political theory and paid more attention to their own spiritual practice, and the essence of Xiang was excavated.
Ancient men and women pay attention to expression and end with ceremony. Xiang Xiang has become the medium of friendship between young men and women.
"The beauty of the temple is colorful and the fragrance is already on the way." Girls always like to give their sachets to their boyfriends as keepsakes to create a series of happy or sad love stories.
Jia Chong's daughters, Wu Jia and Han Shou, had a private meeting in the middle of the night. Wu Jia gave Wu Han the incense given by the emperor, and loved him and gave him the best things.
I didn't expect this fragrance to last for several months, and the Yuanyang thing was discovered like this. Fortunately, Jia Chong didn't beat Yuanyang, and they got married as they wished. Later generations called "Han Shou stealing incense" a woman who loves a man.
Incense is not reserved for women, and ancient men used it more.
"You know the fragrance when you hear it from afar." Yu Xun, a handsome man in the Three Kingdoms, likes incense. It is said that his body smells a hundred paces away; Where you sit, the fragrance will last for three days.
Not only civil servants, but also military commanders are incense. In the Tang Dynasty, many young soldiers liked to go hunting early in the morning, riding white horses and dancing in robes. Their foreign names smelled very fragrant.
A strange young lang, covered in musk and with fragrant clothes, and a handsome boy appeared on the outskirts of colorful willow blue, Chun Qing, who was personable and moved people's hearts.
When the spirit of incense is combined with human temperament, incense becomes an elegant thing for literati.
During the Tang and Song Dynasties, literati incense prevailed. Taking incense as a friend and expressing feelings with incense are very popular among literati, and there are even folk parties to fight and taste incense to show and compete the skill of "harmony with incense".
The ancient study is also called "cloud window" and "cloud pavilion" because of the fragrance of the ancient study-cloud. When meditating on Buddhism, drinking tea, singing and dancing, and reciting poems, light a cigarette, and the flames will fill the room with fragrance.
The ancients were cold for ten years, and the long night was too lonely. At this time, the study burned incense and became friends silently, and the single night didn't seem so difficult.
In ancient times, the process of burning incense was extremely complicated. Burning incense is just like tasting tea. You have to do it yourself to get a wonderful and pure enjoyment.
However, having said that, there are still many literati who accompany Deng Qing's paintings. They are eager to have a confidante to stand by and add fragrance to their tea.
The West Chamber, Zhang Sheng reading at night, and Cui Yingying tea add fragrance, which makes many literati fascinated; In Liaozhai, there are also many anecdotes about Hua Xian, the fox demon who came at dawn in the middle of the night and the scholar who had to say in the ruined temple.
The moonlight outside the window is like water, the snowy night inside the window is warm, the beauty is bitter, the harp is ringing, and the western window is cut. The scholar's cold and lonely life in the sultry aroma seems to be full of poetry and painting.
Incense played an irreplaceable role in China's ancient life. Every scene is inseparable from incense, for example, the emperor is meditating to worship Buddha, the literati are reciting poems, the literati are studying hard at the cold window, and Wang Sun is intoxicated with money.
Incense is not only a feast for the senses. Incense emphasizes the five products of "cleanliness, roundness, elegance, Taoism and harmony", and incense is more integrated into life, which has become the philosophy of life of the ancients for self-cultivation and is also the mapping of their exquisite life and elegant taste.
Maybe we can't go back to ancient times, but we can still enjoy the nourishing ceremony and the elegant life of nourishing the heart and keeping in good health like the ancients, with a cup of tea, a pool of lotus flowers, a wisp of incense and a green lantern.