Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1782 Round and Square Ritual Vessels

However, the main theme of today is still happiness. Next, there will be media interviews, seminars and luncheons. The overall atmosphere is still very good.

In the next two or three days, bigwigs in the industry began to gather in Beijing. They were all heroes sent by Mr. Wang and Mr. Qi, and came to Beijing to authenticate the paintings of the Four Masters of the Six Dynasties.

Zhou Zhi and Lao Ma are also very busy. They are responsible for taking international friends around Beijing.

In fact, let alone international friends, even Zhou Zhi was quite curious about the capital. Although he had been to the capital many times, each time he basically visited the airport and a few offices of the National Museum of China and the Forbidden City. He also visited Daliushu once and Rongbaozhai once.

Zhou Zhi had never even been to his own courtyard houses.

Now those courtyard houses have been transformed into homestays full of old Yanjing style, and are also managed by Ma Ye. Zhou Zhi is not greedy for the store income, mainly because if no one lives in the old houses, they will easily lose maintenance and break down.

Except for the set in Haichao Temple which has been sold to Cui Ruzhe in exchange for a set of 310 Shi Tao Arhat album leaves and a masterpiece "Prosperous Times Lotus Wind", the other nine places have all been renovated.

Therefore, the situation where Ma Ye’s cronies of writers and literary and art figures made a lot of noise in the back room of Demian Hall, affecting everyone’s appreciation of the collection, no longer happened. Instead, they moved to an old house called "Bai Yu" in Zhouzhi that was moved from Huizhou and restored to its original state.

During the Wanli period, there were many cultural societies in Huizhou, among which the Baiyu Society headed by Wang Daokun was the most famous.

Wang Daokun was a leader in the literary world at the time, and was as famous as Wang Shizhen, the leader of the Seven Masters School. The two men, one borrowed the financial resources of Huizhou merchants, and the other borrowed the financial resources of Wu merchants, to recruit literati from all over the country and made great contributions to the development of cultural undertakings in the two places.

Zhou Zhi was not sure whether this old house with the word "Bai Yu" inscribed on the stone door was the former site of Bai Yu Society. After all, it was a Hui-style building with very elegant and prominent features. After it was renovated, Zhou Zhi thought that since there was the story of Bai Yu Society, it would be perfect as a place for literary gatherings.

Mr. Ma is just stupid. He rented houses to entertain cultural figures for free food and drinks. The Seahorse Club lost dozens of courtyard houses because he lacked management skills. He didn't know how to buy a place and use it according to the idea of ​​"playing to support fun" in collecting, and then wait for it to appreciate in value.

In order to ensure that the international friends had good food and accommodation and convenient travel, Zhou Zhi did not let Nitta Toichi and Sakamoto Goro stay in a hotel, but instead let them live in a small courtyard in Dongjiaomin Lane.

The small courtyard is different from the other houses. It is more like a "mansion" and is the former residence of Wu Zonglien, a diplomat in the late Qing Dynasty.

Wu Zonglien was a relatively active diplomat and translator during the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China. He first studied French and Russian at the Shanghai Cantonese Dialect Institute and the Yenching Tongwenguan of the Qing government. After graduation, he worked as a French translator at the Beijing-Hankou Railway Bureau. Later, he was recommended by the Zongli Yamen to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and signed the Tsarist Russia Treaty with Li Hongzhang. He then served as a translator in Britain and Russia, and has been active in the diplomatic community ever since.

He did a lot of things and translated many foreign works. The most interesting thing was that he introduced eucalyptus to China and named it, and he also married a French girl as a concubine.

This house is the old residence where Wu Zonglien lived when he was active in the capital. The house is not big, but it is built in a very "three-dimensional" style, similar to the surrounding old consulates, old embassies, etc., and is full of "Western style".

In the Republic of China, such a three-story building should be called a small Western-style building.

The first floor is a hall where dances and salons can be held. The second floor is an office with a small reception room and five or six offices. The third floor is a residence with smaller rooms, which are distributed a bit like a small hotel, with about ten rooms. It is estimated that Wu Zonglien used this place for both public and private purposes.

The renovation of this place was the most troublesome, because it involved maintaining the original appearance of the street, and the internal renovation required the approval of the Cultural Relics Bureau. So this small western-style building was the last to be renovated, just in time to receive Nitta Doichi and Ban Goro.

It is located in the back alley of the National Museum. It is only 500 meters away from the National Museum and more than one kilometer away from the Palace Museum. A few people can even walk there.

The return of the Zun Fang Lei brought quite good public response, and even the treatment of Nitta Doichi and Sakamoto Goro was improved. These two guys are easy to accompany, they don't go anywhere, and they dive into the thousands of collections of the National Museum of China and the Palace Museum and can't come out.

In his early years, Xin Tiandongyi's collection was mainly bronzes. After a serious illness in the 1950s, he began to collect Buddhist-related cultural relics. The bronzes in the National Museum are the best in the country and even in the world, so several people lingered here.

In addition to the batch that was on rotation, several people also obtained temporary permission to observe the "artifacts" that were stored in the warehouse and not on display.

This kind of treatment is not something that ordinary people can have.

For example, for a national treasure like the Li Gui, not only can several people watch it up close without any gap, they can even touch it.

The museum also specially assigned experts to give explanations to several people.

"Researcher Wu, I have a question for you."

"You tell me, see if I can answer you."

"Mr. Ma was able to confirm that the Dish-shaped Lei vessel was in the possession of Mr. Xin Tian because of an inscription that read: Dish-shaped Lei is a revered vessel made by my father."

"This inscription is extremely similar to the inscription on the lid of the jar in the Hunan Provincial Museum, which reads '皿而全作，父己尊沂', so it is concluded that they are a set."

"Although it is indeed a Lei vessel, since the inscription states that it is a Yi vessel, shouldn't we respect the ancients' naming? Why should we name it a Lei vessel based on the later classification of its shape?"

Researcher Wu is a woman in her thirties, wearing thick black-framed glasses. Upon hearing this, she said, "Professor Wang said that you can recite the Shuowen Jiezi by heart. You need to look for the reason in the original text."

Zhou Zhi suddenly understood: "Xu Shen's original text, Yi, is a common utensil in ancestral temples. Later generations interpreted it as holding silk and rice in both hands to offer to the gods. But according to the new discovery of oracle bone inscriptions, this word means like holding a chicken in both hands to offer."

"The character 糸 (from silk) is because ritual vessels must be covered with silk, and the character 廾 (from the shape of a rice holder). The Zhou Li mentions the 'Six Yi' (from the six yi). The Yi on the 緣方署 (from the square jar) does not refer specifically to the 'square yi', but should be interpreted as 'ritual vessel', which is a general term!"

Researcher Wu smiled and said, "That's right! '皿而全作父己尊沂' means that as a son, he carefully made this sacrificial vessel for his father."

"Gui, like Yi, was previously interpreted as a square vessel. Duan Yucai's "Explanation of the Chinese Characters" explained it as a square vessel for millet and sorghum. The "Zhou Li Sheren Annotation" says: The square one is called fu, and the round one is called gui. They are used to hold millet, rice, and sorghum. The Zhangke Annotation says: fu is a vessel for rice and sorghum. Gui is a vessel for millet and sorghum."

"Later, Xu Shen said that the gui was square and the fu was round. Zheng Xuan said that the gui was round and the fu was square. This is called 'different teachings from different teachers'. The gui we are talking about in bronze ware now has both shapes, with a square base at the bottom and a round container at the top. This also conforms to the ancient people's original concept of 'the sky is round and the earth is square'."