The literary giants of the late Ming Dynasty began by copying books

Fang Damei followed Shen Defu and others around the excavation site. It was almost noon, so she followed Shen Defu and others to the village next to the excavation site.

Before the group entered the village, they saw a middle-aged Confucian scholar and a middle-aged woman greeting them at the entrance of the village.

When Fang Damei saw the man, she was surprised and said: "Shi Gong, are you also in Anyang? Where is Dong Weng?"

"Xuan Zai went to Kaifeng in the past two days, so I will guard here for him. Huang Zhong, please come with me." Fan Yunlin pointed to the woman beside him and introduced to Fang Damei: "This is my wife. "

Fang Damei cupped her hands again and said, "It turns out to be Mr. Xiao Shu. I've heard about it for a long time."

Fan Yunlin, courtesy name Changqian and Shigong, was a Jinshi in the 23rd year of Wanli. He once served as the head of the Nanjing Ministry of War and a scholar in Yunnan. He just resigned this year. He is the seventeenth generation grandson of Fan Zhongyan and a calligrapher as famous as Dong Qichang. , was also invited by Dong Qichang to come to Anyang.

Standing next to him was his wife, named Xu Yuan, who was a famous female poet at this time. Together with Lu Qingzi, another female poet during the Jiajing period, she was known as the "Two Great Masters of the Wu Clan". Fan Yunlinjia was poor in his early years, and he and Xu Yuan fell in love with each other, so she married into the Xu family. Later, he passed the Jinshi examination, and the story of the couple became a favorite.

The Xu family is much richer than Fan Yunlin's family. This time Fan Yunlin came to Anyang to protect the oracle bones, and his wife Xu Yuan also contributed a lot of money.

The couple were both well-known figures in the literary world at this time. Fang Damei was from Anqing Prefecture, Nanjing. She had known Fan Yunlin for a long time, and had also heard of Xu Yuan's name.

Fang Damei walked into the village with Fan Yunlin and his wife, and found that several large houses in the village had been contracted by the Oracle Bone Society. The scholars of the Oracle Bone Society also raised their own money to build houses for making fortresses, which contained baskets and baskets. Oracle bones unearthed in Jiajia.

It was lunch time, and the Oracle Bone Society was full of literati, so they hired villagers to prepare meals. The food was quite simple, including steamed multigrain steamed buns, pickles, and wild vegetable sauce. The literati were eating dry food while studying and discussing the contents of the Oracle Bone Inscriptions. There are people who are busy cleaning the oracle bones with dry food in one hand and a small brush in the other.

Fang Damei also went to the stove and got a portion of steamed buns and pickles. She ate while walking and asked Fan Yunlin, "Since all the distinguished officials are here, why is it so simple to entertain them?"

Fan Yunlin answered honestly: "Excavation of oracle bones requires a lot of money, and protecting the oracle bones requires building a big house. Money is tight in the society, and we really cannot afford to entertain good food."

Fang Damei said strangely: "Just make rubbings from the oracle bones to keep samples. It is easy to look through, and you can sell the rubbings to make money to make up for the shortfall. With rubbings, the maintenance can be simplified."

Fan Yunlin shook his head when he heard this and said: "There were suggestions like this in the society before, but after we tried it, we found that rubbings would damage the oracle bones too much, and the research content that rubbings can do is not as good as using real oracle bones. So now people in the society have discovered It’s best to protect the excavated oracle bones.”

Fang Damei was curious: "Is there such a saying?"

Contrary to what many people imagine, rubbings can cause damage to cultural relics. If you want to make rubbings with complete details, you cannot just use clean water. Experts must learn to boil Bletilla striata water. This thing can make the connection between paper and cultural relics The gap should be as small as possible, but it will also have a corrosive effect on the surface of the cultural relics. Even if you just use clean water to rub, alternating wet and dry times will also damage fragile cultural relics. You may not see any problems after rubbing a cultural relic like a stone tablet a hundred or two hundred times, but In comparison, oracle bone inscriptions are too fragile and will probably crack if they are rubbed a few times.

Later cultural relics protection departments also issued special regulations prohibiting the rubbing of stone cultural relics. If the rubbing damage was small, the price of a good rubbing would not be so high.

And it’s not that the price of rubbings only increased after the new century. As early as the 1970s, a good-quality rubbing of "Longmen Twelve Grades" was something that leaders and their entourage couldn’t afford even if they pooled their money.

The fact that the members of the Oracle Bone Society were able to discover the shortcomings of rubbings also proves that through a series of practices, these literati finally had some basic concepts of cultural relic protection.

Don’t think that this kind of thought should naturally arise. In fact, the thought of protecting cultural relics is definitely a rare thought in this era. For example, when the stone drum, a famous cultural relic in the Tang Dynasty that recorded stone drum inscriptions, was discovered, although many calligraphers admired the stone drum inscriptions on the stone drum, they did not protect the stone drum very well. Once the rubbings were left, no one paid attention to it. , lying quietly in the wilderness, it was not until Han Yushangshu suggested protection that the stone drum was moved to Fengxiang Confucius Temple. At that time, more than a hundred years had passed since the stone drum was unearthed.

Even though the Ming Dynasty stone drum had been placed in the Dacheng Gate of the Confucius Temple in Beijing at this time, the so-called protection was just to protect the stone drum from rain. It was still a semi-open-air storage environment, and the alternation of dryness, humidity, and heat had a negative impact on the stone cultural relics. The impact is hardly noticed.

In the original history, it was not until the Qianlong period that Qianlong wanted to take these ten stone drums into the Forbidden City for his own collection. Then he had ten new stone drums carved and placed in the Confucius Temple to replace them, and the stone drum inscriptions finally entered the indoor space.

In comparison, because the quality of oracle bones is more fragile, and Wang Wenlong constantly made suggestions to Dong Qichang on the preservation of oracle bones in letters, the Oracle Bone Society was already very particular about the preservation of oracle bones compared to other cultural relics.

While Fang Damei and Fan Yunlin were discussing the research on oracle bones, Wang Tonggui was wandering around the research room.

Wang Tonggui, courtesy name Xingfu, is a native of Huanggang, a famous novelist and poet, and a part-time reporter for Suzhou Xunbao. He came to Anyang specifically to interview this time.

Wang Tonggui took a small notebook and described the environment of the research room: unpainted earth walls, only loess on the floor, wooden shelves with wood wax instead of varnish, and rows of items on the shelves. In such an environment, several literati are immersed in their work.

In fact, the reason why the earthen walls are not powdered and the ground is padded with thick loess is to absorb moisture. The foundation of this house is very thick, and the cost is much higher than that of ordinary houses. The reason why the wooden shelves are not painted and waxed is because of the baking. Wax can repel insects and is not easy to fall off, but long-term contact with varnish may destroy cultural relics.

But these details written into the report will definitely make readers feel sympathetic.

After describing the environment, he grabbed a member who was cleaning oracle bones and asked: "Is there a lot of money in the Oracle Bone Society? Why is this big house so shabby?"

"It would be nice to have such a big house to protect the oracle bones," the member of the Oracle Bone Society said with a smile: "It takes labor to dig out the oracle bones, and you need to hire guards to protect the oracle bone pits, not to mention that you need to buy land for excavation."

Wang Tonggui immediately grasped the key point and asked, "Did your Oracle Bone Society buy the land where the oracle bones were excavated?"

The scholar nodded: "Yes, the terrain around Anyang is flat, and most of the places where the oracle bones are buried are farmland. If you want to excavate it, you can only buy the land. Otherwise, who would allow working on other people's fields, just for the price of the land?" It has already cost Oracle Bone Society a lot of money."

Wang Tonggui made a note and asked: "If it is so difficult to dig, why do we continue to dig?"

The commune member said righteously and solemnly: "These are all texts written by the pre-Shang Dynasty. If our descendants do not discover and study them, wouldn't we be wiping out the cultural teachings of our ancestors?"

Wang Tonggui then went to interview the local villagers who participated in the excavation of oracle bones, the guards who protected the oracle bones, and carefully asked the literati of the Oracle Bone Society about the details of protecting the oracle bones.

There are many literati who are good at painting in the Oracle Bone Society. Wang Tonggui finally asked someone to make two paintings, which visually showed the scene of villagers stealing oracle bones and the literati protecting the oracle bone pit, and the fight between the two sides.

(End of this chapter)