During the Chinese New Year, I don't know how many people have added new red clothes to their wardrobes? In fact, looking back at history, the Chinese's love for red is very long.
As early as the Zhou and Han dynasties, the ancestors divided colors into two categories: positive colors and intermediate colors. Among them, the positive color refers to the five pure colors of blue, red, yellow, white and black, and the intermediate color refers to the color of several positive colors.
For example, green is a kind of intercolor - the interpretation of "green" in "Shuowen Jie Zi" is "silk blue and yellow", which means a mixture of cyan (blue) and yellow. I don't know how many people have played with yellow and blue pigments to mix green pigments when they were children?
Purple is also considered an intercolor, as purple is a mixture of red and blue. In "The Analects of Yang Goods", Confucius once stepped on purple, touted red and said: "The evil purple seizes Zhu Ye; The rebellion of the evil Zheng Sheng, Yale also; The one who overthrows the state with a bad mouth. ”
Red and purple. Although the sage has already criticized purple, purple was still reborn in the Middle Ages and became a noble representative, even surpassing red.
The New Tang Dynasty Book stipulates: ** Wear purple robes above the third grade, dark crimson in the fourth grade, light crimson in the fifth grade, dark green in the sixth grade, light green in the seventh grade, dark green in the eighth grade, and light green in the ninth grade - this is also the origin of what we say today "red is purple".
Shanxi's large-scale new historical Peking Opera "The Story of the Purple Robe". *
The Tang Dynasty did not give a reason for this color rule, but we can still guess the reason - in fact, as early as the Northern and Southern Dynasties, purple and crimson were already loved by dignitaries and nobles, because they were the most expensive.
In ancient China, plant dyes were generally used to dye clothes, and today people call it "plant dyeing". In recent years, because of the revival of Hanfu, grass and wood dyeing has also been revived, and it has become a popular national trend.
Readers who have known about plant dyeing must know that purple is the most expensive and difficult color to dye—almost only expensive comfrey can dye gorgeous purple robes; In contrast, madder, which is a red dye, is slightly cheaper. And in addition to madder, there are also safflower and su fang can also be dyed red.
Yellow dyes are generally taken from masts, yellow millet, acacia flowers, tulips, etc., which are not expensive.
Among the many plants and trees dyed, cyan (blue) is the easiest and cheapest: indigo, locust blue, woad indigo, horse blue and other plants and trees can be made blue.
Purple is expensive, so it naturally comes from the middle color. Cyan is cheap, but although it is a positive color, it is still disliked.
And green is the same reason, there are few natural green dyes in nature, and the ancients dyed green with blue + yellow sets, so the green robe can only be more noble than the green robe. In fact, purple can also be dyed with blue + red sets, but this coloring is not as good and stable as that dyed by comfrey: the blue-purple color dyed by comfrey is more uniform; Overdyeing, on the other hand, tends to fluctuate between red and blue.
What's worse is that because of the dislike of the dark blue of the eight grades, it is easy to be confused with the noble purple robe, and the Tang Gaozong period also changed the eight grades of robes to turquoise.
Bai Juyi: Every day, I am irritable about the color I wear.
The color of the clothes represents the official rank. Therefore, the men of the Tang Dynasty were extremely sensitive to color numbers, and they were simply not inferior to modern women. For example, the well-known poet Bai Juyi, every time he changes the color of his clothes, he must write poems and sigh.
Bai Juyi also said that he didn't care about the grade at all, and any color was good. So he wrote, "I look at nine products to one product, and the smell is similar." Purple silk and red silk blue cloth shirt, the color is different."
In reality, however, he was clearly not so open-minded:
When he was demoted to Jiangzhou Sima, he not only left the most famous "Jiangzhou Sima Qingshan Wet", but also wrote poems such as "Half old Qingshan and half white head" and "Qingshan does not change its body last year", which can be said to be quite sad about Qingshan.
After being promoted to the history of assassination, he immediately borrowed a crimson official robe, and also wrote a poem to thank the original owner, saying "If you are in a scarlet robe, you don't smile", "The new bronze charm is not scarlet, because the king's costume is glorious".
After stepping down from the history of the assassination, he took off the vermilion and wore the green again, and he sighed again, "I left the Zhu Fu and returned to the Ling Pavilion, but I wore a green robe to serve the jade", "There are only two people in the green robe immediately", "The white head is not wearing a red shirt", and it can be said that he misses the red robe deeply.
When he was finally promoted to the doctor of Chaosan (from the bottom of the five grades), he officially wore crimson, and he was immediately excited to write the poem "The five grades are enough to marry the master, and the scarlet robe is good to return to the field" - wearing this red robe, even if he takes a back seat now, there is no regret about returning to the field. At that time, I will be in the township, wearing a red robe to support the juniors to preside over the wedding.
However, at this time, Bai Juyi's good **, Yuan Zhen, who was seven years younger than him, had already worshiped the prime minister in a purple rob......eLao Bai, who is happy and envious and jealous, laughed at himself in the "First Scarlet Drama Gift Yuan Jiu" written to the good **: "I Zhu Jun has a purple ribbon, and I still haven't lost my shoulders."
However, Lao Bai finally succeeded in putting on the purple robe, and was full of ambition to leave "Don't say that you are not expensive, the gold medal shines on the purple robe".
is also humble, saying that the purple robe has nothing to be proud of, and everything is bearish:
The purple ribbon of the gold medal is like a dream, and the soap cover and the red wheel are like an empty one", "The purple ribbon is full of glory, and the white head is not for the sake of death", "The new secret supervisor in the purple robe, the old scholar with the white head", "The sideburns are white, and the clothes are vermilion".
Sure enough, after successful people succeed, they like to sigh that success is nothing good - when they are not successful, they can be active in chasing fame and fortune.
Ming Dynasty: Everyone wears red robes together.
The color grades prescribed by the Tang Dynasty were basically used by the Song Dynasty. But after the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty from the grassland obviously would not care about this. The Mongols changed the aesthetics of the Tang and Song dynasties to pursue pure colors and dark lines, and instead admired the big red, gold, embroidery, dragon and phoenix.
Later, Zhu Yuanzhang defeated Emperor Yuan Shun, and as a Han born and raised under Mongol rule, his aesthetics also went back and forth between the two**: Lao Zhu claimed to restore the Tang and Song dynasties, and some aspects did indeed do it - for example, the Yuan Dynasty did not promulgate formal laws, and there were no household registration statistics; Lao Zhu revised and promulgated the "Da Ming Law" in accordance with the "Tang Law Shu Yi", and used the army to thoroughly check the household registration throughout the country - however, in terms of clothing, it can only be said that it has been restored, but it has not been fully restored:
On the one hand, the Ming Dynasty did use the color system of the Tang and Song dynasties, but removed the purple color. Because Confucius said that "the evil purple takes Zhu", the Ming people feel that purple clashes with the national surname "Zhu". On the other hand, Lao Zhu used the big dragon embroidery that the Yuan Dynasty loved on the official uniform, stipulating that the first clothes should have all kinds of colorful embroidery and beasts to indicate the grade, which is what we often call "complement".
However, the official uniforms of the Song Dynasty were uniformly issued, while the Ming Dynasty was made by ** according to rank. Moreover, in the Ming Dynasty, except for the first two generations of Lao Zhu, most of the time after that was very loose, and basically didn't care about clothing. In the late Ming Dynasty, it can even be said that it was laissez-faire, and it became a common practice for ordinary people to wear official uniforms during festivals.
As a result, the ** people have taken the lead in messing around and "skipping" their clothes. Especially the military attaché, he even directly wore the duke and earl costume and the first-class official uniform. In the end, there was an official uniform below the fifth grade, and no one knew what it looked like and how to make it. This is also the reason why when we look at the ancient paintings of the Ming Dynasty today, we will feel that almost all ** are wearing red robes, and rarely see green robes and blue robes.
However, in the Ming Dynasty, this freedom of dress was mainly "regular clothes" (* professional clothes worn to work), and if you want to see the emperor wearing official clothes, everyone basically obeys the rules.
Qing Dynasty: Single-handedly brought down the national aesthetics.
Whether it is the pure color dark lines of the Tang and Song dynasties, or the flamboyant and flamboyant of the Yuan Dynasty, or both of the Ming Dynasty, its aesthetics are relatively acceptable to modern people, and the status of red has always been very high. But the Qing Dynasty's choice of color is really incomprehensible - but if you look at the hairstyles of the Qing Dynasty, you can understand that this is indeed an era of aesthetic collapse, and there is no hope to be placed.
Red was not as important as it used to be in the Qing Dynasty, and it became a special color for hats, which can be said to have been reduced to a background board. And green was also not valued in the Qing Dynasty - there was no green in the "noble" Eight Banners of the Qing Dynasty, and the Green Flag was assigned to the Green Battalion composed of Han cloth banner slaves, and its status was much lower than that of the Eight Banners.
But there is a fun place here, when Nurhachi first formed the Eight Banners, he used the "Xuanqing" flag, that is, the blue-black flag - in Guo Degang's cross talk, the "Zhenghei Flag" where Yu Qian's old ** relatives are located turned out to be not a legend, and the qualifications are very old and the status is very high!
It can be seen that the cyan color, which has been discriminated against for thousands of years, was finally reborn and was raised to a high position by the Qing Dynasty - especially the stone blue, that is, the dark blue that is close to black, which was most valued by the Qing Dynasty. Throughout the Qing Dynasty, the official uniforms were almost "cyan", which was nothing more than repeated horizontal jumps between blue-green and blue-black adjacent colors. Only the Kangxi Dynasty briefly let ** wear a red robe, but soon changed back to cyan.
The clothes insist on using cyan, which may still be related to the "red top" - the hat is already red, and if you wear red clothes again, it really doesn't look good, it's just a Santa Claus; If you wear green, red and green will only be more disastrous. Riding back and forth, I still had to use a calm blue-black to suppress the red top. The crowns of the Tang, Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties are all black or dark, which are more versatile, and the color of the clothes can be chosen at will.
It can only be said that the Qing Dynasty used the red pointed hat as a top hat, which in itself was aesthetically bad, and as a result, the clothes were also ruined. (ENDS).
Author Nan Haimo.
*: Southern Weekly.