Pioneer of grassroots literature - Wang Fanzhi

When it comes to playing rap, you may have such a picture in your mind: fresh clothes and angry horses, wide tops and big gold teeth; The green dragon on the left and the white tiger on the right, dirty braided earrings jeans.

Was there rap in ancient times? There really is. In the Tang Dynasty, when classical Chinese was prevalent, there was such a "big white voice" rap patriarch Wang Fanzhi, who made countless younger generations bow down, and also made today's you and I admire you and me.

Teacher Wang Fanzhi was born in the early Tang Dynasty, and there was no such "Kazakh" dress today. But as a "rapper", of course, he also has his own unique style of dressing, that is: wearing socks backwards, the thread is outward, and it is ugly to death.

Finally, one day, amid the pointing of pedestrians and pedestrians from small merchants, an aunt couldn't help but remind: "Hey, young man, your socks are worn backwards." ”

Wang Fanzhi didn't care about it, continued to walk his own way, and threw a "rap" to the women and children behind him as he walked:

Fanzhi turned over his socks, and everyone said that it was wrong.

It may pierce your eyes, but do not hide my feet.

Simply translated, it is: Ouch hey, oh yes, Fanzhi wears socks backwards, and the crowd is very surprised, and they all say that they are wearing the wrong ones. It is better for you to be blind than to hide my stinky feet. In fact, I just say a word, if you don't accept it, you can hold it.

Mr. Wang Fanzhi profoundly practiced the core value of individualism of "go your own way and let others say go". He was so capricious, of course, because his family was very rich at that time. As a rapper, it's clear that you can't be modest. Therefore, our early poems of Mr. Wang Fanzhi are like this, "My family was rich in the past", "My family has a lot of land", "I am afraid of being known if I am rich......

As well as such:

I have ten acres of land, planted on the southern slopes.

There are four or five green pine trees, and two or three mung beans.

The heat is the bath in the pool, and the cool is singing on the shore.

Swim to your own content, who can help me!

The gist is: Lao Tzu eats grass and you eat soil, you are such a big family, and the open-air swimming pool will ask you if you are convinced. I'll go my way, you only deserve to follow behind and watch Lao Tzu's ass.

It's a pity that the good times didn't last long, and while walking on the family road, it suddenly fell into the middle. With the war at the end of the Sui Dynasty and the tax disaster at the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, the middle-aged teacher Wang Fanzhi went bankrupt. suddenly changed from a rich second generation to a king and a second dog, and even his relatives and friends didn't care about him.

Socks still worn backwards? Now he doesn't even have any clothes to wear, in his own words, "less food and beggars, clothes are torn and hunger and cold".

There is no subsistence allowance, no assistance, and feudalism is very cold.

"Fortunately, I can still write poetry." So Mr. Wang Fanzhi went to participate in the imperial examination with confidence, wanting to find an iron job for himself.

However, it's a pity that no one understands his rap, thinking that this is just a rustic saliva poem by the common people, "not in the ears", and the audition eliminated him.

As a rapper, temper comes first. Teacher Wang Fanzhi, who was not understood and was impoverished, went crazy, even his parents did not let go.

For example, this "Taoist Love Poem":

When I was not born, I knew nothing.

Heaven gave birth to me, what is the reason for giving birth to me?

The lack of clothing makes me cold, and the lack of food makes me hungry.

Pay back you to God, and pay me back when I was not born.

When he was in his fifties, Wang Fanzhi, who had been unemployed for many years, still did not receive the subsidy after all, and quarreled with his wife all day long, and his five sons and two daughters did not support him.

So in the end, he became a monk, and he made his home all over the world, begging for a living. The ups and downs of life, the world is hot and cold, but the impoverished teacher Wang Fanzhi suddenly opened his mouth at this time and discovered the true meaning of vernacular poetry: it is not Lao Tzu who is the first in the world, not the heaven and the earth, but the disadvantages of the times.

He satirized the inaction and corruption of the county yamen, and jokingly advised people not to go to the county yamen even if they were beaten: "I have a convenience, which is worth a hundred horses to practice." Fight each other for a long time and be weak, and they will not enter the county until they die. ”

At the end of his life, when looking back on the past, Mr. Wang Fanzhi regretted that he had wasted his time, and he was ashamed of doing nothing, but he hated this money-filled society even more. So he wrote this most classic "When I Was Rich". seems to be talking about his wife, but in fact he is scolding this snobbish society where "no one asks about the poor in the downtown area, and the rich have distant relatives in the mountains":

When I was rich, my women and children looked at me well.

If I take off my clothes, I fold my robe with me.

I went out to ask for it, and I was sent to the road.

Put the money in the house, and see me smiling.

Circling around my white dove, just like a parrot bird.

When you meet temporary poverty, look at me and look at me.

When a person has seven povertys, the seven riches repay each other.

Trying to make money doesn't care about people, and it seems that the time is right.

If Wang Fanzhi's life is summed up in four words, it is: out of place. It is inappropriate to wear socks backwards, and it is inappropriate to show off his wealth, but the most inappropriate thing is that he wants to write poems in the vernacular.

In the pop music scene of the early Tang Dynasty, the mainstream was palace style poetry and response poems, and the form was to pay attention to rhetorical rhyme. But no matter whether he is poor or rich, whether he is full or hungry, whether the audience comes or leaves, Wang Fanzhi has always insisted on writing vernacular poems that do not fit the stream, and he insisted on writing until he was over eighty years old. Although the vernacular is earthy, it can always be three-pointed, popular but humorous, straightforward but spicy. The form is rough, but the connotation is precise.

Even, as early as the early Tang Dynasty, Wang Fanzhi put forward the concept of planned fertility in his poems based on the principles of human nature, such as "rich children and young men and women, poor men give birth to a group...... The accumulation of generations is not rich, and it is called the poor Han Village", "The big skin is wrapped in a big tree, and the small skin is wrapped in a small tree." You don't need to have many children, you can do everything. The province is divided into fields and houses, and no one is frying. But if you are equanimitarian, you will be lonely in the sky." Li Erzheng is also vivid and full of human feelings, which is more advanced than our slogan of "raising more pigs and having fewer children".

So he actually has a bunch of die-hard fans of his own. There are Hu Shi and Zheng Zhenduo nearby, Hanshan, Shide, and Yuan Zhi in the distance, and even in "Dream of Red Mansions", Lin Daiyu, who looks down on Li Shangyin, has also praised Wang Fanzhi madly. When Bai Juyi commented on Wang Fanzhi, he called him "the ancestor of the vernacular".

However, all this is useless. Because what he wrote was really difficult to get into the elegance of the time, his name was crossed out in the list of "Three Hundred Tang Poems". Even when Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty compiled "All Tang Poems", he coldly rejected Wang Fanzhi's vernacular poems.

His poems were lost for a time.

But I never expected that later, Wang Fanzhi's poems traveled across the ocean to Japan, where they blossomed and bore fruit. The "Catalogue of Japanese Records of the National Opinion" compiled during the Heian Dynasty of Japan included the "Collected Poems of Wang Fanzhi".

In China, fortunately, there is a Dunhuang treasure house, for its treasure, Wang Fanzhi finally waited for the day to see the light of day. In 1900, the Taoist priest Wang Yuanqi discovered the Dunhuang Cave, and more than 50,000 Buddhist classics and literary classics were revealed, including Wang Fanzhi's poems. Its appearance has re-drawn attention to Wang Fanzhi and his poetry. Later, Hu Shi edited and published "A Poem a Day", selecting 100 quatrains, the first of which is Wang Fanzhi's "Fanzhi Flipping Socks".

Straightforward narration, unabashed; Straightforward and unambiguous. The "big white voice" in Tang poetry - Wang Fanzhi, a poet from the Western Regions, is open-minded, and his self-confidence is better than that of a prosperous Tang Dynasty: "The Lord of Heaven sent me to live, and the Earth Mother accepted me to die." Life and death are not up to me, I am a long stream. He also has real confidence in his poems: "If you have Sanskrit poetry at home, you will not be imprisoned in life and death." The white paper book screen, the guest comes and reads. "Can you not be in awe?!

Source: "Wang Left, Center and Right", "Two Horses Look at the World", "Reading Times" Issue 06, 2024

Author: Zou Zou

Editor: Star City

[Disclaimer: This number is the official public welfare account of "National Reading Promotion", and this article is reprinted for the purpose of conveying more information. If there is a source label error or other inaccuracies, please contact us. We will correct it in a timely manner. Thank you]