Diao Peijun: Animal Writing in the Song Dynasty - Focusing on What Su Shi's Poems and Writings See|202407-01 (Total No. 2763)

Thanks to Mr. Diao Peijun for his contributions

The original article was published in the 6th issue of "Social Science Front" in 2024, according to the author's original manuscript, please indicate the source when citing

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Animal writing in the Song Dynasty - centered on what was seen in Su Shi's poems

Text / Diao Peijun

School of History and Cultural Heritage, Xiamen University

Abstract: Su Shi traveled all his life, and the places he visited covered most of the territory of the Northern Song Dynasty. The breadth of his experience, the detail of his observations, the complexity of his reading, and the number of descriptions are beyond the reach of ordinary Confucian scholars. As a result, a large number of animals of different types appear in his works, constituting a biological world of reality and image from Su Shi's vision. Among them, the "written" are molluscs, clams, red snails, shrimps, crabs, mosquitoes, scorpions, bees, butterflies, locusts, etc. Fish classes include bream, carp, sea bass, bream, mandarin fish, sturgeon, crucian carp, pufferfish, catfish, subfish, white fish, sand fish, etc.; Reptiles include snakes, geckos, rays, turtles, hawksbill turtles; Birds include chickens, geese, cranes, eagles, falcons, gulls, herons, swallows, falcons, quails, cormorants, pelicans, ostriches, white pheasants, elves, turtle doves, happy birds, pot birds, five-colored finch, tung flower birds, etc.; Belonging to the mammals (mammals) are cattle, sheep, horses, pigs, dogs, rats, tigers, apes, marmosets, foxes, deer, moose, rhinoceros, roe deer, bats, flying squirrels, bamboos, ox-tailed civets, and so on. This historical landscape is interpreted and reproduced by Su Shi's surviving texts, so as to reflect on the methodological sense of "the turn of animals in history" and "the natural history of animals".

Keywords: Su Shi, animals, realism, imagery, natural history of animals

Su Shi (1037-1101) of the Song Dynasty made pinnacle achievements in the fields of poetry, poetry, literature, calligraphy, and painting, thus becoming a benchmark figure in the history of Chinese culture. His creative career spanned more than 40 years, and his poems recorded a large number of biological names. In addition to serving in Kaifeng, Su Shi also served and lived in Huang, Hui, Dan, Hangzhou, Mi, Xu, Hu, Ying, Yang, Ding and other places. This special experience of eunuch travel makes the names of creatures in his poems richer and more diverse, which can highlight regional characteristics. The realistic and imaginary animal names in his poems and texts show more of Su Shi's infinite imagination and contain many ingenious ideas.

According to the general animal classification method, the animal species involved in Su Shi's writing are listed below.

Table 1 Animals seen in Su Shi's poems

We first develop the specific presentation of Su Shi's animal writing from the perspective of animal classification, and then investigate the distribution of animals between different regions, so as to analyze Su Shi's animal writing, so as to distinguish the realistic and imaginary imagery in it, and explore the future applicability of the methodology of "natural history of animals".

1. Classification of Su Shi's visual animal writing

(i) Invertebrates (molluscs and arthropods)

The invertebrates reflected in Su Shi's poems include anchovies, snails, oysters, clams, red snails, shrimps, crabs, mosquitoes, flies, bees, butterflies, flies, termites, locusts, spiders, fireflies, etc. In the eighth year of Yuanfeng (1085), Su Shi briefly knew Dengzhou (now Penglai, Shandong), wrote "Fish Xing", and presented "300 Fish Fish" to his friend Teng Yuanfa as an earthen object. Anchovy is abalone, Dengzhou is close to the Yellow Sea, and should be produced locally. When he was in Huangzhou, he missed the customs of Hangzhou, and chanted poems such as "crispy red snail sauce", which should be a pickle made of red snails. Su Shi also eats crabs and clams in Lingnan. He recorded that "he stopped killing for a long time, went to Huizhou, broke the precepts, and counted crab-eating clams".

Watery places are often full of mosquitoes. Su Shi has the saying "thousands of acres of mushrooms gather mosquitoes" in Huzhou. Mosquitoes that gather often swarm in groups, and the noise is like thunder, that is, "mosquito mines". When Su Shi was in Huangzhou, he once said, "Alone with mosquitoes and thunders". Su Shi said that Xuzhou in May and June "Flying Mosquito Yin Corridor". Mosquitoes still have various aliases in Su Shi's writing, such as leopard's foot, flower eagle, and white bird. The leopard's foot refers to a mosquito with a pattern on its feet, which is especially painful to sting. Su Shizhi's "Not afraid of flying mosquitoes such as standing leopards" and "Fengdingxuan window flying leopard feet" are both written about the leopard foot mosquitoes in Huzhou. In addition, the "white bird" in Su Shi's "willing to follow the white bird over the weeping rainbow" may refer to mosquitoes, which is a dictionary. Su Shi also compared mosquitoes to eagles, saying that "flying mosquitoes are as fierce as flower eagles", and later generations have used "flower eagles" as mosquitoes.

Su Shi mentioned bees many times: in Hangzhou, there is a chant that "bees are sweet before they are allowed", and in Mizhou, it is said that "honey ripe wasps are also lazy to fly"; In Kaifeng South Park, closed in the spring day, I heard that "only the wasp noise"; Visit Xuzhou Yunlong Mountain, and watch the "noisy bee collection of evening flowers". Su Shi not only depicted the noisy state of bee collection, but also noticed the scene of bees full of honey, quiet rest, lazy and not flying.

For the honey produced by bees, Su Shi recorded more. Lu You once recorded an anecdote: Monk Zhongshu is fond of honey, and his diet is mostly honey-stained, and others "can't get off the basket." Only Dongpo is also cool and honey-loving, and can be full with it." Su Shi saw "honey-stained raw lychees" in Dingzhou. According to records, when Su Shi consumed traditional Chinese medicines such as Poria cocos, Polygonum multiflori, and Rehmannia rehmannia, he often had the words "into less white honey", "refining honey and into wood mortar", and "honey and pills". In addition, Su Shi also used to brew honey wine in Huangzhou, which was passed down from Yang Shichang and used honey as a raw material. In the Song Dynasty, captive-bred bees appeared, and the beekeeping industry has developed greatly. Su Shi once said that "the mountain family cuts the honey of a thousand houses", which may refer to artificially bred bees. He also chanted the sentence "bees make trouble with Coptis chinensis honey flowers", which is the Coptis honey produced in Shizhou (now Enshi, Hubei).

Butterflies are often cited at the same time, but of course the value of butterflies is mostly limited to ornamentation. The places where butterflies appear in Su Shi's pen are: Yu Fengxiang Yansheng saw "Late Butterflies Entering the Curtain"; In Hangzhou Shouxing Courtyard to see "Lingli Han Butterfly Hugging Autumn Flowers"; In Xuzhou, there is a saying that "falling flowers and butterflies fly in groups"; In Kaifeng, the maid "made the yellow flower butterfly through the clothes", it can be seen that the butterfly is widely distributed. The summer cicada is also known as the lizard, and the cicada chirping and moaning can also be heard everywhere in Su Shi's pen. Kaifeng "Gaoliu Song is more noisy at noon", Xuzhou "barren forest and grasshopper chaos", Wujiang "cicadas and birds", Hangzhou "high mountain cicadas hugging leaves", Zhenzhou "green locust high place cicada singing". The stone salt wood that Su Shi saw in Huizhou was "as solid as iron", and "termites did not dare to climb it", and termites appeared.

The locust plague often stretches over many places, causing a wide range of harm, Su Shi once said, "Close to Qiantang, see locusts coming from the northwest...... This Jingdong surplus has spread to the ears of Huaizhejiang", which can be seen in the wide area of locust plague. During the Xining period, when he was in Hangzhou, Su Shi once hunted locusts to Fuyunling. He witnessed and remembered the scene of "shining and occasional, flying from high houses chasing each other", which should refer to the fireflies shining and flying in the night sky. When Su Shi was passing through Huai, he saw a spider in the boat, and left a poem of "the moon hangs on the willow to see the hanging spider".

In terms of the meaning of historical writing, we have repeatedly considered the content of Su Shi's poems, and almost every record is difficult to unearth the "self-confession" of animals and present the history of animal itself.

(2) Fish (class) animals

Su Shi's pen and ink are quite rich in fish (class) animals, bream, carp, sea bass, bream, mandarin fish, sturgeon, crucian carp, pufferfish, catfish, subfish, white fish, sand fish, etc., all appear. The bream was seen as early as when Su Shi passed through Xiangyang on the way out of Sichuan, and the poem "Bream" was recited. In "Shang Du Yin", he deliberately depicts the local "bream is cold and difficult to catch". When visiting Fengxiang Old Temple, Su Shi also has the sentence "Chi Jun falls into the river". bream is bream. In Runzhou, Su Shi Yong once said that "a hook is returned to fishing for shrunken bream", referring to the same bream, which is famous for its fatness. Su Shi once recorded the release of crucian carp in Danzhou. He bought 21 crucian carp caught by fishermen, temporarily raised them in wooden pots, and finally released them in the north of the city. In the face of the carp that "can still move slightly", Su Shi raised it with an urn, "it is eaten when it dies, and it is forgiven when it is born".

Su Shi once tasted sea bass in Huzhou, and left the poem "Purple crab sea bass is as cheap as soil". Su Shi also mentioned sea bass again in Huizhou. The "purple scale fish" produced in the mountains next to the Junling King Temple in Danzhou may be a freshwater fish. Mandarin fish are widely distributed. When he was in Hangzhou, Su Shi once received a gift of bamboo shoots from Qian Xian, and in addition to gratitude, he specially shared his practice of "taking bamboo shoots and mushrooms and mandarin fish opposites". Zhu Shouchang presented Su Shi with sturgeon, which is a food made from sturgeon. When Su Shi was in Jinling, there was a poem about catfish, that is, Jiangtuan, which is a characteristic fish in the Yangtze River. The fish is delicious, Su Shi chanted the sentence "the pink stone head is still boneless, and the snow-white river is not a medicine man", which is to compare the totoaba with the puffer fish to the catfish. Totoaba is yellow croaker. Puffer fish is a famous Jianghuai character, although it is highly poisonous, but because of the delicious taste, there are many people to eat it, Su Shi said, "Jianghuai people eat puffer fish well, every time you fight with people puffer fish does not kill, taste the play, life has its own son, beauty is eaten, what to do with me", is exactly what I do".

South China prostitute-producing fish. Su Shi received a sub-fish from Lu Xiyan in Kaifeng, which was called "Tongyin Long Fish". This fish is mostly produced in Putian, Fujian, and has a delicious taste. According to Wang Gong's records, Cai Xiang, who was born in Putian, "valued the country's things, took the fish as the treasure of the world, tasted the ancestors, but no more than six tails, and the clouds and the old people of the court were two or three ears". Su Shi once described its delicacy as "Tongyinzi fish is still bone-in, and the yellow finch is full of fat". The Song Dynasty Hongmai recorded that Su Shi created the "Tongyinzi Fish": the fish was originally called "Long Fish", and Su Shi borrowed the word "Zi" for the opposite of the Yellow Bird, and later generations used it. The locals even changed the "Xianying Temple" to "Tongying Temple" to confirm what this poem says. The white fish is another well-known fish in Su Shi's writings. Su Shiyin has "white fish is still like Jianghuai" and "Huaiyin City tomorrow, white fish can be fattened", indicating that this is a Jianghuai specialty. Su Shi mentioned "Huaiyu" in Huzhou (now Huzhou, Zhejiang) and chanted "Look at the silver knife from the repair net". Shu also produces this kind of fish, he chanted "I want to see the Tsing Yi River Road, white fish and purple bamboo shoots regardless of money" and "rotten steamed camelina white fish fat", or can be proven. When Su Shi was in Huangzhou, Wu Ziye gave him sand fish and red carp. The sand fish is the shark. Yang Yanling, a native of the Song Dynasty, thought that anchovy (i.e., abalone) was delicious, so he compared it to a sand fish, "Sand shark fin and swim bladder can all be carried north". Zhu Shouchang once presented Su Shi with a sturgeon.

Fish mostly live in water, as mentioned in the previous poems, whether the fish in Su Shi's historical writings can confess themselves and have documents that can be used for historical research to survive, and seek the "natural history of animals" in the meantime, we are quite difficult.

(3) Amphibians and reptiles

There is only one type of amphibian in Su Shi's field of vision: frogs. In South China, there was a custom of eating frogs as early as the Song Dynasty. Su Shi wrote a special book "a little closer to the shrimp and moths customs". The toad is the toad, and the shrimp toad refers to the frog. Shu has the habit of eating frogs. Zhang Shinan boat through Meizhou, "see the fishing on the waterfront, that is, look at it, the basket is full of prawns and toads", this animal is called "treasure" by the locals. Chengdu people like to eat frogs the most, not only for their own enjoyment, relatives and friends also give each other gifts, the practice is to "burn the frog with materials and wine, called the toad".

The reptiles in Su Shi's field of vision include snakes, geckos, turtles, hawksbill turtles, etc. Residents of the Lingnan area eat snakes. Zhu Yu of the Song Dynasty recorded that "Guangnan eats snakes, and snakes are soup in the city", which seems to be quite common. Su Shi has a saying in Huizhou, "Why do you have a bottle, and your neighbors feed frogs and snakes", which probably also shows that frogs and snakes are commonly eaten in the local area. Su Shi also saw the figures of the scorpion tiger and Luo Wei in Xuzhou. The scorpion tiger is a gecko, also known as the palace, resembling a lizard, Su Shi once said that "the palace between the windows is called the scorpion tiger". In March of the tenth year of Xining (1077), the imperial court "came out of the lizard to pray for rain, and the result of the test was tested". In Xuzhou, Su Shi wrote the sentence "Singing under the bed". Luowei is a kind of insect, often flapping its wings in summer and autumn nights, making a sound like the sound of spinning, commonly known as textile Niang, Luosi Niang. It is the Yangtze crocodile, and its sound is like a drum, so it is called "the drum". At the beginning of the eunuch, Su Shi recited the poem "deep turtles and fish, shallow snails and cockles" when visiting Fengxiang East Lake, and heard in Wuxi Road that "the Ming Cave is like beating the ya". The reptiles that Su Shi saw in South China were turtles.

It is very likely that reptiles have preserved their life history in the world, but how to delve into the "natural history of animals" seems to be difficult in terms of the documents in Su Shi's historical writing.

(4) Ornithischia

There are many birds and animals that appear in Su Shi's poems, such as chickens, ducks, geese, geese, cranes, eagles, falcons, gulls, herons, swallows, pigeons, falcons, quails, cormorants, pelicans, magpies, crows, ostriches, white pheasants, mandarin ducks, owls, turtle doves, yellow birds, happy birds, Gu evil birds, Qizhou ghosts, pot birds, hundred tongues, five-colored finch, tung flower birds, squirts, bamboo chickens, cuckoos and so on. Chickens are more common. In the mountain village of Hangzhou, Su Shi once heard the "sound of chickens and dogs in the smoke and rain"; In Wuchang Xishan, there is a recitation of the words "the drum passes the army, the chicken and the dog are frightened"; In Huizhou, due to the continuous rainfall, the embarrassment can only "sleep on the wall with chickens and dogs". Su Shi recited "The old chicken lies on the dung, and the feathers are twilight", vividly describing the scene of the chicken raising its wings and bathing. As early as the Jiayou period, Su Shi went out of Shu, passing through Xiangyang (now Xiangyang, Hubei), and once wrote a poem "Eating Pheasants". In Danzhou, Hainan, Su Shi "met yellow chicken porridge once in ten days".

The birds that appear more frequently in Su Shi's paintings also include geese, gulls, blacks, magpies, and so on. The black and the magpie are often held together, the black is the crow, and the magpie is the magpie, both of which are crows, similar in color and size. In Hangzhou, Su Shi has a saying, "The wild house is half with the cattle and sheep, but the drums are prosperous with the crows"; When he was in Huangzhou, he chanted the words "cattle and sheep are not allowed to be hurt to the clean, and watch the crows and magpies make the new sunshine"; Remembering the old things of Meishan, it is said that "it is the time of the black and the magpie, and the nest eagle can be prostrate"; In Huizhou, he moved to Baihe Peak, and chanted "morning and crow and magpie dynasty, twilight and cattle and sheep evening". During the Jiayou period, Su Shi's father and son brothers went out of Shu, passing through Wushan, and saw many black kites, taking food on the boat, and people did not harm them; When he was in Yingzhou, he accompanied Ouyang Yu to visit the West Lake, and saw "the twilight of the city"; When passing through Sizhou, he depicted the scene of "Hungry Crows Dancing Snow City"; Yu Kaifeng was on duty, and he recited the words "Dongtai sits and feels Wufei". Magpies are also common, in Suzhou Tiger Hill, Su Shi Yin has "magpies turn the first day"; In Xuzhou, there is a poem of "Falling Nest Magpie Fist Hsinchu".

The Song people can often see cranes in the wild. Su Shi saw it in Fengxiang by the stream, and chanted "the wild cranes by the stream rushed to people"; Visit Huzhou Dojo Mountain, He Mountain, and hear "so far the mountain cranes are singing in the middle of the night"; In the Hangzhou Elders' House, it lamented that "only the old cranes perched alone"; In Huizhou, there is a scene of "lonely boat crane overturning"; In Danzhou, I saw "Xuanhe Dance Changxi" again. The crane here, or the gray crane. Su Shi wrote in Runzhou the words "Falling red everywhere you hear the cry". The cuckoo bird is the sub-gauge, that is, the bean. Falcon birds are of the eagle falcon class. Su Shi and Li Wei boated under the red cliff, Li Wei played the flute, the wind and water surged, "the mountain has a perched falcon, and it is also startled". Ducks are waterfowl and are also known as pond herons. On the first day of the seventh year of Yuanfeng (1084), Su Shi traveled and saw "the opposite of each other".

The owl is a species of owl commonly found in southern China, also known as the little owl. Su Shi once "smelled the owl at night" in Huizhou, and heard "the lonely city whistling owl" in Danzhou. Regarding the egret, Su Shi wrote "Beizhu cluster heron" when he was in Huizhou, and he returned north through Chengmai in Hainan in his later years, leaving the sentences "greedy for the egret Hengqiupu" and "there is nowhere to go in the sky". When he was in Huizhou, Su Shi once received a yellow finch from his cousin Cheng Zhengfu. He once said that "the yellow finch is full of fat" and should be used for food. Swallow is a common bird, Su Shi in Danzhou has a sentence "new nest swallow also peep inkstone". In the Lingnan area, there is also the white pheasant, which has long and gorgeous feathers, a white body with black patterns, and a red face. Su Shi once mentioned that when Chen Yi was in Guangzhou, he "raised white pheasants as a minister". During the Jiayou period, when passing through Xintan in Zigui (now Yichang, Hubei), Su Shi saw cormorants and egrets, and wrote the poem "Cormorants dare not go down, fly over the two wings lightly." The egret is exaggerated and thin, and the plugs are still tilted." The ostrich is an owl, the cry is like a fox, Su Shi has heard its voice in the autumn night in Hangzhou, and once said that "there is a perched ostrich in front of the window, and the night whistle is like a fox". The kite is a bird of prey in the eagle family. Su Shi left a poem of "Sorrowful Kite Squatting and Falling Scene" in Suzhou Tiger Hill Temple.

Su Shi saw more birds in Xuzhou. The wild duck is the goose, and it is mostly held together with the goose, which is the "wild goose". In Huanshan, Xuzhou, Su Shi saw "Yan Yan patted first"; Swimming a hundred steps of the flood, the fisherman called and the geese flew away, that is, "the sailor called the geese up". The sound of the birdsong of the teapot resembles "lifting the gourd", so it is named after the sound. When Su Shi visited Zhangshan Garden, he chanted a poem "Although the intention of lifting a pot to persuade wine is heavy, the cuckoo urges the sound of returning faster". The eagle is a bird of prey. When Su Shi was in Xuzhou, he saw the military general "Di Sheng's Arm Eagle Comes". Locally, Su Shi also mentioned the goose used to pray for rain, that is, the "goose slaughter and rain prayer method". Su Shi once said, "(Goose) has the misfortune of praying for rain" refers to this. When praying for snow in Xuzhou, he chanted "the goose is innocent and pitiful"; Related to this, when he was a colleague in the county, he also said, "And punish the white goose".

Su Shi also saw two strange birds in his vision, one of which was an upside-down hanger. This bird has "green feathers, red beaks, and small like parrots", which Su Shi saw in Huizhou. He wrote many descriptions of the bird, leaving sentences such as "the green-clothed upside-down Fusang Tun" and "the green-haired phoenix upside down". In addition to the upside-down hanging, another special bird in Su Shi's pen is the five-colored finch. He wrote a song "Five-Colored Sparrow" in Danzhou, "There are five-colored sparrows in Hainan, and they often take the two of them as the long, and they must follow suit"; The bird's coat color is diverse, "green and yellow Xuanfu, winged guard two silk Zhu", that is, there are green, yellow, black, red colors. According to Su Shi, this bird can also predict sunny rain, or it can be said to be an auspicious bird. When Su Shi visited Baishui Mountain in Huizhou, he also chanted the sentence "Immortal Mountain sees five-colored feathers", and the five-colored feathers here may be the five-colored finches seen later.

The birds and animals that Su Shi saw also included tung flower phoenixes, cormorants, mountain beard birds, falcons, eagles and so on. Tonghua phoenix is a kind of small bird in Shudi, which is said to be named because it is collected in Tonghua. Zhang Ling, a Tang dynasty, has relevant records: "Jiannan Peng, Shu has a bird as big as a finger, five colors, a crown like a phoenix, eat tung flowers, every tung blossom is coming, the tung blossom falls that goes, I don't know how." It is commonly known as 'paulownia bird'. When Su Shi recalled the anecdote of his mother Cheng's not harming the birds, he also left the sentence of the old residence "There are four or five hundred tung flowers and phoenixes, and the sun is gathering in the meantime". In addition, he also recalled in the poem "The old mountain is everything, and the tung flowers are the phoenix".

Su Shi saw a lot of birds in Huangzhou. He specially wrote the poem "Five Bird Words", which recorded five special species of local birds. Bird words, that is, the birdsong corresponds to human language, and meditates through birdsong. Birds in avian poetry are often named after their songs. The five kinds of birds written by Su Shi are Qizhou ghosts, cuckoos, happy, silk 100 foils, and Gu evil. Among them, the cuckoo is the rhododendron, also known as Zigui, and the locals in Huangzhou also call it "taking off the pants" because of its sound; Gu evil is a kind of water bird, or the current bitter bird, its voice is sad. The remaining three are difficult to discern for the time being. This practice of being famous for its song can also be seen in bamboo chickens. The bird, also known as Muddy Slippery, is named after its similar song. Su Shi wrote a sentence in Huangzhou that "mud deep bamboo chicken language". He also noted under "mud is deeply tired of listening to the chicken-headed falcon", and the people of Shu called the chicken-headed falcon "muddy and slippery".

As the saying goes: geese have left a voice, and people have left a name. However, as far as the writing of animal history in Su Shi's poems is concerned, how to make these animals flying in the sky "leave a voice" and explore the "historical animal turn" and its "natural history of animals" needs to be investigated more.

(5) Mammals

The mammalian animals in Su Shi's field of vision mainly include cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs, rats, horses, jackals, wolves, tigers, apes, marmosets, foxes, deer, moose, rhinoceros, roe deer, bats, flying squirrels, bamboos, ox-tailed civets and so on. The cattle of the Song Dynasty were mostly used to cultivate the land. On the eastern slope of Huangzhou, Su Shi "bought a cow and plowed it", and said that "cattle and horses must be used to travel the land". Cow skin, tendons, horns, etc. can be used to make military equipment, that is, "the nearest ordnance must be cowhide". It is used to make dairy products such as "beef crisp", which is naturally a major use of cattle, such as Su Shi's chant "beef crisp fried and falling". Cattle in ancient times also used to sacrifice, Su Shi passed Zigui Xintan (now Zigui, Hubei), there is a poem "rely on this cow wine". Su Shi also recorded the widespread practice of killing cattle in Lingnan, "Hainan is very so", and the local people "do not drink medicine when they are sick, but kill cattle to pray...... The Li people get cattle, and they all sacrifice to ghosts, and there are no escapes"; There are quite a lot of cattle killed in Hainan, and even "the cultivators and the butchers are often half apart". The cattle of the Song Dynasty prevailed in the south. Huangzhou is prolific buffalo, that is, Su Shi bet on "three hundred tails of Wuqian" "Huangzhou buffalo" also. Therefore, the cattle that Su Shi bought when he was plowing on the eastern slope may also be a buffalo. The cow's hair is jet black, and it can be called "black peony". One day, the cow fell ill, and Su's wife Wang Yanzhi thought after diagnosis, "This cow has bean spots, and the law should be eaten with Artemisia annua porridge", Su Shi humorously described this matter as "the old wife is still untied with black peony". There is no doubt that there are many cattle in the Lingnan area, and Su Shi's words "cattle and sheep are full of empty desecration" is the scenery of Huizhou.

Su Shi's horses appear more frequently. Su Shi once mentioned the horses produced in Linzhou (now Shenmu, Shaanxi), that is, "the horses of Zihe fought out". He also saw the "meat horse" produced in Qinzhou (present-day Tianshui, Gansu), which was a kind of horse that "rode like an ox, with a drooping jaw and a beard standing on its side, and turned the raw meat end upside down", which should also be among the horses. When Su Shi was an official in Beijing, he was "given horses" by the imperial court many times, such as in the first year of Yuanyou (1086), the fourth year, the sixth year and the seventh year, Su Shi wrote a thank you table for giving clothes and gold and horses. On the first two occasions, Su Shi was given a coat, a gold belt, a gold-plated silver-plated saddle bridle, and a horse. Due to the many gifts, Su Shi also transferred the surplus horses to Li Diao and wrote a voucher in case Li Diao sold the horse without a basis in the future.

The high-level of the Song Dynasty ate mutton more, and the practice of mutton was different, taking the Kaifeng City contained in the "Tokyo Menghualu" as an example, there were fried sheep white sausages, sheep into the oven, sheep's head sticks, soft sheep buns, etc. When he was in Danzhou, Su Shi once recalled the life of Bianliang "Ten years of disgust in Beijing and fattening, and pressing red jade every day". Lv Dafang once wrote about the cloud: "The diet is not expensive and smelly, and the imperial kitchen stops using mutton." Lu You of the Southern Song Dynasty described the style of respecting Su Shi's works in Shu, and there was a proverb: "Su Wen is cooked, and mutton is slashed; Su Wensheng, vegetable soup. This is an excellent footnote to the sheep-eating style of the Song Dynasty. The Song people also introduced sheep produced in the Khitan and other northern countries into the country. When Su Shi was in Mizhou, he talked about the local "sheared sheep as big as a horse", which should be referring to this kind of thing. In addition, among the sheep produced in the north, there is a product of "lying sand sheep". Zeng Xiongsheng believes that this is exactly what Su Shi said, "lying on the sand and fine ribs", that is, the sheep produced in Tongzhou, Huazhou and other places. Su Shi's hometown of Shu also raises sheep. Su Shi himself also personally herded sheep in his early years, that is, the so-called "there are a hundred sheep in front of me, listen to my whip like a drum" Yes. In addition, its relegated place of residence in Huangzhou "mutton is like the north", which shows that the local sheep is also abundant. Su Shi also learned in Huangzhou that the local herdsmen drove their sheep to barren land, believing that "the grass is short and flavorful, and the sheep have to be chewed carefully, so they are fat and disease-free". There are wild antelopes in Fujian and Guangzhou, and when Su Shi returned north through Shaozhou (now Shaoguan, Guangdong), he received a "sheep edge" presented by Feng Zuren.

Although pigs and sheep are both important sources of meat, in the Northern Song Dynasty, there are certain differences between the two. Taking Su Shi as an example, he ate more mutton in Kaifeng, and there was a saying in Huangzhou that "Huangzhou is good pork", and in Danzhou, it was "a flower pork every five days". When he moved down, he was trapped by money, so Su Shi naturally preferred to choose pork with a relatively low price to eat, "one meat a day", or something that could not be caused by low-class households. In Su Shi's hometown of Shudi, eating pork is a common thing. The local people of Meishan gather to work, and every year in July, they "buy sheep and pig wine, worship the ancestors, eat and drink for fun, and go away drunk". At that time, there were also some regions that were famous for their delicious pork. As early as when he was under Qixia, Su Shi had heard that "Huangyang (now Qianyang, Shaanxi) pork is beautiful" and ordered someone to buy it. As a gourmet, Su Shi also has his own experience on how to eat pork, and he believes that roast pork needs to be "cleaned and washed, with less water, and the firewood can't be smoked." When he is ripe, don't urge him, and when the fire is enough, he is beautiful", that is, the pork should be slowly stewed on fire, and the "Dongpo meat" that later generations said was transformed from this. In addition, Su Shi also cooked turnips with pork. In the first year of Yuanfeng (1078), when he was in Xuzhou, Su Shi once presented bamboo shoots and peonies to his friend Li Gongxue, and wrote two poems, including the sentence "My family is clumsy in cooking, and the meat is turnips". When he was in Huangzhou, Su Shi specially informed his cousin Su Zi'an of his current situation, and in the letter he recorded two methods of making pork, namely "boiling pig's head and infusing it with blood-infused nitrile". "Bloody nitrile" should be pork blood and meat sausage. Eating pig's head and blood sausage may be a Sichuan custom, and Su Shi described the two dishes as having a "Tai'an taste".

The mammals in Su Shi's field of vision include dogs. When Su Shi was in Danzhou, he raised a dog named "Wu Mi", or because the dog's mouth was black, so it was named. Of course, this naming method may also refer to the allusion of "Yellow Ear Biography". Yellow Ear is a dog of the land machine, intelligent and clever, and is rumored to be able to pass books back and forth for his master. Su Shi probably hopes that Wu Mi can be as smart and intelligent as this "senior among dogs". In fact, the dog is indeed quite clever and humane. After Su Shi learned that he was pardoned by the imperial court, the dog "dropped its tail and danced happily" and had fun with its owner. In Huizhou, due to the tornado, there was a situation where "people sleep on the wall with chickens and dogs". In Wuchang West Mountain, Su Shi chanted the words "the drum is shocked by the military and the dog"; The dogs of Wuchang, like the cattle of Hainan, have been killed. Su Shi deliberately wrote "Remembering the Killing of Dogs in Xuzhou", which is exactly what he said that "there is a dog killing business in the (Xuzhou) compartment world". Rabbits are also common animals. In the second year of Yuanfeng (1079), Su Shi and other ten people will hunt in the south of Xuzhou City, and they may also hunt rabbits.

Mammals, rats and bats also appeared in Su Shi's field of vision. In the third year of Yuanfeng (1080), Su Shi stayed overnight in Huangzhou Zenzhi Temple, chanting that "the Buddha lamp gradually dimmed and the hungry rat came out", describing the expressive and vivid image. Bats are a special type of mammal. Su Shi has seen it in Hangzhou, Huzhou, and Haozhou. Bats often appear under the name "fairy mouse". Su Shi visited Hangzhou Dongxiao Palace and wrote "The flying squirrel and the white crow in the cave turned". When Su Shi prayed for the sun in the Dragon Cave of Bian Mountain, Huzhou, he also left the sentence "flying squirrels turning over white crows". "Flying squirrel" and "white crow" may both refer to bats. When passing through Tushan and Jingshan in Haozhou, Su Shi and Su Yu, Su Guo, father and son toured together, "the bats flew when they returned".

Wild animals such as jackals and tigers live in the mountains and forests. Su Shi passed Yibin (now Yibin, Sichuan) and said that "there are jackal and tiger traces on the road" here. According to Wen Rongsheng's research, tigers are widely distributed. Cheng Minsheng pointed out that in the Northern Song Dynasty, except for the Jingshi Kaifeng Mansion, tigers were distributed on all other roads.

The tamarins of Shu, that is, the golden snub-nosed monkey. In Kaifeng, Su Shi once received tamarin skins from Yang Lixian and Li Li. He Yeheng's research shows that the distribution area of ancient golden snub-nosed monkeys is from north to south, spanning the Wei River, the Yangtze River, the Pearl River, the Lancang River and other river basins, and the distribution range is wider than that of modern times. It was not until after the 18th century that the distribution range of golden snub-nosed monkeys began to shrink sharply due to the influence of human activities, reflecting the characteristics of "humans advancing and animals retreating". According to this, it can be seen that the golden snub-nosed monkey should have a relatively wide distribution in the Northern Song Dynasty. Golden snub-nosed monkeys are hunted for skins and used to make a variety of items, the most famous of which is the "marmoset", a mattress made of marmoset skin. According to Zhu Yu's records, this kind of product is only "allowed to be used by the two systems of civil ministers and military ministers"; The tamarin used for this is probably the Sichuan snub-nosed monkey, because the tamarin "has the longest spine hair and is as gold-colored as the namoset". According to Cheng Minsheng's research, affected by factors such as quality and size, the price of suede has also changed, ranging from one to five or six times, and the price of the velvet seat has been as high as 100 times, but the price has decreased in the early Southern Song Dynasty.

The rabbit and fox were seen by Su Shi when he was hunting in the reed garden of Sizhu Supervisor. In the first year of Zhiping (1064), Su Shi left "the yellow fox and rabbit are the most cunning...... The wind is hot and the tail is hot, and it wants to come out of the words that have been covered by the goshawk"; The hunters returned with a full load, "saddle hung pheasant rabbit shoulders". The stag is the stag. The species of deer here is unknown, but according to He Yeheng's research, elk were still produced around Xi'an during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, and until the 50s of the 20th century, there were still wild sika deer in the area. Historically, the Hubei region, including Huangzhou, has been rich in elk, and Huanggang County still has records about elk in the Hongzhi period of the Ming Dynasty, but in the 14th year of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty (1749), there is a time when the wild elk may have been traced. Sika deer were also widely seen in Hubei in various historical periods, and until the 20th century, there were wild sika deer in the local area. Deer and roe deer are abundant in Huangzhou, and Su Shi said that "pigs, cattle, roe deer, and deer are like soil" in Huangzhou, which is an example. When Su Shi passed through Panlong Temple in Nanshan, Yixian County, there was a saying that "the moon is dark and the bamboo is repaired". The deer is a roe deer and is also a cervid. The roe deer is widely distributed, in ancient times Baoji, Fengxiang, Qishan and other places have this beast, but now in Shaanxi, the wild roe deer has been difficult to find.

Flying squirrels are also known as flying squirrels, and on the Chinese New Year's Eve of the seventh year of Xining (1074), Su Shi had a sentence "Hungry Flying Sniffing Empty Case", which should have been seen in Michigan. Bamboo, known today as the bamboo rat, is a rodent and can be eaten. The bamboo rat obtained by Su Shi is "a wild man offering bamboo, with a waist and abdomen as big as an ounce", or a relatively fat bamboo rat. Bamboo rats get their name from the fact that they feed on bamboo, and although their diet is not limited to bamboo, their distribution often overlaps with the distribution of bamboo forests. He Yeheng once studied the distribution area of bamboo rats to explore the distribution of ancient bamboo forests. There is a bamboo supervisor in Xulu County, which specializes in taking care of Fengxiang's official bamboo, and Fengxiang's many bamboos can be seen from this. Therefore, it is not surprising that bamboo rats appear here.

Oxtail civet, also known as jade-faced civet, that is, civet cat, has a delicious taste and a long history of eating. The ox-tailed civet was regarded as a gift by the Song people. Su Shi presented it to Xu Dashou, who knew Huangzhou at that time, in Huangzhou. Mei Yaochen wrote about the taste of his hometown Xuanzhou, and there was the saying "oxtail civet on a snowy day". Jiangxi region is especially rich in ox-tailed civets, Su Zhe records the scenery of Yunzhou, as "Yunzhou two songs", one of which is to write ox-tailed civets. In the literati circle in this area, the act of giving the oxtail civet is quite common, such as Zhou Bida, Liu Kezhuang, Yang Wanli and others have records of receiving the civet.

To put it simply, the animal species in Su Shi's field of vision are quite rich, and it seems that it is indeed difficult to "turn to animals in history" and "natural history of animals".

2. The fiction and reality of Su Shi's vision of animal writing

This article uses Su Shi's poems and essays as the basic historical materials, which are naturally influenced by the characteristics of literary works, including the realistic writing of historical truth, and it is inevitable that the author's fiction, allusions, pretenses and imagery, and even more inevitably biased seeing and not seeing. Although the former is the focus of this paper, the latter cannot be ignored, and the exploration of imagery writing may help to reveal the transmutation of Chinese elements in Song social life. The two are combined, and the party is a complete animal world under Su Shi's vision. Of course, as far as the types of texts that record the animals of the Northern Song Dynasty are concerned, there can still be different sources such as local chronicles, official histories, notebook novels, literati and humanities collections, etc., or they can corroborate each other due to different forms. For example, Su Shi's yellow chicken has a special image. Su Shi quoted this allusion, which is different from his predecessors, and uses it with the meaning of "time is fleeting, and people are easy to get old". Moreover, Su Shi's horses are in a variety of shapes and have rich literary connotations. Su Shi inscribed a large number of painted horses during his lifetime, and those who survive today are quite rare. The horses in his pen have different expressions: ordinary and ordinary, there are people who carry heavy roads, and they mostly write about daily road life; There are also those who are handsome and fast, and they are mostly used as metaphors; There is also a thin and haggard sick horse, this special image of a sick beast often reflects Su Shi's thinking about real life.

Between Su Shi's pen and ink, Niu also has a rich literary connotation. "Selling swords and buying cattle", "sheep and cattle coming down", "taking cattle and calves", "cow and horse style" and other cattle-related allusions are frequently used by him. In addition, he also uses "old cows", "cattle cattle" and "grinding cows" as self-metaphors, and often writes about poverty and hardship in life.

In Su Shi's writing, another widely occurring bird, the gull bird, is a common water bird, mainly inhabiting near lakes and rivers. This bird has appeared in the "Liezi", and the relevant records have derived the canon of "gulls and birds forgetting their machines". In Su Shi's pen, gulls and birds appear repeatedly, involving multiple locations, during which realism and imagery may be both: Su Shi sang and sang directly at Li Bang on Jingdong Road, saying that "the sun is to see the bathing gulls in the south of the city"; Traveling to Heshan in Huzhou, there is also this bird, which is called "sitting on the envy of the light gull"; He traveled to the West Mountain of Wuchang and "sat to see if the gulls were gone"; Drinking in the West Lake of Yingzhou, Su Shi enjoyed the scenery of "water gulls and herons"; In Huizhou, there is also the state of "river gulls gradually tamering". There are people in the scene, there are scenes in the people, and it is difficult to distinguish between the virtual and the real.

In Su Shi's writing, the frequency of all species of birds is significantly inferior to that of cranes and geese. Both birds are migratory and have migratory habits. Among them, the migratory nature of geese is better known. Therefore, in all kinds of literary works, there are often the words of the North Goose and the South Xiang. For Su Shi, who has been repeatedly belittled, "returning to the wild goose" is undoubtedly a special image, especially after being degraded to Hainan, he pinned his nostalgia and homesickness on the Hongyan who returned to the north.

After repeated copying by poets of the past dynasties, Gui Yan, Fei Hong, North Goose, South Flying Goose, etc., are all common fixed images, and the combination of virtual and real is often difficult to distinguish. Out of the consideration of rigor and the pursuit of historical truth, this article will list some geese in Su Shi's pen with a clear realistic orientation: Su Shi travels to Fengxiang Lingxutai, see "Flying geese in front of the stage"; Tour Xuzhou Yunlong Temple, watch the "frightened flying and injured geese"; Climb Wuxi Huishan, and "look up to see the crane Xiang"; After Henan Xinxi, chanting the poem "Zhupi geese rise and the sky is dark"; Writing on the banks of the Huizhou River, it is said that "plumbing Hongbei Zhu". And so on (and so on?) We all present it in the idea of the virtual and the real.

Cranes and geese are sometimes mentioned together, and they are also animals with profound literary implications. Because of its elegant posture and noble meaning, the crane has won the blue eyes of literati and ink writers. In the Han Dynasty, the term "Crane Scholar" appeared, referring to a sage who was talented but not outstanding. Since the Tang and Song dynasties, scholars have often raised and trained cranes for ornamentation. Driven by the culture of raising cranes, books such as "The Book of Cranes" were widely disseminated. Su Shi's "Crane Sigh" in Dingzhou depicts cranes raised in the garden. By the time of the Song Dynasty, the crane's status had risen, and its appearance was often celebrated as auspicious. This phenomenon may be related to Song Huizong's admiration for Taoism. So far, based on its ornamental value and cultural significance, the crane has derived a different kind of interest. With a special political background, the price of cranes is constantly rising. At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, officials had to purchase cranes due to the needs of Huashigang, and even the white cranes in the Huating area of Xiuzhou (now Songjiang, Shanghai) were as expensive as 1,000 per each. The ancients were vague about the classification of cranes. After studying the records of Fang Zhi and other records, Wen Rongsheng believes that the ancients called "cranes" or "white cranes" should refer to red-crowned cranes. However, when it comes to Su Shi's writings, it is difficult to judge which type of cranes he is talking about, because most of the cranes that appear do not have a clear direction. What's more, Su Shi writes about cranes with allusions and metaphors. In his writings, cranes are often used to describe the body as clear and thin, that is, "crane bones". In addition, "Beishan Ape Crane", "Crane Returns to Huabiao", "Huating Crane", etc., are all common allusions related to cranes in Su Shi's pen.

Robert Hans van Gulik made a detailed study of the image of apes such as "ape crying" in Chinese poetry, and sorted out the transmutation of ancient Chinese "ape" imagery in detail in "Examination of the Gibbon". He believes that before the 14th century AD, because the habitat of gibbons was quite extensive, people were not unfamiliar with this animal, so the "ape" in the poem at this time was the gibbon; Since then, due to climate change and deforestation, the distribution boundaries of gibbons have continued to move southward, and their numbers have become more and more scarce, and the word "ape" has begun to be used interchangeably, that is, it has gradually been used to refer to other primates such as baboons and macaques. The research of Gao Yaoting et al. also corroborates this point. In this regard, the allusion of "Wushan Ape Cry" has a long history, and Su Shi once passed through the Three Gorges area. When he was in Qianwei (now Qianwei, Sichuan), he once chanted "the mountain ape is sad and the valley spring sounds", and what he wrote and heard was the cry of the ape.

In addition, when he was in Huizhou, Su Shi also mentioned a more special animal, that is, the rhino. The rhinoceros is a rhinoceros, and its horns can be used to make a variety of ornaments, especially for its belt decoration. There should be rhinoceros in the Lingnan area, but Su Shi has no record of seeing or smelling rhinos here. The rhino he mentioned is a rhino belt donated for the construction of the two new bridges in Huizhou, the so-called "sigh I donate the waist rhino". This sentence refers to Su Shi's donation of rhino belts to help build bridges. Su Shi's rhino belt should be given by the imperial court and is a symbol of fame and fortune. Therefore, on the winter solstice of the second year of Yuanfu (1099), when drinking with people in Danzhou, Su Shi tried to compose a poem "The crane temples are all white, and the rhinoceros is still half red", indicating that although he is degraded, he has not yet been deprived of his gifts. The descriptions of cranes and rhinos here undoubtedly contain the image of etherealization.

To be sure, although the above article lists and proves the different animal species that exist between Su Shi's pen and ink, most of them are corresponding to the virtual and the real, which are distinguished one by one and presented clearly, which is not easy. In addition, the comparative survey documents of many current animal history research works have repeatedly presented evidence, and I am afraid that we must also adhere to this concept and repeatedly examine and distinguish it. However, if we explore the "natural history of animals" in this regard, it seems to be quite a methodological embarrassment. Whether the research of animal philology, which takes literature review as the method and the goal of examination and revision of famous objects, can be called academic research from the perspective of "animal history turn", it still needs to be expanded and innovated by scholars.

3. The Turning of Animals in History, the Natural History of Animals, and the Historiography of Animals

Scholars believe that it is influenced by postmodernist theories and directly advocated by animal rights protectionists, so giving animals subjective initiative, or calling it a new animal history and critical animal research, is a new way of exploration under the discourse of "de-anthropocentrism". Prior to this, in the era of modern natural history in Zhaoxing, Europe, the history of animals was combined with literature review and field investigation, focusing on the detailed observation and description of the classification and distribution of animals, and special attention was paid to wild animals, which may be described as "natural history of animals". In the Chinese naturalist tradition, the study of animals should be regarded as the study of animal history in premodern historiography, that is, the textual studies of animals in history with the method of literature revision and the goal of famous objects.

In recent years, there has been a fruitful academic effort on the topic of animal history. For example, Yi Maoke's The Elephant's Retreat: A History of China's Environment (Nanjing: Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2014), Chet Van Diezer (Beijing: Exotic Beasts of the Sea on Medieval and Renaissance Maps) (Beijing: Beijing United Publishing Company, 2018), Yang Bin's The Little-Known Global History of Seashells and Shellfish (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2021), and Zou Zhenhuan's Goodbye Beasts: Animal Culture and Sino-Foreign Exchanges in the Ming and Qing Dynasties (Shanghai: Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House, 2021), Edited by Jennifer Bonnell and Sean Kheraj.Traces of the Animal Past——Methodological Challenges in Animal History, Alberta of Canada: University of Calgary Press , 2022), especially Robert B. Marks's "Tiger, Rice, Silk, Mud: Environment and Economy in South China in the Late Imperial Period" (Nanjing: Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2010), etc., have produced abundant results, but the initial understanding of the previous uncovered achievements gives the impression that there are various pitfalls that scholars often ignore the hidden dangers of animal history writing. In this way, considering the actual situation of the history of the Song Dynasty in China, as well as the existing appearance of the surviving documents of the Tianshui Dynasty, we think that it is inevitable to go back with the concept of "using the present to be the ancient", and it is inevitable that there will be a gap between them; Taking the perspective of the Song people as the scene of "reproducing" the animal history of the Northern Song Dynasty may be more able to reveal the truth of traditional China.

Rather than insisting on constructing the "natural history of animals", we should take the research method of animal philology in pre-modern historiography with the method of document examination and the goal of the examination of famous objects, and summarize, classify and interpret all kinds of animals in Su Shi's field of vision, and compare them with the records of other Confucian scholars of the same era and the relevant records of previous generations and later generations, and may be able to find some traces of animal types and changes in the social environment. In order to reconstruct the biological world and ecological environment of China before and after the 11th century, and to compare the northern and western regions (Song Dynasty China and Europe) and the north and south (Khitan, Jurchen, Mongolia and other nomadic regions) in the same period of time and the whole history, this paper examines the expression of the changes in the Great Song Dynasty between the writings of the eunuchs and Confucian scholars, and the real reasons for the southward migration of the northern nomads from the perspective of climate and ecological changes, especially from the perspective of European and American naturalist research, and re-examines this issue from the perspective of global history. Showing the ever-changing and splendid historical landscape of animals that are linked to future generations is the direction we will actively explore in the future.

The notes are omitted, please refer to the original text for the full version.

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1. Song Dynasty History Research Information 1

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