The first exhibition on the protection of intangible cultural heritage in China was recently held at the National Museum of Beijing. Gu embroidery, bamboo carving, Gong and drum books, Shanghai Opera, Jiangnan silk bamboo and Huang Daopo's hand-made cotton spinning technology were all exhibited in Shanghai. But no one knows the Chinese fragrance road which has a history of thousands of years. Professor Liu Liangyou's greatest concern is that once the Japanese take the lead, then this very pure and elegant Chinese art will completely disappear.
Over the past two years, the delegation of Xiangdao, led by masters, has visited Beijing, Nanjing, Tianjin, Guangzhou and other cities in China frequently. They are not only looking for roots, but also trying to find out. But for a while, China could not find its opponent of Huashan's argumentation of sword. Many experts who study Chinese ancient culture have no idea what it is called Xiangdao at all.
Liu Liangyou felt "very ashamed and depressed" when he learned the news. But at the same time, he said that even if he met Japanese experts in Xiangdao face to face, he would not deal with them. "Because it's very difficult to win a single-knife meeting. I don't have an assistant in mainland China."
According to him, there are only a dozen or so people in Taiwan who can be regarded as researchers of Xiangdao. Others are just burning money. Playing fragrant road requires cultural accumulation, calm down, and of course, a lot of money. He asked: Are the mainlanders ready?
Liu Liangyou is a professor at the Institute of History and Cultural Relics Management, Fengjia University, Taiwan. Recently, he was invited to do research work in Shanghai Museum. It is also a topic to excavate and sort out Chinese fragrant culture. When Shangbo held the Civilization Exhibition of Zhou, Qin, Han and Tang Dynasty, a special museum was set up to display the gold and silver wares stored in the Tang Dynasty cellar of He Jia Village. Experts in Shaanxi interpret some exquisite utensils as tea sets and alchemy utensils. Professor Liu said, "In fact, they are used for smelling fragrance." For this reason, he wrote a paper entitled "Discussions on Fragrant Culture of Tang Dynasty and Cultural Relics of Fragrant Incenses unearthed from Famen Temple" and sent it to the "International Symposium on Civilization of Zhou, Qin, Han and Tang Dynasties", in which the participants were greatly surprised by the findings and views.
In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, incense was very common. Luo Yin of the Five Dynasties wrote a poem: "The good material of submerged water eats Baizhen, and the Boshan stove warms Yulou Chun. The emperor is also a baseless thing, greedy fragrance forget himself. In the Song Dynasty, due to the strict requirements of scholar-bureaucrats for material life and their efforts to advocate and promote from the spiritual level, the Chinese traditional culture of Qin, Chess, calligraphy and painting, as well as food, wine, tea and so on have completed the foundation, showing a broad and vigorous situation. So far, incense has become an art. Officials and literati often gather to smell incense and formulate the initial ceremony.
In the Tang Dynasty, the Jianzhen monk's eastward journey not only spread Buddhism to Japan, but also brought the incense culture closely related to Buddhism. In the early Southern Song Dynasty, Japanese royalty members and nobles frequently came to China to carry out diplomatic activities, and from Tianmu Mountain in Zhejiang Province took away the tea cups and complete tea ceremony rituals made in Fujian kiln. Today the Japanese call Jianyaozhan "Tianmu Tea Bowl" because it is produced in Tianmu Mountain. If you go east with the tea ceremony, there will be fragrance.
After the Ping'an era, spices were widely used among Japanese aristocrats. They often held incense appreciation activities such as "incense party" or "competition incense", which was a kind of fashion formed by "Tang style" fumigated by "harmony style". The incense Festival has been mentioned many times in the Japanese classical work The Tale of Genji. In the era of Righteousness and Righteousness, incense evolved into the custom of "smelling fragrance" in a certain way, and gradually formed the "fragrant way" of Japan. Especially after the publication of Xiangdao Catalogue in the year of enjoying insurance, Xiangdao has made great progress. But Japan does not produce fragrance. It imports about 500 tons of chess fragrance every year.
Today, there are more than one hundred schools of Hong Kong in Japan, which are generally divided into "imperial family" and "ambitious community". The former is aristocratic, elegant, emphasizing atmosphere, luxurious fragrance and seeking softness in complicated formulas; the latter is a school of warriors (scholars), emphasizing spiritual accomplishment, simple fragrance and rigidity in simple formulas. In Japan, practicing Xiangdao is a very mysterious and profound art. From smelling incense in the first year to practicing incense sculpture in the second year to comprehensive practice in the third year, it takes four years to give the "first pass" certificate, 15 years to advance to the "all pass" level of normal school, and 25 to 30 years to upgrade to the "Austrian pass" level.
However, in China, the birthplace of incense culture, a thousand years after the Tang and Song Dynasties, especially since the Qingjia Road, the spiritual life of scholar-bureaucrats tended to be rough and neglected due to frequent wars, and the ritual of incense banquet, like pure artistic forms such as poetry, ci, music, dance and chess, declined day by day. This incense was passed on to the end of the Qing Dynasty, and finally in the end of the Qing Dynasty. The fire was ashed and cold in the wind and rain. However, there are still a few people studying Xiangdao in Taiwan, where Japan has a deep influence. They prefer to communicate with mainland Chinese culturists or fans of Xiangdao and carry it forward.
The art of flower arranging, tea drinking, chess playing and incense smoking all originated in China. They formed a splendid part of the secular culture of the Han nationality. When they were introduced to Dongying, they were played on the Taoist level. They not only enhanced the sense of ritual, but also became a life of self-cultivation that the upper class and the citizen class were willing to accept. Philosophy. But today, some of the more pure and elegant art of life, such as Xiangdao, tea ceremony and flower ceremony, have a strangeness to the Chinese people, which makes us see something sacred and solemn that can not be seen in China.