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    Interview | Ma Weidu: Ancient Books Protection Focuses on Application

    Neither a chef nor a gourmet, Lu Ran has written a book about gourmet "Song Yan" with friends over the years. They salvaged the Song Dynasty recipes from ancient books and recovered dishes that were visible and edible.
    In the documentary "Ancient Books Through Time and Space", the audience followed Lu Ran back to the Song Dynasty, which was elegant and full of fireworks. Smack the humanities from the food, and collide the poetry in the cups and plates. "Ancient Books Through Time and Space" poster

    "Ancient Books Through Time and Space" poster

    The program producer Xiaohe Media has produced high-scoring documentaries such as "But There Are Books" and "Book Fans". "Ancient Books Through Time and Space" has found an interesting entry point, from ancient book protection, collection, restoration and research in different forms From the perspective of the ancient book person, we can see the cultural value of an ancient book from the outside to the inside.
    In the film, you can see vivid stories like Lu Ran, such as the new life of Dongba ancient books, the life in the family tree, etc. The audience witnesses scholars and artists repairing ancient books and interpreting the contents of ancient books, and at the same time, they also feel that the original books were put on the shelf. The ancient books gradually "lived to life".
    ByteDance and the China Cultural Relics Protection Foundation jointly launched the "ByteDance Ancient Books Protection Special Fund", and cooperated with the National Library of China to provide targeted funding for projects such as the restoration of precious Chinese ancient books, the training of professional talents, and the activation and digitization of ancient books. "Ancient Books Through Time and Space" is a part of this special project, which aims to arouse more people's understanding of the charm of ancient books by excavating the stories of folk experts on the restoration of ancient books. Among them, the ninth episode of the documentary contains the plot of the ByteDance ancient book protection special fund to support the restoration of "Yongle Grand Ceremony". Screenshot of "Ancient Books Through Time and Space"

    Screenshot of "Ancient Books Through Time and Space"

    Of course, the most attractive thing in the film is this Song Yan. The most coveted dish of the banquet was a crab stuffed with orange.
    Cut off the top cover of a large yellow ripe orange, scoop out the pulp with a spoon, and make a hollow orange urn. Steam the crab for eight minutes over high heat, remove the crab meat and crab roe, add rice wine, vinegar, orange juice and a little water, mix Mix the orange filling. Then stuff it like an orange urn, steam it in a steamer for about five minutes, and you're done with a crab-stuffed orange with full of color and aroma.
    "Crab stuffed orange is recorded in several ancient books. It was such a dish that was widely welcomed by the public and the upper class during the Southern Song Dynasty." Lu Ran said: "I admire the combination and ideas of the chefs in the Song Dynasty. The few words recorded can be fed back, and I can feel the joy of eating this dish in the Song Dynasty."
    The successful trial production of crab-stuffed orange proves the feasibility of restoring the delicacy of Song Dynasty. But this success is based on their combing and textual research on a large number of documents. In order to find the most accurate recipe for a dish, they often need to compare various recipes and related ancient books of the Song Dynasty and its dynasties before and after.
    During the restoration process, Lu Ran and others referenced not only the home-cooked recipe "Wu's Family Feedback" written by the cook in the Song Dynasty, but also the "Shanjia Qingyi" written by literati, which was mainly composed of literati dishes. This book The writer Lin Hong is a middle-aged literary and artistic middle-aged man in the Southern Song Dynasty who is good at poetry and painting, likes elegance, and even a little hypocritical.
    In "Mountain Family Clearance", he recorded more than 100 dishes with a reclusive temperament in the mountains and forests, not only listed the practices, but also attached poetry dictionaries and personal feelings. The most impressive thing is his talent for naming dishes. If he lived to this day, he must have been recruited by star restaurants. "Manshanxiang", whose name comes with the fragrance of mountains and forests, is actually just a boiled vegetable. The poetic "Bijian Soup" turned out to be water celery soup, a simple piece of boiled meat, and he named it "Bai Xia Offering".
    Recently, Ma Weidu, a cultural scholar and curator of Guanfu Museum, Hong Huang, a well-known media person, Zhang Zhiqing, guardian of ancient books and deputy director of the National Library of China, Zhang Yu, vice president of ByteDance, and Zheng Suhang, director of the documentary "Ancient Books Through Time and Space", came to Guanfu together. The museum set up the table, and also re-engraved a Song banquet. While enjoying the food of the Song Dynasty, everyone talked about the past and the present with the food as the center, and at the same time felt the wonderful culture in ancient books and its meaning to people living today. Song Yan live poster

    Song Yan live poster

    After the live broadcast, in an exclusive interview with The Paper, Ma Weidu talked about the many challenges faced in the protection and restoration of ancient books. He believes that ancient books are a matter of high mountain, not only for the public, but most cultural relic workers also look up to ancient books, because it is an independent knowledge, and the threshold is particularly high.
    "There are only a handful of Chinese people who can read ancient books well, and since the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, there are less than one or two ancient books left behind, most of them are submerged in the vast river of history, and the rest have become very Ma Weidu felt that, “As a national project, I think the most important thing is to digitize all the information of ancient books. First, it can be widely used by the public. Second, we are not afraid of primitive Once the paper version is lost, digitization, in a sense, can preserve ancient books for a longer period of time.” Ma Weidu

    Ma Weidu

    【dialogue】
    "Paper Life Millennium"
    The Paper : When was the earliest contact with rare ancient books?
    Ma Weidu : For me, rare ancient books are not my major, but I came into contact with ancient books relatively early. About 30 years ago, I was stationed at Liulichang. There were a lot of ancient books sold in Chinese bookstores, so we went to read them. Some of them are re-engraved ancient books, so they are very cheap. For me, I will buy them if they are useful, and I will not buy them if they are not. For the collection of ancient books, the Song edition is very rare, because the Song edition had a saying in the Republic of China that "a page of paper is worth a tael of gold", so I buy some ancient books just to use them.
    The Paper : Do you have any treasured ancient books in your hands?
    Ma Weidu : Because I have never deliberately collected ancient books. On the one hand, compared with cultural relics, ancient books were expensive decades ago. One ancient book and one stele extension. These two items are a relatively unique category in the collection, and both are relatively expensive. of. Historically, the collectors of ancient books were all well-educated. For example, Mr. Zhu Jiaqing's father's generation and his grandfather's generation were all collectors of ancient books, so later a large number of ancient books were donated to the Forbidden City.
    The Paper : To understand the protection of ancient books, it may be necessary to understand the differences in paper. Many young people may not know that ancient handmade paper is longer than modern coated paper.
    Ma Weidu : Papermaking is a great invention in China. Paper from the Tang and Song Dynasties can still be read after thousands of years. It still has softness, mainly due to the ancient method of papermaking. There are no trace elements in the paper that should not be present. Without acid, its lifespan is relatively long. So the ancients have been saying "paper life is a thousand years". For example, it is easier to preserve the booklet that is given as a gift, but if it is written on silk, it will become very brittle and it is difficult to preserve it. Now there is acid in the paper, and the life expectancy is generally 100 years. Just like 100 years ago, when this kind of painting newspaper, which was commonly known as Western coated paper, came in and said, at that time, everyone believed that this kind of paper would definitely defeat Chinese rice paper. The pictorial cannot be flipped through, and once you flip through it, it will be crispy.
    In the past, the old gentleman was more optimistic about the ancient books, and they covered their mouths to read. No one spoke in front of the ancient books, and they couldn't let out their anger, because the breath you exhaled would hurt the ancient books.
    The Paper : Although the life span is long, the ancient method of making paper is not widely used. Is this also a test for the protection of ancient books?
    Ma Weidu : Well, it is indeed a problem for the restoration of ancient books. The restoration must be made of ancient paper. Now there is a fake ancient method. It looks similar to rice paper, but you have to test it. It still has acid, if there is acid , it must be affected. This restoration method of restoring ancient books is to use new paper as life paper (referring to the layer of paper that is close to the back of the silk after the silk calligraphy and paintings are mounted), and then mount it again, this paper must have requirements. There is no requirement for this paper, and it may have problems in a hundred or two hundred years.
    The Paper : Like many ancient paintings and calligraphy, they will be unframed many times, so what are the key words for restoration?
    Ma Weidu : Reversibility. In China, we have this kind of reversibility for the so-called "property" value.
    For example, after a painting is mounted, it can be re-mounted again after hundreds of years. The above can be repaired, such as dry cracks and insect bites. The same is true for ancient furniture. The tenon-and-mortise structure of ancient furniture can also be disassembled. If it has been rebuilt, it will be in good condition after it is finished, and its concept is the concept of letting nature take its course.
    But now many new furniture use this kind of chemical glue. This kind of glue is irreversible. For example, if you mount a painting, the traditional mounting is still with noodles. If some of them use chemical paste, the paste is irreversible. Once it dries, it can never be soft again.
    It's hard to know how valuable the paintings and words written by people today will be in 200 years. A painting that may be very valuable now will be worthless after 200 years. Maybe the painter is worthless now, but after 200 years, it will be worthless. It has value; for example, if you buy a painting, or the value is very cheap, if you frame it like this, then after 200 years, the problem may come out, right?
    The Paper : So it is possible that the cost of protection and restoration is higher than the cost of buying it. Is this also a key to the failure to pass on?
    Ma Weidu : Well, the ancient book must have a destiny. It can be preserved to this day. It must have this destiny. Like the Dunhuang suicide note scattered all over the world, we don’t talk about who owns this thing, or what happened back then. Better than burning, right? Everything that remains to this day is the life of the thing itself.
    How to make full use of ancient books is the focus of protecting cultural relics
    Surging News : In the fourth episode of the documentary "Fantasy World in Ancient Books", Satan, who is addicted to the gods and monsters in the ancient book "The Classic of Mountains and Seas", uses modern brushstrokes to draw the gods and monsters originally imagined by human beings. How do you read this innovative ancient book? inherited?
    Ma Weidu : The key is still this part of the treasure, can it be applied more in society? For example, repainting and color matching according to the ancient book "Shan Hai Jing", I think this can only be regarded as using it, not protecting it, because in a sense, if you want to protect it, it must be original. For example, what was the situation in history at that time, we can see its most real situation, if you re-color and re-check the line, people are very happy now, but in a hundred or even thousand years later, Maybe this information is messy. For me, it is most important to keep the original state of the cultural relic information.
    First of all, ancient books are few in number, and second, they have longevity. In theory you protect it, but it will eventually perish. Civilization itself is a process of substitution, that is, a civilization replaces a civilization. I don’t think it is necessary to completely protect all human civilizations. The question now is how to make full use of this part of what we have. I think this is a very important point in our protection of cultural relics, that is, how to apply it.
    The Paper: The documentary also talks about genealogy, which is a supplement to national history and local chronicles. It is very precious to preserve the genealogy of big families, and it is now attracting much attention in the collection market.
    Ma Weidu: Genealogy and genealogy, we used to say that it was a critical attitude, so this kind of genealogy genealogy in China has been destroyed in all likelihood, and very few are left. I just wrote a book about the interpretation of Tang poetry and Song Ci, "The Code of Tang Poetry and Song Ci". In this book, I wrote a lot of poets and lyricists, and they all have clear family trees. For example, people like Du Fu can be found dating back more than a dozen generations. If you don't have a family tree, you don't even know who your ancestors are, right? Many famous people in history, his family relationships are told to us by family tree, which we thought was not important before, but now we think it is very important.
    Surging News : For example, in Anhui, there are still a group of descendants of Xixia people. Because there are few historical records in Xixia, this is also through the family tree like in the ancestral hall to find the origin of history.
    Ma Weidu : Exactly. Because the civilization alternation in Chinese history is basically the alternation of nomadic and farming civilizations, and every time there will be a weaker party in the process of alternation, that side is forced to remain anonymous, and many people are gone. For example, the Khitan finally destroyed the country, at least millions or even tens of millions. In fact, they were integrated into the big family of the Chinese nation. There are many such examples. For example, there was a Roman in Gansu, a Jewish in Henan, and Kaifeng. The Jews, who have returned to Israel, have joined Judaism, and they ended up using DNA to explain this. Live screenshot

    Live screenshot

    The Paper : You ate a Song Banquet together that day. I thought of a gourmet friend of mine who also likes to read ancient books to cook. He said a court fish tendon noodle. A fish has only one tendon. It takes time to make this bowl of noodles. It is labor-intensive and extremely particular. In your memory, is there such a food memory of flipping a book and dropping your chin?
    Ma Weidu : A famous dish in Jiangsu and Zhejiang restaurants is steamed anchovies. Today's shad are all artificially raised. The shad is half a fish on the table, and it is split in half from the back. You look like a fish, but in fact it is only half a fish. Why is it a half bar? It is because the fish scales of the shad are not scratched, and the fish scales have grease, which needs to be steamed. Shad has many thorns, but it is very fragrant. This thing is very annoying. It will die when it comes out of water. In ancient times, it could not be kept fresh.
    Emperor Qianlong had eaten shad when he went to the south of the Yangtze River. After returning to Beijing, he suddenly wanted to eat this fish, but it was transported from the south of the Yangtze River to Beijing. According to the fastest speed in ancient times, it took at least one day to travel day and night. Therefore, to transport it to Beijing, the ancients had a trick. First, prepare the lard. The lard is in a semi-solidified state. After the shad is hit, it is directly stuffed into the lard, and the lard seals it up. When it was transported to Beijing, the lard had solidified, and it was fine for half a month, and the lard would not damage the shad, and now, when steaming the fish, you need to add a little lard instead. In this way, Emperor Qianlong could eat fresh anchovies in the north. This cost can only be afforded by the royal family. If you want to transport it to Beijing like this for ordinary people, how much do you think the fish will cost?
    The Paper : Collectors seem to be very particular about food. For example, Mr. Wang Shixiang, it is said that a visitor suddenly visited, two green onions can also be fried, and it is very delicious.
    Ma Weidu : A friend treats guests at a five-star restaurant. The old man (Wang Shixiang) will fry a green vegetable and spinach at home, and put them in a bottle after frying. Think about their home away from the restaurant and riding a bike. It takes more than ten minutes to ride a bicycle, and it takes more than half an hour to open the glass bottle to the restaurant, right? I bumped all the way to the hotel to put it on a plate and then eat it. Everyone said it was delicious. I think this kind of deliciousness is still a kind of etiquette. But it can show the mentality of a person who has a pursuit of food. The old man likes to eat, pursues it, pays attention to the season, and does not eat it out of season. For example, when the spring bamboo shoots come down, we will eat the spring bamboo shoots. In fact, it depends on the individual's mouth. It takes 6 hours to grow soup. How can ordinary people do this when they eat? Except professional chefs do it for you.
    The Paper : What about you, do you pay attention to what you eat?
    Ma Weidu : I didn't pursue it. I eat fast. This is a problem developed in the past difficult times. I'm afraid I won't be able to eat when I'm slow. It's like I've come here after a hard time, and everything I eat is delicious.

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