Chapter 60 Chapter 60 Yuan Zhen: How many good sisters do you have?

The love story between Cui Yingying and Zhang Sheng has a long history among the people for thousands of years, and it has been performed on the opera stage for a long time. The beautiful blessing of "May all lovers in the world get married" makes every audience resonate in their hearts and at the same time, they are deeply rooted for this love story. A pair of idiotic men and women are deeply gratified.As everyone knows, Zhang Sheng and Cui Yingying are not fictional characters. Zhang Sheng's prototype is the famous Tang Dynasty poet Yuan Zhen who is as famous as the great poet Bai Juyi, and Cui Yingying is his recorded first love.In fact, Yuan Zhen did not have the same deep love and determination for Cui Yingying as Zhang Sheng did, and Cui Yingying was not his only sweetheart.So, who are Yuan Zhen's sweethearts?Let us start with Cui Yingying.

Cui Yingying Cui Yingying's first love did happen in Pujiu Temple in Puzhou (now Yongji City, Shanxi) as mentioned in the book, but her first love was not Zhang Sheng, but her distant cousin Yuan Zhen. In 800 A.D., a handsome 22-year-old Yuan Zhen was studying his homework in Pujiu Temple, preparing for the exam in Beijing.At this time, his distant aunt Zheng Shi also came to the temple with her children and many family servants in order to avoid the military chaos.Yuan Zhen knew Du Que, the general who guarded Puzhou, and thus protected the Zheng family from being harassed by the rebels. Sister Cui.

Yuan Zhen was not only beautiful, but also intelligent. He had been admitted to the Ming Jingke when he was 15 years old.For such a distant nephew who is graceful, unrestrained, capable of protecting them, and has unlimited prospects, Mrs. Zheng is obviously "the mother-in-law looks at her son-in-law, and the more she looks at her, the more she likes her." Cui Yingying came out to meet Yuan Zhen to express her gratitude.Cui Yingying, who had no choice but to follow her mother's order, came out to meet her guests, although she was "commonly dressed and unadorned, without new decorations" (wearing ordinary clothes without embellishments, and sitting down with a sad look), she was still colorful and charming. All of a sudden, Yuan Zhen was stunned. From then on, she "felt sleepy and longing for clothes", haunted her in dreams, and never missed her for a moment.

In fact, Cui Yingying also fell in love with Yuan Zhen at first sight, but after all, she is a young girl who just fell in love.Yuan Zhen has understood Yingying's mind long ago, so she frantically launches rounds of fierce love offensives, and the maid and matchmaker beside Yingying play a role in fueling the flames.In the end, Yingying, who was full of spring, could no longer hold back, and Yuan Zhen, who came over the wall, completed a major baptism in life in the moonlit West Chamber. Once caught in hand, the ruby ​​on the roof will no longer be arrogant, and the bright moonlight in front of the window will no longer be mysterious. After a long period of intimate contact, the opposite effect of "distance creates beauty" begins to work, and the ruby ​​gradually becomes the back of the hand. The cinnabar mole on the face, the bright moonlight slowly reduced to rice grains on the side of the mouth.

Just when the fire of love in Yuan Zhen's heart was no longer so hot, the day to go to Beijing to take the exam arrived. He left Yingying and went to Chang'an. But it far exceeds the sorrow of parting between lovers. The love affair between Yuan Zhen and Cui Yingying started with romance, but it didn't end with romance. The naive Yingying was abandoned by Yuan Zhen. Maybe at this time she understood how important a marriage letter is! Later, Yuan Zhen entangled Cui Yingying, who was already a married woman, twice. Maybe it was because of her conscience, or maybe it was because of the distance that produced beauty again, but she was rejected by the deeply hurt Yingying.

Wei Huicong In the end, Yuan Zhen resolutely abandoned Cui Yingying. One reason was that the love without a marriage certificate had passed its shelf life, and the more important reason was that there was a tall branch in Chang'an City waiting for him to climb. This tall branch is Wei Huicong. Wei Huicong was born in a famous family and is the youngest and most beloved daughter of Jing Zhaoyin (equivalent to the current mayor of Beijing) Wei Xiaqing.Perhaps Wei Xiaqing had taken a fancy to Yuan Zhen's handsomeness and talent, so she married Yuan Zhen, who came from a poor background and was just a secretary and provincial school secretary. This position sounds beautiful, but it is actually the lowest-ranked civil servant.Wei Huicong is a smart, beautiful, industrious and virtuous woman. Although her family background is much higher than Yuan Zhen, she is not arrogant or domineering at all.She worked hard to take care of the housework and maintain a difficult life. "I don't eat ordinary things, but I only think about the long road in the mountains", "Wild vegetables are full of food, and the fallen leaves add salary to the ancient locust tree", "I have no clothes to search In the suitcase, he sells the wine and picks the gold hairpin", he works hard and pays for love.Although the life of this poor and humble couple is not rich, they are warm and sweet, which makes people sigh from the bottom of their hearts, "I only envy mandarin ducks but not immortals".

The virtuousness of his wife and the high status of his father-in-law gradually calmed Yuan Zhen's once-rogue heart, and the birth of his daughter deepened the relationship between husband and wife. , when the happy life was about to begin, Wei Huicong died of illness unfortunately at the age of 27.Yuan Zhen was deeply saddened, thinking about it day and night, and wrote dozens of poems in mourning for his deceased wife, the most famous of which was "Li Si": once having seen the best, the rest is not worthwhile looking. Take Hua Cong to look back lazily, half destined to practice Taoism and half destined to be king.

The nostalgia for his deceased wife expressed in Yuan Zhen's poems is true, but this does not guarantee that he will not make emotional mistakes. As the saying goes, "People are in the world, they can't help themselves", and the officialdom is a world.Not long after Wei Huicong's death, Yuan Zhen went to Chengdu, Sichuan Province as a censor inspector. In this city, the unspoken rules of the officialdom led him to develop a rare "sister-brother relationship" with a famous woman in history. ". Xue Tao Datang is a country of poetry, famous poets are like shining stars, dazzling people's eyes.If male poets are compared to green trees, then the few female poets are the red dots among the green bushes, and the three most popular among them are Shangguan Wan'er in the early Tang Dynasty and Xue Tao in the middle Tang Dynasty And Yu Xuanji of the late Tang Dynasty.

Xue Tao was born in Chang'an, the capital city, and went to Sichuan with his father when he was young. Unfortunately, he became a musician (similar to a singing girl, not a prostitute).She is not only outstandingly talented, good at poetry and prose, but also good at calligraphy, good at singing and dancing, she is definitely the eldest sister of the literary and entertainment circle at that time.Wang Jian, a heavyweight poet at the same time as her and a close comrade-in-arms of Bai Juyi, once wrote a poem to praise this extraordinary woman: "The girls' school book by the Wanli Bridge, and the closed door under the loquat tree. How much do you know about sweeping eyebrows? It’s not as good.” Xue Tao’s talent and reputation can be seen here.

As a poet, Yuan Zhen must have always wanted to see her beauty and exchange her poetic skills with such a strange woman in the poetry circle who is a musician. The trip to Sichuan after serving as the supervisory censor just provided him with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. opportunity.But Wei Huicong had just passed away at that time, and it was very difficult for Yuan Zhen to take this step no matter in terms of public opinion or his own inner feelings. Yan Sikong, the magistrate in charge of receiving Yuan Zhen, saw the intention of the supervisory censor sent by the imperial court, so he secretly arranged for Xue Tao to serve him.Yuan Zhen and Xue Tao, who is 11 years older than him, get along very well with each other for poetry and poetry.In the second year, Yuan Zhen left Chengdu and returned to Chang'an. The distance between the two was thousands of miles, the mountains were high and the water was long, and the previous relationship was gone.Yuan Zhen would sometimes think of Xue Tao, "Farewell to the lovesickness, the calamus blossoms into five clouds", but he didn't go any further. Xue Tao lived in seclusion in Chengdu in infinite desolation and never married.

I thought that the relationship between Yuan Zhen and Xue Tao should belong to the platonic love between two high-level intellectuals. The spiritual attachment is far more than the physical desire. After all, the latter is a full eleven years older than the former. age. Pei Rouzhi Although Yuan Zhen affectionately used the most beautiful image in the world to express his infinite nostalgia for his dead wife, and felt that no woman could replace the virtuous and beautiful Wei Huicong, but one year after Wei's death, he still married another woman. Maybe it's because this woman's name is very beautiful. Her surname is Pei Mingshu, and her style name is Rouzhi. She is also a lady of every family, and she shares a common interest in poetry with Yuan Zhen. Yuan Zhen's official career thereafter was not smooth sailing. Although he was once an official prime minister, he was demoted to the governor of Tongzhou within three months of his tenure, and later went to eastern Zhejiang as an observer.In 830 A.D., Yuan Zhen was recalled to Chang'an, the capital, to serve as Minister of the Shangshu Youcheng, and was even selected as a candidate for prime minister again, but he failed to do so because of opposition from political opponents.During Yuan Zhen's ups and downs in his official career, Pei Rouzhi has always been by his side, sharing weal and woe with him, basking in the sunshine of life and facing the storms of life together. Yuan Zhen was fifty-two years old when he was recalled to Chang'an.It was a cold winter day, and Pei Rouzhi and her husband returned to the capital with great relief.But just after the Spring Festival, their fate changed dramatically again. An imperial edict came down, and Yuan Zhen changed from the Shangshu Youcheng in the capital to the Wuchang Jiedushi.Pei Rouzhi not only missed her relatives in the capital, but also worried about her husband's uncertain future, so she wrote a poem of five laws very sadly: "The Houmen embraced the festival at the beginning, and the imperial garden Liu Sixin. It's not sorrow for fate, but sorrow for separation. Huang Ying moved to the ancient wood Thinking of thousands of mountains, the Cangjiang River is in the late spring." Seeing his wife's poem, Yuan Zhen also wrote a five-character poem to express his comfort for her: "When the poor winter comes to the country, it is the first year to leave Beijing. I hate the wind and dust, and often look at the flowers in the distance. The green building is still shining, and there is nothing to worry about. If you marry a son-in-law, you will be home." The poems and lyrics are full of true love and understanding between husband and wife, which is really enviable. In the Tang Dynasty, someone once commented on the relationship between Yuan Zhen and Pei Rouzhi: "Yuan Gong and Rou Zhiqin are in harmony, and the beauty of the room is also beautiful." They supported each other all the way to Wuchang, thousands of miles away. In this year, Yuan Zhen's life came to an end. Even though Pei Rouzhi was intelligent, virtuous, and considerate, even though Yuan Zhen and her were on equal footing, they were in harmony with each other, but these did not prevent Yuan Zhen from enjoying the blessing of being equal, and he still had concubines.This was understandable at the time, but it was not an expression of loyalty to love after all.As a victim, Pei Rouzhi's feelings, I think, should be like what Li Yi'an wrote in his poems: There is no way to get rid of this feeling, so I lowered my brows and raised my heart again. There should be other women who used to be by Yuan Zhen's side, because he is a romantic talent who can't stand loneliness, we can't help but want to ask this famous Tang Dynasty poet for the women around him: How many good sisters do you have? ?Who is it that you love in your heart?