Chapter 17 Section 5 Famous Posts

In modern life, when people meet for the first time, they often have to hand over business cards to each other. The business cards are usually marked with name, position, unit name, unit and family address, telephone number and zip code, etc., as a self-introduction , is also a kind of etiquette when meeting.In ancient times, there were also "business cards", but the name was different, and they were called "name posts".The earlier famous posts were called Ye and Ci. Because paper was not widely used at that time, Ye and Ci were made of bamboo and wood, with their own names written on them.When you want to visit for an audience, you should first submit an invitation or a stab to inform you of your name.During the Chu-Han War, Liu Bang led his troops through Chenliu (now southeast of Kaifeng, Henan).Li Shiqi [yiji Yiji], a small official who lives in Gaoyang (southwest of Qixian County, Henan Province today), went to the barracks to ask for an interview.Li Shiqi's family was poor since he was a child, but he was very good at reading, and he was even addicted to books, so he was called a crazy student.At that time, Liu Bang was washing his feet. When he saw Li Shiqi's call, he thought that it was not a matter for Confucian scholars to compete with Xiang Yu for hegemony, so he refused to meet him, so he asked the envoy to go out of the camp and politely declined.Unappreciated Li Shiqi heard that Liu Bang didn't want to see him, and immediately opened his eyes wide with anger, put his hand on the hilt of his sword, and reprimanded the envoy: "Go! Come back to Yan Peigong, I am a drunkard in Gaoyang, and I am not a Confucian." The envoy was terrified, and unexpectedly He accidentally dropped it on the ground, he quickly knelt down to pick it up, turned around and entered the tent, and notified again, Liu Bang agreed to let Li Shiqi see it.Later, Liu Bang adopted Li Shiqi's strategy and conquered Chenliu in one fell swoop.Later, Li Shiqi persuaded Qi Wang Tianguang to return to the Han Dynasty, so that Liu Bang, the emperor of the Han Dynasty, obtained more than 70 cities in Qidi without a single soldier.

After the invention of papermaking, the use of paper became more and more common. After the Eastern Han Dynasty, paper name posts appeared, called name or name paper, and name thorns.The content written on it includes name, township (referring to native place or residence), and some also write the name of official title.In addition to notifying the name, the name post is sometimes used to greet the other party. In March 1974, a tomb from the Western Jin Dynasty was unearthed in Yongwaizheng Street, Donghu District, Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province. A husband and wife were buried together in one tomb.The owner of the tomb is Wu Ying, styled Ziyuan, from Jiyangli, Du Township, Nanchang County, Yuzhang County.Among the burial items are five famous thorn wooden slips, on which there are three types of written content and formats: one is "disciple Wu Ying asked Ziyuan for living in Nanchang again".The format is two lines. The five characters "Nanchang Ziziyuan" are located on the lower left side, and the characters are also smaller than the previous line. The "asking daily life" here is a greeting.The second is "Wu Ying of Yuzhang pays homage to Ziyuan living in Nanchang".The format is the same as the first category.The third is "Zhonglang Yuzhang, Nanchangdu Township, Jiyangli, Wu Yingnian, Ziyuan, seventy-three characters".A line of straight script added the official title "Zhonglang" and age.The ancients generally had regulations on the writing format of famous thorns. · Release of Books").

During the Tang and Song Dynasties, when lower-level officials met with senior officials, they often used "public form" and "door form" when interacting with literati. "The magistrates of the government and county see the chief officials, and the bureaucrats and subordinates see the officials. When the feudal towns enter the court to see the prime minister and the Taiwan ginseng, they use the official form. The former title is called 'You Mou is only waiting', 'a certain official will be punished', and the ultimatum The form is the same as before, and I respectfully submit it." (Volume 3 of Ye Mengde's "Swallows in the Stone Forest") The official form is actually a kind of name card used exclusively in officialdom. Judgment after the petition", only the lower officials can be admitted to see the superiors.Even the famous post submitted to a private mansion is very solemn, and this kind of famous post is also called door post.In addition to writing one's official position, township, and name on the door post, some also write "words" and greetings for the other party.When visiting at home, first give it to the servant of the master's house, and ask him to report to the master.When the master sees the name post, he will know the visitor. If he agrees to meet, he will ask the servant to call him in, or he will greet him outside.During the Ming and Qing dynasties, famous posts had further development. Not only were they used more widely and in a wider range, but also attention was paid to the binding of the appearance of famous posts.The paper posts are generally long and folded into a folding shape, lined with hard paper at the beginning and end for protection, and then wrapped with cloth or satin for decoration.

Famous posts were also used to congratulate festivals and became special gifts for festivals, which was very common in the Song Dynasty.When it comes to festivals, if you can't go to a friend's or relative's house to pay New Year's greetings in person, you can ask your servants to send you greetings with a name card. "The congratulatory ceremony of the festival, if you can't come in person, you can sign it with a bunch of thorns every time, so that a servant will throw it all over the place. It is commonplace. Yu Biao's uncle Wu Sizhang is funny. He has no servants to go out on the festival, so he hangs around the door. My friend Shen Zi, a public servant, sent the thorns to him, and took them for a long time. They were all relatives, so he drank wine and stabbed them with himself. The servant Shen didn't understand, because he threw them all over, and he knew Wu's thorns. They merged in another day. , Because of the heavy thorns, we laugh with each other, and the folk songs are passed down as a joke." This article recorded in "Guixin Miscellaneous Knowledge·Pre-collection" written by Zhou Mi in the Song Dynasty tells an interesting story about the famous post: Every New Year's Day, there is the etiquette of congratulating each other, but if you can't visit your relatives and friends in person to express your congratulations, you have to write your name on the thorns, and then bundle the thorns with your name on them to make a bunch. A servant visits relatives and friends, and gives a thorn to everyone who needs to visit.Zhou Mi's cousin, Wu Sizhang, has a cunning personality. It just so happened that during the holidays this year, he didn't have a servant by his side to deliver posts.He had no choice but to linger at the door, trying every means to deliver the famous post.At this moment, one of his friends, Shen Zigong, sent his servant to bring the posts. Wu Sizhang took all the posts brought by the servant, and after looking at them one by one, he found that they were basically for his relatives and friends.So Wu Sizhang invited the servant to drink to express his condolences and thanks.While the servant was drinking, he secretly took out his own name card and replaced the Shen Zigong name card carried by the servant.Shen Zigong's servants didn't notice this. When he finished drinking and continued on the road, he still thought that he was holding a name card from his master, so he continued to deliver name cards from house to house.But he never expected that all the postings were Wu Sizhang's famous posts.One day after the festival, Wu Sizhang sorted out the name cards sent by relatives and friends during the festival, and took out a large bundle of Shen Zigong's name cards.This incident later became a joke among people.The nature of this kind of famous posts sent during festivals is not the same as that presented during ordinary visits. The former focuses more on festive congratulations and greetings, which has the same function as today's New Year's cards (cards).Every festival, sending a famous post to relatives and friends who cannot visit in person is actually offering one's heart to the other party. This is also a kind of civilized etiquette, so it has been passed down to this day.

The ancients regarded business cards as one of the etiquettes when meeting, so they often believed that the bigger the name card, the more exquisite it was, and the more important the etiquette. Therefore, there were name cards of different sizes in ancient times. "In the past, there were large and small shapes. The big shape was full paper (a whole piece of paper), and the small one was half a paper." As for the name post "Big Buying Palm (meaning smaller than the palm)", The ancients thought that "it is enough to see how thin the etiquette is" (ibid.), and they didn't use it easily.However, this also shows that in ancient China, very small name cards were used, not as big as a palm, which is about the same size as the name cards commonly used by people today.