Chapter 33 Section 10 "Second Lady's Family Letter"

In the Tang Dynasty, like the previous dynasties, there were very few private mails.It is extremely difficult for ordinary people to communicate, and only through people's piggyback can they write a few words to their relatives. Du Mu, a poet of the late Tang Dynasty, in a poem titled "Landing", there are a few lines: "The hotel has no good company, and the love is quiet. The cold lamp thinks about the old things, and the geese wake up and sleep. The distant dream returns to the dawn, and the letter from home arrives. The next year. The Xiangjiang River is full of smoke and moon, and the door is a fishing boat." It means: alone in the hotel, thinking about it, thinking about the past, and the sound of the geese passing by makes people restless and sleepless.Write a letter home, it will take next year to bring it.What a depressing wanderer's feeling!In Du Fu's poems, there is often a sigh of "sending books is not long enough" during wartime.Another poet in the late Tang Dynasty, Wei Zhuang, said in his poems that the situation was even more sad: "Nine times attached a book to Luoyang, and there was no news of the flesh and blood for ten years." These poems vividly illustrate that even in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, folk correspondence It's not easy.

Under such circumstances, it is undoubtedly a great joy to get a letter from home. "Second Lady's Family Letter" is such a rare letter that has been handed down to this day.This letter, found in the Dunhuang Stone Chamber, was written on the back of a copy of the Tang Dynasty scriptures.According to textual research, this is a letter from the 11th year of Emperor Xuanzong Tianbao (751 A.D.), and the sender is Er Niangzi. Judging from the content, it is a letter from the daughter to her mother. The opening part of "Er Niangzi's Family Letter" has been lost.Judging from the remaining text, the second lady first expressed her strong homesickness and family.At that time, the second lady went to Luoyang, Tokyo with the officials, and everything is safe so far.In the letter, I told my family that I was safe, and I gave some gifts to my sister and mother, and a gift to my little nephew.Judging from the content of the letter, the second wife is a young woman who may be a second wife at home.Her older sister is married and has a son.The second lady herself may marry an official family as a concubine, or act as a decent maid. It seems that her status in the official family is not too low, so she can also have some personal items as gifts for her family.

There is another letter from the end of the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties that has been in the dust for more than a thousand years, which is also worth introducing.This is a letter discovered by Western sinologist Stein from the Dunhuang stone chamber. It is estimated that it was written when the Cao family ruled Dunhuang during the Five Dynasties. The sender signed the letter "Princess Monarch".According to experts' research, she was a noble woman from Khotan or Uyghur, a minority ethnic group in Xinjiang, who married the Cao family.This letter was written by Junzhe from her natal family to Mrs. Beizhai of the Cao family in Dunhuang. For unknown reasons, it was later kept in the Dunhuang stone chamber.It is worth noting that the format of letters in the late Tang and Five Dynasties was different from that in the Qin, Han, Wei and Jin Dynasties.At the beginning of the letter, the name of the recipient was written directly, and at the end, it was signed "On October 19th, the princess and monarch", which is getting closer to today.There is another point that deserves the attention of historians: the letter mentions that the writer "made blessings along the way and lit lamps in Zoroastrian temples" on the way from Dunhuang to Khotan.Zoroastrianism refers to the temple of Zoroastrianism that originated in Persia and was introduced to China during the Sui and Tang Dynasties.This letter shows that Zoroastrianism was very popular in Xinjiang and Gansu in the Tang Dynasty, so Zoroastrian temples can be seen along the way.This letter has considerable historical value.Similar to this, there is another Tang Dynasty military document discovered from the ruins of Turpan.This is a document sent by General Huai Ji of the Persian Army appointed by Emperor Gaozong of Tang to Du Huaibao, the Persian envoy (the highest officer of the Persian Army).Huai Ji reported the military situation to the chief, and at the same time requested that the army be equipped with guides ("傔 [qian owed] people") and translators ("Yiyu").This letter provides historical researchers with important evidence that there was a long-term military struggle between China and Persia during the reign of Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty, and there were direct military confrontations.The unearthing of this letter also shows that the frontier post stations were very developed in the Tang Dynasty, and the efficiency of posting military documents was quite high.

In addition, in some anthologies of Tang people, you can often see correspondence between literati and scholars.Even Wang Ji, a poet who lived in seclusion in the mountains during the Sui and Tang Dynasties, was sent letters to him ("Wang Ji Ji Du Zhisong Answers Wang Ji Shu"), and Lu Zhaolin of the early Tang Dynasty, who was lying in Longmen Mountain in the eastern suburbs of Luoyang due to illness, also sent him several times. Write letters to "beg for medicine" from relatives and friends in Luoyang and Chang'an ("Lu Zhaolin Collection"). The above historical data show that during the Tang Dynasty, communication between people increased compared with before.People sometimes send letters to each other and send some small gifts to each other.The channel and method of such communication depends on the specific circumstances.The correspondence between nobles and generals can be facilitated by the government and border guards, as is the case with the king and princess and the Persian general Huaiji.Those belonging to the middle and lower levels of officials can send letters through prefectural and county post offices, while ordinary people still rely on fellow villagers and business travelers to carry letters, just like the daily correspondence between Wang Ji, Lu Zhaolin, and Bai Juyi and Liu Yuxi, great writers after the mid-Tang Dynasty.But this is legally allowed after all.