Chapter 40 Chapter 12 Ancient Anecdotes

After the sinking site of the Tianyuan four-person spacecraft was discovered by the marine exploration team, the "Zheng He" was ordered to take a rest on Xinghua Island. The owner of the island enthusiastically arranged them in a guest house with clean lines and strong tropical flavor.The guest house is located on the west side of Xinghua Island, facing the sea, backed by the road, and surrounded by a dense and magnificent maple tree with intertwined branches.During the day, you can see many beautiful and exotic seabirds perched on the trees, and at night, you can hear the singing of the waves hitting the shore.This is simply the most wonderful natural park.

Early in the morning, young people surrounded Fang Yutian and went to the beach to watch the fishermen catch plum blossom ginseng.Yang Fan originally wanted to use this time to continue revising her doctoral dissertation, but she always seemed to lack some materials, and she was very dissatisfied.She couldn't continue writing for a while, so she also left with Fang Yutian.Huang Jingzhi felt that the air on the island was particularly fresh, and he was very excited. He wanted to read some books in the house, so he didn't go.He found Ren Sihong's door ajar in the corridor, so he went in and sat down.

"Why don't you go to the beach with them to play?" Huang Jingzhi asked with concern when he saw Ren Sihong buried in the pile of ancient books. "It's rare that I have free time, and I want to write "History of Chinese Archeology" as soon as possible." Ren Sihong put a thread-bound book in his hand on the table. Huang Jingzhi heard him mention "History of Chinese Archaeology", and immediately stared at him with deep eyes and said: "By the way, when boarding the ship in Tongsui Xingang, I heard you said whether the ancients of Guanzi saw the four spaceships of Tianyuan?" Well, you've found a little clue?"

"I found this by accident when I was researching the history of archaeology." Ren Sihong took out a notebook from the drawer and handed it to Huang Jingzhi. Speculation and addition. Please give me your opinion." Huang Jingzhi took the notebook, wiped his glasses, and looked at it with relish. This is something that happened in ancient times. One early morning in summer, the sun had just risen.In a tribe of the Li nationality who worked and lived in the southern coast of my country, a middle-aged man with an animal skin wrapped around his waist and his upper body bare came out of a very simple bamboo house, stretched his waist, and sucked in the fresh morning Air, looking up at the sky.When this strong man saw a crescent moon in the low sky in the east, he murmured happily:

"Ah, new crescent moon, another new crescent moon is out!" He hurried back to the bamboo house, took out a carefully hewn, sharp stone ax from inside, and walked to the gable outside the bamboo house.There, stood four shoulder-high stakes.Each of the first three stakes had twelve deep scratches, and the last stake had only seven scratches.The middle-aged man supported the fourth stake with his left hand, held a stone ax with his right hand, and cut a deep new mark under the original mark. He counted the marks, including this one, there were already eight. up.At this time, several young people came over.He said to them:

"It's the eighth crescent since the month with the shortest winter days! Ah, we must tell everybody to get ready for harvest." A young man said: "Yes, Uncle Li is right. This is already the month on the fourth stake. We have lived here for more than three years, but the crops in any year are not as good as this year's. Good harvest." It turned out that this young man was the chief of the tribe.According to the usual practice, it is his task to be in charge of the year, the season, and the major events in the memory tribe.So people called him "Libo".This tribe did not have its own written language at that time, and all things that needed to be remembered were completed by Li Bo's woodcuts and knotted knots.The methods of woodcutting and knotting to record events are much better than relying on word of mouth alone.

When Li Bo finished carving the wooden stake, he looked up at the new moon that had just risen as usual, and he was surprised to find that in the northeast sky, there was a very bright star hanging in the middle of the sky. .It is obviously not the orange morning star, because the morning star is not as bright as it is, nor is it so white.Besides, a person with good eyesight like Li Bo can even see that this bright star has obvious defects like the moon!It's still going very fast in the sky to the southwest! Liber has never seen such a bright star in the sky since he became the chief, and he has never heard of such a thing from the old man. He quickly returned to his residence, took out a rope, and hit it A knot and hang up.From then on, when he observed the sky every day, he had to see if the brightest star came out.

Time flies.There are not four but sixteen wooden stakes beside the gable of Li Bo's bamboo house!In the autumn of this year, the crops grew especially well.Li Bo felt that he was old and frail, so he was determined to step aside.People in the tribe failed to dissuade them repeatedly, and it has been agreed to elect a new chief tonight.In the evening, people gathered on a small hill beside the village and sat around a bonfire.The old chief sat in the middle, with a wooden board in front of him, on which a beast was painted.This beast has two horns on its head and bristles as hard as swords and halberds on its ears. It is very fierce.This is the "totem" that symbolizes their tribe.

It was getting dark.A very bright star with a dazzling bluish-white color rose slowly from the northeast, slowly passed through the sky, and set down into the sea in the south. Li Bo waved his hand to signal everyone to calm down.The crowd fell silent, and he said earnestly and sincerely to everyone: "I nailed stakes one after another, and my age is one year and one year older. I am old and my body is not good. Let's choose another new chief. I told you some time ago that tonight let Everyone is here to elect a new chief who is younger than me and capable." There was no sound on the hill.The old chief looked at a middle-aged man sitting diagonally opposite, and continued:

"I want to recommend a new chief to you. This is our Uncle Nong. He is energetic and strong. He can speak, engrave, and count. He is the most learned person in our tribe. He is a He is a good farmer, knows seasons, and is good at hunting. I think he is very suitable to be a chief. I don’t know if you have any opinions from elders, brothers, sisters, and children, please put them forward.” The people present were discussing in one go, men, women, old and young all expressed their agreement with the opinion of the old chief Libo. After Li Bo finished speaking, everyone stood up and cheered, and surrounded Uncle Nong around the old chief.The old chief picked up the totem with the beast painted on it, and solemnly handed it to Uncle Nong with staggering steps.Uncle Nong took the totem and bowed to the old chief and the people around him.

The old chief said earnestly to the new chief: "From now on, you will be in charge of the calendar!" The new chief was elected, and the people danced joyfully to celebrate. The fast-moving bright star reappeared.After a while, people discovered that the star was getting bigger and brighter, and it was like a ball of fire in an instant, illuminating the night sky brightly.It pierced the sky and rushed down to the sea to the west. The people in the tribe panicked and scattered in all directions. In order to remember this event forever, Uncle Nong found the rope that remembered the appearance of the bright star twelve years ago.Now, in addition to a big knot indicating the appearance of a bright star, there are twelve small knots added by Libo year by year on this rope.Each of these small knots represents a year, which means that the bright star has appeared for twelve years.At this moment, Uncle Nong tied two big knots on the rope in turn. The first knot represented the fall of the bright star, and the latter knot represented that he was elected as the new chief on this day. A few months later, a tribe from outside the tribe came to Uncle Nong’s tribe. By the way, he mentioned that a few months ago, someone in their tribe saw a bright star falling on a small island in the southern sea. Into the west sea, floating like a boat in the west sea.They even saw a few gods coming out of it!In the evening, on the coast, the dazzling light from this ship can still be seen, and at its brightest, even the light of the sun and the moon seems dimmed. When Uncle Nong heard the news, he immediately took out the rope already tied with three big knots and twelve small knots, and tied a new big knot underneath. A few months later, five girls from the Nongshu tribe were going to marry into another tribe of the Li nationality in the north.Before leaving, Uncle Nong took out a rope and tied one big knot, twelve small knots, and then three big knots just like the old rope.He gave the new knotted rope to the girls who were to be married, and said to them: "Keep this matter firmly in your mind, and carry this news to your husband's tribe." The girls thanked their chief, and embarked on the arduous journey north, to carry the news to their husband's tribe.Later, the news spread to the tribes further north, and the news of the bright star falling into the sea spread among the various tribes of the Li people step by step and year by year.Later, even the Li tribes far away in the Yangtze River Basin knew about it. More than ten years later, the Yangtze River flooded and flooded many villages of the Li people.An old man of the Li nationality was washed away by the flood.He survived death only because he fished a tree stump.He was washed far, far away.A kind-hearted chief of the Yanhuang tribe rescued him and took him in. Outside a simple thatched hut, the grown-up chief, dressed in coarse cloth, was having a heart-to-heart conversation with an old man of the Li nationality.The old man of the Li nationality was very grateful to him, and took out a rope with four big knots and twelve small knots from himself: "This was seventeen years ago..." The middle-aged chief pinched his fingers and said to himself: "Seventeen years ago was exactly 30 years since Emperor Yao ascended the throne." The old man of the Li nationality then told the story from the beginning to the end: "In the year when Uncle Nong became the chief, a huge ship fell from the sky to the West Sea and floated on the sea. At night, the lights on the ship were bright and flickering. When it was bright, even the sun and the moon became dim. This giant ship has circled the sky for twelve years, and after falling into the water, some people still saw immortals coming out of it." The chief was very interested and waved his hands to show his humanity: "Take him to dinner!" After the old man of the Li nationality left, the chief found the old man in charge of historical materials and asked him to record the incident.At that time, the culture of the Yanhuang nationality living in the Central Plains was relatively developed, and they already had their own pottery writing, which was a primitive writing much earlier than the oracle bone inscriptions.Therefore, in their tribe, there are already special people doing written records. After a while, the old man in charge of historical materials found a pottery blank of a large clay pot, and skillfully inscribed on it with a stone knife, recording the story of the spaceship falling into the sea just heard on the pottery blank.After writing, the pottery body is sent to the kiln for drying and firing. In 281 A.D., during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Jin Dynasty, a man named Bucheng in Jijun obtained dozens of carts of bamboo books, totaling hundreds of thousands of bamboo slips, when he robbed and excavated the tomb of King Wei Xiang of the Warring States Period.These bamboo slips are all written with lacquer in the ancient tadpole script. Few people at that time knew these characters.This incident was quickly reported to Emperor Wu of Jin. Emperor Wu of Jin was eager to know what was recorded on these bamboo slips written in ancient characters?Therefore, he summoned Wei Heng, a famous scholar, and ordered him to sort out the bamboo script, translate the ancient tadpole script, and rewrite it into the regular script prevailing at that time. Since these bamboo slips have long been scattered and the meaning of the words is difficult to distinguish, the work of collation and translation proceeded very slowly.It was not completed until Wei Heng's death.Later, after Xun Xu, Shu Xi, He Qiao and others continued to work on it, it was completed. At the end of finishing the translation work, something happened: On that day, Xun Xu's assistant made a final proofreading of the batch of bamboo slips that had been sorted out.When moving the bamboo slips, I found that there were more than a dozen bamboo slips in the corner of the bottom layer of the bamboo slip frame.When I took it out, it turned out that it had been left out and had not been sorted out.A few days later, Xun Xu's assistant had sorted out their order and translated the original text, and took these bamboo slips to find Xun Xu. Xun Xu took the bamboo slips and saw that it read: "King Mu of Zhou traveled all over the world. One day, when he traveled to a certain place in the middle reaches of the great river, a scholar came to present an ancient pottery pot with indistinguishable ancient characters engraved on it. The scholar claimed to know the ancient text, and King Mu of Zhou ordered him to translate it, and the scholar immediately read it Like a stream. The ancient text says: Yao ascended the throne for 30 years, a giant tree fell from the sky, floated in the West Sea, and there were immortals. The lights were brightly lit at night, and the light changed from big to small, and the light of the sun and the moon seemed to be dark when it was big. Falling into the sea I have been traveling in the sky for twelve years now!" Xun Xu was amazed at the case, and praised again and again.The assistant asked for his opinion: "Do you think this part should be edited or not?" "How can such a wonderful record not be included?" Xun Xu said enthusiastically. "If you want to compile it, it should be compiled into "Mu Tianzi Biography". However, it has already been edited, and it is very difficult to intersperse it." "It doesn't matter, we still have a few missing passages before, and we can compile it together with it, and make another "Supplement to the Biography of Emperor Mu", isn't it also very good!" "Good advice, good advice! Let's do it like this." After a long time, all the hundreds of thousands of native bamboo slips were sorted out and translated. They compiled sixteen books including "Supplement to the Biography of Emperor Mu", "Bamboo Book Chronicles", "Mandarin Language", "Biography of Emperor Mu" and so on. Dozens of vehicles were transported to the imperial library for preservation. Eighty or ninety years later, there lived a man of the Jin Dynasty named Zhang Jie who was an assistant to the court historian.One day, in the library of the imperial court, he saw the manuscripts of the bamboo books of the Warring States period compiled and translated by Xun Xu and others during the reign of Emperor Wu of Jin Dynasty.He was particularly interested in the story about the giant boat falling into the sea in the bamboo book "Supplement to the Biography of Mu Tianzi", so he copied the relevant passages and took them home.Later, some of his friends read the notes he transcribed. "That's right!" Huang Jingzhi said pleasantly, "I found a record in "Supplements of Relics" written by Wang Jia of the Jin Dynasty, which was about a spaceship splashing into the sea in the 30th year of Yao. But I only know that the author Wang Jia had a close relationship with a man named Zhang Jie, and I don’t know its origin, so I have never publicly announced it.” Ren Sihong was very happy to hear that the clues he found were connected with Professor Huang's discovery. He said: "That's great. Did you bring "Supplementary Notes" by Wang Jia? I want to see it." "Lao Fang borrowed it to watch it last night." After lunch, Ren Sihong and Fang Yutian said they wanted to read "Supplements of Relics", and Fang Yutian went back to his room to pick it up.After a long time, Fang Yutian came sweating profusely: "I searched all over the room, but I couldn't find it. I don't know where to put it." "Don't worry, let's talk later when you have settled down." Ren Sihong comforted him, and somehow suddenly remembered that Fang Yutian misread the date of the boat ticket and missed the registration date, so he couldn't help but secretly smiled.