Why did the royal make a "typo"?
Zhou Qian
The Forbidden City in Beijing and Chengde Mountain Resort belong to Ming and Qing imperial buildings. There are many calligraphy characters on the building plaques and screen doors, which are used to interpret the name and function of the building, or to express the mood of the ancient emperor.
The writing styles of these large characters are mostly italics, with neat and regular strokes.
However, some characters are added or missing, which are obviously different from the traditional characters we see in daily life, and seem to be "typos".
So, why do these royal buildings have "typos"?
The word "door" does not have a hook, it turns out to be afraid of fire
According to the writing convention of italics, the character "door" must have a hook.
However, when you visit the Forbidden City, you will notice that many of the plaques on the gates of the palace do not have a hook with the word "door".
Take the palace gates on the central axis of the Forbidden City as an example. No matter it is the Meridian Gate and the Taihe Gate of the previous dynasty, or the Qianqing Gate and Kunning Gate of the Inner Court, the word "door" on the plaque does not have a hook.
The reason why these "doors" are written "wrongly" is mostly related to the fire prevention and taboo of the Forbidden City.
From a scientific point of view, whether the word "door" on the building plaque has a hook has nothing to do with whether the building itself is on fire.
However, according to the 16th volume of "Tea Xiangshi Congchao" written by Yu Yue, a scholar of the Qing Dynasty, the Jade Palace in Lin'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, suffered a fire, and the fire spread to the gate of the palace.
A minister reported to the emperor that the fire was caused by the "door" on the plaque of the palace gate with a hook.
So the emperor ordered the plaque at the gate of the palace to be taken off and burned in the fire. The fire at the Jade Temple was quickly extinguished.
In the Ming dynasty, no matter it was the gate of Miyagi in Nanjing or Beijing, the word "door" on the plaque did not have a hook.
According to the records of volume 361 of "Six Yilu No. 1 Lu" by Qing Dynasty scholar Ni Tao and volume 4 of Ma Pu's "Tan Wrong", Ming Dynasty calligrapher Zhan Xiyuan wrote the "Xianmen plaque of Nanjing Taixue Ji" The word "door" has a hook, and I think it can show the strength of the strokes.
Unexpectedly, Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang was furious after seeing it, thinking that this hook was blocking the development of sages and wise men, so he ordered the hook of the word "door" to be cut off, and Zhan Xiyuan was put to death.
Can the word "door" without hooks really prevent fires?
The answer is naturally no.
The earliest fire in the Forbidden City was Wumen.
The twenty-ninth volume of "Wanli Huoye Bian" by Shen Defu, a writer of the Ming Dynasty, records that in the 13th year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty (1415), on the Lantern Festival of the first month, the Aoshan Lantern Festival was held outside the Meridian Gate. Unexpectedly, firecrackers ignited Aoshan and caused noon The door caught fire and Mawang, the governor in charge of the fire fighting, was burned to death.
The Taihe Gate in the Meridian Gate suffered fires several times in history, among which the fire in the 14th year of Guangxu (1888) was the most serious.
According to the “Interrogation of Confessions of Officers and Soldiers on Duty at Zhendu Gate” recorded by the Deputy Memorandum of the Military Aircraft Division of the First Historical Archives of China, on December 15, Guangxu fourteenth year, on duty at Zhendu Gate (located on the west side of Taihe Gate) The two guards hung foreign oil lamps on the pillars behind the east mountain wall of Zhendu Gate. The pillars were burned by the lights, causing a fire.
The fire quickly spread eastward, burning Taihe Gate, Zhaode Gate and several adjacent warehouses.
"Bright and Prosperous" and "Benevolence and Virtue"
The front hall of the Chuxiu Palace area of the Forbidden City is the Yikun Palace. Inside the gate of the Yikun Palace, there is a screen gate with 4 characters of "Brightness and Prosperity" in which the word "Ming" is more horizontal and the word "Sheng" is less.
Many netizens believe that these two characters are wrong, and believe that the reason is "avoid taboos and oppose Qing and Ming."
In addition, the Huangji Hall and Cining Palace of the Forbidden City have plaques with "Benevolence, Virtue and Dalong". Some people think that the word "Germany" has one horizontal line on the "Heart" and is wrong.
"Brightness and prosperity" and "Benevolence and virtue" come from the third volume of "Jiao's Yilin" written by the Western Han philosopher Jiao Gan.
The meaning of this sentence is mainly that the country governed by the monarch is prosperous and therefore has high merit.
The "Benevolent Virtue Dalong" in the Huangji Hall was written by Cixi, and it has a similar writing style to "Bright Prosperity".
According to the records of "Chuxiu Palace and Tihe Palace" in "The Palace Girl Talks to the Record" written by Jin Yi and Shen Yiling, Cixi was so happy that he lived in the Chuxiu Palace area and often compared himself with Qianlong's achievements.
It is not difficult to speculate that the words "Bright and Prosperous" were probably also written by Cixi.
Cixi is good at calligraphy.
The chapter of "Arts · Xiaoqin Post-Good Calligraphy and Calligraphy" in the "Qing Barnyard Notes" by Xu Ke, a writer of the late Qing Dynasty, mentioned that Cixi's calligraphy was very good and he liked to write large characters.
American painter Catherine Carr wrote "Forbidden Garden Twilight-The Queen Mother in the Eyes of an American Female Painter" Chapter 15 "The Queen Mother's Literary Interests and Talents", it is written that "the Queen Mother gave one of the most precious gifts to his ministers. It was also regarded as a treasure by her ministers. It was a single large character that she wrote on the scroll herself." "Her characters are famous and are said to be on par with the best calligraphers in China."
"Ming" has one more horizontal character, which is a variant of ancient Chinese characters.
Variant characters have the same meaning as regular characters, but the radicals or strokes are different.
The Ming Xiaoling Tomb in Nanjing, the stone stele of Wuhou Temple in Chengdu, and Wang Xianzhi's lower-case calligraphy "Luo Shen Fu", in which the word "Ming" is more than one horizontal line.
In addition, in Yuan dynasty calligrapher Zhao Mengfu's "Xuan Miao Guan Rebuild Sanmen Ji" and Tang dynasty calligrapher Liu Gongquan's "Xuan Mi Pagoda", the word "Ming" used "目" instead of "日".
The seventh volume of "Shuowen Jiezi" by Xu Shen, a philologist in the Eastern Han Dynasty, contains "Ming, Zhaoye, Congyue, Cong囧", which means "Ming" is composed of "囧" and "月".
"朙" became "眀" after the change of Chinese characters.
Similarly, the writing style of "Sheng" had appeared before the Qing Dynasty. For example, the writing style of "Sheng" inscribed on the stele of Jia Shijun in the second year of the Northern Wei Dynasty (519) was also less, while the calligrapher Li Yong of the Tang Dynasty wrote "Yun". The character "Sheng" in "The Stele of the Generals" is subtly integrated with the horizontal line on the upper part.
In addition, the word "De" is missing one horizontal line, which also belongs to the writing style of ancient calligraphers.
For example, the "Preface to Shengjiao" written by the calligrapher Wang Xizhi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the "Mysterious Tower" written by Liu Gongquan, and the "Li Sao Jing" written by the calligrapher Mi Fu of the Northern Song Dynasty.
In this way, Cixi's writing of "Ming", "Sheng" and "De" and other variants are not typos, but a manifestation of his writing style.
"Mistakes" in Imperial Brushwork of the Mountain Resort
The Mountain Resort in Chengde, Hebei, formerly known as the Rehe Palace, was a royal garden in the Qing Dynasty.
When Kangxi visited Rehe in 16th year (1677), he found that the climatic conditions here were not only suitable for summer heat, but also conducive to giving Mongolian Forty-Eight Banner princes the opportunity to meet the emperor, so he ordered the construction of a palace.
By the 50th year of Kangxi (1711), this palace had begun to take shape.
Subsequently, Kangxi inscribed the plaque "Mountain Summer Resort" and ordered it to be hung above the middle gate of the Meridian Gate in the main palace.
The four large characters of "Mountain Summer Resort" are vigorous and powerful, making it a masterpiece of calligraphy.
Among them, the word "Xin" in "Avoid" is one more horizontal line. Some people jokingly call this word "Avoid" as "the best typo in the world" because it is Kangxi's imperial pen. Others think that the word "Avoid" was deliberately incorrectly written by Kangxi. , Is to avoid the meaning of "escape".
The author thinks that the extra horizontal character "to avoid" is not a mistake in Kangxi's writing, but belongs to the style of Kangxi's calligraphy.
It is not uncommon for the Chinese character "Bui" in italic calligraphy to have more than one horizontal character "Xin" in ancient Chinese calligraphy.
For example, the Tang dynasty calligrapher Yan Zhenqing wrote "Mr. Maoshan Xuanjing of the Tang Dynasty Guangling Li Jun inscription and preface", the Tang dynasty calligrapher Ouyang Xun's "Jiucheng Palace Liquan Inscription", the Ming Dynasty calligrapher Dong Qichang's "Dong Qichang portrait monument" In Zanjuan, etc., the word "avoid" is one more horizontal line, which is consistent with Kangxi's writing.
Kangxi studied calligraphy since childhood and was a great calligrapher.
According to the fifth volume of the Hadith of Emperor Sheng Zuren, on July 17th in the forty-third year (1704) of Kangxi, he convened officials such as Hanlin and scholars to say: "I have been in the pond since I was a child, and wrote more than a thousand times a day. The words are never interrupted. The ink marks and stone carvings of the ancient celebrities are all carefully copied. They have been accumulated for more than 30 years, and they are as good as they are. That is to say, the Qing characters are also fast, and there are no mistakes." From the above, Kangxi loves it. Calligraphy, I copied the brushwork of calligraphy for a long time, so that my calligraphy has reached the level of "writing fast and well, and never typos".
Therefore, the word "avoid" has one horizontal line, not because Kangxi made a deliberate mistake, but "to add a pen" belonging to the calligraphy circle, which is a variant of the word.
In Ming and Qing imperial buildings, the word "door" was written "wrongly", which was an act of taboo, and it was a form of idealism under the condition of low productivity in ancient times.
For the public today, this is a valuable material for interpreting the history and culture of fire prevention in the Forbidden City.
For "Ming", "Sheng", "De", "Avoid" and other "typo", the "adding pen" or "missing pen" is the expression method of Chinese ancient Chinese character variants. The ingenious choice of variants is the inner emotion of the writer. And the reflection of aesthetic value is the embodiment of the charm of ancient Chinese calligraphy art.
(Author's unit: The Palace Museum)