The modern significance of Su Shi’s cultural personality

Su Dongpo lived to be 66 years old. His life experience was very rich and his achievements were multifaceted. It is impossible for us to introduce his life. I will only introduce a little about him. In his 66-year-old life course, when he reached 2/3, that is to say, when he was 44 years old, that was the second year of Yuanfeng, Shenzong of the Northern Song Dynasty, in 1079 AD, on the night of July 29 of that year, At this time, our Su Dongpo was not called Su Dongpo. He was only called Su Shi, with the courtesy name Zizhan. Su Dongpo only took the title two years later.

So, where is he this night? He was on a boat on Taihu Lake in my hometown of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. His identity at this time was an imperial prisoner. The day before (July 28), the imperial court sent an imperial envoy to Huzhou, Zhejiang. At that time, he was the local governor of Huzhou. In the Song Dynasty, the magistrate was the local governor, equivalent to the current mayor. He was arrested as a political prisoner. It was originally going to be sent to Bianjing overnight, but because the rudder was broken, it stopped at Taihu Lake that night to repair the rudder and stayed overnight. In ancient times, the lunar calendar was used to keep time, and that month was a small month. July 29 was the last day of that month. Of course, there was no moon, but the weather that day was clear and the sky was full of stars. In the Northern Song Dynasty, there was no cyanobacteria in Taihu Lake, and the water was very clear. Therefore, it was such a poetic and good night, but this Dongpo, who was not yet named Su Dongpo at that time, was worried on the boat because he already knew that he was being hunted by the court for thousands of miles and the charges were very serious. Some people say that he not only criticized the politics of the court, but also slandered the emperor and made disrespectful remarks about the emperor. This crime is very serious. He felt that the consequences of being caught in the capital would be serious, and he might be subjected to all kinds of insults, and his relatives and friends might also be implicated. So, when he looked at the water of Taihu Lake outside the cabin, he suddenly had a bad idea. He thought that if I jumped into Taihu Lake at this moment, then everything in the future would come to an end and life would be gone. .

We say that history cannot be assumed. Su Dongpo did not jump that night. One reason is that the officers and soldiers at the time guarded him very strictly, because he was a repeat offender of the imperial court and must be strictly guarded. Second, the thought only flashed across his mind, and he quickly changed his mind and decided not to commit suicide. We say that history cannot be assumed, but let us assume now that on the night of July 29, 1079 AD, Su Shi jumped into the lake from his boat in Taihu Lake, and his life came to an end. For him, this matter was life-threatening. If 1/3 is cut off, life will be reduced by 22 years. However, what impact will this incident have on the cultural history of our Chinese nation?

I made a list for my friends, if they jumped that day: In our treasure house of ancient prose, there are more than 1,500 ancient articles including "Chibi Fu" and "Hou Chibi Fu". In our poetry treasure house, more than 1,600 poems including "Lychee Sigh" are no longer available. In our treasure house of poems, there are no more 200 poems including "Niannujiao" and "Da Jiangdong Goes". We want to get a masterpiece of calligraphy in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, which is the third-line calligraphy in the world that the host just mentioned, "Huangzhou Cold Food Post", which was written two years later. The host also mentioned just now that he is also a painter, and there is a "Picture of Dead Trees and Strange Rocks" in a certain poet's collection room in Japan that is about to disappear. There are about 450 prescriptions in a traditional Chinese medicine book called "Su Chen Liang Prescription" that are about to disappear. Some maxims in our daily language, such as "If you don't know the true face of Mount Lu, you just live in this mountain" will no longer exist, and the beautiful Su Causeway on the West Lake in Hangzhou, which looks like a long dragon lying on the waves, will no longer exist. . Then in Chinese restaurants all over the world, there is a famous dish that is fat but not greasy and melts in your mouth - "Dongpo Pork" because it was invented by him two years later when he went to Huangzhou, and so on. wait. In other words, if this person's life is cut off by 1/3, and if he lives less than the next 22 years, so many valuable things will be lost in the cultural history of our nation. On the other hand, this person made a great contribution to our history and the nation. Therefore, the greatness of this man is self-evident.

But when the leader of the imperial army saw the local governor, the mayor of a city, the magistrate Su Dongpo walking in, he was covered in mud and looked haggard. He didn't go home for several days and nights, all the time fighting the flood. Therefore, the leader of the Forbidden Army was moved and said that a civilian official worked so hard to fight the flood. Our country has raised an army and we went to fight the flood together. Finally, the flood was overcome. It took more than 80 days for the flood to recede.

We said that as a local governor, you led the whole city to fight against floods and supported them vigorously. This is what you should do. You did a good job, but it was not anything special. Su Dongpo's excellence came in his second year. The floods receded in the spring of the next year, so he immediately mobilized all manpower and material resources to build water conservancy projects outside the city and strengthen embankments to prevent a second flood. We just said that the maximum term of a local official was three years, and the Yellow River flooding cycle in the Northern Song Dynasty was 50-60 years. In other words, there was no chance of a second flood during his term, but he began to contribute to long-term local peace and stability in the second year. Such achievements are not the pursuit of some of our current local officials’ projects and face-saving projects. The benefits of his term of office cannot be equated with each other. He truly considers the local interests.

Let’s look at another example, Hangzhou, Zhejiang. Su Dongpo came to Hangzhou for the second time 15 years ago. He liked Hangzhou very much, especially the West Lake. But when he went to Hangzhou for the second time, he found that the area of ??West Lake had shrunk. It turns out that Hangzhou has a warm climate, and the West Lake is a shallow basin with very shallow water, with an average water depth of more than 2 meters. Therefore, the aquatic plants on the shore of the West Lake grew wildly. When the aquatic plants grew, the grass roots were prone to stasis, and the stasis and mud accumulated there. In this way, the stasis formed a kind of trap, which blocked the lake surface weir. , West Lake has shrunk by 1/3.

Su Dongpo was very anxious, because West Lake in Hangzhou was not only a tourist attraction at that time, but also the only source of fresh water in Hangzhou, so he immediately began to improve the West Lake after taking office, mobilizing manpower and material resources to cut water weeds and dig out sludge. So, where does all this waste go? At that time, there was an embankment in the West Lake, which was oriented east-west. It was called Bai Embankment passed down from the Tang Dynasty. There was no embankment in the north-south direction. When Su Dongpo renovated the West Lake, there was so much grass roots and mud that there was no place to pile it up. He thought it would be better to build another north-south embankment in the West Lake, so he used waste to build the embankment there. When this long embankment was built, in order to allow the lake water to flow, there were six bridges on the embankment. There were holes under the bridges so that sewage could flow, and trees were planted on them. Later, after he left, in order to commemorate him, the common people called this embankment "Sugong Embankment", which is now simply "Su Embankment".