Is it really written by Su Dongpo that "one pear hits one begonia" mocking Zhang Xian's old husband and young wife?

What does Su Dongpo mean by "a pear tree hits a begonia"? How to appreciate?

First of all, we can be sure that "a pear tree hits a begonia" is not Su Shi's work.

When most people are telling anecdotes, this answer is actually a bit disappointing.

It is generally believed that Su Shi joked that Zhang Xian married a concubine at the age of eighty-five. He used "a pear tree" to describe Zhang's father and "Haitang" to describe his newly married concubine. This poem is also accompanied by the word "pressure", which is really vivid and vulgar, and it is in line with Su Shi's broad-minded and humorous character. He was mistaken for the author of this "famous poem", which actually originated in the 1980s. At that time, street stall literature prevailed, and people could buy all kinds of "interesting stories of celebrities" and "anecdotes" at any time when they went to railway stations and bus stations. Linking the ridicule of Su Dongpo and Zhang Xian with this poem, and deliberately pulling out two works to falsify it, it is estimated that it is the product of stall literature.

Tracing back to the source, where did a pear tree crush Haitang come from and why did it change?

"Pear tree beating begonia" is a popular folk joke in note novels since the Ming Dynasty. The earliest version found at present comes from the collection outside Yaoshan Hall written by Jiang Yikui in Ming Dynasty? Later, books such as Beihua Monthly, Luji Teahouse and Picking up Wisdom all included similar jokes. The hero of the story is different from the poem, but neither of them said that the author was Su Shi, only that it was written by a folk "some Weng", "Xu Mou in Dinghai, Zhejiang" or "Weng Chen, a Shanghai poet".

Some of the poems in these folk stories were written by themselves, but this famous poem does have a source. Its author was the first love rat in the Tang Dynasty-Yuan Zhen, who wrote that "once the sea was difficult for water, it was amber forever". "A pear flower on the tree presses a Chinese flowering crabapple" is a sentence in his Two Poems in White, but it is not a Chinese flowering crabapple, but an ivory bed:

This is a poem describing the beautiful face of a boudoir woman. With the help of simple and elegant things like white clothes, a beautiful and simple woman image is outlined. Here, "like a pear flower on a bed" naturally describes the exquisite and dynamic beauty of a woman dressed in white and reclining on an ivory bed.

From the graceful woman to the teasing of the old lady, it is naturally the credit of these folk jokes, but we have to say that this metaphor is vivid, poetic and indecent, and it is a quite good humorous rewrite.

Then how did this folk saying hook up with Su Shi?

Let's see if the two legendary teasing works by Su Shi and Zhang Xian are similar in character and poetic features.

Su Shi and Zhang forgot to make friends first. After all, Teacher Zhang was born in 990, and Su Shi was born in 1037. He is 47 years old. That is to say, Zhang Xian took eighty couplets, which is about 1070, while Su Dongpo was only in his thirties. At that time, Ding You was reinstated and Wang Anshi's political reform had begun. Su Shi and Wang Anshi were forced to leave Beijing because of their different political views, but they were not demoted, but just invited themselves. Although it backfired, compared with the later relegation and Wutai Poetry Case, life is normal, so it is a matter for literati to make fun of Zhang Xian, an old friend.

According to records, Su Shi wrote poems mocking Zhang Xian, but although literati poems have their own characteristics, they are far less attractive to the public than common sayings. Because of this fact, although the poems written by the two men have been tampered with in circulation, no one believes the so-called 100% lie, and the true and false rumors will make many people believe it.