Where does the hanging pot come from?

A past event is still fresh in my mind.

There is a relative who has been a scholar for generations. There is a sentence in the letter; "Curing the world by hanging pot", literally, obviously refers to practicing medicine, but the word "hanging pot" is quite puzzling. Without in-depth research, I thought it was a pointer, but it turned out to be a joke.

The classic "Hanging Pot" originated from the Book of the Later Han Dynasty and the Biography of Fei Changfang, which wrote: "Fei Changfang was also a Runan person and was once a market rafter. There is an old man selling medicine in the city. He hangs a pot on the top of the city and jumps into it when the city goes on strike. City people can't see, just sit upstairs and watch ... ".

In fact, the book is not a true story in history, but a fairy tale. The old man in the book claims to be "a fairy couple, and now it's time to go." Pot is also a magic pot. Weng and Chang Fang "both entered the pot and saw the Jade Hall solemn and beautiful, full of mellow wine." The old man gave Fei Changfang a spell to punish the ghosts, and later Changfang "lost the spell and was killed by the ghosts."

There are many allusions from fairy tales in China's literature, such as "Que Bridge in Tianhe" and "Chang 'e on the Moon", which are almost household names. But the classic "hanging pot" has never been heard of.

In ancient China, most merchants and shops in all walks of life had their own signboards, also called excuses. Just hang a signboard in front of the store to indicate the goods sold. Such as hanging fences in restaurants and wine flags in hotels, are described in ancient novels and poems. For example, the poet Du Mu's "Spring in the South of the Yangtze River", "A thousand miles of warblers sing green and red, and the wine flag in the fruit mountain village is in the wind", and Jie Jiang's "A piece of spring sorrow is waiting for the wine to pour, the boat on the river shakes, and the curtain moves upstairs" has been told by the world so far. The 23rd chapter of Water Margin is about Song Wu walking on the road for several days. "At noon that day, he was hungry and saw a hotel in front with a flag flying in front of it. "This wine flag, curtain card and flag card are all signs of the hotel.

There is an old saying in China that "selling dog meat by hanging sheep's head". Presumably, the mutton shop in ancient times also hung a sheep's head in front of the door as a sign. But selling dog meat by hanging sheep's head is selling fake goods and deceiving customers. It can be seen that fake and shoddy commercial fraud has existed since ancient times, but today's fake and fake sales are more ingenious, more varied and more technical, so they are more deceptive. But no matter ancient or modern, making and selling fakes will not have a good end. Always ends up hurting others and hurting yourself. Finally, it closed. How many famous decades-old shops at home and abroad were destroyed because of making and selling fakes. I hope that the tragedy similar to Guanshengyuan, a 70-year-old shop, will never happen again.