Laughing, playing chess, calligraphy, painting and prose

When I wrote this topic, my heart was really empty. In ancient times, these things, such as piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, were the so-called "literati things", and at least they had to be "scholarly families" to have a chance to play. People at our level are in such an era, no matter from the subjective identity or objective environment, I am afraid they are not qualified to enjoy such elegant entertainment, and even talk about it makes people feel a little extravagant.

Literally, the word "Chyi Chin Shu Hua" has a wide range of meanings. However, since these four words are linked together and crowned with the reputation of "elegant people and four good", they have a specific object and significance, and they have become old "literati and poets", including some necessary skills for "famous families" to cultivate their self-cultivation. In this new society, their style is naturally very old. In our ancient country, there are many things that used to be very ordinary when taken out individually, but if you mix several equally ordinary things together, the realm will immediately become a bit extraordinary. For example, in addition to the "chess, calligraphy and painting" mentioned here, there are also examples such as "romance", "the long river sets the yen", "the moonlight on the spring river", "the crow with a dead vine, the family flowing through a small bridge" and so on. ...

I was born with a bad nature, and some of them were idle. When I was a child, I liked to play with activities such as flowers, birds, fish and insects, which belonged to the category of playthings. Although there are flowers in it, it is like a clear spring. If you pour it into a wine jar, it will become wine, but if you pour it into the toilet, it will only become smelly water. The word "flower" is the same. If it is accompanied by romantic feelings, the real scene is needless to say so charming. Just looking at the words written on paper is already beautiful. However, if you are unfortunate enough to associate with fish and insects, although you can sometimes get a word "fun", it always comes before the word "wild", but it has long been out of touch with the word "elegant".

In this way, people are a little suspicious of talking, but sometimes talking is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, if we take the words "Qin, Qi, calligraphy and painting" out of this gorgeous robe, literally speaking, even a layman like me may have the cheek to say, "Isn't it Qin, Qi, calligraphy and painting?" I think I've played it before! "

However, after all, the robe of "Elegant People and Four Kindness" has been hanging there for thousands of years. If I take that thing I play with, it will really make people laugh.

The Qin in the "Four Good" originally refers to the guqin, ranking first among the four good, and has always been regarded as the embodiment of elegance and the necessary skill of the old literati. Just listening to its name like this is already a very old "sage's instrument". Don't say how advanced you are in melody knowledge. Just from the ceremony, it is not what ordinary people can do. If, as Lin Daiyu said in A Dream of Red Mansions, playing the piano requires not only physical and mental integrity and respectful posture, but also "cleaning hands and burning incense" in advance, how can ordinary people be so pious about a musical instrument? Perhaps it is for this reason that few people play guqin now. Among the people I know, although some people specialize in art originally, they also have one or two musical instruments at home, such as guzheng, erhu, piano, violin, saxophone and so on. In normal seasons, they can play a few songs, but almost no one can play guqin. In fact, the zither and erhu piano, whether made in China or abroad, can be regarded as classical elegance, and it cannot be said that there is no difficulty in playing skills. The reason why they can be accepted by people may be that they are somewhat civilian, not as high as guqin, and there is no need to "clean hands and burn incense" before playing.

The fate of Qin and I came very late, and the experience was very short. To tell the truth, not only is there nothing to express, but I am also a little ashamed to show people. The so-called Qin, such as guqin and piano, has nothing to do with me, but has a short fate with me, but it is just a small harmonica.

After graduating from junior high school, I once sat in a technical school that was not like a school for two years. Most students who come to this school are out of their parents' love and don't want them to go to work after graduating from junior high school. So they tried their best to find a school and let the children sit for two more years before "turning down"; Secondly, after all, you can get a high school diploma. Although that diploma is not very valuable, it is better than nothing. So we are not very particular about studying at school, but only about playing. We can play carefree in that school, because there is no psychological pressure for further studies and exams, and we will only wait for two years and go home with that diploma.

So we came up with all kinds of ways to play. At that time, there was a very elegant and fashionable way to play, which was to have a party. At first, it was only held in one's own class, then it was held in conjunction with other classes, then it was held in the whole school-at that time, there were only three classes in our school, which was very convenient to organize-and finally it developed to invite people from nearby schools to hold it together.

Once, a male student from another school played a flute at a get-together in our school. The tune I played seemed to be "I'm leaving when the moon is gone". He plays well and fluently, and there is no mute in the middle, let alone staccato. We had several get-togethers before, and the content of the performance was nothing more than singing pop songs, dancing disco or break dancing, but no one had ever played an instrument, so the classmate from another school naturally stole the show. From then on, a gust of wind blew in our school, and many people became interested in musical instruments. However, playing musical instruments at school should not be too extravagant, because it is too expensive to buy and too big to wear. There are two kinds of ideals, one is naturally a flute and the other is a harmonica.

It is difficult to play the flute. People who can't play the flute don't even know how to ring. There's a saying in our place that "a thousand-day huqin, ten thousand-day flute and three-day feather flower clang" is a kind of flute-we don't distinguish between flute and flute there, but they are all called Xiao anyway-it's a kind of suona. Although this sentence is exaggerated, it will never take twenty or thirty years to learn flute. Even if it is difficult, it is enough to prove its difficulty.

I have always been afraid of difficult things, so I didn't dare to play the flute from the beginning. Think about playing the harmonica, at least the sound of the harmonica is not a problem. I was going to buy a harmonica myself, but because I was too greedy, I refused to give up snacks and spend the eight dollars, so I kept dragging my feet and just listened to others whistling after class. Later, a senior didn't want to play for some reason, so she lent me the harmonica, which contained several notations, saving me eight yuan.

Ordinary harmonica looks very simple, half a foot long, like a comb, with two rows of holes up and down, which are divided into three sound zones: high, middle and low. When playing, hold the piano with your mouth to the hole, exhale and inhale, and move your hands left and right according to the notation, and the changing sound will come out constantly. Moving the harmonica to the corresponding hole depends on feeling, unlike other musical instruments, which have strict fingering, but this does not mean that playing the harmonica is not mysterious.

I just started to learn to play the song "Qianshan is always in love", and almost all my classmates started to learn from this song. It took about a week to finally blow Qianshan's love from head to toe, but I felt that the music was very different from others. Other students are full of harps when playing, because they can play different timbres. According to their experience, if you hold more than one hole at the same time, but only one hole sounds, stick your tongue on the other holes, and move your tongue according to a certain rhythm when playing, so that the music blown out will have an accompaniment rhythm, which is particularly pleasant to listen to. But from beginning to end, I can only hold one or two piano holes with pointed lips, and the sound is not only monotonous, but also a little "crying" if I play slowly. I also did experiments based on my classmates' experience. As a result, not only can't play the beat, but also the hole is filled with saliva, and even a note can't be played.

I've only learned three songs, besides Qianshan has been in love, there are two songs, namely "The Moon on the 15th" and "Mother's Kiss". I always do things just for novelty. After learning these three songs, I thought it was impossible to perform on stage at my level, and there was no point in practicing more. Besides, the harmonica is not my own. Although my senior sister didn't come to urge me to return it, it was always inappropriate for other people's things to occupy for a long time, so I took time to clean the harmonica carefully and returned it to my senior sister.

I have hardly played the harmonica since I graduated from school. When writing this article, I want to review these three songs in my mind, but I can hardly hum the notation from beginning to end except Qian Shan. Mother's kiss only remembers a beginning, but the moon on the fifteenth can't even remember a note.

The "chess" in the "four good" originally refers to Go. I can't play Go at all, and I still don't know what "flying, jumping, rushing and breaking" and what "small eyes, wrong eyes and carefree corners" mean. I have played military chess, China chess, flying chess and pinball checkers. These chess have been in physical education class since my primary school, but there is no big secret except China chess.

China chess was originally an elegant entertainment and very cultured, but we couldn't play the whole game at that time, so we had to turn it over in the second half. After 32 pieces are confused, they are randomly arranged on a chessboard, and then turned over one by one, killing each other in the order of general, scholar, Xiang, car, horse, cannon and soldier. Among them, soldiers have the lowest rank and are useless, but they can kill generals in turn, so the effect is particularly great.

Playing this kind of chess is not a skill at all, it depends entirely on luck, and sometimes it is really irritating. For example, it was hard to dig out a great future, but there was another soldier next to him. The general was destroyed by that soldier and made no achievements. Do you find it irritating? So many times, we would rather play flying chess and checkers than play this kind of half-chess.

Later, a classmate learned to play gobang with chess, which is much more interesting than flipping chess. Because playing gobang requires a little brain, we played gobang with chess. In addition, a classmate who saw Weiqi on TV said that this is actually the way to play Weiqi, only a few pieces are missing. We didn't know what happened in the middle, so we took his words seriously and always thought that gobang was the right way.

Go actually has many specialized terms, which are professionally called terms, such as "flying, jumping, rushing, breaking", "little star, small wrong eye, carefree corner" and so on. The reason why I can say such a noun is actually from the internet. I only know the name but I don't understand the meaning. However, among many nouns, I know that one is called "Tianyuan", which is the star position in the center of Go board. This name was taught to me by a teacher in my technical school, and there was a shameful joke.

When I was a sophomore, the physics teacher was new, just graduated from college, not much older than us. He likes playing Go. After lunch, he asked me if I could play Go. I always thought that Go was Gobang, so I said, "Go? Yes. " So he called me to his room to play chess. There is a small square table in his room with nylon chess cloth and two boxes of chess pieces on it. After I went in, I took a box and sat on the stool outside. The teacher also sat down, looked at my chess box and said, "You take the black, you go first."

I didn't think much about it either. Let's go first, so I put the first particle on the star position in the center of the board according to the usual gobang method. I didn't expect my hand to stick out. The teacher was surprised, panting, and shouted in disbelief, "What's the matter? I cann't believe you ordered Tianyuan first hand! This is deliberately let me come? "

I gave him a puzzled look and replied lightly, "It's not for you. I got off like this before."

"Psst ... darling, even Nie Weiping dare not play this game!"

I didn't know the depth, so I touched a chess piece in my hand and said, "I may not be afraid of the chess that Nie Weiping didn't dare to play."

After hearing such arrogant words, the teacher became more and more afraid. He looked up at me and guiltily put the first albino on the star position in his lower right corner. I have never seen a monk like him, and I am puzzled, but I didn't say anything. I only put the second sunspot next to Tianyuan, and the teacher immediately occupied the star position in the lower left corner. Next, I have been in a straight line in the center, and the teacher has been frowning at the periphery to grab the star position. When he grabbed four stars, it was my turn again. At this time, I had five children in a straight line, so I took five children and ate one of his pills. Then the teacher burst out laughing, and he just kept laughing. He laughed and kept lighting it at me with his right index finger. It took a long time to stop and say, "Ha ha ha, I thought you were a great master. So you can't play Go at all. You think gobang is a board game, haha ... "

This time it was my turn to be shocked, so I asked, "Isn't Gobang just Go?"

The teacher didn't answer me either, only put the pieces on the plate back into the chess box, but still couldn't help laughing and saying, "You play Go with gobang. If Nie Weiping meets you, you will be intimidated. Ha ha ha, that's funny!" Only then did I know that Gobang and Go were completely irrelevant. Fortunately, it was just the two of us, and no one else was present. Otherwise, it will be ugly.

I haven't learned to play Go yet, but sometimes I often recall this shameful joke. Think about those crazy words that can be described as "rock breaking" at the beginning, which can be regarded as the best annotation of this sentence "ignorance and fearlessness"

My stories about books and paintings are far less wonderful than those of Qin and Qi. These two things can actually be said together. Isn't there a saying that "painting and calligraphy are not separated"?

Books refer to calligraphy, and in a popular way, writing is regarded as an art. The word "art" is really noble, and ordinary people can never reach it. Calligraphy is no exception, so we have always had no artistic requirements for writing. But when I was studying, I had three 20-minute writing practice classes every week from the third grade of primary school to the second grade of junior high school to practice China's calligraphy. The usual method is that the teacher copies a five-character ancient poem on the blackboard, and we write it on the blackboard below, regardless of the brushwork and style. After writing, hand it in as homework. The teacher will use a red pen to select a few relatively good circles on it. Although it is impossible to make any achievements and experience in "art", this method of practicing calligraphy still has some effect, at least it will not be unfamiliar with pen and ink.

Although my grandmother is from the old society, she knows a few words very well and values China's calligraphy. When she was old, she believed in Buddhism and often attended ceremonies held in nearby temples. If she meets a bodhisattva, she will definitely spend 50 cents to buy a "light-opening pen" in the temple. As the old saying goes, when a scholar writes with a brush, it is not only easy to write well, but also his studies will be promoted step by step, and he is hopeful to be the number one scholar.

I have used this kind of bottle opener many times, at least once a semester, but in the end my handwriting is still poor. As for "being the first", it is even more impossible. Even the technical schools in the last two years had to ask for help. Fortunately, in our era, brush calligraphy has almost lost its practical value, and the only opportunity to play is to write Spring Festival couplets in the New Year, but now there are very few people posting Spring Festival couplets in rural areas. Every year, our family puts a short couplet on the middle door, and the content is the same every year. It is nothing more than "resigning the old year and welcoming the new year in peace". It is the best wish for rural people to have a scratch in the old year and peace in the new year, and dare not expect more. This couplet is written by myself every year. Naturally, the style is chaotic, which can only make people recognize the handwriting and understand the meaning. It is not difficult to imagine that people who write couplets every year can't write any good words anyway because of this extremely "practical calculation".

Actually, I'm interested in painting. That was when I was in junior high school, and I was a little fascinated for a while. But my painting is not the traditional Chinese painting in the "Four Good". I can't say what it is. Maybe I can call it "graffiti", because the content of the painting is varied. In my memory, I have painted the birthday girl offering peaches, making waves, willow swallows, dragonflies with lotus leaves, magpies climbing plums, cranes Gu Song, dragons and phoenixes in full bloom, the forest roaring, the sunset on the green hills, and orchids ... The method of painting is always to draw a shadow on a piece of white paper with a pencil at the sample, and then paint it with various colors. The color is watercolor like a powder cake, which is sold in stationery stores and is not expensive.

At that time, my painting was just imitating the original picture. No matter what kind of painting, it is the same painting method, which has no meaning at all. After painting, it's just a model, but it's not actually a painting. But at that time, it was really carefully painted, and even pretended to write money. In fact, it was very funny. It was often a Western-style year and a Chinese-style month. But we also know the different names of three months in a season, among which spring, autumn and winter are Meng, Zhong and Ji in turn, and only the first month of summer is called early summer or early summer. In addition, the seal is a big problem and can't be done, so I cleverly drew a seal under the title with a red ballpoint pen to pretend.

In order to keep these paintings, I also bought a lecture folder. After each painting is completed, watercolors are carefully collected in folders. A few years later, there was a very large booklet. When I have nothing to do, I often open the brochure "self-appreciation" and sometimes show it to others to show off. I also received some praise for it, so I am a little proud.

I have kept this picture book for many years. Later, because of the renovation of my house, I worked outside when I moved things, not at home. Maybe the lecture folder was mixed with a pile of old books and papers and sold as waste.