Ordering tea, burning incense, arranging flowers, and hanging paintings were collectively called the Four Arts of Life (also known as the “Four Things”) by the Song people. They were part of the literati’s pursuit of elegant life at that time. These four artists, through the senses of smell, taste, touch and vision, taste daily life, elevate daily life to the realm of art, and enrich inner self-cultivation and self-cultivation. This is very consistent with the life aesthetics pursued by modern people and the life attitude of paying attention to personal taste, and it also coincides with the mainstream consciousness of oriental aesthetics today.

Incense burning emphasizes the beauty of “fragrance”, tea tasting emphasizes the beauty of “taste”, flower arrangement emphasizes the beauty of “color”, and hanging paintings emphasizes the beauty of “environment”. Such an elegant move is getting farther and farther away from the lives of Chinese people after sweeping the “Four Olds”. world.

Ordering tea: a pot of agarwood tea, entertaining friends from afar

The tea ordering method was popular in the Song Dynasty. The tea was rolled into powder, put into a teacup, poured with water, and stirred vigorously to make the tea milky before drinking. The Japanese matcha ceremony is the ordering tea of ​​the Song Dynasty. Chinese tea ceremony is an art of tea drinking, which is deeply involved in poetry and painting in daily life. Emperor Qianlong once said: “You can’t live without tea for a day”, which has become the best portrayal of tea’s integration into daily life.

Ordering tea is a method of making tea during the Tang and Song dynasties. Ordering tea is also commonly used in tea fighting. It can be carried out by two or more people, but it can also be boiled (water), ordered (tea) and tasted alone. The physical and mental enjoyment it brings can evoke endless aftertaste.

Tea, meeting water and sacrificing oneself, is made into tea drink because of charity; the leaves contain tea fragrance, just like the fragrance of precepts, which is for keeping precepts; enduring steaming, frying and fermenting, and being squeezed and kneaded is for enduring humiliation; getting rid of laziness, refreshing and benefiting Thinking is for diligence; respecting peace and tranquility, the taste of tea is the same, is for meditation; doing things in the right way, helping countless people, is for wisdom. What is the difference between the heart of tea and the heart of Buddha? A cup of tea. The stone grinds lightly and flies away, and the frankincense cooks Jianxi spring. It is difficult for people to recognize the best in the world, so I recall the ancients in the “Tea Classic”.

Incense: a ray of deep fragrance, soothing worldly worries

The word “burning incense” is very popular. According to the common interpretation, it should be followed by the word “kowtow”. In fact, the meaning of the word “burning” is the same. It seems that burning incense is much more elegant, but it is actually just a language habit. The burning of incense here does not refer to incense in Buddhist temples, Taoist temples or ancestor worship, but in order to add to the mood of daily home life.

The history of incense used in China can be traced back to before the Spring and Autumn Period. During the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, incense blending, incense, and incense evaluation had become an elegant art, and the culture of incense Taoism took shape. The development of the Song Dynasty reached its peak, and incense culture was integrated into daily life. Scholars and scholars gathered to taste incense and read books. While enjoying the fragrance, they read scriptures and talked about paintings and Taoism. Many emperors, generals, and literati in the past dynasties cherished fragrance like gold and became addicted to it. Some literati even lamented “how can we get together without fragrance”. In his later years, Su Dongpo and his disciples used agarwood as a companion, burning incense all day long as a gift, and spent their old age.

This is a sketch showing folk daily life. The characters are women and children. On the table on the left side of the painting is Chen You’s incense burner, vase, a piano, a three-axis painting and a letter of books. It can be seen that there are four events and four arts. popularity.

Flower arrangement: a pot of flowers of ideas, taste all kinds of life

The art of flower arrangement in China began before the Sui Dynasty, and it was mainly made to offer flowers in front of altars and Buddhas. In the Tang Dynasty, flower art was very popular in the court, and in the Song Dynasty, it was more popular among ordinary literati and refined scholars, and its development flourished. The art of flower arrangement in the Song Dynasty broke through the magnificence of the Tang Dynasty. With a clear and sparse style, it pursued the beauty of lines, and the connotation was more important than the form. It reflected the philosophy of life and moral integrity of the flower arranger. It was called “ideal flower” and had a great influence on the flower art style of later generations. big.

The term flower arrangement is very popular now, and there was no flower arrangement in China for a long time before the early 1990s. There are traces of flower arrangement, at least before the Tang Dynasty in China, and some people even think that it existed in the Han Dynasty. No matter when it existed, it was relatively simple, and it was mostly related to sacrifices or offerings. It is relatively simple, in addition to referring to the matching of flowers, the vases for flower arrangement are also very simple, basically borrowing everyday utensils.

Hanging painting: a calligraphy and painting of floating clouds, containing the beautiful scenery of mountains and rivers

“Hanging paintings” originally referred to tea-related paintings hanging beside the tea party seats. In the Song Dynasty, hanging paintings were mainly scrolls of poems, words, characters, and paintings. Literati and scholars pay attention to the content and display form of hanging paintings, which are important activities for daily home appreciation or elegant collection activities.

Hanging pictures is also an elegant thing, and it is estimated that most people are puzzled. According to the current phenomenon, it doesn’t matter whether you are educated or not, and it doesn’t matter whether you have taste or not. It seems common to hang a few paintings at home, but in fact it is not. There are some profound historical reasons for this.

Before the Song Dynasty, most of the paintings were painted on the walls, which are now called murals. As a part of architectural decoration, they are integrated with the building, such as the finishing touch of the story, the point is the murals. The movable ones painted indoors belong to those painted or mounted on a screen. Therefore, Zhang Yanyuan’s Records of Famous Paintings in the Tang Dynasty recorded the murals of many famous masters, such as Wu Daozi, who is famous for his murals.

At the same time, we now call the paintings with vertical axes appearing in even numbers, such as four, six, eight, ten, and twelve screens. Many of them are the products of the ancients who mounted the paintings on the screens and then removed the scrolls. Before the Tang Dynasty, hand scrolls with horizontal scrolls were convenient for collection and appreciation, but vertical scrolls appeared in the Five Dynasties.

Booklets were also very popular in the Song Dynasty. What we want to say is that during this period, people mounted paintings on vertical axes as a very important part of home appreciation or elegant collection activities. How to display the painting and what scene to hang What kind of painting is particular, and it is said that it is not suitable for the family, at least one skilled servant must be trained to take charge of it.

Burning incense emphasizes the beauty of smell, tasting tea emphasizes the beauty of taste, flower arrangement emphasizes the beauty of touch, while hanging paintings emphasizes the beauty of vision. The combination of four arts shows the elegant and charming life aesthetics of the literati in the Song Dynasty.