Being able to eat the three meals a day necessary for life to achieve aesthetic pursuits, China’s food culture is at least unique, if not unique. The ancient saying “Food is paramount to the people” can be traced back to the Western Han Dynasty. With the gradual development of the times and society, people have higher and higher requirements for food, and wealthy families have developed spiritual pursuits in terms of food. The ancient Chinese paid attention to eating not only in the food itself, but also endowed the behavior of “eating” with the core of “decency” and “humanity”, and then achieved the purpose of maintaining the ecology of social relations through “banquets”. As one of the pinnacle works of Chinese classical novels, “A Dream of Red Mansions” is known as an encyclopedia that shows the society at that time in detail. The author Cao Xueqin’s great-grandfather to his father’s generation has served as a weaving doctor in Jiangning for a long time for three generations. In terms of family financial resources, the Cao family used to be second to none in the Jiangnan area. After the death of Emperor Kangxi, the Cao family gradually declined. Cao Xueqin personally witnessed and experienced the rise and fall of the Cao family, honors and disgraces, ups and downs, so he has a deep understanding of life from court aristocrats to folks. A Dream of Red Mansions, half of feudal history. This work itself is of great reference value in the field of ancient social and cultural research. Speaking of food, according to incomplete statistics, there are as many as 68 famous banquet scenes in the first 80 episodes of “Dream of Red Mansions”, which is enough to see the important status of food in Chinese culture, and because of this, many scholars and cultural institutions believe that Studying the descriptions of banquets and food in “A Dream of Red Mansions” has far-reaching significance for the inheritance of Chinese classical culture.
Guangcai Figure Lid Cup Inlaid with French Gilt Bronze Base | Qing Daoguang | Hand-painted White Porcelain | Height 37 cm | , Pushouer, and the base are made of gilt copper. The cover of Guangcai porcelain is painted with pictures of ladies in the Dream of Red Mansions, and the edges are covered with European garland patterns. Both the body decoration and the cover of the porcelain cup use the pictures of ladies from the Dream of Red Mansions. The ladies stand or stand, the courtyard scene is deep and deep, the carcass is delicate and solid, the color is rich and elegant, and the painting is exquisite. The body of the porcelain cup is also molded with a pair of lion heads with rings and ears. The plumage is high and the facial features are three-dimensional. The decoration of the gilt seat is in the shape of lotus petals, which is heavy and magnificent, and complements the richness of Guangcai. This artifact shows the harmonious coexistence of Chinese and Western cultural content and form, and is a fine piece of porcelain with special themes in the Daoguang period.
In order to explore the relationship between the food culture and related handicrafts hundreds of years ago presented in “Dream of Red Mansions” and today’s society and humanities, the KCG×”Dream of Red Mansions” project came into being. The project was initiated and supported by the charity K11 Craft & Guild Foundation (KCG). Founded in Hong Kong in 2018, KCG is committed to inheriting and revitalizing traditional Chinese crafts that are about to be lost, establishing an intangible cultural heritage ecosystem, integrating “culture” and “business opportunities”, and trying to achieve truly sustainable craft protection and development. In addition to Guangcai, Baibao inlay, and mother-of-pearl that have been introduced in “Supreme”, “A Dream of Red Mansions” is also one of the eight core craft culture projects that KCG is committed to inheriting and revitalizing. KCG, together with experts in red studies, craftsmen, designers, artists and other professionals from various fields, uses the famous book “Dream of Red Mansions” and its contemporaneous documents as historical clues, and takes the craft and cultural relics along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal as geographical basis to create an , food, housing, transportation, and a series of studies aimed at exploring the Chinese lifestyle and life aesthetics, and hoping to put them into contemporary applications. Lasting until July 30, 2023, the themed exhibition “Cao’s Four Seasons Food List Summer” held at the former residence of Cao Xueqin in Beijing is part of the KCG×”Dream of Red Mansions” comprehensive cultural project. The exhibition re-reads this pinnacle masterpiece from the perspective of craftsmanship and cultural inheritance and innovation, and reproduces the story of its era with the era craftsmanship of “Dream of Red Mansions”. The beauty of Chinese life.
Lacquer inlaid mother-of-pearl piano, chess, calligraphy and painting small cabinet “Qianli” style | Qing Dynasty Kangxi | Inlaid lacquerware |
The “Reproduction: Yihong Yayan” exhibition hall in the exhibition “Cao Shi’s Four Seasons Food List Summer” presents the Guangcai “Flowers Bloom · Well”, which pays tribute to the 63rd chapter of “A Dream of Red Mansions” through a contemporary perspective In celebration of Baoyu’s birthday, Zhong Qunfang celebrates Baoyu’s birthday with a joyful scene of drinking wine, composing poems and having fun in the Yihong Courtyard. Different from the more detailed description of scenes and dishes on Jia Mu’s 80th birthday in “A Dream of Red Mansions”, Cao Xueqin’s description of Yihong’s night banquet focuses more on the social activities of the sisters and Baoyu’s drinking orders, so There is plenty of room for development in the re-enactment – forty white powder Ding kiln small dishes, some dry and fresh, water or land, both Chinese and foreign, covering thousands of things. Seeing the big from the small, the exquisite luxury of the Grand View Garden can be seen from a few strokes. It is precisely because of this that how to create a relaxed scene without losing the details in the absence of specific descriptions has become the top priority of writing sixty-three essays.
Before the lively program started that day, Cao Xueqin also wrote a short section of Fangguan’s meal and a girl’s lunch: a combination of meat and vegetables, side dishes, staple foods and even desserts; pink, white, red, yellow, green, color and fragrance Excellent. Pink is shrimp ball and chicken skin soup, white is steamed duck fermented with wine, red rouge goose breast, a plate of four yellow butter pine rolls, and a large bowl of hot Bi Rong Rong green rice fragrant rice, this is Bi Rong Rong . This is true for a girl’s meals, but the attention to diet in “Dream of Red Mansions” is even more numerous.
Guangcai “Flowers Bloom. Alright” Look at the plate | Modern-Cai Sizhe (Asi) | Hand-painted white porcelain | Diameter 12 cm, a set of eight pieces |
The work originated from the metaphor of “one flower, one person” by Cao Xueqin, the author of “A Dream of Red Mansions”. The lottery in the lottery all implies the fate and ending of the characters.
The overall design concept of the work echoes the story design of Dream of Red Mansions and the shape and color distribution of the Grand View Garden. Each watch plate is painted with multicolored stones, which serve as witnesses and bearers that breed flowers in the picture. The stone is expressed in two ways, one is the multicolored stone that breeds flowers, and the other is the red stone that is the stone shadow. The symmetrical appearance of the two is like an illusion in a mirror, true and false, like a dream. In terms of color, the work uses a wide color “hemp color” to write lines, and uses the classic “red and fast green” red and green combination of “Dream of Red Mansions” as the main tone. The interlacing and matching presents a gradient effect, creating an illusory visual illusion.
Throughout the whole story, “Dream of Red Mansions” sets off and describes food to the point of being lifelike. Poems, words, songs, whispers, and even all kinds of small romances are brewing and rising in the eating environment. All the books are food and non-food. The brilliantly written words are transformed into fragrant imaginary scenes, making readers feel like they are in the book.
The nutrition brought by food nourishes our bodies, and at the same time, food can also be used as a medium to make people feel various and rich emotions through ups and downs, sweet, bitter, spicy and salty, and experience the beauty of Chinese culture in the long history of change. The “high-end diet” that most people in the world recognize is still a concept dominated by a Western perspective. If we integrate traditional Chinese life aesthetics into contemporary life, perhaps in a subtle way, we can strengthen our cultural self-confidence.
