A Study on the Literary Activities and Creations of Envoys in the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties and Their Impact(http://doi.org/10.63386/619015)

Xiaoyu Guo

School of Chinese Languages and Literatures, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, PR China

Email：1413746059@qq.com

Abstract: As a period of economic development and political and cultural prosperity in China’s history, the Song Dynasty was surrounded by a large number of ethnic minorities, and economic and trade exchanges and political and cultural exchanges between them were more frequent, and a large number of poems on mission slowly emerged, which not only showed a unique regional style, but also possessed a rich cultural content, and made use of the title sequences and allusions in the artistic techniques. Comparing the same stage of the mission words and mission poems, it can be found that the authors recorded the major events of the mission trip in a poetic way, and expressed their deep and unique personal feelings in the words. Therefore, after understanding the basic concepts of the two Song dynasty pedestrians, this paper, based on the relevant contents of the Song dynasty envoys’ participation in literary activities and literary creation, deeply explores their far-reaching influence on the literature of the Jin dynasty, the relationship between northern and southern literature, and the expression of regional culture, so as to provide theoretical support for the study of the literary works of the new period.

Keywords: Song Dynasty; pedestrian; missionary words; literary activity; literary creation

1. Introduction

When the Song Dynasty interacted with the minority regimes represented by Liao and Jin, the development of peaceful interaction between the two countries was maintained mainly through the exchange of envoys. Pedestrians served as an effective bridge between the north and the south, and since most of the envoys were literati ambassadors, some literary activities and literary creations, such as poems, notes, and travelogues, were inevitably produced in the course of the missions, which are important materials for the study of cultural exchanges between the Song Dynasty and neighboring regimes, humanistic mentality, as well as literary writings. From the perspective of interaction and exchange between literary works and political activities, some scholars have systematically sorted out the literary activities of the Song and Jin Jiaoyu system, and clearly pointed out that poetry has the dual functions of diplomatic rhetoric and personal lyricism [1]. Some scholars have studied the poetic works created by Fan Chengda, and believe that the works of making Jin can combine geographical imagery to metaphorically express the rift between the northern and southern primitives, which intuitively reflects people’s historical reflection on the Central Wetland at that time[ 2]. From the perspective of the historical information and literary value of the pedestrian genre, some scholars have studied a large number of travelogues and found that they possessed both practical and literary characteristics, providing a unique perspective for the study of frontier folklore and people’s worldview[ 3 ]. From the perspective of people’s identity anxiety and cultural identity at that time, part of the time memorialized the homeland relics by writing poems, forming a unique sense of cultural belonging[ 4 ]. Currently there are fewer studies on Song Dynasty envoy words and the relevant definitions are not clear. Some scholars believe that envoy words can be defined as a large number of works written by envoys on their way to Jin; some scholars believe that envoy poems have a broad and a narrow meaning, in which the broad meaning refers to the poetic works of all the envoys, in addition to the normal envoys, and there are also the two categories of Serving the Jin and Getting the Cargo Machine to Return South[5]. Since the interactions between the Song Dynasty and Liao and Jin were more frequent, and the relationship with other minority regimes, such as Xixia, was not close, there are not many poetic works about the emissaries. In this paper, starting from the social environment at that time, we mainly discuss the background of the creation of Liao and Jin poems and their far-reaching influence, and gain an in-depth understanding of the distinctive features and rich emotions expressed, so as to provide references for related historical and cultural research.

2.Basic overview of the two Song pedestrians

According to the analysis of modern Chinese interpretation, “pedestrian” is considered to be a merchant in a guild, or a merchant in a guild, or can be equated with a guild. In reading the existing historical data, some scholars have raised doubts about the meaning of “pedestrian” proposed by the former, thinking that there would be a misunderstanding if pedestrians were only regarded as industrialists and businessmen in the guilds. In ancient China, the pedestrian’s mission was very important, and his social status was relatively significant.

In the Song Dynasty, there was a specialized agency to deal with foreign matters, called the National Xinshou, and the Song pedestrians were called the National Xinshi. Pedestrians in the Northern Song Dynasty opened the word movement of the Jin Dynasty, laid a solid foundation for the creation of words in the Jin Dynasty, set up a clear benchmark, and made great contributions to the construction of the word world at the beginning of the Jin Dynasty. And the pedestrian in the Southern Song Dynasty created a unique style of making Jin words, mainly the mission’s insights, feelings and so on are given to poetry to express, and most of the word works were created in the north, widely circulated in the north, and the local Jin words and exchanges with each other, the creation of Jin words had a far-reaching impact[ 6].

3. Analysis of literary activities

3.1Local customs, culture and art

For the act of traveling on a mission, the change in the geographical space in which the traveler is located will inevitably result in a change in the social space, but such a change is temporary in nature. If the pedestrian’s mission was accomplished, the socio-spatial changes generated by the short journey would also end, but from it, one could acquire a wealth of travel knowledge and truly experience the unique elegance brought by the exotic space. When Jubilee was in the clouds, he would often create poems in combination with local customs, such as the northern people would make pine bark into dishes, like to eat meat food, and in winter they would choose to burn coal to warm up to resist the cold; during the period of making Jin, Lou Yao came to Yanjing to attend a banquet, and found that most of the songs and dances on the table were originated from the Northern Church Silk and were slightly different, and then he thought of composing poems from this: The musicians mostly learned from the present dynasty but the staff and drums were colorful, and they were all turbaned and red brocade-palmed, dressed in goose-yellow clothes and purple garments, and they had to be dressed in the same style as the present one. The color of the staff and drums are all turbaned with red brocade heads and goose-yellow and purple garments, and the attire is very different. The sound of the music is so anxious that the songs are like mourning, and those who respond to the songs can laugh at them. Among them, “the color of the staff and drums” and “the costumes are very different” refer to the local influence of the Female Genghis Khan’s costumes, and “the anxious sound of the music” is also due to the integration of the unrestrained and rough elements of the Female Genghis Khan’s music, while the song “dirge” refers to the local influence of the female Genghis Khan’s costumes. The song “Lamentation” is a major feature of female music. After the Jin envoys entered the Song Dynasty, they were more interested in enjoying the beautiful scenery, and most of the few surviving Song poems are mainly about the scenery, and seldom deal with the customs and culture of the Southern Song Dynasty[7].

3.2 Political attributes and psychological changes

First of all, the homesickness for the homeland. The two Song pedestrians in the process of the mission in the spirit of the idea will inevitably be due to changes in the social space changes, and the reason for the change is that the political identity is changed, changes in the geographical environment. Wu Keqi once wrote: “In the Southern Dynasty, the sadness of the past is still singing about the flowers in the back of the garden. In the old days, Wang Xie and the swallows in front of the hall flew to whoever’s home. In a sudden dream, the immortal muscle is more than snow, and the palace temples are piled up with crows. Jiangzhou Sima, his green shirt is wet with tears, the same is the end of the world. The author utilizes multiple imagery and historical allusions to express his deep pain of family and country and the sadness of drifting in the world. The use of “flowers in the backyard” implies that the historical tragedy of the ruler’s indulgence in sex ultimately led to the destruction of the country and the death of the family, combined with the metaphor of “to whom the swallows fly” in the dynastic change of the aristocrats fell, the people were displaced from the bleak reality, and quoted Bai Juyi’s “Pipa Xing” to say that “the same world is at the end of the earth. He quoted Bai Juyi’s poem “Pipa Xing” to express the sadness of “people who have fallen at the end of the world”, and expressed the fact that the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty was just like a dream, which was hard to believe, and also embodied his own state of mind when he looked back on the past as if it were a lifetime ago. Shi Yisheng once wrote: “I am in the south of the river looking at the north of the river, and I am sad when I send my guests away. Literally, the author expresses his nostalgia of living in a foreign land, but the deeper reading reveals the author’s own deep emotion of missing his hometown, and the “hometown” in the poem is covered up as the Jin country where the author works.

Secondly, the unswerving loyalty. In the social environment at that time, between the two countries in the geographical situation, political power, economic level, cultural development and many other factors under the combined effect, and gradually formed a relatively even-handed confrontation, pedestrians as the promotion of the two countries at that time, economic trade and cultural exchanges, there were a part of the people at that time for the “into the gold after the section does not serve At that time, there was a part of them who were “those who held the section without serving after entering Jin”, and they always kept their loyalty to the country and the people, tried to survive in the difficult situation, and put forward the idea of longing for peace to the war at that time. Teng Maochen was detained during the period of making Jin, because of the request to accompany the captured Qin Zong did not allow, died under the worry of grief and anger; Zhu Ben in making Jin: to pass the question to see to stay, the order to the official, to eye disease fixed resignation, suddenly stabbed with a cone.

Finally, the desire to quell the war. In the face of the impact of war, the two Song pedestrians have a profound experience, they have always fulfilled their duties during the mission, always persuade the ruler to quell the war, and truly realize the two countries peaceful interaction. When Hong Hao was forced to stay in the tribe of Chen Wang Wumu, he said, “I have written many poems to satirize, all of which are sad about the country and the time. Wumuro tried to ask Hong Hao about the “Strategies for the Taking of Shu” and the “Ten Matters of Peace”, mainly for suitable persuasion, and also paid more attention to conveying the concept of peace when teaching the local children, for example, “I wish to form a tie as soon as possible to repair the old friendship, and I hope that I can make peace with a single word. The three kingdoms”, etc.

3.3 Natural landscapes and artistic visions

When the Song Dynasty entered into peaceful relations with the Jin Dynasty, pedestrians would no longer encounter special circumstances such as being detained or harmed during their missions, and most of them could successfully complete their missions and return safely to their hometowns. In this context, the pedestrians’ missions would change the regions they were in, and the actual human landscapes and humanistic landscapes they knew would also change, which could certainly inspire the pedestrians’ passion for artistic creation. On the one hand, the natural landscape. Yang Wanli, as a representative poet of the Southern Song Dynasty, when he was ordered to transport the Jin envoy Pei Man Yuqing and his party, mainly traveling from Lin’an to Xuyi, and sightseeing the strange landscapes of the Southeast region along the way, he even composed more than 350 poems, and this enthusiasm also infected the Jin pedestrians who went on a mission to the Southern Song Dynasty, and they thus composed poems related to the landscapes, objects and customs along the way. For example, Yang Wanli once wrote: “Jianlong family business is greater than the sky, Qingli spring breeze 10,000 years. The temple plan plan out of the child Cai, laughing about the Jingluo Bo Youyan. The White Gully used to be outside the Honggou, and the Yishui is now in front of the Huaishui. Chuan after the year to the world of love, a wave of protection of the two end of the boat.” By depicting the unique scenery of the Central Plains and the unforgiving Huai Shui, the author expresses his sorrow over the fall of the Central Plains and his deep nostalgia for the people in the north. Dang Huaiying, an envoy of the Jin Dynasty, created “Evening Chrysanthemums in West Lake”, which expresses the author’s admiration for the natural landscape and the sentiment of life by depicting the chrysanthemums in West Lake in late autumn, among which “frosty chrysanthemums” and “chilly waves” belong to the cold-colored scenery, thereby The “frosty chrysanthemums” and “cold waves” are cold-colored scenes, thus conveying a deep and introverted unique emotion, effectively reflecting the unique cultural nature of the modern literati who fused the north and the south, and the whole poem intuitively embodies the complex spiritual world of the modern literati in a special historical background.

4.Literary Creation of Pedestrians in the Two Songs and Analysis of Their Influence

In the tense and confrontational situation at that time, the cultural activities of travelers from the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties were both a byproduct of diplomatic practices and an important medium for the collision and integration of northern and southern cultures. The related literary creations and their dissemination influenced cultural relations and expressions in different periods and regions. Table 1 lists the classification of research documents on missions from the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties

Table 1 Classification Table of Research Literature Related to the envoys of the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties

4.1Generation of Golden Age Literature and its Changes

In the era of war and chaos, the duty of the pedestrian was to travel in all directions and make alliances to fight against the enemy in order to protect the country. And the literary activities of the Song emissaries directly contributed to the transformation of Jin Dynasty literature from “imitation” to “innovation”. Combined with the results of the classification of the Song dynasty’s envoys’ words , the envoys’ words, as the poems written by all the envoys during the period of envoys to the Liao and Jin Dynasties, show that the interaction between the Song and Liao Dynasties was very close, according to the names of the seasons and periods.

First, the paradigm of creation. The Northern Song Dynasty pedestrians carried the “Dongpo Lefu”, “Huaihai Words” and other collections when they went on a mission, which became the model for the Jin Dynasty literati to imitate. For example, Cai Songnian, a writer in the early Jin Dynasty, accompanied his father on a mission to the Southern Song Dynasty, and was influenced by Su Shi’s concept of “poetry as words”, and his work of lyrics, “Going East of the Yangtze River – Mr. Dongpo’s rhymes”, directly used Su’s words, and created a precedent for the Jin Dynasty’s bold style of lyrics; and secondly, the theme of breakthroughs. Secondly, the theme breakthrough. The “Jin lyrics” of the Southern Song pedestrians were mainly based on the theme of chronicle and border fortress, which broke through the limitations of the traditional euphemistic lyrics. For example, Fan Chengda recorded the post-war scene in the north in “The Record of the Ranging Bridle”, and through the translation of his poem “Song of Water Tune – Nine Days in Yanshan”, he incorporated the images of “sunset in the deserted city” and “hu Jia’s sadness” into the lyrics, which provided a new creative paradigm for the Jin Dynasty writers; and last, the theoretical construction. Theoretical construction. The literary criticism formed in the interaction of pedestrians promoted the formation of lexicographic theory in Jin Dynasty. For example, Hong Hao, a pedestrian of the Southern Song Dynasty, recorded in Song Mo Ji Wen that the Jin people “like southern words, especially Dong Po”, and this evaluation standard was absorbed by the Jin literati, which gave birth to the “Zhongzhou Lefu” and other word selections of “elegant” and “bold”, and the dual esteem of “elegant” and “bold”. This standard of evaluation was absorbed by the literati of the Jin Dynasty, giving rise to such word selections as “Zhongzhou Lefu” which emphasized both “elegance” and “boldness”, laying the theoretical cornerstone of Jin Dynasty lexicography.

4.2The special relationship between North and South literature

Literary interactions during the Song-Jin envoy campaign reconfigured the power relations between northern and southern literature and gave rise to complex cultural tensions. First, there was a shift in literary power. In the early Northern Song Dynasty, the literary ideas spread by the pedestrians through their missions established the cultural centrality of the Southern Song Dynasty. However, after the mid-Jin period, literary power began to tilt toward the north as the creative level of Jin literati increased. For example, at the end of the Jin Dynasty, Yuan Haoqian compiled the Zhongzhou Collection, which put the Jin Dynasty literati in the sequence of “orthodox” literary history, marking the challenge of northern literature to the hegemony of the Southern Song Dynasty; secondly, the game of cultural identity. Secondly, the game of cultural identity. The cultural identity embedded in the literary creation of pedestrians directly reflects the complexity of the literary relationship between the north and the south. In the Southern Song Dynasty, pedestrians such as Lou Yao, in his “Day Record of the Northern Journey”, utilized the perspective of “the distinction between the barbarians and the summer” to examine the culture of the Jin Dynasty, and many of his lyrics contained the “thought of the homeland”; whereas the Jin literati, Yuwen Xuzhong, through his works such as “Day Record of the Golden Journey,” expressed his dual identification with the North and the South [8]This ambivalence pushed the literature of the North and South from “confrontation” to “dialog”; finally, the interaction of the literary market. Finally, the interaction of the literary market. In the questionable trade on the Song-Jin border, the circulation of literary works became an important form of cultural exchange. The Southern Song’s engraved version of Dongpo’s Words circulated at a high price in the north, while the Jin literati Cai Gui’s Supplementary Commentary on the Water Canon was imported into the Southern Song through merchants. This market behavior blurred the boundaries between Northern and Southern literature and provided a material basis for literary integration.

4.3 Reconstruction of regional culture

Although both the Liao and Jin lyrics were composed by pedestrians, the actual social, cultural and political backgrounds they faced were quite different, and the authors differed in their textual expressions and emotional treatments, which contributed to the differences in the ideological contents and expressions of the two. According to the Song poets and their stylistic achievements shown in Table 2 below, in this context, the literary activities and creations of the two Song pedestrians transformed regional cultures into literary symbols, truly realizing the cross-regional dissemination of cultural ideas[ 9 ]. First, the border imagery of the northern region and its literary works. Based on their experiences in the north, Southern Song pedestrians regarded geographic spaces such as “Yanshan” and “Bianjing” as unique literary imagery. For example, Fan Chengda wrote in “State Bridge”: “The north and south of the state bridge is a heavenly street, and fathers and elders wait for the return of the driver year after year”, and the author transformed “Bianjing State Bridge” from a geographical entity to a unique symbol of the memory of the family and the country. The Jin Dynasty literati, influenced by this, reconstructed northern imagery in their literary creations, for example, Wang Silence had combined Liaodong’s “Yalu River” and “northern Serbian flavor” in “Yajiang Xingbu Zhi”, which gave literary depth to the unique regional culture; secondly, the spreading of Jiangnan scenery to the north. Secondly, it spread the scenery of Jiangnan to the northern parts of the country. When the Jin Dynasty pedestrians went to the Southern Song Dynasty, they brought the delicate images of the Jiangnan water town into the northern literature, and this kind of cross-regional literary reconstruction not only enriched the content of creation, but also made a new breakthrough in artistic methods. For example, Wanyan Jing, the King of Jin Zhangzong, wrote the allusion of “Luoyang peonies are the best in the world” in “Peonies in May in the Hall of Taihe of Yunlongchuan”, which was actually a utilization of the scenery in Jiangnan under the writings of Southern Song literati, and this kind of creation not only fused the cultural contents of different places together, but also presented the beauty of northern literature with both ruggedness and modesty in the transmission of words and expression of emotions. Finally, the reconstruction of literature based on cultural memory. Pedestrian works as an important carrier of regional cultural memory, the Southern Song Dynasty pedestrian Zhou Hui has recorded “northern food customs” in Qingbo Magazine, which is an important document for the study of Jin Dynasty folklore in later generations after the translation of his words; Jin Dynasty literati Yuan Haoqian’s Renewal of Yijian Zhi preserves the oral culture of the northern ethnic minorities through the narration of wonders, truly realizing the relationship between literary works and regional history. realized the interpenetration of literary works and regional history [1 0 ].

Table 2 Song Dynasty poets and their style achievements

Conclusion

To summarize, the literary activities of the two Song pedestrians are essentially the epitome of the game and fusion between the cultures of various countries, mainly through the promotion of the transformation of literature in the Golden Age, the reconstruction of the relationship between northern and southern literature and the transformation of the regional cultural symbols and other ways, effectively changing the path of the generation of literature in the Golden Age, and prompting the literature of the Southern Song Dynasty to obtain more knowledge and experience in the daily exchanges. This process visualizes the close connection between literary activities and creations and the socio-political and cultural exchanges of the era in which they were created, and provides a reference basis for the study of literary creations in the new period. Therefore, under the increasingly close economic and cultural exchanges in modern society, continuing to study the literary heritage of the two Song dynasties can provide a vivid sample for people to understand the cultural conflict and cultural integration, thus contributing to the creation of the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

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