Everyone reacted one after another and started to applaud Pipa Matchmaker.
Many people threw the reward money directly in front of the matchmaker. The white-haired accompanist immediately bowed down and put away the reward money while thanking everyone.
Wang Chengwei looked at the matchmaker's plain dress and couldn't help but ask: "You have such skills, why do you end up like this?"
At this point, the matchmaker couldn't help but her eyes turned red and she started telling her own experience.
It turns out that this matchmaker was also a famous pipa girl in Chang'an City. When Chang'an was the most prosperous, she bought real estate in Chang'an with the rewards she received from visiting the houses of dignitaries, and she also adopted several orphan girls as apprentices.
It also became popular for a while.
But when Anlushan rebelled, the matchmaker hurriedly left Chang'an with her apprentice after Anlushan invaded Chang'an.
After two years of wandering outside the city of Chang'an, during which time there was a war and chaos, naturally no one listened to pipa music anymore.
The matchmaker and her apprentice struggled to survive, but how could a well-dressed woman with several half-grown children survive in such troubled times?
The matchmaker and her apprentice could survive by selling gold and silver jewelry at first, but soon, all the jewelry she brought with her was sold out.
At this time, someone came to the matchmaker and said that a local powerful man had taken a fancy to her apprentice and wanted to take her apprentice as a concubine.
Of course, the matchmaker knew that these people were not good matches, but she could no longer afford to eat, and her apprentices would starve to death if they continued to follow her.
She could only tearfully marry these lands to these powerful men. The matchmaker finally arranged for all her apprentices to get married, and she relied on performing arts and begging to survive until Chang'an was restored.
After receiving the news, the matchmaker cried with joy, and immediately packed her luggage and returned to Chang'an.
The matchmaker took out her treasured land deed, only to find that the house she bought had been burned down in the war.
The matchmaker wanted to cry but had no tears. She was already penniless and had no money to rebuild her house.
Then she found the boss of Mingyue Tower and begged him to give her a job playing and singing in Mingyue Tower.
When the matchmaker finished speaking, all the scholars fell silent.
The imperial court regained Chang'an, which was something that the army and the people had been waiting for for a long time.
But when Chang'an is truly restored, will everything go back to the way it was before?
This is just everyone's beautiful thought. Although Chang'an was recovered, the pain caused by the Anlu Mountain Rebellion to the Tang Dynasty has not been healed.
In other words, this pain will last for decades or even hundreds of years and will not be eliminated.
For a Pipa girl like Hong Niang, she does not understand the principle of prosperity and decline.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have spent a lot of money and lived a luxurious life when I was young and rich.
But what was accumulated step by step in that prosperous era was wiped out after a rebellion.
Even if this matchmaker can survive in troubled times, it is already the greatest luck to live in this era.
Everyone was silent, Chang'an City was restored, and the emperor and officials were all eager to return to the luxurious and prosperous Chang'an City of the past.
But what about the people of Chang'an?
Wang Chengwei sighed and said: "The people are suffering!"
This sentence about the suffering of the common people resonated with everyone.
Many of the Jinshi are from poor families, so they naturally know that life is not easy.
We have just encountered troubled times, and even the children of wealthy families like Wei Yingwu are facing the dilemma of family decline.
It can be said that these new scholars have not yet entered the big dye vat of officialdom, and have not lost their ability to empathize with the people.
Wang Chengwei put down his wine glass and shouted downstairs:
"Boss, bring me pen and paper!"
When the boss heard that Duke Zhuang Yuan wanted to bring paper and pen, he immediately excitedly handed over the high-quality pen, ink, paper and inkstone.
When the literati drank enough, they always wanted to keep their calligraphy. Wang Chengwei was the number one scholar with poetic talent, and his poems were very valuable!
If you write a famous novel, it can be sold for hundreds of dollars in Chang'an City, and it is not an exaggeration to think of it as a family heirloom.
But when the boss held up the paper, Wang Chengwei shook his head and said, "This paper is too small!"
The boss was stunned at this moment, but he was able to make Mingyue Tower so big, so he was certainly smart.
The boss immediately said to the waiter: "Quick, ride to the market and buy a roll of high-quality Longyou paper!"
When the matchmaker heard that Wang Chengwei, the champion, wanted to compose a poem, she immediately said: "Master champion, please ask your servant to grind ink for you."
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The matchmaker took the inkstone and started to grind the ink for Wang Chengwei. They saw that although she was dressed in plain robes and no longer young, her demeanor was graceful and her temperament was transcendent. Everyone thought of her extraordinary piano skills and lamented that they were not at the matchmaker's most beautiful time.
met her.
After a while, the waiter finally returned to the store holding a roll of Longyou paper.
The boss spread out the paper and saw Wang Chengwei swipe his pen and write on the paper——
"Pipa Play"
I really want to write poetry!
I don’t know if it’s five-character or seven-character?
But why does Five Characters and Seven Characters require such a long paper?
Just when everyone was still confused, Wang Chengwei had already written!
I only saw that Wang Chengwei had written four sentences without stopping, and was still writing quickly with a splash of ink.
The first few sentences describe the process of meeting a pipa girl at a Jinshi gathering. The content of the poem is plain and simple, but there is nothing outstanding about it.
But as Wang Chengwei wrote:
"He came out after being called out for a long time, but still half-hiding his face with his pipa in his arms."
Everyone applauded!
This is exactly the same as the pipa girl's demeanor when she appeared on the stage. This sentence "still holding the pipa and half covering her face" describes the pipa girl's movements vividly. This sentence alone is enough to make her famous through the ages!
But Wang Chengwei did not stop writing and continued to write:
“The three or two sounds of the strings being plucked by the rotating shaft, there is emotion before the tune is formed.
The strings muffle the sounds and thoughts, as if complaining of a life of dissatisfaction.
The formalities of the letter were continued with a low eyebrow, telling all the infinite things in one's heart.
Lightly gathered, slowly twisted and smeared, and then picked again, at first it was a colorful dress and then it was six pieces.
The big strings are noisy like the rain, and the small strings are like whispers.
Noisy and mixed bullets, big and small beads fell into the jade plate."
After writing these few sentences, everyone fell silent.
Just like after listening to the matchmaker's pipa, everyone fell silent and forgot to cheer.
Everyone was also shocked by the beauty of Wang Chengwei’s poems!
Recalling the climax of the matchmaker playing the pipa just now, everyone was even more excited!
How lucky I am today to hear the exquisite pipa music of a pipa player like Hong Niang and to witness the release of an eternal masterpiece!
You must know that the most difficult thing in the world is a long poem.
Although long poems do not strictly require contrast between tones and tones, the fact that a long poem can be written is enough to show the depth of the poet's skill.
People in the Tang Dynasty were not good at writing long poems, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t write good long poems.
The most famous among them is Zhang Ruoxu's "Moonlight Night on the Spring River", which is said to be the only one that covers the entire Tang Dynasty.
Also because such a gem comes first, many poets are reluctant to write long poems.
The subject matter of poetry is all about subtlety and artistic conception.
Small insights in life, seeing a beautiful scenery, or the small sadness of parting can be recorded in poems.
But these are limited to short poems. Each long poem must describe and record some more grand and subtle thoughts.
Long poems, like novels, must contain more content than short poems in essays.
After these few gorgeous descriptive sentences, Wang Chengwei changed his writing style and began to write about the life in Chang'an when she was young and beautiful according to the previous life described by the matchmaker.
"At the age of 13, I learned the pipa and became a member of the first group of the school.
Qu Ba once taught good people how to dress well, and Qiu Niang was always jealous of her makeup.
The young people in Wuling were quarreling over their heads, and they could not count the number of red ribbons they sang.
The silver grate on the tin head was broken into pieces, and the blood-colored skirt was stained by wine.
This year’s laughter will bring back the next, and the autumn moon and spring breeze will be spent leisurely.”
How wonderful!
The matchmaker is also literate. When she saw these lines of poems, she felt like she was back in the prosperous Tang Dynasty.
She wore beautiful clothes, went in and out of the mansions of princes and nobles, and attended gorgeous and extravagant banquets.
The days of laughter at the banquet seemed like a beautiful dream, and the matchmaker never wanted to wake up.
Everyone even applauded, Wang Chengwei was indeed the first among the undergraduate poets!
But just like the moon waxes and wanes, the good days will eventually pass.
Wang Chengwei wrote about the miserable experience behind the matchmaker, and then wrote:
"Late at night, I suddenly dreamed about my youth. I cried and cried, and my eyes were red with tears.
I sighed when I heard the pipa, and I groaned again when I heard the words.
We are all fallen people from the end of the world, why should we have known each other before when we meet!"
Now everyone became melancholy.
As the saying goes, people are reduced to the end of the world. Although everyone is a new scholar with a bright future, they will inevitably go their separate ways in the future.
Although the world has now seen the dawn of peace, many people have also suffered from the war.
The matchmaker's experience makes the phrase "a human being reduced to the end of the world" full of sadness.
Everyone was silent. The second half of this long poem completely penetrated the beautiful description in the previous part and wrote down the fate of everyone in this troubled world.
When Wang Chengwei stopped writing and left a long poem in the long scroll, Wang Chengwei said silently in his heart: "I'm sorry, Bai Letian, it's not easy to live in Chang'an!"
Then he threw away the pen coolly and picked up a bottle of wine again.
He said to all the Jinshi:
"In the past few days, Mr. Wang has held five banquets in Mingyue Tower after passing the exam. This was originally a happy event for everyone."
"But I recently heard from the matchmaker that there are still many displaced people in Chang'an, and I really feel uncomfortable eating this delicious feast."
"Before the Qionglin Banquet, Wang decided not to attend these banquets anymore!"
As soon as Wang Chengwei said this, everyone's eyes widened in surprise.
I only heard Wang Chengwei say: "I, Xue Zhizhou of Longyou, once wrote a poem, 'There are tens of millions of mansions in Anhui, and the great shelter makes all the poor people in the world happy'! Wang is going to set up a charity fund to help the people of Chang'an to rebuild the old houses destroyed by the war.
, so that they will not suffer from the cold due to the cold winter!"
After Wang Chengwei finished speaking, the players who won the Jinshi title with him stood up one after another: "Count me in!"
Wei Yingwu and Gu Kuang also stood up: "We are poor, but we can also contribute!"
Everyone stood up and responded.
Wang Chengwei said to the matchmaker: "Then let's start from this matchmaker's house. Although Wang cannot build tens of millions of mansions, he can first tide over the difficulties for the people in front of him!"