Those who know the art of wisdom and have a wide range of knowledge are good at talking and writing, and are usually full of enthusiasm and vitality in their words. Those who dare to venture into the world of art, and belong to those who are talented and elegant, generally like to be unconventional, and eventually tend to pursue extreme refinement.

Song Yu of Chu during the Warring States Period was suave and talented, but he was not appreciated by the world and was ridiculed by the people of the time. In an article "Asking the King of Chu", he talked eloquently, from the lower riba people to the white snow in the spring and spring, which not only revealed the helplessness of Qu Gao and the widow, but also expressed the consciousness of the bird and the phoenix. The reason why this kind of article is so high-minded and open-minded is that it is righteous and awe-inspiring, like a long rainbow.

The Western Han Dynasty has reached the point of being at ease with the use of glamorous words and beautiful sentences. In his article "Seven Hairs", the words are piled up like floating clouds, and the beautiful sentences are undulating like a storm of dust; His questions directly hit the instinctive hobbies, the rendering of seven emotions and six desires, and the ability to satisfy luxury and satisfaction; The whole article starts from inciting evil thoughts, and is attributed to temperance and righteousness; The fundamental purpose is to exhort the children of rich officials and eunuchs to be as good as flowing.

At the end of the Western Han Dynasty, Yang Xiong was in Tianlu Pavilion, reading a group of books, meditating; Drawing on the wisdom and philosophy of the ancients, he created the style of "Lianzhu"; This kind of style, although the length is short, but the meaning is clear, as the so-called witty words, crystal clear.

To cite the above three genres, if the entire article is compared to a towering tree, they are just short and concise branches. Moreover, the status and attributes of this kind of literary style are more like some strange and bizarre artistic masterpieces that literati like to play and appreciate in their leisure time.

Since Song Yu's "Question to the King of Chu", those who imitate his sentimental style have been preceded by Dongfang Shuo's "Difficult to Answer Guests", talking freely about "different times and different things" by using the past to satirize the present, for example, "gentle and self-satisfied" is good at arguing, and borrowing "pipe peeping and speculation" to comfort oneself wittily; Later, there is Yang Xiong's "Explanation of Mockery", which justifies that "the world is not chaotic enough, and the world is more than governed", listing historical stories, surnames and names, who cycle back and forth, and the sound and smile are like a few family treasures. Later generations inherited the footsteps of the two, in the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was Ban Gu's "Answering Bin Play", which was conclusive, and he talked at length about "fame cannot be faked"; Then there is Cui Chu's "Reaching the Purpose", which expounds that "danger saves customs, peace rules are courteous, public intentions, and selfishness", which can be described as the proverb of a virtuous gentleman; There is also Zhang Heng's "Ying Jian", which sighs at the similarities and differences, and promotes the original meaning of "not suffering from nameless troubles, so it stands", and the argument can be called rigorous and elegant. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Cui Wei's "Answering the Question" talked about doing what he could, "love the bait hook, regret in the luan knife" is easy to understand, and it is still in the ears; Cai Yong's "Commentary" interprets the judgment of the situation, and the righteousness of "the world governs people with courtesy, and the world examines people with merit" is clear and eloquent. After entering the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Guo Pu's "Guest Pride" is graceful and generous, and the sentiment of "the voice of Xinli Huang, the chant of the non-cockroach cricket" is distinct and personable. Although the above companies imitate each other, they do compete with each other, and they are all outstanding works. Other people from the same period, there is also Cao Zhi's "Ke Wen" (Death Yi), which is elegant but broad; Moreover, Yu Yu's "Guest Consultation" (Dead Yi) has a lot of content and weak rhetoric. Although there are many other articles like this type of Q&A, they do not have a clear and standardized format. Tracing back to the source, this kind of question-and-answer scenario hypothesis was originally just to express the author's very suppressed and resentful emotional mind, and the more he was in the embarrassing situation of frustration and embarrassment, the more justifiable he expressed his mind and tried his best to show his own ambitions and ideals. Just like seeing the Thai hexagram in the Tun hexagram, there must be a free imagination and magnificent words that fly up and down, so that it is possible to achieve a shocking and surprising victory. This is the true face and characteristic purpose of this genre.

Following the "Seven Hairs" of the Western Han Dynasty, dialogue papers using the "seven" proposition, such as "Seven Radicals", "Seven Yi", "Seven Distinctions", "Seven Strengths" and "Seven Enlightenments", flocked out one after another. It can also be seen from this that the article "Seven Hairs" is like standing out from the crowd and like an arrow in the forest, and it does have an extremely unique artistic charm. After arriving in the Eastern Han Dynasty, Fu Yi's "Seven Radicals" captured the backbone of the writing of "Seven Hairs", and it was more concise and to the point; Cui Chu's "Seven Yi" has developed the momentum of "Seven Hairs" with extensive knowledge, and it has become more and more elegant and ingenious; Zhang Heng's "Seven Arguments" is thoughtful and profound; Cui Ming's "Seven Sus" (death or the remnants of "Seven Strong"), the book is pure, righteous and pure; Cao Zhi's "Seven Revelations", imaginary composition, magnificent; Wang Cang's "Seven Interpretations" is calm in tone and talks about things. From Huan Lin's "Seven Sayings" in the late Eastern Han Dynasty to Zuo Si's "Seven Satires" in the Western Jin Dynasty, similar to the above-mentioned imitation works with "seven" in the title, there are as many as ten, some of them have gorgeous rhetoric, but the truth is not incisive, and some of the truth is pure, but the rhetoric is not magnificent. Summing up these representative works, it is not difficult to see that their commonalities are nothing more than talking about the magnificence and luxury of palaces and pavilions, praising the enthusiasm and extravagance of field hunting, depicting the rare treasures of costumes and delicacies, and praising the seductive soul of music and dance beauties. The reason why there are such extremely exaggerated beautiful words and sentences, as well as the scene composition of "words are not amazing and endless", is to achieve the so-called artistic realm of "wonderful words" through thrilling and deafening formal means. To put it another way, it is "starting with extreme virtual exaggeration and ending with bland enlightenment anyway". However, in reality, there is too little exhortation and sarcasm on the positive side of this style, and too much temptation on the negative side, so the proportion of the two is unbalanced, but it does more harm than good. Therefore, at the beginning, Yangxiong had this evaluation of this style: "The voice of Cheng Zhengwei is elegant at the end of the song." What it means is that it's like a whole concert, full of beautiful sounds, only at the end of which a few elegant notes appear! You say it's elegant? Or is it vulgar? In addition, among the above examples, only Cui Ming's "Seven Sus", which quotes the stories of sages and sages, and the preaching is all Confucian Taoism.

Following Yang Ziyun's "Lianzhu" article, works imitating similar styles began to emerge in endlessly. For example, in the Eastern Han Dynasty, Du Du (A.D.-78 A.D., Ji Yajing, Zhao Duling, scholar), Jia Kui (174-228 A.D., Liang Dao's real name is Quhedong, Xiangling, and the late Han Dynasty, the Three Kingdoms Dynasty), Liu Zhen (A.D.?-ca. 126 A.D., also known as Liu Bao, Qiusun or the secret grandson, Caiyang County, historians), Pan Miao (A.D.-215 A.D., Yuanmao, Zhongmu people) and others, they invented Lianzhu Wen, which was originally intended to make the words and words coherent like crystalline pearls, but instead connected them into a string of dead fish eyeballs; If copying and imitation falls to such a level, what is the difference between it and Handan toddler and Dongshi imitation? During this period, there were only dozens of Lu Ji's "Yan Lianzhu", racking his brains, brainstorming, quite righteous and novel, but his out-of-context words were too long and bloated! Could it be that this kind of "Lianzhu" style is really like the pearls sold by Zhu Zhong in "The Legend of the Immortals", the bigger the more valuable it is? In fact, if the article is both short and comprehensive, it must seem to be leisurely and complacent, as if it is inadvertently exported, and it can also be evocative, and can stand up to scrutiny, and it is worth thinking about again and again. Therefore, the reason why such a style of writing is precious and exquisite is that "the meaning is clear, the words are pure, and the things are round and sound", like the crystal pearls that fall one after another, not only the sound and brilliance of the ground, but also to gallop and jump, and rotate non-stop, the real style is pleasing to the ear and the eyes are not taken away...... This is the spirit of Lianzhuwen.

Since the Han Dynasty, the names of the categories of articles that belong to the essays have been disorganized. Some of them are called "pawns, edicts, oaths, and questions"; Some are called "overview, omitted, chapter, chapter"; Some are called "songs, manipulations, plays, and introductions", and some are even called "chanting, satire, ballads, songs" and so on. In fact, when these types are summed together, they can indeed be defined as essays. However, the analysis of each name has a corresponding content meaning, which just shows that they all have their own category affiliation. Therefore, there are also cross-linked relationships in the clustering of likes, which will not be discussed in detail here.

In a nutshell: what is a sage? How do you become a top student? Exhausted and invincible. Negative text waves, and stones turn into gold. The stronger the smell, the tighter the maggots. The chase of the ancients, the stars are shining; Today's fans are a pot of rotten. How can you be so disgusted that you don't dare to look at it again.