What are the specific behaviors of the painter Mifei?

Mi Fei, a great painter and calligrapher in the Northern Song Dynasty, has a strange behavior and many unique quirks and hobbies. Therefore, people speculate that he may be a descendant of ethnic minorities in the western regions, and some scholars have made detailed arguments. However, it is only speculation now, and there is not much conclusive evidence. So why is Miffy so weird? It's really puzzling.

Mifei's calligraphy

Mi Fei (1051~1107), originally named Kun, has a stamp. After serving Ren Xuan, my mother made an official with her former kindness, and learned about the county and the army through the calendar. In Song Huizong, he was called Doctor of Calligraphy and Painting, and was appointed Foreign Minister of the Ministry of Rites. Poetry and prose are strange and dangerous, and they don't follow the path of their predecessors. Wang Anshi tasted his poems in the fan, and Su Shi also liked them. Especially good at calligraphy and painting, he is a famous calligrapher, painter and connoisseur in the Northern Song Dynasty. His calligraphy and cursive brushwork are bold and unconstrained, which is one of the "Song Sijia" in the history of calligraphy. Although people who paint landscapes learn from Dong Yuan, they don't create new works, but mostly focus on ink and wash, emphasizing interest rather than details, being naive and frank, and creating a freehand brushwork method with overlapping horizontal points, which is called "Mi Dian Landscape" or "Mi Shi Yun Shan". He is also good at appreciation and appraisal, and is good at collecting ancient stone products and famous paintings and calligraphy, especially for strange stones. He is the author of Mountain Forest Collection 100 volume, as well as Book History, Painting History, Ink History, Treasure Carving Collection and Interview with Treasure Chapter.

Mi Fei's outstanding artistic achievements and his position in cultural history need not be described in detail. However, this person is eccentric and often different from ordinary people. He is called "Mi Dian". For example, "History of Song Dynasty" originally told him: "When the people in the Tang Dynasty are crowned, the fengshen flies away and the sound is clear, and people who come here gather to watch it. And I'm so clean and addicted, I don't give towels to people. There are people who are different and can still laugh. There is a huge stone in Wuwei prefecture, which looks ugly. As soon as I saw it, I was overjoyed and said,' This is enough for me to worship!' Worship him with clothes and call him brother. There are many other nicknames: Lumen layman, Xiangyang Manchu, Haiyue Waishi, Huaiyang Waishi, Huozheng descendants, raccoon descendants. Some people also call them "Minangong", "Mixiangyang" and "Mihaiyue", which shows that they are different from ordinary Zhongyuan people. What is the reason?

According to Cai Zhao's Epitaph of Mr. Mi Haiyue, a Yuan Wailang in Song Dynasty, and Painting by Deng Chun, Mi Fei lived in Taiyuan (now Shanxi), then moved to Xiangyang (now Hubei) and finally settled in Runzhou Dantu (now Zhenjiang, Jiangsu). Mi Xin, an outstanding minister in the early Song Dynasty, was his fifth ancestor. Because Mi Fei lived in Runzhou for a long time, he was called "Wu Ren" in The Original Biography of Song History compiled in the early Yuan Dynasty. So, is Mi Fei a Han Chinese in the Central Plains? According to various indications, some people suggest that Mi Fei may be a minority in the western regions, but it is not recognized by most people because of the lack of relevant information about its ancestral home and insufficient evidence.

1988 Luo Shaowen's article "An Examination of the Descendants of the Western Regions in Mi Fei" re-examined this issue in detail and put forward ten reasons:

First, there was no Mi surname in the Central Plains before the Middle Tang Dynasty. From now on, there are occasional surnames of Mi, such as Mi, Mi He, Mi, Mi Sui and so on. , are the conference semifinals in the western regions, not in the surname spectrum. There is no Mi surname in all kinds of surnames books from Han Dynasty to Tang Dynasty. It was not until the Song Dynasty that Mi's surname appeared in the Book of Surnames and the Book of Ancient and Modern Surnames by Deng and his son. As the saying goes, "There is a country of rice in the western regions, and later generations take the country as their surname." Therefore, the secret people in the Central Plains are all descendants of the Hu people in the Western Regions. "Lu Shi" thinks that there is a surname Mi after Chu State, which is also quoted in other dictionaries. This is due to misunderstanding Miffy's mark. Princess Mi bears the seal of "Mi Zhang of Chu State" and the title of "Descendant of Bear", and Bear is the ancestor of Chu State, so Jane's surname says: "Princess Mi is the queen of Chu State." In fact, it's just that Mi Fei stayed in Xiangyang, the old capital of Chu.

The second is the issue of "fragrant country". Ming Taizu Jin series "Haiyue" contains that before Mi Fei died, he invited all the county officials and held the Buddha high for public display, saying, "Where the fragrant country enters, where the fragrant country enters." Throw a Buddha, and your hands are crossed. The so-called fragrant country is the name of Buddhist worship in the western regions.

The third is the seal of "Fire is for posterity". There are more than 100 seals in Mi Fei, one of which is "the seal of the descendants of fire". This is Mifei's enlightenment to the religion he and his ancestors believed in-Zoroastrianism. In the early Tang Dynasty, the nine surnames of Zhaowu, including Miguo, believed in Zoroastrianism. Mi Fei compared him to a descendant of the official name of the Han nationality "Huozheng" who believed in Vulcan. In the Song Dynasty, Zoroastrianism in the Western Regions had already been replaced by Islam. Mi Fei's move was a nostalgia for his hometown and its religion.

Fourth, Mi Fei's unusual cleanliness. When Dr. Ren Taichang was a doctor, his boots were repeatedly washed by others, causing damage; The algae fire decoration on the sacrificial clothing was worn off due to frequent washing, so it also deteriorated. He often wears a high-brimmed hat, and the sedan chair is blocked by the top cover. He would rather remove the top of the sedan chair than give it to a slave, so that the top of his sedan chair was removed, and Mi Fei sat there with his hat exposed. Miffy used silver as a bucket and a long handle to wash her hands. The servant held water in his hand, patting each other with both hands until it was dry, and did not wipe it with a towel. There are countless such examples, which should be the traditional habits of the believers in fire jackets and the United States.

The fifth is to repeat the writing of horse talent. Mi Fei's small letters are too expensive to write more, but he has written "Horse Talent" many times and repeated at least four. The reason is that Tianma comes from Dayuan in the western regions, the United States is adjacent to Dayuan, and Mi Fei is homesick and sees things.

Sixth, the custom of burying relatives is quite different. According to "Haiyue Zhi Lin", Mi Fei buried his relatives in Runzhou Mountain, without taking a burial grave or setting up a tombstone. According to Swing Harding's Travels in the Hinterland of Asia, the cemetery of the fire jacket believers is also a "flat grave". "Tong Dian" quoted "Xifan Ji" as saying: "Take bones and bury them, there is no coffin class." Similar to the funeral customs in Mi Fei.

Seventh, Mi Fei's "crown suits the Tang people". It is strange that the clothes in the Tang Dynasty are characterized by imitating Khufu, or that Mi Fei in the Song Dynasty still wore Khufu, so that "people get together to watch". In fact, Tang costume is no stranger to people in the early Song Dynasty. What people are curious about may be Mi Fei's appearance. Shu Wei and History of the North once recorded that people in the western regions are characterized by "deep eyes, high nose and many beards". The portrait of Mi Fei in Wang Qi's Three Stories is really deep eyes, high nose and long beard.

Eighth, the American people's "treacherous and heartless" spirit is reflected in Mi Fei. Mifei loves painting and calligraphy. Whenever he sees famous books and ancient paintings, he always takes them by various tricks and takes them for himself. For example, in Qingbo magazine, Mi Fei threatened to throw himself into the river and get Wang Xizhi's copybook from Cai You. Or borrow ancient paintings to extend, and at the same time, it is true and false after completion, so that they can choose indiscriminately. In this way, Mifei skillfully took many ancient paintings. It is said that this is related to the traditional educational spirit of good American businessmen.

Nine is Mifei's seal and name. Han people often take their ancestral homes as their names, while Mi Fei takes all the places where they have lived as their names, and there are a large number of them. In fact, they deny that they are from any place in the Central Plains.

Ten is the general outline of Mi Fei ancestors moving into the Central Plains. According to Wen Jing Tong Kao, Mi Fei "was a military attache in his last life and was the first minister after Mi Xin." According to Mi Fei, the third sun in Mi Fei, the genealogy from Mi Xin seems to have only eight generations, which was not clear before Mi Xin. It can be inferred that the Americans moved eastward to settle in the Central Plains, partly with the Shatuo Turks and partly as the "military attache" of the Shatuo Wang Qinjun invited by the Tang Dynasty. This is from 883 to 947, when Mi Fei's ancestors moved to the Central Plains.

The above analysis is indeed quite thorough, but many places are still just guesses, and they are obtained from the notes of literati hearsay. In particular, the eccentric character of some artists is linked with the customs of western countries hundreds of years ago, which is probably far-fetched. The first reason is the most important. Chinese surnames often come from many sources, but did Mi completely disappear before the middle Tang Dynasty, and then only came from the United States of America in the western regions? It seems that more in-depth research is needed to reach this conclusion.