For example, the birthday of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty is called "Tianchang Festival", which represents immortality for generations. Banquet nature also can't fall, pendulum driving Calyx Building, accept the gifts of princes, gifts too soft to stop completely. Since it is a national carnival, it is natural to have a holiday. The whole country has a unified holiday for three days, and the streets and alleys are decorated with lights, and the whole people cheer for me.
Taking the Song Dynasty as an example, Zhao Kuangyin laid the foundation for the elegance of the Song Dynasty, so the Emperor of the Song Dynasty celebrated his birthday and added cultural performances. Geisha and maiko were both big coffees in the Song Dynasty. There is also a children's dance troupe, and the scene is very lively.
The Qing emperor renamed his birthday "Wanshou Festival", which means endless life. On that day, ministers presented gifts in succession, but the gifts were still exquisite. They must be "exquisite, rare and peculiar", preferably unique in the world, such as the long-lost "He", which only represents the noble status and position of the emperor. Speaking of it, the word "greed" is full of screens, and the Qing Dynasty has thus perished.
However, if you committed a crime in the Qing Dynasty, you will look forward to the emperor's birthday, because there is another advantage of this day, that is, I will pardon your crime, reduce the death penalty to life, and reduce the severe punishment to a lighter one, even petty theft, and accept it on that day. Sorry, the yamen is closed on this day.
It is particularly worth mentioning that the birthday banquet of the Qing emperor is an ultra-luxury lineup, with 20 hot dishes, 20 cold dishes, 4 soup dishes, 4 side dishes, 4 fresh fruits, 28 preserves and 29 dim sum cakes, totaling 109 products. Of course, wine is indispensable to you. There are two large iron pots in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, one for holding meat and the other for boiling water and warming wine. The service is very thoughtful.
However, it is not easy to eat this banquet. You have to keep up with your strength and appetite. The birthday party lasted four hours. Besides eating and drinking, there must be tea, wine, wine and the like. The Forbidden City has become a bustling ocean.
What about the agreed "thousand banquets"? Don't worry, the founder of the Millennium Banquet is Kangxi. He was born and will wait until he is old, so we should give Kangxi some time.
Speaking of Kangxi's 60th birthday, he willfully opened a ladder of thousands of people and invited thousands of long-lived old people from all over the country to celebrate his birthday. At the birthday party, Kangxi wrote a poem:
Dinner party
Therefore, since then, this kind of banquet has also been called "Thousand Wedding Banquets". In history of qing dynasty, this banquet was held four times, and Kangxi held it twice on his 60th and 69th birthdays respectively. Gan Long was also held twice, and Gan Long's "Thousand Banquets" even surpassed the Kangxi Dynasty.
But the 2000 banquet held by Qianlong was not to celebrate his birthday, but to show off his political achievements. To put it bluntly, they are complacent.
When Gan Long was fifty years old (1785), he hosted a thousand banquets. After he became the emperor's father, he willfully held a second birthday party, but this second birthday party almost turned into a killing party. What happened?
On the fourth day of the first month, the Emperor's Hall of Ningshou Palace was beautifully decorated, and court bands lined up to play slowly. Inside the hall are seats for senior officials, under the porch are seats for envoys and generals, while the old people attending the banquet line up left and right under the steps outside the hall.
At the beginning of the banquet, I saw Emperor Jiaqing personally assisting Emperor Qianlong to sit on the throne, and then accepting more than 3,000 elderly people with silver beard and white hair to bow down. Qianlong looked at what was in front of him and nodded frequently. Life is so complete.
According to the past custom, people over 60 years old will be invited, but Gan Long raised the threshold of the banquet this time, and all people who requested to attend the banquet should be over 70 years old. After his post was sent out, I don't know where his staff got him more than 3,000 old people at once, including two centenarians, one is a bear, 106, and the other is Qiu, 100 years old. They didn't lose money.
More than that, in order to show his image of being close to the people, Gan Long dragged his 85-year-old body and personally went out to deliver wine to the nobles and yipin dignitaries, so an interesting scene appeared. The Longjing wine here is dry, and the prince and grandchildren are busy running around, and they all get up and propose a toast.
In the cultural history of China, wine and poetry have always been the best partners. How can there be poetry without drinking? The poetry output of the elderly is amazing. According to statistics, at this grand banquet, lovely old people created 3497 poems, which is a challenge to the Tang Dynasty. Poets in the Tang Dynasty expressed serious dissatisfaction.
The whole banquet looks so happy and intimate. However, happiness will bring sadness, which is an unavoidable natural law. Some sickly old people died after eating this "last supper", so the grand banquet became a "killing banquet".
As for the reasons, there are roughly three:
First, anyone who lives to 70 years old is already in ruins, and he has to work all the way to attend a banquet. Unlike the high-speed rail now, he had to bump for a month on his way to Beijing, which in itself was a torture to the elderly.
Secondly, the time of the banquet is the first day of the first month. In the north, the spring breeze in February is like scissors, not to mention January. We can imagine a group of old people sitting outside eating a big meal on a cold night. Isn't that what the sentence "illness comes from the mouth" says?
Thirdly, inviting some old people who have never been out of the house and have never seen the world to the palace to eat and drink is a psychological impact and a dietary impact, which is easy to cause indigestion and lead to diseases.
In this way, a thousand feasts turned into a killing feast.
To sum up, we know something about the celebration of the ancient emperor's birthday, and how the thousand wedding banquets during the Qianlong period became a feast of death, which also shows that the emperor's birthday is really capricious.