"Hoeing and Harvesting Dangwu" is from the poem "Compassionate Farming" (II) by Li Shen, a native of Wuxi in the Tang Dynasty, which was included in the language textbooks for the first grade of elementary school. The full line reads:
The day of the hoeing of the harvest is noon, and the sweat drips from the bottom of the soil. Who knows how hard it is to eat on a plate?
What is the meaning of "the day is noon"?
Searching on the Internet, I found a "Language Lesson Plan - Compassionate Farming" (anonymous): In your own words, say the meaning of this sentence (In the hot summer, at the hottest time of the day, the farmers hoeing the seedlings under the scorching sun. (The farmer was so tired that his whole body was covered with sweat, and the sweat dripped drop by drop into the soil under the seedlings).
Also searched for a "Compassionate Farmer Appreciation" (anonymous), "Hoeing the grasses when the sun is in the afternoon, sweating drops of sweat into the soil under the grasses." Depicting that at noon when the blazing sun is in the sky, farmers are still working in the fields, the drops of sweat, sprinkled on the scorching hot land.
There are also those who interpret this poem as "the sun shines overhead". The list goes on and on. *** the same point is the "day when the noon" when the noon, are interpreted as noon, including the so-called "the hottest time at noon", is also noon.
It is said that such an interpretation is not entirely reasonable, nor is it accurate enough. From the lexical sense, "the day when the noon" when, is when the meaning of the coming. For example, "Wei Shu - Cui Liang biography": "but make when the gentleman, know my intention." Jin Dong Xieyuan, "The Tune of the Western Chamber": "If the limit of danglai is over, the four great wolves will be in the past." Yuan Guan Hanqing "Pei Du Returns the Belt": "This person is not small, this person is bound to be great when the day comes."
So, "the day when the noon" should be interpreted as "the day will be noon". That is to say, look at the sun is about to noon, farmers are still in the field sweat, for the crops hoeing and loosening the soil. This is the basic meaning of the saying, "The day of hoeing is noon, and the sweat is dripping from the soil".
The origin of my writing this article is that I used to watch a program recorded by a local station (either Shanxi or Shaanxi), and the guest of honor on the stage, Mr. L, improvised this famous Tang poem "The Day of the Harvest is Morning". He said that he had always been puzzled by the fact that farmers shoveled in the hot sun at noon. Later, he finally realized that there is a kind of vegetable called "Allium" (small root garlic), because the root is very thick, it must be shoveled down at noon when the sunlight is the most abundant in order to die in the sun. Otherwise, if you shovel it down at night, it will come back to life when it gets some dew at night. I'm not sure what I mean by that.
The audience, including me, loved Mr. L's knowledge and eloquence.
But there are two questions here: first, since allium is a vegetable that many people have eaten and like to eat, why do farmers risk heatstroke by shoveling it down and not taking it home to eat, instead of leaving it in the ground to die in the sun?
The second is that the sun at noon is the most poisonous, as if under fire, the South is even hotter, working in the hot sun at noon, can be sunburned straight oil, not only easy to heat stroke, and can even be sunburned into the third degree of scalding.
Why must it be understood as noon time? I'm afraid it's because that's what teachers taught me growing up, and no one ever questioned it. So even Mr. L, who is a knowledgeable teacher, has consciously or unconsciously become a "set of people"!
When I say this, there may be people who are not convinced that there are so many peasants in the world, and there may be one who is not afraid of the sun and has to shovel the ground under the scorching sun, and then this scene was watched by the poet who also walked under the scorching sun in the middle of the day, and then he wrote a poem in Tang Dynasty, and then it was passed down through the ages.
To say that in history, extreme abnormal circumstances, such as under the bayonet of the Japs, anything can happen. There should have been cases where brutal invaders completely disregarded the deaths of hard laborers in order to extract wealth from the people in the occupied territories.
Even in the past, some grass-roots cadres in the era of the big help coaxing, blindly directing, at 12:30 pm, let the rural members of the community to carry hoes down to the ground. But dawdling to the ground, it is also considered over lunch.
And in the "Cultural Revolution" period is quite popular works, "midnight cockcrowing", that is to eliminate the old landlord Zhou Pawpi, said he learns in the middle of the night cockcrowing, urging the long laborers and poor peasants, darkness down to the ground for him to sell their lives.
In fact, the old landlords in real life are experts who know the laws of land and labor. Generally will not be like the literary works of the scandal, driving sleepless workers in the dark for him to planting, that not only planting bad crops, and is simply a pitfall of his own!
If you can't rest, you can't work. This kind of reasoning, the farmers also know. No matter how busy, always need to rest at noon, to eat lunch, to take a nap. Especially in the summer, not to mention. Only a good rest, but also avoided the hottest time, when the day is cooler and then dry, will be more energetic, more efficient production.
Speaking of which, I would also like to say one more thing.On January 29, 1963, Premier Zhou Enlai, speaking at the Shanghai Science and Technology Work Conference, pointed out, "We want to realize the modernization of agriculture, industrial modernization, national defense modernization, and the modernization of science and technology!"
While more than half a century has passed, has the modernization of agriculture in the "four modernizations" been achieved?
Not bad, today's farmers, have enjoyed the fruits of the development of agricultural modernization.
The spring planting and fall harvesting used to be the busiest season. In the past, it took several months of work, and even before the first day of the month, you had to be busy delivering manure to the ground. Nowadays, we use machinery. Spring production, fall harvest, are a half day's work, more than a day, less than half a day, cleaned up neatly. The rest of the time is to enjoy life. And herbicides have long replaced hoes. The next hoe season, no longer in the "hottest time", "top of the hot sun" waving the hoe hard plowing!