Dong Tang's taste

His surname is Lu, his name is Danlin, and his study is named Hongshulin. He was born in Sanshui, Guangdong Province in 1896. He was blind in his left eye and had a porcelain mesh. He was shot in the foot at an early age and was slightly lame all his life. Several predecessors I know are familiar with Lu Danlin in old Shanghai: Mr. Lu seems to have been in Shanghai for most of his life. Ye Gongchuo, Panyu, trusted this fellow villager the most. Many things were handled by Lu Danlin, and even the bank passbook was given to him for safekeeping. I have long heard the name of Lu Danlin, a scholar of the Republic of China, an old member of Nanshe and a member of the League. For decades, I have learned about him in dribs and drabs, and occasionally bought some old collections in the mangrove room. Unfortunately, I have been trying to write about Mr. Lu for several years, but I haven't been able to write it yet.

In 1967, Lao Zhou, who took me to see Cui Dajie, an expert in Lu Xiaoman, took me to visit an interesting old gentleman with a Chinese character face, a moustache, a distiller's grains nose and a square chin. At first glance, he looked like a Maitreya Buddha who had lost weight. I read several letters written by Lu Danlin at his home, and I also saw a small inkstone engraved with maple leaves and mangrove rooms, saying that Lu Danlin gave it to him as a souvenir: "We often met when Mr. Lu was editing Gale in Hong Kong," he said. "The mainland changed its flag and we lost track of it. What a freak! What a good man! " I was young at that time, and I didn't pay much attention to the past dictated by the older generation. I didn't write down the anecdote that the old gentleman told about Lu Danlin, and it was hazy for decades. The old man said that he had tea with Ye Gongchuo in Lu Yu and often talked about Lu Danlin's temper. I also read some in books, newspapers and magazines.

Lao Zhou is an old-school man with great enthusiasm. Just after forty, he looks like a careful old man. My friend's hobbies are not only remembered, but also fulfilled everywhere. I said that I suddenly love reading Bao Tianxiao's articles. He remembered that the old man had cut and saved a bunch of Bao Tianxiao's articles and said that he might as well borrow them. The old man lives in the old building of a small street near Songwangtai, Kowloon. He has a large collection of books, old newspapers and magazines, and the newspaper clippings are clearly marked in different categories. That afternoon, when the old man heard that my surname was Dong, he was very happy. He turned around and took out a cookie tin box from his desk and invited us to eat Dong Tang: "What a coincidence that a friend in the New Territories has just delivered it!"

Dong Tang is said to be a dessert invented by Dong Xiaowan. The old man said that Dong Xiaowan and Maobijiang retired to the Yanyue Building of Rugao Water Painting Garden, poets and poets often recited poems and painted in the garden, and Xiaowan developed this crisp candy with frosted sugar, caramel and sesame seeds to entertain guests. Everyone praised it and it became a famous local product in Rugao after several decades. I ate two pieces that were really fragrant, crisp and not greasy. The old gentleman smiled as brightly as a light: "Have you eaten the charm of your Dong Jia sweet sister!" He said that in his early years, he ate Dong Tang at a friend's house in Shanghai, and there were several female painters from China Women's Calligraphy and Painting Association, including Gu Qingyao and Song Reying from Xie Yuemei, and Feng Wenfeng came soon. The old gentleman praised Feng Wenfeng, a native of Heshan, Guangdong, for his great official script, but his paintings were well-behaved and did not show any creativity.

In the past 4 years, I have met Feng Wenfeng, painted many words, bought a fan painted by her, and wrote an article "Looking for Feng Wenfeng", but I haven't met an excellent official script of Feng Wenfeng for a long time. Recently, Liang Jiyong, a friend from Guangzhou, found a small couplet written by Feng Wenfeng to Lu Danlin for me in Shanghai. It was only 48 centimeters high, and the old mounter was particularly exquisite. The calligraphy was really wonderful: "Washing tung and wiping bamboo Niyuan Town, it was sunny than Tang Zixi", the owner of the previous mangrove, and Feng Wenfeng, the seal of several parties was simply the best. Lu Danlin's "Mangrove Room" collected Zhu Wenfang's seal with brilliant red.

It is said that Lu Danlin has a unique taste, and he never follows the customs. He doesn't like Liu Shi 'an's Deng Shiru and He Shaoji's handwriting, so he doesn't even want to give it to him. He never wants an old man's painting when he knows Qi Baishi. When he saw a small painting screen of a famous painter hanging on the wall at Feng Wenfeng's house, he forced Feng Wenfeng to tear it down. Feng Wenfeng hesitated, so he couldn't help tearing it down himself. I keep a landscape sketch painted by Xinyu Pu for Lu Danlin, which is really good. No wonder Mr. Lu wants it. Feng Wenfeng is an intimate friend with him, and writing this pair for him shows that he dare not be careless.

While drinking Longjing and eating Dong Tang, we listened to the old man scold Feng Wenfeng's husband Deng Zhonghe, saying that he used to be a servant of the Feng family and had a wife and children. Feng Wenfeng was bent on him, and broke out overnight after his adoption, whoring and gambling, and married three or four concubines. Feng Wenfeng said, "I was the one who got the first pet, and now he has the third and fourth concubines, and his anger is the first." Since then, I have raised a police dog and a famous cat to set up a studio to send love paintings and calligraphy. Shanghai is tired of living with her family in Hong Kong. I heard that even Sun Yat-sen pitied her and went to the dock to pick up her boat. The official script written by her father, Feng Shihan, is as famous as Deng Erya's seal script. Feng Wenfeng started to learn from his family, and the more he wrote, the more ups and downs he got. The old man lamented that her talented woman was miserable: "It's rare that the handwriting is as inventive as Dong Tang!" Flash a dream, Liu Danlin died in 1972, the old man died the next year, Lao Zhou died in North America, and Dong Tang was also a stranger for a long time. Suddenly Feng Wenfeng's ink flowed from Shanghai to me, and it was written for the official script of the mangrove room. In the middle of the night, it was like a half-story affair in "Memories of Shadow Mei 'an", even if the water was painted without a garden and the moon was empty, Dong Xiaowan's lonely mountain felt dead.