It was he who discovered that the moon was the most loved, and analyzed 180,000 poems about the moon
"When autumn comes, I miss the appointments with old friends. When the moon reaches Mid-Autumn Festival, it is especially bright."
After the typhoon, the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2024 arrived as scheduled, with a bright moon in the sky, which was exceptionally perfect.
The Complete Tang Poems published by Zhonghua Book Company contains more than 48,900 poems. According to statistics, the image of "moon" appears 12,126 times in it. The Poetry dataset published on Github contains more than 850,000 ancient poems from the pre-Qin period to the present, and the number of "moon" appearances is as high as 180,000, which means that you may encounter a poem containing the moon for every 5 ancient poems you read.
It can be said that there is almost no Chinese literati who does not love the moon, but who has the most special affection for the moon?
"I can't bear to leave you, who is like the half moon on Mount Emei?" The patriotic poet Lu You of the Southern Song Dynasty sang about the moon 1,501 times in plain, unrestrained and sad language, the most times among all the literati in history. However, poems containing the moon only account for 14.2% of his total works. The poet Zhang Daoqia of the Southern Song Dynasty has the highest "moon content" in his works, as high as 57.5%. "The moon shines brightly over the sparse fences, and the wind blows gently through the quiet windows", "The moon shines on a trace of bamboo house, and the old man is reciting poems under the tree"... The moon appears in almost every one of his poems.
Another "moon lover" is the Southern Song poet Bai Yuchan. As one of the five founders of the Southern School of Taoism in the Southern Song Dynasty, Bai Yuchan's poems contain both the philosophy of the universe and life, such as "people grow old from ancient times to the present, and the moon rises and sets again and again", and the inner thoughts of "this heart is lonely like the moon in the autumn night, and its solitary light is scattered into the cold light".
Bai Yuchan's name is also closely related to the moon. It is said that his mother dreamed of a white toad jumping into her arms, and after waking up, she gave birth to a son, so the nickname was Yuchan. "Yuchan is on the sea, when the white dew wets the flowers", Yuchan is one of the common nicknames for the moon in ancient China, which shows the inseparable relationship between Bai Yuchan and the moon.
The moon, a common image, has a very rich meaning. It can express homesickness such as "I wish you long life, so that we can share the beauty of the moon together even though we are thousands miles apart" and "I look up at the bright moon and think of my hometown", and it can also express life philosophy such as "Who first saw the moon by the river, and when did the moon by the river first shine on people".
With the help of big data technology and machine learning algorithms, we analyzed 180,000 ancient poems containing the moon and found that the emotion of the moon image is very complex.
Although the beautiful flowers, full moon and long life are the beautiful expectations of the Chinese people from ancient times to the present, in poetry, people will feel sad about its imperfection when seeing the waning moon, and will feel sad when seeing the full moon, which triggers the loneliness and sadness of the literati. Therefore, among the 180,000 poems containing the image of the moon, the works expressing homesickness are as high as 35.3%, followed by sadness, frustration, loneliness, melancholy...
If we compare the two generations, the moon in the late Qing Dynasty is more sad, while the moon in the Ming Dynasty is more homesick. Overall, sadness and homesickness are increasing and decreasing. Focusing on the changes between the two dynasties, every time the era enters the end of the dynasty, sadness will increase and homesickness will decrease.
Specifically, homesickness occurs more often in periods of peace and stability, but once foreign invaders or dynasties change, literati will fall into the sorrow of leaving their homeland, so sadness increases and homesickness decreases.
In addition, the emotions towards the image of the moon also reflect the strong national characteristics of Han literati. During the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the proportion of sad emotions during the periods of minority rule in the Yuan and Qing dynasties was significantly higher than that during the period of Han rule.
With the development of science and technology, humans have landed on the moon, collected lunar soil... The mystery of the moon has faded. However, when the Mid-Autumn Festival comes as scheduled, when we all look up at the bright moon, many people will hear those well-known poems.
