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The first fragrance of agarwood chips has always attracted the attention of readers at home and abroad. Among the existing research results, there are few papers about the purpose of Zhang Ailing's topic selection. The topic is the embodiment of the soul of the work, and why Zhang Ailing chose this topic is a question worthy of discussion. In the text, the author only mentioned burning agarwood slices with a copper incense burner at the beginning and end, but did not mention these words in the middle part of the work. In order to find out the author's intention, we need to find out the following questions first.

(1) About "Aquilaria Resinatum Tablets"

Mr. Ma Mingbo wrote in "Fragments of Aquilaria Resinatum, First Furnace Incense":

Aquilaria sinensis is the most fragrant, also known as Tianxiang. [ 1]50

In the 43rd time of Dream of Red Mansions, Jia Baoyu secretly went to pay homage to Jinchuan, who died of sinking well, because I had no money for my birthday.

..... Baoyu reined in his horse and turned to Yan Ming: "Is there anyone selling incense here?" Yan Ming said, "There is some incense. I don't know which one? " Baoyu thought, "Other perfumes are not good. Tan Yun must lose three." ..... then return your hand, take out a wallet from under your skirt and touch it. There are two stars sinking, which makes you very happy ... [2]

Two-star sinking speed: Aquilaria sinensis and Su Xiang, who are equally famous for sandalwood and rutang. Jia Baoyu often takes Aquilaria sinensis and Su Xiang with him. From the above quotation, we know that agarwood tablets are a very valuable fragrance, ranking before sandalwood, rue and Dalbergia odorifera, which is not an ordinary fragrance. "Xiang" is often a metaphor for a woman. In the novel, agarwood crumbs are metaphors of young women such as Wei Long.

(B) the significance of incense burner

Incense burner is a special instrument for burning incense. Ci Hai records:

Incense burners are also used for display. ..... Today, the so-called incense burner is made of sacrificial utensils in ancient ancestral halls. ..... was also used to fumigate clothes in ancient times. [3]

Incense burners are used for offering sacrifices, and can also be used to decorate or perfume clothes.

The description of the "incense burner" at the beginning of the novel: the moldy green copper incense burner handed down from the family. "Family heirloom" refers to a long time ago, "moldy and colorful" copper rust can testify. As an antique, the "bronze incense burner" has traveled through time and space, bearing the thoughts and culture of the mainstream discourse power. Here, "bronze incense burner" is a symbol. The narrator uses the word "please look for it", which means that there may be more than one antique in your family, indicating that this is a family with a "family tradition". To find this incense burner, you need to "find" it in a storage room. The word "Qiu" shows the richness of family books, the close relationship between two people (narrator and imaginary audience), and their recognition of the story-telling ceremony of lighting incense. Incense burner can be understood as the destination of "incense" and the burning environment of "incense".

(3) Burning incense and its function

Mr. Ma Mingbo wrote at the beginning of "The first fragrance of agarwood crumbs":

Xiang Shide: Sensitive to ghosts and gods ... [1] 50

Incense can touch ghosts and gods. Zhang Ailing chose the best "Tianxiang" and chose to burn it with the "family-passed mildew blue-colored bronze incense burner". She is holding a ceremony: the narrator and her imaginary audience, with piety, burned a precious "agarwood crumbs" with the "bronze incense burner" handed down by their families. Through this ceremony, they conveyed a kind of spiritual hope and offered sacrifices to the lost souls of that era. The ceremony of lighting incense should have a special procedure. Zhang Ailing didn't write in the novel. But Mr Ma Mingbo wrote:

..... Mr. Shi Gang took a Gu Zhuo porcelain incense burner, ... He stirred the soft ashes in the incense burner with incense sticks and gently poked them around the incense burner, forming a concave ground in the middle; He opened the incense box, took the agarwood crumbs with a spoon, put them in the middle recess, sprinkled a little incense ash and mixed well; Take half a spoonful of fragrant crumbs, light them with fire, and gently put them in the center of the incense in the furnace; He held incense, gently gathered the incense ashes around the furnace wall onto the burning incense crumbs, and then buried him, ... [1] 50.

When burning agarwood tablets, there can be no smoke, and the elegant fragrance slowly spreads in the air, just like the process of integration of mind and environment. In order to reflect the importance of the ceremony, Zhang Ailing wrote in the last paragraph of the novel:

The story of Hong Kong ends here ... a furnace of incense from the dragon is about to burn out. [4]2

It can be seen that this incense was burned by the narrator for the hero of the story, which expressed his regret for the decline of the hero's youth, crossed the "withering" of young life during the war, and showed Zhang's sympathy for troubled times. The moldy green bronze incense burner represents the Hong Kong world that devours and melts "Tianxiang" in Wei Long's story. The process of burning incense is the consumption of incense in the incense burner, which means that the hero's youth "died" in Mrs. Liang's home in Hong Kong.

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As an antique, the cold copper incense burner is like an old environment that devours people's souls. Young people who can't jump out of this environment are like the incense burning in this furnace. In incense, people's youth floats like incense, and the incense burner as an antique has become rusty. In order to stay in the bustling Hongkong, Wei Long chose a man who didn't love himself and felt "boundless desolation and boundless terror". Her future is the same-I can't think about it, but I can only think of endless horror ... "[4] 28.

There are many attempts in the novel to describe the devouring of human soul by environment, and there are also many places to describe that human soul is attracted by material desires and loses its reason. This environment is the so-called "incense burner". In this incense burner, there is a continuation of historical time: "I kept the air dissipated in the late Qing Dynasty and closed the door to be a little Cixi." [1]7 and the present tense: "In front of Liangzhai, this mountain road is a famous lovers street. In summer, people often stop until dawn. " [4]2 1 There are also regional shuttles from Shanghai to Hong Kong.

There are five objective reasons why "agarwood fragments" are trapped in the "melting pot":

(A) the feudal tradition of Neo-Confucianism teaching-ancient family education

Wei Long was born in an old-fashioned family in Shanghai and received the traditional family education in China. The positive teaching that Wei Long got from his father since childhood is: Don't corrupt the family style. This is the "chastity" education of women in China's traditional Neo-Confucianism. If you don't "listen", you will suffer. Therefore, after the George incident, Wei Long did not dare to return to his father to be a "newcomer". Wei Long began to think that a "just" father led by traditional ideas could not maintain family expenses while avoiding chaos, while an example aunt, whom his father strongly opposed, "moistened" the lives of himself and the people around him in troubled times. This cruel reality forces a teenage female middle school student with immature discrimination to "calmly" think about "menstruation-style" life and reflect on her father's education. This created a psychological foundation for Wei Long to choose his own "way out".

(B) the colonial westernization teaching in Nanying Middle School-slave-style school education

The goal of traditional education in China is to train the educated into "talents" required by feudal ethics and feudal system. However, colonial education serves colonial culture. For the suzerain, the colony is only the source of their wealth. People here should worship and imitate their suzerain country in life style, and flatter and please their suzerain country in ideology and culture. Only by destroying the original ideological and cultural system spiritually can we combat the inherent tradition's resistance to the suzerain's thought and realize effective colonial rule. Therefore, Nanying Middle School in Wei Long is not for cultivating elite talents, especially female students, but for pleasing tourists. Even offering English or French classes in schools is a long-term plan of the colony. In order to communicate with the suzerain, it is a manifestation of colonial servility. Besides lifestyle education, there is also religious education, such as Wei Long's participation in choir activities. Mrs. Liang held a family garden party, invited choir partners and invited Catholic nuns. These are the directions of school education. Therefore, school education in Hong Kong is different from traditional education in Shanghai. Education in Shanghai is a "new school" with feudal literati as the mainstay, while education in Hong Kong serves colonial rule. These two contradictory systems confuse Wei Long's standard of judging right and wrong, which is the psychological foreshadowing of Wei Long's depravity. (3) The influence of Mrs. Liang's family environment and life concept-the social butterfly skills training school.

My aunt used the materials she bought when she was young to control Wei Long in poverty. According to the pre-designed steps, she first conquered Wei Long spiritually: playing hard to get, first scolding Wei Long's father, making Wei Long lose his judgment in inferiority; Then seduce Wei Long with a luxurious lifestyle, conduct communication skills training (piano, tennis, family gatherings), and seduce Wei Long with these dazzling entertainment activities. While measuring the size of tennis clothes, we also measured Wei Long's figure data, prepared a closet full of clothes for Wei Long, and immersed impoverished Wei Long in the closet. The fragile Neo-Confucianism theory flinched in the face of strong material desires: Wei Long resisted the temptation of menstruation with her father's theory, while enjoying material happiness under the anesthesia of menstruation.

The "marriage" between Wei Long and Giorgiya was designed by my aunt. "Wei Long was sold to Mrs. Liang and Giorgiya, and she was busy all day, either giving Mrs. Liang money or finding someone for her." This is the fate of being "fragrant" in the "incense burner"! This is a net designed by my aunt's "spider" after staring at Wei Long: the black spider of the poison widow not only devoured the "male spider" who came to find her, but also spared the gnats flying beside the spider web. Wei Long became my aunt's prey, a furnace of agarwood scraps in the Hong Kong-made "family-handed moldy green copper incense burner", which blended the dross of China's traditional feudal culture and slave colonial culture. My aunt's family environment is a trap of Wei Long's depravity and a symbol of the antique bronze incense burner with a long history. Wei Long burned her young life helplessly and soberly in the furnace.

(d) The interference and persecution of the prodigal George-the distorted concept of "love"

George is a well-known prodigal son. All the women around him know that they can't marry him, but they all like to be noticed and play games with him. His charm is that he looks "foreign" and "handsome". He doesn't love Wei Long, he just plays with her. Wei Long knew that he was the only man who could resist the temptation of menstruation and fell in love with him. George's views on love and marriage are the direct reasons for Wei Long's fall.

(5) The macro environment of Hong Kong-the bronze incense burner in the encirclement.

The colonial life obsessed with money and materialism, the social atmosphere of drinking, eating and drinking in time, the business society of intrigue, supremacy of interests and money worship are all social reasons for a teenage girl to fall into it.

It can be seen that Zhang Ailing is thinking about a youthful soul with a feeling of compassion. That beautiful soul is like a furnace of agarwood crumbs, precious and elegant, but it is trapped in that antique environment, burning slowly, but not giving enough oxygen, and slowly being consumed. This is the interpretation of the meaning of the topic "Fragments of the First Furnace of Aquilaria Resinatum" in this paper.

[References]

[1] Ma Mingbo. Aquilaria sinensis tablets, the first fragrance [J]. Workers in China, 20 1 1(07).

[2] Cao Xueqin. A dream of red mansions [M]. Beijing: People's Literature Publishing House, 2000: 466.

[3] Ci Hai [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Dictionary Publishing House, 1999: 2444.

[4] Zhang Ailing. Selected Works of Zhang Ailing [C]. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House, 200 1.

[5] Modern Chinese Dictionary [M]. Beijing: Commercial Press, 1995.

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