牡丹（工笔）

花好月圆。

牡丹花，大家都喜欢，富贵的象征嘛。

台湾不产牡丹，每年春季南投杉林溪牡丹（盆栽牡丹）开花时，人山人海，挤得水泄不通，人人争睹“花王”的风采。

陶潜说他爱菊；周敦颐讲他爱莲；谁谁又爱竹；某某又爱梅，各有偏爱，但他们也都感叹：爱牡丹的人委实太多了。

我曾仔细观察牡丹，发现它的叶片长得很不一致，除了固定的那种形式之外也有根本不一样的叶相，因此就很难说谁画对或画错了。

昔日苏轼看到王安石一首诗“明月当空叫，黄狗卧花心。”心想这宁非咄咄怪事？明月怎么会叫？狗卧花心更是离谱了。于是随手把它改成“明月当空照，黄狗卧花荫”，这才称心满意。

多年以后，当苏轼得知“明月”是一种鸟名；黄狗是一种虫名，羞愧得简直是无地自容了。

Peonies/fine brush painting

The flowers are beautiful and the moon is round.

Everyone likes peonies, which are a symbol of wealth and honor.

Peonies generally don’t grow in Taiwan. When the peonies of Shanlinxi, Nantou County (potted peonies) bloom every spring, thick crowds of people come to view the beauty of the “king of flowers.”

The ancient poet Tao Chien liked chrysanthemums, while Zhou Dunyi preferred lotuses. Many people liked bamboo, and a few liked plum blossoms. Everyone had their own individual preference, but all of them acknowledged that people who loved peonies were extremely numerous.

While carefully examining peonies, I discovered that their leaves are all different from each other. Apart from the way they are attached to the stem, they also have many different shapes. Because of this, it is hard to say whether someone has painted them correctly or wrongly.

After seeing the poet Wang Anshi’s verses: “The bright moon cries out in the sky, and the yellow dog lies in the flower’s heart,” the Song Dynasty writer Su Shi wondered what kind of strange things the poem was alluding to. How can the moon cry out? A dog lying in the heart of a flower is ridiculous. Su thereupon changed these verses to “The bright moon shines in the sky, and the yellow dog lies in the flowers’ shade,” so that they would make more sense to him.

Many years later, Su was mortified to find out that the “bright moon” is the name of a bird, and “yellow dog” is a kind of insect.＠

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责任编辑：昌英