The Magpie Liang is located in Xuanhua County, Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, at an altitude of about 2,000 meters, which is an alpine meadow. In the summer, green grass, wildflowers bloom, colorful butterflies fly, and the highest temperature is 10 degrees lower than that of Beijing, which makes it a good place to escape the summer heat.
Driving to the magpie beam, all the way to see a lot of magpies, or in the middle of the road to sneak, or in the high voltage line lookout, leisurely and free. When they fly, they spread their black and white wings, stylish and dashing. However, once the voice, loud and clear call is really unpleasant, so people can not help but think of the big star Zhou Xun, uh, personality beauty!
Magpies are very personable birds, preferring to build their nests in large trees next to homes and moving around settlements. When I was studying at Tsinghua, I often saw magpies on campus.
Magpies are good birds. Their diet varies according to the season and the environment, feeding mainly on animal food such as insects in the summer, and on plant fruits and seeds in other seasons. 80% of their diet consists of insects that harm crops, such as locusts , mole crickets, golden tortoiseshells, larvae of night moths, or pine caterpillars, and 15% of cereals and plant seeds, but they also eat small birds, snails, and seeds of melons and fruits, and of weeds. Early in the morning in the field of labor farmers, see magpies or pairs, or groups of three or five in the field grass jumping and chasing to eat pests, it will be fond of feelings.
The mother was confused about magpies and crows, thinking they were all the same. It's no wonder that magpies are members of the crow family, and their appearance is similar to that of crows, with which they are most closely related. But a magpie's belly is clearly white, and it's still very different from a crow's all-black outfit.
The magpie is a member of the crow family, and like the crow, it prefers to live in groups and has a strong sense of territory, so no matter what kind of bird invades its territory, it will cause a bloody battle. The magpies can't fight alone, but they are good at fighting in groups. In Beijing, every year there are magpies killed and injured by a variety of large raptors, against small raptors is not a problem. A few days ago, my friend drove away two magpies in the neighborhood, saving a small hedgehog from being bullied and shivering.
The magpies aren't just brave, they're smart - they're the only non-mammal to have passed the "mirror test", and they're probably the smartest birds around. The so-called "mirror test" judges an animal's ability to recognize itself in a mirror. Very few animals pass this test, and even human babies don't figure out that the person in the mirror is themselves until they're about a year and a half old.
While magpies proudly passed the test in a program that cats and dogs have failed, other animals that have passed the mirror test include all species of apes (pygmy chimpanzees, chimpanzees, orangutans, humans, and gorillas), rhesus monkeys, bottlenose dolphins, orcas, and elephants. Of course, just because cats and dogs are among the animals that are recognized by scent and cannot pass the mirror test does not mean they are not self-aware.
I'm a Manchu, and in the minds of the Manchus, crows and magpies are "sacred birds" that deserve to be honored. Since the Qing Dynasty, the Manchus have not harmed the crows and magpies, and there is a saying that they will not eat their flesh, but will feed them with minced meat and grain.
In the Shenyang Imperial Palace Qingning Palace in front of a vermillion wooden pole, more than ten feet high, the top of a bowl-shaped object, wooden pole placed on a white jade pedestal, which is the Manchu court used to "sacrifice to the sky to enjoy the magpies," the Solon pole. In the area of Manchu settlement, many ordinary people in the yard also stood high wooden pole, the top of a bucket, bucket with pork, pork and rice as crows and magpies food.
Why do the Manchus honor crows and magpies? The most popular saying is derived from the myths of the ancestors of the Qing dynasty: "Manchurian Records" records, Buryaku Yongshun several generations later, the children and grandchildren tyrannical, was killed, the young child Fancha off, fled to the wilderness, "there will be a magpie of God, the building child head, the pursuers of the soldiers ...... suspected of being a dead wood pile, so back". Another legend is similar to this, "Bamboo Leaf Heung Miscellany": Nurhachu from the Ming will be Li Chengliang home to escape, "stashed in the wild, the group of crows to cover, the pursuers thought that the crows stop must be no one, with this is to get off. Because the crows rescue Nurhachu out of danger, so he told his descendants and clansmen shall not harm the crows. As for the legend of Solon rod, refers to the Nurhachu with Suo dialla stick, God blessed him to pick ginseng to get rich, recruiting troops and horses to fight the world.
However, why is it that crows and magpies save the day rather than other birds? This is related to the primitive Manchu animal worship of crows and magpies.
The history of the Manchu people can probably be traced back to the Sushin region more than three dry years ago. This area, centered on the Ussuri River basin and the Mudan River, is densely forested and has a favorable climate, which is most suitable for human life and the reproduction of birds. Crows and magpies are very alert birds, and their cries of alarm in case of danger became a kind of alarm signal, conveying information for the Manchu ancestors who lived a life of fishing and hunting. Due to the backwardness of productivity, the lack of knowledge of nature and living creatures, as well as by the shamanism of the concept of the spirit of all things, the ancestors of the Manchu people will be due to the crows and magpies have the function of transmitting information to give them all kinds of divinity, that is, the ability to foresee, the ability to protect the ability to communicate with the human and the ability to God, and therefore respect.
This concept has been passed down from generation to generation, and y accumulated in the collective unconscious of the Manchu people. Crow magpies to save the ancestral image of the emergence is the embodiment of this collective unconscious.
The Han Chinese also love magpies. As early as two thousand years ago, they believed that magpies could announce good news. The Tang Dynasty novelist Zhang gull's "Dynasty and Wild Command" has this story: At the end of the Zhenguan period, there was a man named Li Jingyi, there is a magpie's nest in the tree in front of his house, and he often fed the magpies in the nest, and for a long time, the birds and men had feelings for each other. Once Lai Jingyi was wrongly accused and imprisoned, he felt pain. Suddenly, one day, the bird he fed stopped in front of the prison window and chirped happily. He thought good news might be coming, and sure enough, he was acquitted three days later.
With the story, the custom of drawing magpies as a sign of good luck became popular. Two magpies face to face painting, called the "happy meeting"; double magpies in the addition of an ancient money, called the "happy in front of me" (to "money" harmonic "before"), a badger and a magpie in the tree under the tree looking at each other, called the "happy days" (to "badger" harmonic "happy"). A badger and a magpie looking at each other from tree to tree is called "Huan Tian Xi Di" (欢天喜地) ("獾"). The most widely circulated is the picture of a magpie on a branch of a plum tree, also known as the "happy" (to "plum" and "eyebrow"), Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong and other masters have painted.
When I got married, a friend gave me a pair of red Tan carpenter comb, red lacquer, carved with raised magpies and plum blossoms, it is to take the "happy eyebrows" meaning. I still remember the joy I felt when I opened this gift.
The most familiar, when the Chinese folklore of the Cowherd and Weaving Maiden magpie bridge meeting. Every year on the seventh day of the seventh month, magpies build a bridge over the Milky Way, and the Cowherd and the Weaving Maiden meet on the bridge with great affection. Quan Deyi of the Tang Dynasty wrote in "Tanabata": "Today the clouds plow across the magpie bridge, should not be a pulse and a long way."
What is the actual situation? This year's "Tanabata", I drew a "flood force - double happiness picture", in the accompanying text to explain: the cowherd and the weaving maiden are 16 light years apart, about 1.51 million kilometers, magpies make a flood force to build a bridge, but it does not matter.
No matter what, magpies are still magpies. It's a brave, smart, loveable, and brings people a lot of beautiful expectations and visions. May we all be happy and joyful every day, and we don't have to wait until July 7 every year to love each other.