Mirror Talk

What kind of novel is "Mirror Talk"? To put it bluntly, this is a collection of novels that uses bronze mirrors as "circles of friends" to decipher them. First let's talk about the meaning of the book's title. "Mirror" refers to a bronze mirror. The ancients also called bronze mirrors "flower mirrors", "carrying mirrors", "soul-calling mirrors" and "daughter mirrors". And "words" are secret codes, passwords, and messages. Together they are: the secret words engraved on the bronze mirror. In ancient times, unlike now, the ancients did not have a circle of friends, but they hid all kinds of private information in the mirror, just like the old photos left by your grandfather. The photos themselves are not valuable. What is valuable are the words behind the photos, the stories in the photos, and the era the photos reveal. The same is true for mirrors. The ancients "wrote" various information on the mirror (not real writing, but things like size, texture, rust, wear, and quantity). A knowledgeable person could read a lot of things at a glance: For example, how many girls were born in whose family? You can tell by looking at the number of mirrors (7 mirrors = 7 girls, the more expensive the mirror = the greater the dowry). How many grades will someone get as an official? You can tell by looking at the height of the mirror button (1.8Cm = a third-grade official). Whose wealth is thicker? You can tell by looking at the size of the mirror (12cm small mirror = scholar, 18cm = rich man), this is "mirror talk", a set of social code words written in bronze. Unfortunately, Zhu Yuanzhang in the Ming Dynasty deleted the etiquette system, craftsmen collectively lost their jobs, old gentlemen who could read mirrors left one by one, and no one wrote a book about it. So now no one understands. It is not only a material carrier, but also the key to decoding social relations.