Su Dongpo 17 years old entered Zhongyan Academy of Zhongyan Temple in Qingshen, Meizhou, and carefully prepared for the imperial examination. The lecturer of Academia Sinica is his future father-in-law, Wang Fang. In order to prepare for the exam, students must read classics, history and poems, and classic ancient books must be familiar enough to recite. When reciting in class, students must stand with their backs to the teacher to avoid peeking at the articles open on the teacher's desk. Students who are willing to work hard recite all the texts in history books. When you endorse, you should not only pay attention to the content and knowledge of the article, but also pay attention to the words, because that's where you learn the words used to make a fuss. People who read widely will have elegant and extraordinary happiness if they use famous quotes and allusions without knowing the source. This is a language used by like-minded people. Readers admire the author for writing such an article, and they can understand it themselves, so they are complacent. The happiness that authors and readers get comes from the suggestion and association of ideas. This kind of hint is more powerful and moving than clear and straightforward, because the charm of hint is elusive when it comes to the point.
This kind of rote learning is really a difficult and laborious thing. The traditional old method is to let students recite a whole book without punctuation, and let students add punctuation to test whether they understand it thoroughly. Students who study hardest will copy classics and official history. Su Dongpo used this method when he was studying. If we think about the simple classics of China's poems and the unexpected metaphors of names in official history, this reading method has its own advantages. Because I have copied a book word by word, I have not only read it many times. This diligent method is of great benefit to Su Dongpo's future, because whenever he remonstrates with the emperor or drafts the imperial edict for the emperor, or quotes historical examples, he will never be confused, just like modern lawyers quote precedents. And when copying books, he can practice writing.