The saying "The thin ground is planted with pines and cypresses, and the poor family is studying" once became the motto of Putian students. They used this sentence to encourage themselves to study diligently. The background and allusion of this sentence actually dates back to an anecdote from the Southern Song Dynasty.
In the eighth year of Shaoxing in the Southern Song Dynasty, a group of scholars from Xinghua came to Beijing to take the exam. They were selected at all levels and rigorously promoted in the provincial and imperial examinations. Finally, on the day when the imperial list was announced, the city was full of people. The people are very concerned about this year's exams. They found that the name of the number one scholar announced on the list was Huang Gongdu, and the name of the second person was Chen Junqing. There were also many people who were Jinshi in high school. The oldest was 75 years old and the youngest was only 18 years old. Most of these people They are all students from Xinghua area, and students from Putian County, Xinghua area account for 14 people on the list.
Later, Emperor Gaozong held a banquet and invited scholars who were ranked second in the exams and Jinshi scholars to the banquet. Since Putian is located in the coastal area, the terrain is relatively remote and not very developed, so this time there were 14 high school students. Emperor Gaozong was very surprised, so he asked at the banquet, why can Xinghua Army, the number one scholar and the number two scholar all have quotas?
So he pointed to Huang Gongdu, the number one scholar, and asked him, do you have Some strange place? After thinking about it, Huang Gongdu replied: "The oriole is beautiful in brocade, and the Yin Zi fish is fat?"
Emperor Gaozong then asked this question to Chen Junqing, who was second in the list. Chen Junqing answered very confidently: "The ground is thin and planted with pines and cypresses." The emperor was very happy after hearing this, and he spoke highly of the second place student. Chen Junqing's answer not only answered the emperor's question, but also appropriately expressed the Putian people's spirit of hard work, perseverance, and diligent study in poverty. This incident was widely praised by everyone and became a favorite story for a while, so Chen Junqing's poem also spread from this. It became the motto of the Putian people at that time that a poor boy from the Songbai family should study hard, to encourage himself to study diligently and be enterprising like Chen Junqing.