"Poetry of Cooking Porridge"
Shen Zhou, Ming Dynasty
How to cook rice is better than cooking porridge, so that you can discuss it with your children.
One liter can be used as two liters, and two days can be used as six days of food.
If you have a guest, you only need to add water and fire. If you don’t have money, you don’t need to ask for soup.
Don’t say that thinness means less flavor, but thinness has more flavor.
The author of this poem is Shen Zhou. He was also an outstanding calligrapher and painter in the Ming Dynasty in my country. His works are now collected in the Palace Museum. Although Shen Zhou was a painter, he was also an outstanding poet. His poetry had a distinctive personality and extremely rich artistic heritage. His love for art was fully demonstrated in his works. Shen Zhou was born in a family of calligraphers, which made him proficient in all kinds of music, chess, calligraphy and painting at a young age. However, he was a poet who despised the powerful and was not afraid of the world. This also led to him not taking part in the imperial examinations throughout his life, and finally living in seclusion in the countryside. He continued to engage in calligraphy and painting creation until his death.
Although the poet is a great calligrapher and painter, from the lines of this poem, we can see that he is still a very simple person. This poem is very life-like and easy to write. Let readers enter the poet's heart. The whole poem uses the most straightforward language, and every sentence is expressed clearly. Just like what the poet wrote in his poem, if you eat, a meal must require a lot of rice. But if you are cooking porridge, you won’t need so much rice at all. As the poet said, two days of rice can last for six days.