One day, Zheng called 4-year-old Ouyang Xiu to his side and said, "Son, from today on, your mother will teach you to read, but our family has no money to buy paper and pens, so we use bamboo branches instead of pens and sand instead of paper to write." You should study hard and don't be playful, so that when you grow up, you can become a useful person to the country and society and be worthy of your dead father. When you are older, I will send you to a private school. " Xiao Ouyang Xiu said sensibly, "Mom, I must study hard." Mother and Ouyang Xiu came to the window. Mother picked up a thin bamboo branch and wrote the word "person" on the prepared fine sand. Then she said to him, "Heaven and earth, man is the foundation". Ouyang Xiu followed his mother's example and carefully wrote a crooked "person". From then on, Ouyang Xiu learned to recite words with his mother every day, and her mother often told him stories of sages and philosophers and taught him how to be a man. People passing by their yard can often hear the sound of reading from inside.