At the age of 20, he was selected in the provincial examination. In the spring of the following year, he won the first place in the province, so he went home to give lectures and write books. In the last years of Dade, except for the vice promotion of Confucianism in Jiangxi; In the new year, imperial academy Cheng was awarded and promoted to division; At the end of his reign, he worshipped the Hanlin bachelor; In the early years of Taiding, he served as a banquet officer and edited A Record of Yingzong. Tong Yuan died in the first year at the age of 85. His life works include Wu Wenzheng Collection (volume 100), Yi Zhuan Yan (volume 10), Yi Zhuan Yan (volume 36), Yi Zhuan Yan Zhuan (volume 8), Shu Zhuan Yan (volume 4) and Yi Li Yijing Zhuan (volume 4).
Wu Cheng was an outstanding thinker and educator in Yuan Dynasty. It is as famous as Xu Heng, a contemporary master of Confucian classics, and is called "Northern Xu and Southern Wu". He devoted his life to the spread and development of Confucianism in the Yuan Dynasty.
Wu Cheng comes from an ordinary intellectual family. According to Su Wei's The True Story of Wu Culture and Yuji's Journey to Wu Gong, his grandfather Wu Xuan is generous, disdainful of details, good at poetry and fu, and proficient in astronomical calendar calculation. His father, Wu Shu, is warm and pure, honest and humble to others, and does not compete with the world; On weekdays, I am charitable and helpful. One year, the plague was prevalent in his hometown, and doctors were afraid of infection, so that their illness became more and more serious, and some people were bedridden. Wu Shu was very worried when he saw this situation. He searched for folk secret recipes, collected herbs in the mountains for days, personally boiled them into soup, and gave them to patients door to door, which relieved the suffering of many families and restored many patients to health. Some poor people in the village had no money for funeral after their death, so Wu Shu gave generously and tried his best to help them. It is not difficult for a person to do a few good deeds, but it is difficult to do good deeds all his life. What is commendable about Wu Shu is that he has always cared for and sympathized with poor families. He took pleasure in helping others all his life and was deeply respected and loved by the villagers. This family with a certain cultural upbringing and fine moral tradition undoubtedly had a good and far-reaching impact on Wu Cheng's life.
Wu Cheng was born on the 19th day of the first month of the 9th year in Song Lizong (1249). Since the age of 3, he has become more and more clever, which is very different from ordinary children. At that time, my grandfather liked him very much and often taught him to read some ancient poems. He could recite them almost casually. Grandfather loves him even more when he sees his high understanding. Day after day, Wu gradually recited hundreds of ancient poems, which made the whole family very happy and convinced that he would make great achievements in the future. His mother, Mrs. You, once took him to a neighboring village to play. An old woman saw that Wu Cheng was cute and gave him some coins and fruits. Wu Cheng thanked grandma respectfully and immediately accepted these gifts. After a while, he thought that grandma was old and weak, and her life was hard. He really shouldn't accept gifts from old people. So, full of guilt, he quietly returned the coins and fruits to his grandmother's house before leaving the neighboring village with his mother.
In the first year of Baodu (1253), Wu Cheng just turned 5 years old. The family hired a teacher from other places to teach Wu Cheng. Under the guidance of the teacher, Wu Cheng became more and more clever. Even if he reads more than 1000 words, he can remember it by reading it two or three times. From then on, he studied all day, worked hard and studied all night. Mrs. You, the mother, was worried that her son's overwork would damage his health and cause illness, so she gave Wu Cheng lamp oil for reading, and only allowed him to read until midnight, enough is enough. Wu Cheng has a strong thirst for knowledge. He loves books like a life. How can he stand his mother's restraint? So he secretly went to the market to buy some lamp oil to meet his needs of staying up late to study. Every night, he turns off the lights at the time specified by his mother. When his mother was sleeping, he quietly lit the lamp, studied hard, and carefully shielded the light to avoid being found by his mother.
In this way, through accumulation, Wu Cheng read many books. At the age of seven, I was able to recite the Analects of Confucius into Mencius and the Five Classics (poetry, books, changes, miscellaneous, spring and autumn), and I also learned to write poems and Jinshi Fu. When he was 9 years old, he took several exams in neighboring cities, all of which were among the best.
In the sixth year of Bao You (1258), Wu Cheng was just 10 years old and began to understand the fundamentals of scholarship. He assiduously studied four books and five sentences compiled by Dali scholar Zhu, and recited the University 10 and 20 times a day for three years, which made great progress in his studies. Later, Wu Cheng once told scholars about his experience. He said: "I studied poetry and fu when I was young, but I didn't finish reading Zhu's book." Those who benefit from it don't know how to play their role here. " When I was ten years old, I accidentally read the chapters and sentences of "University" and "The Doctrine of the Mean" in old books, and I was very happy. Naturally, I have to recite "University" for more than 1000 days in the morning, and then read "The Doctrine of the Mean" and all the classics, such as broken bamboo, without stopping. Scholars score well in the University, so The Doctrine of the Mean is not difficult to read. "
Ding Jing was two years old (126 1) and Wu Cheng 13 years old. In order to broaden his knowledge, he began to read A Hundred Schools of Thought. Martha does not always produce a new series of ancient Chinese prose integration. Wu Cheng tried his best to borrow books from booksellers because his family was poor and had no money to buy them, and returned them on time. Once a book seller asked him, "Have you read all the books you borrowed?" Wu Cheng replied, "Take a chapter from the book to test me!" " The seller listened and casually pointed out a paragraph on a page in the book. Wu Chenggong could recite it word for word. The book seller was very surprised and deeply moved by the young man's hard work spirit. At present, he gave Wu a set of books integrating ancient Chinese prose, encouraging him to continue to study hard and determined to get ahead in the future. A year later, 14-year-old Wu Cheng went to Fuzhou County to make up the exam with two small horns on his head. Confucian scholars in this state were amazed to see his extraordinary writing style.
He was four years old (1263) and Wu was 15 years old. He knew that the imperial examination industry was not invested enough, so he devoted himself to the study of sages, and Yi ran took the road of sages as his own responsibility. One day, he read Zhu's "Xunzi Post" and saw the words "diligence" and "sincerity" in it. If he was convinced by his face, he decided that it was "an important thing to keep and learn". Immediately, Wu Cheng wrote two proverbs, diligence and sincerity, and made two inscriptions, respect and peace. "Jingming" has a cloud: "Grasp in the middle, mentally and psychologically; The inspection beam is outside and is a bone. " "He Ming" is a great example for scholars such as Zhou Dunyi and Cheng Hao to encourage themselves. He often said: "When I read Jingming, it makes people's minds converge and all the mistakes disappear. For example, in a spiritual shrine, if you stand on the side of Yan Shi, just like autumn, you will not feel the respect of your hands. " Reading Heming makes people relaxed and happy, and everything is in harmony. Romantic feelings, flowers and willows, like spring, but I don't know how to dance. Later, Wu Cheng also wrote inscriptions on self-study, correction, extermination, self-denial, repentance, correction, and insufficient police use. It can be seen that he pushes himself everywhere and always inspires himself. His diligence and perseverance can be described as profound! Wu Cheng later became a master of Confucianism in Yuan Dynasty, which was inseparable from his early self-cultivation and hard training.