Among these upright scholars, there is a brave young man named Fan Pang, and Su Xun's wife is teaching her son to read Fan Pang's biography.
Jianning two years, sent a letter to punish party member, emergency arrest. Wudao and Du You, when they arrived in the county, held the imperial edict and cried when they heard that they had given up their beds. As soon as I heard it, I said, "It must be for me." Which means from prison. Guo Yi, the county magistrate, was frightened. When it was printed, all the bows were dead. He said: "The world is big, what is the son here?" Sun: "If you die, it will be a disaster. How dare you make your husband bear the guilt and make your mother homeless! " Its mother is with it. On Mother's Day: "Zhong Bo's filial piety is enough to support him. He will return to the grave from Long Shujun, and his life and death will be where he belongs. Only adults can break the unbearable grace, don't increase feelings! " Mother's Day: "You are as famous as Li and Du today, so why bother to hate when you are dead! With your name, can you have it both ways? " Kneel down to be taught and say goodbye. Gu said his son's day: "I want to make you evil, then evil can't do it;" If you are good, then I am not evil. " You will cry when you smell it on the road. At the age of 33.
Xiao Dongpo looked up at his mother and asked, "Mom, do you want to be like Fan Pang when you grow up?" Mother replied, "If you can be Fan Pang, can't I be Fan Pang's mother?"
Dongpo entered school at the age of six. This private school is not small, 100 students, only one teacher, a Taoist. Su Dongpo's extremely clever young mind was soon revealed. Among so many pupils, Su Dongpo and another student are the most praised by the teacher. That student is Chen Taichu. Later, he passed the imperial examination, but he became a monk and wanted to become an immortal. In his later years, Chen Dachu was always ready to fly high. One day, he visited a friend. Friends give him food and money. After he went out, he distributed all the food and money to the poor, sat cross-legged outside the door, prepared not to eat fireworks, and got rid of the world of mortals. A few days later, he swallowed his last breath and did not move. The friend asked the servant to remove his body. But it was New Year's Day, and on such an auspicious day of the year, the servants didn't want to carry the body. But the dead man said, "Never mind, I can carry it myself." He stood up, went out into the wild and died in a more comfortable place. This is what Taoist practitioners call "rising in the daytime".
When he was young, Su Dongpo had many interests besides reading. After school, he went home to spy in the bird's nest. His mother has severely warned Dongpo and his maid not to catch birds. So, a few years later, birds know that they won't be hurt in the garden, and some nest on the branches of the garden, so low that children can see them. A bird with extremely beautiful and bright feathers went to his garden for several days. Su Dongpo remembers this bird very clearly.
Sometimes officials pass by meishan town to visit the Su family, because Dongpo's uncle has become an official. The family was in a hurry, and the maid ran around barefoot, picking vegetables in the garden to kill chickens and giving a banquet. This situation left a deep impression on the children.
Dongpo and his cousins often play around their mother. He and his younger brother Zhe often go to the village market or dig in the vegetable garden. One day, the children dug up a beautiful slate, crystal clear, with exquisite green stripes on it. Under their tapping, there was a crisp metallic sound. They want to use it as an inkstone, which is very useful. The inkstone must be made of a special kind of porous stone, which is good at absorbing water and preserving it. This kind of good inkstone is very important for calligraphy. One side of the top-grade inkstone is often regarded as a treasure by literati. Good inkstone is an important thing for literati's desk, because most of their lives are closely related to it. The father gave the child an inkstone to keep until he grew up. He also has to carve special words on the inkstone to wish him fame in the future.
According to some written records, Su Dongpo could write amazing poems when he was ten years old. In his article "On Rats", we found two sentences. This essay describes a sly little mouse, which fell into an earthen urn and pretended to be dead. When the urn fell to the ground, he ran away quickly, which was a lie. At about the same time, his teacher was reading a long poem describing a group of famous scholars in the imperial court at that time. Su Dongpo, a young pupil, peeped forward behind the teacher's shoulder and began to ask questions about them. They are all celebrities in the history of China, because in Su Dongpo's childhood, China was under the rule of the most wise monarch in the Song Dynasty, and he strongly rewarded literature and art, and there was no peace in China. Nomadic peoples in the north and northwest of China, such as Jin, Liao and Xixia, once suffered greatly from China, but they were also at peace with the Song Dynasty. Under such a court, the virtuous minister was in power, and a group of talented people were favored, serving the emperor and decorating Taiping. It was at this time that Su Dongpo, a child, first heard the names of Ouyang Xiu and Fan Zhongyan, and was deeply encouraged at present. Fortunately, in the childhood of this great poet, we still have these predictions about his future appearance. Although Su Dongpo recorded many dreams and unfinished poems in his adult life, modern biographers combined explanation, intuition and fantasy to fabricate the structural form of Dongpo's subconscious neuropathy, and nothing was inadvertently revealed. Su Dongpo never mentioned diapers and constipation.
When Su Dongpo was eleven years old, he entered a middle school and carefully prepared for the imperial examination. In order to cope with 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 all the words used for writing are learned from this. 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 people who like each other. 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 knowing the truth, 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 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.
Before the invention of printing, this copying work was inevitable, but when Su Dongpo was here, the book had been printed for about one hundred years. Clay movable type printing was invented by an ordinary businessman, Bi Sheng. The method is to make a special cement into a single word, and after the word is engraved, the cement becomes hard; Then put these words on a metal plate coated with glue. After the word board is arranged, heat the glue and press it on the arranged word board with a metal plate to make the words completely flat. After the book is printed, heat the adhesive, and each type plate will easily fall off the metal plate, and then clean it for use next time.
Just as Su Dongpo and his younger brother Su Zhe were reading a lot of literary classics, his father fell behind. At that time, the imperial examination had its fixed rules. Just like the doctoral thesis of modern philosophy. In those days, to reach a certain standard, you must work hard, have a good memory for remembering facts, and of course have normal intelligence. When intelligence and creativity are too high, it is an obstacle to the exam, not beneficial. Many talented writers, such as the poet Qin Shaoyou, failed the exam. Nine times out of ten, the weakness of Su Xun's failure lies in poetry. To test poetry, one should have considerable artistic taste and exquisite wording, while Su Xun mainly pays attention to conception. Because a scholar's official career is the only way to glory and success except teaching, his father will inevitably feel uneasy and depressed when he leaves Sun Shan.
The younger generation reads the classics aloud, while the older generation leans on the bed to listen. The cadence is crisp and sweet, which the older generation thinks is a great pleasure in life. In this way, the father can correct his son's pronunciation mistakes, because beginners naturally have many difficulties in reading classics. Just as Ouyang Xiu and later Su Dongpo listened to their sons' reading by the bedside, now Su Xun also listened to the sweet reading sounds of his two sons by the bedside. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling, and his mood was probably like a hunter shooting the last arrow and missing the deer, as if to catch a new arrow and let his son shoot it again. The child's eyes and bright voice convinced his father that they would succeed in pursuing fame, so his father regained hope, and the wounded honor heart was incurable. At this time, the sons of two young people may have surpassed their father in reciting classics and excellent calligraphy, but the young style is clearer than the old one. Later, a student of Su Dongpo once said that Su Xun was gifted, but Su Dongpo, as a son, was more learned in academic thought than his father. Su Xun didn't completely give up fame. Although he failed in the exam, if he can't believe his son's high school, he is the biggest dementia in the world. I don't mean to be disrespectful to this father, because he taught his son in a pure and elegant style, and taught him to study history books as a way to govern the country and even the rise and fall of the country.
Fortunately for Su Dongpo, his father always insisted on the simple style of the article and urged him to restrain the gorgeous habits that were popular at that time. Because later, when young students rushed to Beijing to catch the exam, Ouyang Xiu, the minister of rites and the examiner of rites, was determined to launch a movement to reform the style of writing, so he took the opportunity to exclude all students who were only addicted to carving sentences and showing off gorgeous rhetoric. The so-called gorgeous style of writing can be said to be to pile up difficult words and difficult allusions in order to achieve the beauty of the article. In such an article, it is difficult to find a simple and natural sentence or two. The most taboo thing is to substitute things for names, and the most fearful thing is that sentences are plain and unpretentious. Su Dongpo said that this beautifully dressed article is fragmented in words, regardless of the effect of the whole article, just like Lao Ji with gorgeous jewels in her arms on the day of the play.