Wang Anshi is a native of Linchuan, Fuzhou (now Linchuan County, Jiangxi Province), and one of the eight masters in Tang and Song Dynasties.
In the second year of Xining in Song Shenzong (1069), after Wang Anshi became prime minister, he was determined to reform and implement the new law, which was resolutely opposed by big landlords and bureaucrats, and he became an official in a few years. He was bored in Beijing and decided to go back to Nanjing to see his wife and children.
In the spring of the following year, Wang Anshi went south from Bianjing to Yangzhou, took a boat to Jinling (Nanjing, Jiangsu) in the west, passed through Jingkou (Zhenjiang, Jiangsu), and arrived in Guazhou, crossing the river. The boat docked and did not go. Standing at the bow, he looked west, but when he saw the faint green hills, surging rivers, spring breeze and green fields, as well as the bright moon in the sky, he missed his relatives in Jinling Zhongshan (also known as Purple Mountain) even more. He walked into the boat, took out a pen and paper, just thought about it, and wrote a poem entitled "Boarding Guazhou":
A water room in Guazhou, Jingkou,
Zhongshan is separated by only a few mountains.
The spring breeze came to Jiang Nanan again.
When will the bright moon shine on me?
After writing, Wang Anshi felt that the word "to" in Spring Breeze and Green Jiang Nanan was too dead, and he couldn't see what it was like when the spring breeze arrived in Jiangnan. After thinking for a while, he began to circle the word "to" and changed it to "to". Later, I thought about it and felt that the word "country" was not appropriate. Although the word "Guo" is more vivid than the word "Dao" and describes the passing away, it is still not enough to express a person's urgent mood of returning to Jinling. So I circled the word "country" and changed it to "gold" and "full". This has been changed more than ten times, but Wang Anshi still hasn't found his most satisfactory word. He felt a little headache, so he went out of the cabin and looked at the scenery to rest his mind.
Wang Anshi went to the bow and looked at Jiangnan. The spring breeze blows, the grass dances, and the wheat waves fluctuate, which makes it more vibrant and picturesque. He felt refreshed and suddenly saw the spring grass green. Isn't this the word "green" I'm looking for? A word "green" expresses the moving scene of the whole Jiangnan full of vitality and spring. Thinking of this, Wang Anshi was very unhappy. He ran into the cabin and took out a piece of paper. He changed the sentence "Spring breeze comes to Jiang Nanan again" in the original poem to "Spring breeze is green in Jiang Nanan".
In order to highlight his hard-won "green" word, Wang Anshi deliberately wrote the word "green" bigger and more eye-catching.
A "green" word makes the whole poem vivid and vivid. The word "green" became what later generations called "poetic eye". Later, many articles about word refining took him as an example.