How would you describe a person who is very talented? Many people will think of the word "only high eight buckets", but people also have very big doubts about this, why must it be "eight buckets"? To use "nine buckets" and "ten buckets" to describe it is not to look more talented.
In fact, the origin of the word "Cai Gao Eight Buckets" has a lot to do with Xie Lingyun, a great poet, and the earliest person to use "Cai Gao Eight Buckets" to describe it is Cao Zhi. This person who could make famous poems in seven steps really gave everyone a sense of amazement, and his talent was unmatched by no one at that time.
The question is, Xie Lingyun and Cao Zhi are not from the same dynasty, but how did these two people get involved? Cao Zhi was a celebrity during the Three Kingdoms period, and Cao Zhi was also the most intelligent and talented of their brothers. Cao Zhi left behind many literary works, which were used as teaching materials for many scholars in the later Southern Dynasty period, and it is precisely because of this influence that Cao Zhi has always been a person whom Xie Lingyun greatly admired.
Xie Lingyun was a Song dynasty man during the Southern Dynasty, and he was also a very talented and learned person, but he was depressed and unmotivated, and he did not go all the way on the political road, and because of this, he slowly turned his ambition to traveling through the landscape. The beauty of the landscape along the road is really beautiful, and Xie Lingyun is such a talented person who inevitably has a lot of poetry, so in his poems, most of them are some landscape poems.
Many people compared him with the literati Yan Yanzhi at that time, saying that these two people can be called "the first in Jiangdong", which shows that Xie Lingyun's influence at that time was very large. Sometimes once people become famous, the opportunity to change their fate will come, and soon a shocking news will come to Xie Lingyun's side.
It turned out that his masterpieces were frequently passed down this road, and slowly he was known to Emperor Wen of Song, and every poem of Xie Lingyun was very fond of Emperor Wen of Song, so on a whim, he invited him back to Beijing and specially let him serve with him. Moreover, Emperor Wendi of Song not only loved his poetry, but also liked his calligraphy works very much, and called these two "two treasures".
At first, Xie Lingyun was full of confidence, feeling that Tianzi had given him a good face, and that following him would definitely get ahead and develop his talents in the future. But who knew that after returning to the capital, Emperor Wen of Song did not appoint him any important work, which was to let him follow his side, often attend large and small banquets, and let him compose poems on the spot when he was happy, all to please himself.
The gap between reality and ideals made Xie Lingyu very unhappy, after all, he was a person who was proud of his wealth, but now although he could follow the emperor's side, he was like a pet that people called to come and go. But what can he do if the other party is the Son of Heaven, if once he annoys the emperor, it is a small thing to lose his head and tire the family is a big thing.
Distressed, he could only borrow wine to dispel his sorrows, and when he was drunk, he murmured to himself: If the talent in the world adds up to a stone weight, I Xie Lingyun will only occupy one of the buckets, and Cao Zijian can definitely occupy eight of them, and the rest of the talents will add up to account for the remaining one.
Among them, Cao Zijian is the Cao Zhi mentioned earlier, which shows that Xie Lingyun admires his talent very much, and feels that he is too much different from him.
After this incident, the term "only high eight buckets" began to be widely used, as long as people feel that he is very talented, do not call him "only high eight buckets".