Zhang Zai, Jiayou (1056-1063) Jinshi, was a philosopher and thinker during the Northern Song Dynasty. He was in his hometown of Guanzhong (

Zhang Zai, Jiayou (1056-1063) Jinshi, was a philosopher and thinker during the Northern Song Dynasty. He lectured in his hometown of Guanzhong (present-day central Shaanxi Province), known as "Guan xue", and was one of the four schools of Confucian philosophical thought in the Song and Ming dynasties. Zhang Zai was particularly willing to study and learn, and he personally wrote a pair of yang lian on the pillar of his study:

After sleeping at night

Get up early and birds chirp first

Zhang Zai used couplets to spur himself to study hard: he went to bed late at night to rest; in the early morning, before the birds crowed, he got up to read. Because of his hard work, he eventually became a famous scholar in the Northern Song Dynasty. Some consider this to be the earliest self-exhortation maximal couplet.