Su Xun: Middle-aged and energetic, counterattack into a "winner in life"

Sichuan Meishan Sansu Ancestral Hall

Ever

When talking about the ancients' diligent study of reading, the "Three Character Classic" said: "Su Laoquan, twenty-seven, began to be angry, read books. He is old, but he regrets it late. Er Xiaosheng, it is advisable to think early. "This Su Laoquan is Su Shi's father, Su Xun.

Unlike the fame of his sons Su Shi and Su Rui, Su Xun traveled the world when he was young, and only began to study angrily at the age of twenty-seven, but at the age of thirty-seven, he experienced the failure of the imperial examination. After that, he adjusted the direction of his studies, gave up the imperial examination, studied hard behind closed doors for more than ten years, and finally became a late success, not only creating classic political treatises such as "The Theory of the Six Kingdoms" that have been passed down to later generations, realizing the dream of becoming a career, but also achieving the rare "one three literary heroes" in the history of Chinese literature.

Young and playful, he was influenced by his brother and suddenly woke up

In 1009, Su Xun was born in Meizhou (meizhou, in present-day Meishan, Sichuan). The Su family not only has a good family style, but also has a strong reading atmosphere. Su Xun's father, Su Xu, attached great importance to the study of his children and grandchildren, saying: "I want my children and grandchildren to study, and I do not want to be rich. So he poured out his money and bought a large number of books to put in the study. Su Shi later wrote in a letter to a friend that the books his grandfather had purchased were full of sweat and cattle, and that he had lived in an environment of "ten thousand bamboo poles in front of the door and four libraries of books in the hall" since he was a child.

Su Xun's two older brothers are very fond of reading, and the eldest brother Su Huan reads hard and seriously, but unfortunately his health is not good, and he has not been able to get his wish. The second brother, Su Zhuo, was talented and wise, liked to read since childhood, and finally lived up to expectations, and in 1027 AD, he passed the entrance examination and the first.

However, unexpectedly, Su Xun did not love to read as much as his two brothers. He was born intelligent and eloquent, but as a teenager he did not like to read. When Su Xun was 12 years old, Su Xu specially invited his husband to teach his three sons. Whenever Mr. Su gave a lecture, Su Huan and Su Zhuo were sitting precariously, listening intently to the lecture, only Su Xun was not interested in the way of writing such as the sound rhythm and rhyme taught by Mr. Su, and even simply ran out of the classroom to the countryside to go on a sightseeing tour, and he himself later said in the article about his stubborn self, "To the former teenagers, wandering and not learning." This incident was also recorded by Ouyang Xiu in the "Su Jun's Epitaph": "Jun Shaodu did not like to learn, and he was too old to know the book." ”

So, what made Su Xun change his attitude towards learning? One of the influencing factors is the death of Su Xun's mother Shi Shi, which makes Su Xun discover the finiteness and brevity of life, and also begin to think about whether his life should do meaningful things in addition to playing in the landscape. The second brother Su Zhuan, who returned from the funeral, had long heard that this younger brother liked landscapes, so he asked him to write some articles, which was a natural request, but Su Xun was overstretched, and his stomach Chinese ink was completely empty. In order to help Su Xun, Su Juan had a plan and decided to let Su Xun revise the Su clan tree. In the process of compiling the family tree, Su Xun learned about the wonderful life of the ancestors who studied hard and exerted their ambitions, and could not help but be encouraged, and suddenly felt the shame of wasting time, which made him decide to read angrily.

Take ink as sugar

The road to scientific research behind closed doors

This year, Su Xun was twenty-seven years old. In ancient times, this age was appropriately middle-aged. During the Northern Song Dynasty, when Su Xun lived, the average life expectancy of people was about 50 years old, and it was popular to learn early and marry early. At this time, Su Xun was already married and had not yet established a family, and he said to his wife Cheng: "I feel that it is still too late to start learning again, but if I am focused on learning, there is no time to take care of family affairs, what to do?" Cheng immediately supported her husband's decision: "I have wanted to persuade you to study hard for a long time, but I think if you read because of my request, it will not be interesting." After all, reading is your personal business, if you really have this ambition, then the family affairs are entrusted to me, you study well. Cheng's words were like reassuring pills, and Su Xun had been reading them painstakingly ever since.

Su Xun, who made up his mind, studied very hard. The allusion to using ink as sugar to dip zongzi is a good illustration of Su Xun's concentration in reading. One year during the Dragon Boat Festival, Cheng saw Su Xun staying in the study early in the morning, afraid that he was hungry, so he sent him a few rice dumplings and a plate of white sugar. Later, when she went in to collect the plate, she found that Su Xun had eaten the rice dumplings, but the sugar plate did not move at all, and Su Xun's mouth was black and white, and it was ink and glutinous rice grains. It turned out that Su Xun was reading too much and mistaking the ink for sugar.

Such a focused study attitude to prepare for the imperial examination made Su Xun's literary skills quite deep, but unfortunately, Su Xun's road to the imperial examination was extremely bumpy, and after more than a year of hard study, Su Xun was admitted to the jinshi section for the second time (the first time was when he was 18 years old when he participated in the township examination and failed the list), he failed. After that, he went to take the Maocai Alien Examination and did not pass the examination. (The Great Dictionary of Chinese History records that Su Xun "raised up the jinshi in his old age, and also held up Mao Cai to be a subject, but he was not in the middle").

Adjust the direction of life, and the big thing will eventually become successful

At the age of 37, Su Xun, who had repeatedly failed on the road of scientific examinations, finally accepted his "examination slag" physique and made a decision that surprised everyone: no more. Why? After three examinations, Su Xun came to the conclusion that the imperial examination was not his own strength. This is one of them. Second, Su Xun is already thirty-seven years old, and it has been ten years since he began to study hard at the age of twenty-seven. Su Xun did not intend to waste his life for the imperial examination - "This is not enough for me to learn," determined to go his own way. He burned hundreds of articles he had written for scientific expeditions over the course of a decade and continued to immerse himself in hard study. However, from then on, he was no longer a candidate, Su Xun, he had to read for himself and write for problem solving. Su Xun's life goal shifted from the previous examination of the examination to two new goals: the first is to become a true scholar, thinker and writer through reading books and reading classics; the second is to carefully cultivate the two sons of Su Shi and Su Rui.

Since the age of 37, Su Xun has been studying behind closed doors for seven or eight years, so what is the effect? In "Su Xun's Epitaph", Ouyang Xiu described his reading process and effects in the past seven or eight years. Ouyang Xiu said that Su Xun immersed himself in the study of the Six Classics of Confucianism and the Hundred Schools of Thought, examined the changes in the ancient and modern Taiping and turmoil, success and failure, examined the setbacks and smooth things encountered by the sages, the reasons for their retirement and retirement, obtained the essence of their thoughts from their life experiences and writings, and then accumulated them in their hearts layer by layer, but suppressed and did not express them. Since then, the literary thinking has been agile, and in an instant, a thousand words have been written, the article has been galloping in all directions, the thinking has been open and open, and it must reach the depth of the subtle place before stopping. It was only at this time that his talent, tired of the imperial examination, burst out to the fullest.

In the cultivation of sons, Su Xun is not only the loving father of the two sons, but also their rare teacher. Father and son often write on the same topic and interact with each other. The "Treatise on the Six Kingdoms", which has been handed down to this day, is a case in point. Su Xun said "evil" (the Six Kingdoms died because of bribery of Qin), Su Shi said "soldiers" (talents), and Su Rui said "potential" (the general trend of the world). The second son's "Theory of the Six Kingdoms" is basically a history of history, while Su Xun borrows the past to satirize the present, which has a stronger realistic pertinence. At the same time, he also led his second son to visit the famous mountain temple to broaden his horizons and improve his temperament. From a practical point of view, Su Xun's tutoring was very successful, and Su Shi and Su Rui became three of the eight masters of the Tang and Song dynasties together with him, which is also a good story in the history of Chinese culture.

When Su Xun was nearly half a hundred years old, the opportunity finally came, and he was recommended by Zhang Fangping of Yizhou Zhizhou to lead his second son Su Shi and Su Rui to visit the literary leader Ouyang Xiu in the first year of Jiayou (1056). Su Xun presented his own article, which was appreciated by Ouyang Xiu, who believed that it was comparable to Jia Yi and Liu Xiang ("although Jia Yi and Liu Xiang were not yet"), and tried his best to recommend Su Xun to the imperial court, so Su Xun's article was widely read by the scholars of the capital, and the literary name was great, and for a while scholars in Beijing competed to imitate the articles made by Su Shi. This year, Su Xun was forty-eight years old. The following year, Su Shi and Su Rui participated in the imperial examination, and they were on the gold list together, which caused a sensation in the Beijing Division, and the father and son were famous. At the age of 52, Su Rui was also recommended as a secretary and provincial school secretary, embarked on a career path, and realized his dream of becoming a temple and helping the world.

Mo Dao's years are late, and it is time to rise up. Throughout Su Xun's life, although he started late and experienced several failed scientific expeditions, he relied on his own ambition and heart not to be left behind, and finally became a late bloomer and ushered in a brilliant life. Text, photo/ Guangzhou Daily all-media reporter Li Qiaorong