There is a special combination in the history of Chinese literature called the "Eight Masters of the Tang and Song Dynasties", of which Ouyang Xiu is a leading figure, and several of them are his students. At the beginning, they were able to make a name for themselves, thanks to a large extent to Ouyang Xiu's appreciation and promotion.
Therefore, some netizens said that they hoped that they could cross to the Song Dynasty and be a student of Ouyang Xiu, because such a teacher is rare to find.
This is a "teacher of someone else's family".
So, among Ouyang Xiu's students, who was his favorite? The answer is: Zeng Gong.
Among a bunch of talented people, why is it Zeng Gong? There is a special reason here, and I have to talk about the story of "ten years and ten soldiers" first.
When it comes to Zeng Gong's family background, although it is not an ordinary family, his ancestors have also been officials. But by the time his father's generation came to an end, there was no money left. In 1047, Zeng Gong's father died, and he had to drop out of school to return to his hometown, and what awaited him would be a field of chicken feathers.
Halfway through his studies, his family was in financial difficulties, and all his worries were wholesale to him. What's more, Zeng Gong has quite a large number of family members, he is the second oldest in the family, followed by 4 younger brothers and 9 younger sisters. Looking at this string of numbers is scary enough.
He was beaten by society at a young age, but Zeng Gong did not lie down, but lived well. He was filial to his stepmother and cared for his younger siblings to grow up. In his spare time, he also strives to read. Under his influence and education, Zeng Gong's big family reading atmosphere is super good.
Let's look at a set of data: in the second year of Song Renzong Jiayou, the same year that Zeng Gong was admitted to the Jinshi, his younger brothers Zeng Mu, Zeng Bu and his cousin Zeng Fu, as well as two brothers-in-law, a total of 6 people were in the Jinshi at the same time. In the following years, there were 4 more people in the family who passed the entrance examination, and in one of them, there were ten jinshi in ten years, which was unique in history.
Therefore, Ouyang Xiu admired Zeng Gong's article, preferred his personality, and treated him differently, so much so that he made a big fuss in an exam.
In 1057, in the examination room, Ouyang Xiu saw a test paper, the language of the article was simple and fluent, but the reasoning was thorough, and it was three points. Ouyang Xiu was overjoyed at the sight of it, such a good text, it was none other than his own student Zeng Gong.
According to common sense, this article deserved to be the first place, but at this time, Ouyang Xiu played Xiaojiujiu in his heart, giving his students the highest score, would it be too ugly to eat? He finally endured the pain of cutting love and gave a second. As a result, when the test paper was unsealed, I saw a strange name - "Su Shi".
Yes, it was Su Dongpo, the great literary scholar who later occupied half of the Chinese literary world. Fortunately, when he went to the Rebbe re-examination, Su Shi won the first place with "Spring and Autumn Confrontation". This could make Ouyang Xiu feel a little better in his heart.
After Su Shi passed the entrance examination, he wrote a letter to Ouyang Xiu, expressing his gratitude to the teacher, and showed the article he had written before to the teacher, and Ouyang Xiu was applauded by the case.
He praised Su Shi in a letter to his friend Mei Yaochen, who once recorded such a sentence: "Reading ShiShu does not feel sweating, hurry up!" The old man should avoid this person and let go of a head."
The translation is, I Ouyang Xiu, reading Su Shi's articles, are sweating, very ashamed, I will leave him a little farther in the future, because he dumped me several streets.
Although Su Shi is quite talented, after all, he is still a fledgling hairy boy, but Ouyang Xiu is already a leader in the literary world, and he does not hesitate to blacken himself and elevate the students, and there is only this cute old master.
With the endorsement of Ouyang Xiu, Su Shi soared in the capital and was red in every corner. Each of his new works will immediately spread throughout the capital, and all of them are 100,000+ blockbusters.
As for Su Shi's father, Su Xun, Ouyang Xiu was even more indispensable.
At the beginning, Su Xun took his two sons to rush to the exam, and he followed behind to do service work, not because he did not want to take the exam, but because he was embarrassed to take the exam together. Because before this, he had not failed the exam twice, and he teased himself: "MorddenKoyi, the old man is like ascending to the heavens." ”
Now seeing his son "Dengkeyi", regretting that he did not sign up, was he destined to "ascend to the sky"? He had a stroke of genius and thought of a way. He approached Ouyang Xiu and asked him to give some advice to his article. Saying that it is an opinion, in fact, I want to be promoted. Sure enough, Ouyang Xiuhui saw the hero and thought that he had the style of Jia Yi in the Han Dynasty, which was amazing, and Ouyang Xiu also personally wrote a "Recommendation cloth Su Xun" to report to Song Renzong, and did his best to recommend him.
Since then, not only Su Shi has become red, but even his father "Boss Su" has also become red.
Because Ouyang Xiu cherished talents, a large number of unknown small characters stood out at that time and became Maxima.
But not every horse is grateful to Bole. For example: the famous Wang Anshi. When Wang Anshi was a herding official, after Ouyang Xiu met him, he wrote poems to praise him, but Wang Anshi was talented and showed a face of arrogance, but Ouyang Xiu was open-minded and did not mind at all.
However, Ouyang Xiu has a characteristic, for people who are not talented, they are not soft, they should get zero points, and they will never give you 1 point. Therefore, when it came time to put the list, those who were not admitted, especially those who wrote "Tai Xue Ti", thought that their level was very high but they fell off the list, and they were very angry, so they went to the street to make trouble, and even threatened: if Ouyang Xiu was caught, he would be beaten up. Fortunately, the emperor trusted Ouyang Xiu very much and did not let them succeed.
One of them was named Liu Ji, who later became a student of Ouyang Xiu. At the beginning, he also wrote "Taixue Body". But Ouyang Xiu thought that this style was not good, so he specifically stared at Liu Ji during the exam and gave him zero points every time. Later, Liu Ji changed his style and finally wrote an article that Ouyang Xiu appreciated. Ouyang Xiu felt that Liu Ji was a very learnable person, so he accepted him as an apprentice.
Ouyang Xiu's life is full of peach and plum, and when it comes to his appreciation of talents, some people once used a word "excitement", which is indeed appropriate.
Unlike ordinary people, Ouyang Xiu especially cared about the feelings and evaluations of the houlangs. In his later years, he often took out articles from his youth to revise. His wife saw that he was very old, and repeatedly advised him, "You are so old, you still bother with this." Are you still a child, afraid that Mr. Will scold you? Ouyang Xiu replied, "I am not afraid of Mr. Scolding, but I am only afraid of laughing later." ”
Author: Our special guest author Liu Mai