After entering the fame and fortune residence, Wang Xu found a place to sit down, raised his eyes and looked around.
It feels like entering a modern century-old store. It is full of calligraphy, paintings and couplets. Wang Xu knows several of them. They are either contemporary scholars or newcomers in the literary world. Obviously these people have been here and are still in the store.
The calligraphy treasure was left behind.
"Sir, are you staying in a hotel or eating?"
When Wang Xu sat down, a waiter came up to greet him.
While admiring the calligraphy and paintings on the wall, Wang Xu said: "I will also stay in a hotel and eat. I want a room in the hotel and a table of wine and food. Choose what I am good at."
"Okay, please wait a moment"
The waiter yelled and left, and soon wine and food were served, two cold, three hot, one steamed, one stewed, a pot of wine, and a small table was set.
After eating for a while, it tasted pretty good, and the dishes and drinks were both top-notch.
As soon as the accounts were settled and a new trick came, the waiter looked at him first, and then said: "I dare to ask, sir, are you a scholar with a good reputation?"
"how?"
Wang Xu was wearing a Confucian scholar's uniform. He put down his bowls and chopsticks, glanced at the clothes on his body, and said with a smile: "No one would dare to wear these clothes randomly, right?"
There are two types of scholars, those with fame and those without fame.
People without fame are not allowed to wear Confucian robes, not even at home, and wearing them out openly is a serious sin.
"That's nature, that's nature"
The waiter responded repeatedly and said: "We have a tradition in Mingliju. Payment can be divided into two types, payment or writing. If you are confident, you can pay with calligraphy. Whether it is poetry or calligraphy and painting, as long as the writing is good
, everything can be used as money here. Of course, if it’s too bad or inconvenient, just pretend I didn’t say anything.”
"This is where all the calligraphy and paintings on the walls come from?"
Wang Xu did not respond in a hurry, but glanced at the wall again.
With a respectful look on his face, the waiter replied: "You have really good eyesight. We are famous and rich, and have a history of at least 500 years here. There are no less than a thousand calligraphy, painting, couplets, and poems collected on the first floor.
The ones in the living room are not even one-tenth."
Wang Xu had heard before that some restaurants were only open to literati, and every year before and after the state examination, there was a literary feast.
It seems that fame and fortune are similar. Although rich people are not prohibited from entering, they pursue elegance but are not left behind. It doesn’t take much thinking to know that those who can put calligraphy and painting here, regardless of whether they are named or not, I am afraid that none of them are ordinary people.
.
"After the teacher left, I have been living in a low-key life for the past few years. I am indeed a bit low-key. Even people outside say that I am a talent. This time I came to Yangzhou to take the exam. It is impossible to be low-key. In this case, it is better to be high-profile once."
Wang Xu's thoughts changed and he looked at the diners in the lobby. He spotted the person and said, "Bring me a pen!"
The waiter waved his hand, and a waiter brought the pen and ink.
Holding the pen in his hand, Wang Xu thought for a moment and wrote: "Compassion for the farmers"
Compassion for farmers: It is noon on the day of hoeing, and the sweat drips from the soil. Who knows that every grain of food on the plate is hard work.
This poem of sympathy for farmers will be regarded as the moonlight in front of the bed in later generations. Basically anyone can hum a few lines.
However, few people know that this poem is an eight-line poem, preceded by four lines: "Sow a grain of millet in spring, and harvest ten thousand grains in autumn. There is no idle land in the world, and farmers still starve to death."
Wang Xu didn't write the first four sentences. Why not? First, the first four sentences can only be considered average, and second, the first four sentences are too annoying.
He was a reserve member of the Zhu Party. He wrote poems about how there was no idle land and farmers were starving to death. Wasn't this a satire of the gentry's annexation of land and a cry for the Cold Party's new policy? Of course, he couldn't write like that.
Only write the last four sentences, and remove those that are sarcastic, leaving only the persuasion that farmers should cherish their hard work and hard-earned food, which can be regarded as standard political correctness.
As for whether it is appropriate to write such a sour poem with a table full of food and wine, it actually doesn't matter at all.
Historically, Li Shen, who was born in the Tang Dynasty, rose to the position of prime minister, and wrote this poem of sympathy for farmers, was an elegant scholar who loved eating chicken tongue.
Legend has it that when Li Shen eats, he must order the dish of phoenix tongue. For one meal, he must kill three hundred chickens and only take the tongues of the chickens, leaving out the rest.
He also has a problem. The tongue of a slaughtered chicken must be thrown away after being removed, and it cannot be used for other purposes.
Li Shen had a concubine who thought it would be a pity to throw away the whole chicken, so she kept one chicken to make soup for dinner.
In the evening, when Li Shen was drinking soup, he saw that there was no chicken tongue in the chicken soup, and he immediately became furious.
Later generations of historians came out to clean up the matter and said that Li Shen ate the chicken tongue and threw the chicken away in order to help the poor people.
The poor people couldn't afford chickens, so they stayed outside Li Shen's house all day, picking up unwanted chickens and eating them back. Li Shen did this as a charity, not as a real luxury.
What is going on? We are not from the Tang Dynasty, so we can't explain it. Anyway, Li Shen's behavior has always been talked about by people. Compared with the poem about "who knows that every meal on the plate is made with hard work, it is far different."
Whoosh!!
After finishing a poem, a golden light shot up from the page into the sky.
The golden light formed four poems in mid-air, exuding dazzling light. The literary light climbed all the way up, and soon reached eight feet, which was only one step away from the nine-foot poem that formed the country.
"Poetry makes the state strong!"
Seeing the movement here, the diners in the lobby couldn't sit still.
Everyone here is either a scholar or a gentry, and no one is illiterate.
Seeing that this poem was only one foot away from conquering the country, someone exclaimed: "Who wrote this poem? Did it come to a great Confucian to gain fame and fortune?"
"It's not a scholar, he's a young man. He looks so young. Is he twenty years old?"
"There is such a poetic talent in the grade of 17 or 18. We don't have such people in Yangzhou, right?"
"Who says no? Have you forgotten that a few years ago, Xue Daru took care of the young man? That young man was so proud that he wrote several poems about the government in his teenage years!"
"Yes, I remember that person. The young man's name is Wang Xu. There has been no news about him in the past few years. Could it be that the person writing the poem now is him?"
Along with the surrounding discussions, the golden light slowly converged and turned into a page of golden book left on the table.
Wang Xu's gaze heralded his return and also heralded another addition to his resume.
Resumes are useful even if they are useful, and useless even if they are useless.
Normally you wouldn't use it, but when evaluating great Confucians or compiling history, it is indispensable.
If Wang Xu and someone else were to evaluate the Great Confucianism together, and the other person's poetry quantity and quality were not as good as his, if he chose one of the two, he would be more likely to become a Great Confucian than the other person.
Similarly, the more high-quality poems he writes, the more likely he is to be remembered. If he has dozens of such poems, he can bind a collection of Wang Xu's poems, let alone how many years he has
If he doesn't show up, even if he doesn't show up for decades, others won't dare to deny his talent.
In the past few years, Wang Xu has been keeping a low profile, but people secretly say that he has exhausted his talents. This is not because he has too few poems to prove that he is a literary giant and not a transient passerby.
"May I ask, sir, what do you call me?"
The shopkeeper of Mingliju trotted down the stairs and pulled Wang Xuhan to ask for help.
Wang Xu smiled slightly, cupped his hands to the people around him and said, "Xiaosheng Wang Xu, courtesy name Xunzhi, I have met you all."
"Wang Xuzhi, is it Wang Xuzhi who wrote that the world only thinks that gold is precious and does not ask God to buy a boy?"
A scholar stood up and asked Wang Xu.
Wang Xu listened, nodded slightly, and smiled.
Before the scholar could say anything more, a gentleman stood up again and continued: "There is a beauty like jade in the book, and there is a house of gold in the book. Where is this poem?"
"Yes." Wang Xu bowed his hands modestly as a greeting to everyone.
"Looking at the mountains from a distance, they are colorful, and hearing the water up close is silent. Spring has gone and the flowers are still there. Birds are not surprised when people come. Is this poem your work?"
When someone else asked, Wang Xu continued to nod. This poem was written by him in Jiangnan. The teacher took him to visit friends and met a painting master.
The master drew a landscape painting and asked Wang Xu to compose an impromptu poem. Wang Xu copied this poem.
"really!"
After hearing Wang Xu's answer, the surrounding gentry suddenly realized and looked at him differently.
Poetry about Zhenzhou is always a highlight when it comes to being a Jinshi. Wang Xu was not even a candidate, but being able to write poems about Zhenzhou was like a middle school student studying advanced mathematics.
It is conceivable that in less than a day, the scholars in Yangzhou Prefecture will know the news of his arrival.
Of course, this is what Wang Xu wants. He is still waiting for the scholars in Yangzhou Prefecture to help him spread his reputation.