Chapter 46: Fu De Mei

In the following days, Lu Beigu reported to the Transport Commissioner's Office punctually every morning.

Because he left early and returned late, he hardly ever saw Li Pan, who lived in the same Qingyang Palace; Li Pan was busy networking and likely had no time to attend to him.

When Zhao Bian was busy with official duties, he let Lu Beigu study by himself under the plum tree in the courtyard; whenever he had free time, he personally instructed him, explaining in detail everything from phonetics and tonal patterns to the origins of allusions.

Lu Beigu's level in composing fu and poetry leaped from "completely clueless" to the realm of "having some insight."

Seeing Lu Beigu's rapid progress, Zhao Bian increased the workload: besides studying exemplary works from the Wen Yuan Ying Hua, he additionally made him write a short fu daily, with a time limit, and corrected it character by character.

Although Lu Beigu still found it difficult, he was no longer as bewildered and at a loss as at the very beginning; at least he could barely conform to the tonal patterns, and his use of allusions gradually became more accurate.

The "Three-Pass Character Refinement" in Zhao Bian's "Three-Pass Method" was very useful; after roughly understanding the phonetics and tones of characters, Lu Beigu became sensitive to many character-related issues and gradually began to easily judge whether the level tones and oblique tones of a character had obvious problems.

Zhao Bian also began to teach him how to complete the steps of "one pass for establishing the theme, two passes for refining the wording."

It sounds a bit mystical, but in fact it means first memorizing templates, then selecting the template corresponding to the format of different fu topics, and finally filling in the content.

Of course, that is what is said; in reality, it requires repeated training to become familiar with how to operate.

After Zhao Bian's strict training, Lu Beigu, regarding fu topics, although not yet reaching a brilliant level, at least rarely made obvious mistakes in basic allusion usage and tonal patterns.

Do not think the progress is small; in exams, sometimes it is not about comparing who is better, but comparing who is worse; when everyone's level is very poor, as long as you are not that poor, you are already considered outstanding.

The general characteristic of county school students is—rote memorization for the Tie Jing, painstaking effort for the Mo Yi, on-the-spot improvisation for the Ce Lun, and nonsensical fu and poetry.

Moreover, this characteristic is also very common among state school students.

For example, Zhou Mingyuan.

Although he did not obtain a Jie quota the year before last, he managed to pass the exam to become a Juren; regardless of whether there was a factor of extraordinary performance involved, his results must have ranked among the top in the state school.

But no matter how perfect his Tie Jing was, no matter how profound his Mo Yi was, his fu and poetry were simply not good.

Why was it not good?

Zhao Bian had a saying that was indeed not entirely meant to comfort Lu Beigu: "the literary qi flows through," which in common parlance means "having literary talent."

A person "with literary talent," when improvising on the spot, as long as their state is okay, the words they think of and the things they write are a whole notch stronger than others.

To illustrate with an extreme example: an ordinary person thinking hard and straining for a year cannot compare to Li Bai writing casually after drinking alcohol.

So what to do? No way.

This kind of thing belongs to talent, not to postnatal effort.

If you have it, you have it; if you don't, you don't.

Precisely because Lu Beigu had talent, insight, and knowledge, Zhao Bian was willing to cultivate him; for a genius, techniques are the easiest to master; what is feared is not content with techniques, but content without techniques.

Of course, whether one can find a good teacher willing to teach you the correct techniques is also a necessary condition.

If the teacher is incompetent, or unwilling to teach, or if what is taught is itself wrong, then it is definitely better not to learn at all.

After extensive training in fu topics, Zhao Bian also began to gradually teach Lu Beigu poetry topics.

This afternoon, Zhao Bian looked very leisurely; he took out a scroll of the Zhao Ming Wen Xuan: "Today we will not discuss fu, but discuss the source of poetry."

"Liu Yanhe once said, 'Poetry is to hold; it holds human nature and character; the essence of the Three Hundred Poems lies in the meaning of being without evil.' Tell me, what is the 'eye' of poetry?"

Lu Beigu pondered for a moment: "Is it the eye-catching sentence in the poem?"

"Not quite." Zhao Bian shook his head. "The poetic eye is not in the sentence, but in the meaning; for example, Wang Moji's 'In the vast desert, the lone smoke rises straight; over the long river, the setting sun is round.' The eye lies in the two characters 'straight' and 'round'; they not only depict objects precisely but also reveal the desolation of the frontier."

"Let us practice the 'Shi Tie Shi' common in the state exam; I will give the topic, and you compose it on the spot, pondering whether you can apply the technique of the 'poetic eye'."

Zhao Bian paused briefly in thought, pointed at the old plum tree in the courtyard, and said: "Take 'Plum' as the topic, five-character lines, restricted to the 'Xian' rhyme."

Lu Beigu sat upright, thought for a moment, and then began to write.

"Fu De Mei"

Frozen buds break the cold first, jade branches reflect the morning sky.

Fragrance floats on a thousand trees of snow, shadows fall into a stream of mist.

Jade bones, ice as the soul; Lone Mountain, the moon as the letter paper.

Do not say the spring news is late; pure qi fills the human world."

To be honest, not boasting, after writing this poem, Lu Beigu was shocked by himself.

Compared to the rhyme-riddled Shui Long Yin not long ago, he could finally avoid errors in tonal patterns now.

The significance was comparable to going from singing out of tune randomly to being able to stay on pitch just after formally starting to learn singing!

"—It seems progress can be made through learning!"

Lu Beigu felt delighted in his heart; making mistakes when not understanding tonal patterns was normal; now that he understood, wouldn't he not make mistakes?

However, he still carefully checked it once.

First, the tonal patterns: starting with "Oblique Oblique Oblique Level Level, Level Level Oblique Oblique Level" fully conformed to the Oblique Start Level End pattern; the first character of the last line, 'Mo', was slightly loose in oblique tone, but it fell within the scope of "ignore the first, third, and fifth," so there was no problem.

Looking at the rhyme words again: the four rhyme characters 'Tian', 'Yan', 'Jian', 'Jian'; the first three were normal, and the last one 'Jian' had a slight flaw, but according to the principle of adjacent rhymes being interchangeable, it was the same logic as "Life and death part us, like Can and Shang stars" using adjacent rhymes; to say there was any major problem, there wasn't; actually, he just preferred the word "Ren Jian" and couldn't think of a more suitable replacement for the moment.

Overall, except for the first character of the final couplet being slightly loose in tonal pattern, the tonal patterns of the whole poem fully conformed to the five-character regulated verse norms; the parallelism was especially exquisite; it could be said that the tonal patterns had reached a normal standard; especially the couplet "Fragrance floats on a thousand trees of snow, shadows fall into a stream of mist," which had quite the Tang poetry style.

"The way of fu and poetry is like polishing jade; your progress is very obvious."

After looking at it, a trace of surprise flashed in Zhao Bian's eyes.

Lu Beigu's progress was simply too fast!

This learning talent was almost visibly strong!

Just a few days ago, Lu Beigu was still in a very bewildered state regarding the tonal patterns and rhyming of fu and poetry, often making mistakes; yet after only a few days of intensive training, he had now become quite presentable.

For ordinary students, to reach this level, even a few months would be an understatement!

Therefore, Zhao Bian genuinely began to like this adopted disciple.

"In past years, Ouyang Yongshu composed the poem Hua Mei Niao; he changed the four characters 'Hundred turns, thousand sounds' dozens of times before obtaining the wonderfulness of the second half of the line 'Move at will.' Your two characters 'Po' and 'Fu' today have already grasped the true meaning of the Shi Tie Shi, but the 'poetic eye' still needs polishing and changing."

Afterwards, Zhao Bian took up his brush and made slight modifications, changing the third line to "Jade bones congeal ice soul; Lone Mountain embraces the moon in sleep."

"Do you understand why it must be changed this way?"

Lu Beigu pondered for a moment and said: "Roughly, changing to the character 'Ning' not only corrects the tonal pattern but also condenses the static with the dynamic, implicitly conforming to the principle in Liu Yanhe's Wen Xin Diao Long: 'Subtle meanings beyond thought, intricate beauties beyond text.'"

"Correct, you have insight."

After praising Zhao Bian, he continued: "As for changing 'Moon as a Letter' to 'Embracing the Moon to Sleep', first, it personifies the plum blossom; second, it adapts Lin Bu's 'Sparse Shadows Slanting' to endow the plum with aloofness, avoiding the directness of the character 'Letter' to appear more subtle and reserved."

What is a famous teacher? This is what a famous teacher is!

Not only is his own literary level high, but when correcting, he casually changes a few characters to lift the entire poem's temperament by a notch, and he can explain the intent clearly so that you understand and learn it.

"This student has received your teaching," Lu Beigu said.

"Very well, let us stop here for today."

Zhao Bian's expression softened; he was no longer in the serious posture of teaching, but chatting casually.

"I heard your family is in Gulin; have your ancestors lived here for generations? Did your father or grandfather enter officialdom?"

——————

① The *Selections of Refined Literature*, also known as the *Wen Xuan*, is the earliest existing anthology of poetry and prose in China. Organized by Xiao Tong, the eldest son of Emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty of the Southern Dynasties, it gathered scholars to compile works from over 130 authors spanning eight hundred years between the Zhou and Liang dynasties, collecting more than 700 pieces of poetry and prose. Because the *Selections of Refined Literature* selected materials rigorously, emphasized ornate language, and strictly distinguished the boundaries between poetry/prose and historical records, most of the selected works were elegant, so it has always been regarded as the literary textbook for ancient scholars.

② Shi Tie poetry originated in the Tang Dynasty and is a poetic form commonly used in imperial examinations, also called the "Fu De Style," named for the two characters "Fu De" often prefixed before the title. Bai Juyi's famous "Fu De: Sending Off Friends at the Ancient Plain" was written when he was sixteen to practice composing Shi Tie poetry on assigned topics. Shi Tie poetry is mostly five-character regulated verse of six or eight rhymes. It was one of the examination contents for the Jinshi degree from the Tang Dynasty to the mid-early Song Dynasty and was abolished during the reign of Emperor Shenzong. The time in the book is precisely when this poetic form was a common examination topic in the imperial exams.

(End of this chapter)