A perfect score on the college entrance exam? The Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng has astonis

The surrounding crowd was still whispering among themselves.

Some people think the boy is just putting on an act.

Some people thought it would be embarrassing for him to go up there, while others were just there to watch the show.

Professor Li stood at the front of the crowd.

He was leaning on a cane with both hands.

His chin was slightly raised.

A cold smile played at the corners of his lips.

Chen Mo wrote the first sentence.

He did not write poetry.

"The ancients said that the goddess of this river was named Mi Fei."

The pen tip landed on the paper, writing a dozen or so words.

Some people in the crowd moved closer to take a look.

But it's too far away to see clearly.

Some people squinted, while others stood on tiptoe.

Someone held up their phone and zoomed in.

Finally, someone read those words aloud.

"The goddess of this river is named Mi Fei... Isn't this a poem?"

"Yeah, weren't we supposed to write poetry? What on earth is this?"

Who is Mi Fei?

"I don't know, it sounds like a person's name."

The dissenting voices spread like ripples on the water.

The boy with glasses frowned as he spoke.

"Shouldn't poems be five- or seven-character lines? This one has several characters in one line and doesn't rhyme, what kind of poem is it?"

His girlfriend chimed in.

"Exactly, the form is all wrong. Just write poetry, why bother with all this fancy stuff?"

A middle-aged man next to me stood with his hands on his hips, speaking loudly.

"Young man, they asked you to write a poem praising the Luo River, and what did you write? All this talk of gods and concubines—we common folk don't understand!"

The older woman next to him nodded in agreement.

"Exactly, exactly, they're just making things mysterious."

Su Wanci stood in the crowd, looking at Chen Mo's back, feeling somewhat puzzled.

诗？

She thought he would write a poem.

A quatrain or a regulated poem, four or eight lines, rhyming, and well-structured, just like the ones she learned in her textbooks.

But these are the things he wrote.

A sentence of varying lengths, not like a poem.

Anyone who comes here probably won't understand it.

Su Wanci pursed her lips, her fingers unconsciously clenching the hem of her skirt.

The female host held up the microphone, her expression somewhat subtle.

She doesn't understand classical Chinese poetry.

But she has been doing variety shows for so many years.

I've seen all sorts of performances.

What this boy wrote doesn't sound like poetry, so what is it?

She glanced at Professor Li.

I wanted to find the answer in the face of this old expert.

Professor Li was still standing there.

The cold smile on his lips hadn't yet faded.

This reassured her somewhat.

At least the old professor didn't immediately deny it, which means it's not too outrageous.

Professor Li stood still.

He leaned on his cane with both hands, the cold smile on his lips remaining perfectly still.

He could tell, of course—this wasn't poetry, it was prose.

The fu (赋) genre is more difficult to write than poetry.

It requires a higher level of classical Chinese proficiency.

It requires elaborate descriptions, parallelism, and allusions, and also pays attention to rhythm and style.

A high school student might not even be able to write a good poem.

You still dare to write a poem?

He sneered inwardly.

Young people, ignorant of their own limitations.

Do you think that stringing together a few classical Chinese sentences makes a prose poem?

Which aspect of the fu (a type of Chinese prose-poem) – its elaborate descriptions, parallelism, allusions, and rhythm – is one you can master?

He waited to see what kind of nonsensical thing the boy would write.

Then he spoke again, easily pressing the arrogant young man to the ground.

Let everyone see it clearly.

What is professionalism? What is profound knowledge?

What does "Your grandpa will always be your grandpa" mean?

But he still took two steps forward.

It wasn't because I was interested, but because of my occupational hazard.

Anyone who studies classical literature.

When I see someone writing in classical Chinese, I instinctively want to see what they wrote.

Just like a chef who always wants to taste someone else's cooking.

He walked to the edge of the pavilion, less than two steps away from the sheet of Xuan paper.

The cane tapped on the wooden boardwalk, making a "thud" sound.

He lowered his head, his gaze casually falling on the line of words Chen Mo had just finished writing.

"The ancients said that the goddess of this river was named Mi Fei."

His cane trembled slightly in his hand.

These seven characters are unremarkable.

The grammar is correct and the vocabulary is elegant, but there's nothing particularly outstanding about it.

Professor Li's brow twitched slightly.

Not too bad, at least there are no grammatical errors.

He waited to see the next sentence.

Chen Mo continued writing.

His writing speed is not fast, but very steady, and every stroke lands solidly on the paper.

The ink is even, neither too dark nor too light.

He wrote the second sentence.

"Its form is graceful as a startled swan, and lithe as a swimming dragon."

Professor Li's cane slipped from his hand.

It wasn't a slow gliding motion; it happened suddenly, as if my fingers had lost all strength.

The bamboo cane slammed straight onto the wooden boardwalk.

A crisp "snap" sound.

He didn't bend down to pick it up, and didn't even realize that his cane had fallen.

His entire attention was drawn to those eight words.

What did he see?

He saw a sentence written by an eighteen-year-old boy.

"Graceful as a startled swan, lithe as a swimming dragon."

He recognized every single one of these eight characters.

But when put together, he had never seen it in any ancient book.

This wasn't copied from some ancient text.

This was not a sentence from any of the poems he had ever read.

This was written by a teenager himself.

Even if such a sentence were placed in the "Zhaoming Anthology".

It is enough to make those timeless masterpieces pale in comparison.

His hands began to tremble.

It is enough to make those timeless masterpieces pale in comparison.

His hands began to tremble.

It wasn't because he was old, it was because he felt it.

What he was looking at was beyond all his understanding of the word "high school student".

People around him were still questioning it.

The boy with glasses was still saying, "What does this say? I can't understand it."

His girlfriend chimed in, "Exactly, it doesn't sound like poetry."

An older man next to me shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Young man, they asked you to write a poem, what is this? We can't understand it!"

Some people are even more direct.

"Could it be that you can't write poetry and just wrote a few random classical Chinese phrases to fool people?"

The voices grew louder, and the doubts multiplied.

Someone started laughing; the laughter wasn't loud, but it was jarring.

Su Wanci stood in the crowd and heard the laughter.

It felt like something had stabbed my heart.

She wanted to say something for Chen Mo, but didn't know what to say.

Because she didn't understand it either.

She could only stand there.

Looking at Chen Mo's back, seeing him with his head down.

She wrote those words she couldn't understand, stroke by stroke, feeling both anxious and pained.

Professor Li ignored those voices.

He didn't even hear those sounds.

All he could hear was the scratching sound of the pen tip gliding across the paper.

His eyes were fixed only on the words that were growing from the tip of his pen.

He took another step forward, almost standing to Chen Mo's side and slightly behind.

Bending over changes one's entire posture.

He was no longer that arrogant, condescending old professor.

Rather, he was someone who had been seized by something and forgotten his own identity.

Chen Mo continued writing.

He didn't look up.

He didn't know that Professor Li was standing less than a meter behind him, didn't know that the old professor had lost his cane, didn't know that he...

His expression had changed.

...

...