Restart life

Chapter 76 0074 [Let Me Give You a Lesson]

"Li Jun, aren't you going to the multimedia classroom?"

"Chen Guiliang's lectures are utterly pointless! Let's go play basketball."

"That's not a good idea. We're classmates, we should at least offer our support."

"Whatever. Let's play basketball, let's play basketball together."

"..."

Li Jun held the basketball and shouted repeatedly, and sure enough, four or five boys didn't listen to Chen Guiliang's "lecture" but instead played basketball with Li Jun.

To support Chen Guiliang, the homeroom teacher moved the physical education class to that location.

Students in Class 11 of Senior Three can choose to engage in free activities or support Chen Guiliang.

Students from other classes, regardless of grade, can join in the fun as long as they are not in regular class.

Bian Guanyue and Wu Meng walked side by side, discussing in hushed tones.

"Do you know what he's going to say?" Wu Meng asked.

Bian Guanyue shook her head: "I don't know."

"How could you not know he borrowed your laptop to make lecture notes?"

"I really don't know, he's been acting all mysterious these past few days."

"I'm really looking forward to it; I'm sure they'll come up with something new."

"..."

The multimedia classroom is located in the laboratory building, which, like the library building, was also built during Principal Yan's tenure.

The laboratory building contains physics and chemistry labs, of course. There are also computer labs and multimedia classrooms specifically for lectures and large classes.

Computer classes have been offered in the first and second years of high school.

The reason Chen Guiliang initiated the petition to demand the return of computer fees was simply because the senior year curriculum was too demanding, and the grade group canceled computer classes, but the school forgot to refund the computer fees.

It could be due to poor communication between the grade level and the finance department, or it could be that the finance department is pretending not to know.

More likely, it's something everyone knows, but they'd rather avoid trouble!
Because refunds require a supervisor's signature, the process is complicated and could potentially offend the supervisor, the finance department simply chose to remain silent.

The money should have been sitting in the school's account. In the second week after Chen Guiliang initiated the joint petition, the school readily returned the money to the senior students.

……

As the students of Class 11, Grade 12, were heading to the multimedia classroom, school leaders were also accompanying media reporters.

There are also some Chinese language teachers.

When everyone arrived at the entrance of the multimedia classroom, they saw Chen Guiliang standing on the podium adjusting the equipment.

Immediately, a reporter took out a camera and snapped a few pictures of Chen Guiliang.

Among the school leaders, Zhong Dahe, the geography teacher and vice principal, was the most familiar with Chen Guiliang. He walked over and asked, "Can you handle this yourself?"

"no problem."

Chen Guiliang smiled and replied, then tested the microphone again: "Hello, hello, hello~~~"

Reporters from big cities, after a bumpy ride on the dilapidated roads yesterday, had low expectations for the school in this small county. But now, stepping into the multimedia classroom and seeing students adjusting the equipment, they realize that the school's facilities are actually quite good.

Principal Yan was very happy at this moment. His main purpose was to showcase the school's facilities and resources.

Especially the high-tech hardware, all of which were designed by him!
In the afternoon, he also arranged other activities, such as inviting some students into the electronic reading room and then inviting media reporters to visit and take photos.

The seats for leaders and reporters were quickly filled.

Before long, the students from Class 11 arrived and all took their seats in the teacher-student section. Some teachers and students from other classes also came to watch the excitement.

Chen Guiliang glanced at the clock on the wall, waited a moment, and finally spoke: "Respected reporters, leaders, teachers, and students, I am very happy to meet you all today and discuss some key points of high school Chinese language. I am just an ordinary student, not qualified to give a lecture, and I am only offering a few personal opinions. I hope this will spark discussion and be of little use to your reference..."

As he spoke, Chen Guiliang clicked the mouse, and the projector displayed the full text of "Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng".

"The Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng is a timeless masterpiece, and I'm sure everyone is very familiar with it. But when I was studying it, I also had some questions..."

"First, we should understand the subject matter of this article. What is a preface? Can anyone here answer that?"

Xu Haibo was very accommodating and immediately raised his hand.

Chen Guiliang smiled and said, "Please go ahead, student."

Xu Haibo stood up and said, "A preface is a foreword or introduction. It can be the preface to an article or a poem, or it can be the preface to a book."

"What about the Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion?" Chen Guiliang prompted.

Xu Haibo added, "It could also be the prelude to an event."

"Thank you, please have a seat."

Chen Guiliang clicked the mouse again, and the definition of the sequence appeared on the projection screen.

"The first type of preface is the introduction to a book or article. The second type of preface is a descriptive text of an event. So, which type does the 'Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng' belong to?"

Chen Guiliang looked at the press area: "Any reporters willing to answer?"

A reporter from the Rongcheng Business Daily quipped, "It's both. It's writing a preface for a banquet and also for his own poems."

Chen Guiliang shook his head: "It's almost impossible for both to happen simultaneously."

The reporter was taken aback, while the other reporters chuckled.

"【One line completes the poem, and four rhymes are formed.】The annotation in the Chinese textbook is: 'My poem is presented in four rhymes.' This indicates that I am writing a preface for my own poem."

Was Wang Bo really writing a preface for his own poems? Has anyone heard any interesting stories about this banquet?

Chen Guiliang looked down at the audience.

Class monitor Li Rui raised his hand and said, "Our Chinese teacher talked about this in class. The host of the banquet was the local governor, who wanted his son-in-law to shine. So no one else dared to write anything, or deliberately wrote very badly. But Wang Bo didn't understand social etiquette, and his 'Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng' amazed everyone. Because it was written so well, the governor wasn't angry and even praised Wang Bo as a genius. Wang Bo didn't have any official rank at the time, and no one respected him before he wrote the article, but he became famous after this article was written."

This story is widely circulated because it follows the typical "feigning weakness to deceive others" and "showing off one's power to get revenge" tropes.

Not only the students had heard it, but most of the reporters present had as well. Chen Guiliang clicked the mouse, pointed to the projection screen, and said, "I couldn't find the earliest source of this story. But it's recorded in the 'Biography of Wang Bo' in the New Book of Tang, which says that no one else dared to write it, but only Wang Bo dared to put pen to paper. The governor of Hongzhou was so angry that he went to the toilet. Every time Wang Bo wrote a few lines, his clerk would go to the toilet to report. Before he had even finished listening to an article, the governor was already calling him a genius."

"It is also said that Wang Bo did not need to carefully conceive his ideas. He would get drunk and sleep, and when he woke up, he would write without changing a single word. The term 'draft in the mind' comes from this story."

"Thanks to the school for opening the library, I was able to find the New Book of Tang."

Principal Yan was extremely pleased with the last sentence, and he also deserved credit for cultivating a literary genius.

Media reporters and school teachers and students listened with great interest and even learned the origin of the idiom "to have a draft in one's mind".

"The New Book of Tang is a complete fabrication!"

Chen Guiliang suddenly uttered a sentence, which was resounding and forceful.

The audience immediately perked up.

How dare a high school student assert that the New Book of Tang is a complete fabrication?
Chen Guiliang clicked the mouse again: "The imperial examination and officialdom in the Tang Dynasty were different from those in the Song, Ming, and Qing Dynasties. Although the Tang Dynasty also had the imperial examination, becoming an official mainly depended on recommendation. Family background was more important than the imperial examination."

"Wang Bo came from the Wang clan of Hedong, a branch of the Wang clan of Taiyuan. There is a line in the Three Character Classic: 'Among the five sons, there are Xunzi, Yang Xiong, Wenzhongzi, Laozi, and Zhuangzi.' Wenzhongzi is Wang Tong, who was Wang Bo's grandfather!"

"When the Song Dynasty compiled the Three Character Classic, they listed Wang Bo's grandfather alongside Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, and Yang Xiong as one of the Five Masters. You can imagine how illustrious Wang Bo's background was. In the Tang Dynasty, which valued lineage, would a local governor dare to show disrespect to Wang Bo?"

"When Ouyang Xiu compiled the *New Book of Tang*, he applied the Song Dynasty's officialdom to the text, without carefully researching the situation in the Tang Dynasty. At least in the section on Wang Bo, the *New Book of Tang* is absolutely fabricated!"

A reporter from the Shancheng Evening News raised his hand and said, "The Three Character Classic was written in the Southern Song Dynasty. Perhaps Wang Tong was not famous in the Tang Dynasty, but his status rose in the Song Dynasty."

"Also a possibility."

Chen Guiliang smiled and clicked the mouse, and a series of article titles appeared on the projection screen.

Chen Guiliang said, "The Collected Works of Wang Zian is very hard to find. It can't be found in Xinhua bookstores or online. Last week, I asked Principal Yan to take me to the Sichuan University of Science and Technology Library in this city, where I was fortunate enough to find a copy of the Annotated Collected Works of Wang Zian published in 1995."

"Wang Bo's collection of essays includes more than forty prefaces. Most of them, like the Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng, were written by Wang Bo at banquets. In other words, wherever Wang Bo went, he was a star, and he was the one who wrote the prefaces for banquets."

"Wang Bo died less than two years after writing the Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng, and most of these prefaces were written earlier than the Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng. Wang Bo was already famous, so how could the governor of Hongzhou dare to bully him? This also proves that the New Book of Tang is a fabrication."

The teachers and reporters in the audience had already been persuaded by Chen Guiliang.

Because the projection screen was densely packed with Wang Bo's prefaces to XXX. The titles of those prefaces were either related to banquets or travel, all referring to gatherings of officials and literati.

The story of Wang Bo being bullied by the governor of Hongzhou and discriminated against by the scholars present is definitely false.

The relevant content in the New Book of Tang is also false.

At every banquet, Wang Bo was always the most handsome man at the table!
Chen Guiliang continued clicking the mouse: "Many of Wang Bo's prefaces contain phrases such as 'one word per person,' 'one word per person,' 'one word per person,' and 'one word per person.' They are followed by phrases such as 'four rhymes' and 'six rhymes.'"

"If we follow the annotations in the Chinese textbook, this means he has finished writing his poem. Is it necessary to bring up this kind of nonsense every time?"

"Let's look at the banquet prefaces written by other poets of the Tang Dynasty."

Reporters, leaders, teachers, and students looked at the projection screen, which displayed excerpts from several prefaces by the Four Great Poets of the Early Tang Dynasty.

All of them contain phrases similar to "one word can be composed, and four rhymes can be formed".

Clearly, this is not just polite talk, but the standard format for a banquet preface.

Chen Guiliang continued, "When literati gathered to compose poems during the Sui and Tang dynasties, they also had to follow certain rules. The banquet organizers would select many words in advance as rhymes. Participants would be assigned a word on the spot, and their poems had to rhyme with that word. At the same time, there were also rules about how many lines to write."

"【One word per person】 means that everyone chooses one word to rhyme and writes a poem together."

"【Four Rhymes Complete】 means that all poems must have four rhymes and must be written in eight lines."

"These two lines are Wang Bo announcing the rules of poetry writing, not saying something like in a language textbook, 'I've written my poem well!'"

Everyone present, including the students, suddenly realized what was going on.

Principal Yan even clapped his hands on the spot and led everyone to applaud as well.

After the applause ended, Chen Guiliang continued:
"When writing poems at a banquet, there is a fixed format for the title, and you must specify which word you are assigned as the rhyme. This makes it easier for everyone to evaluate the quality and judge whether you have violated the rules."

"For example, Wang Bo's 'On the Third Day of the Third Lunar Month, I Rhymed with the Character '止' (zhi) at the banquet on the river, and Song Zhiwen's 'Accompanying the Dukes to Climb Mount Ji' with the Character '群' (qun)."

"Therefore, the poem about Tengwang Pavilion in the Chinese textbook is also a forgery!"

Chen Guiliang once again spouted outrageous remarks.

Many reporters sat up straight; they had news to write about this time.

"Why is the poem about the Pavilion of Prince Teng a forgery? First of all, its title does not conform to the format."

"Secondly, the poem 'The Pavilion of Prince Teng' has six rhymes, which does not conform to the rule of 'all four rhymes' given in the 'Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng'. The poem also changes rhymes midway through, which does not conform to the rule of 'one word per line' given in the 'Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng'."

Fearing that the audience wouldn't understand, Chen Guiliang circled and marked the six rhymes of "The Poem of Tengwang Pavilion" while he was making the PPT.

Then, Chen Guiliang summarized:
"The full title of the Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng is Preface to the Farewell Banquet at the Pavilion of Prince Teng in Hong Prefecture on an Autumn Day. This indicates that Wang Bo was attending a farewell banquet."

The correct translation of the last paragraph is: I am honored to be invited to the farewell banquet and have dared to record the grand occasion and leave a message. As for the task of writing poems and essays, I leave it to all of you present. I have taken the liberty of writing this preface and have assigned each of you one character as a rhyme. You must all write a poem of four rhymes and eight lines. Please show your talents to the fullest!

"Therefore, it can be concluded that the Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng was written after the banquet began and before the poetry was written. It is equivalent to the opening remarks of the banquet poetry gathering, in which Wang Bo, on behalf of the governor of Hongzhou, defined the nature of the poetry gathering and announced the rules."

Chen Guiliang put down the mouse and said to the audience, "Therefore, the Chinese textbook's annotation of 'one word is composed of four rhymes, and all four rhymes are completed' is ridiculously wrong, which leads to students' misunderstanding of the whole article and its creative background. Moreover, the 'Poem of Tengwang Pavilion' given at the end of the textbook is also a forgery."

"I suggest that this be changed when compiling the next Chinese language textbook."

"In addition, when compiling the textbook, they must have consulted many reference books. Those reference books are probably all wrong."

"The annotations in the 2002 edition of 'Guan Zhi Gu Wen' published by Jiangsu Ancient Books Publishing House that I bought are correct, while the 1988 edition of 'Guan Zhi Gu Wen' published by Yuelu Publishing House that my Chinese teacher bought is wrong. However, both editions of 'Guan Zhi Gu Wen' include forged poems in the appendix."

"I suggest we revise the relevant reference books as well!"

The media reporters on site were already brainstorming headlines.

A gifted young writer questions the Chinese language textbook and suggests that the education department revise it.

High school students cite classical texts to refute the errors in the New Book of Tang and Chinese language textbooks.

"A gifted teenager with profound knowledge of classical Chinese literature deserves special admission to a prestigious university."

"A Preliminary Discussion on the Defects of Contemporary Chinese Language Education: Why is the Expert Group of the Textbook Editorial Board Inferior to a Senior High School Student?"

(End of this chapter)