Top Scholar

Chapter 11 The Ancestral Brick-Lifting Memory Method

After reviewing the "Hundred Family Surnames" and the "Thousand Character Classic," Su Lu heard his aunt calling him to eat, and only then did he realize that his stomach was rumbling.

After a morning of intense studying, his stomach was completely empty; he had even digested all the sorghum porridge.

Lunch was naturally sorghum pancakes. The freshly steamed sorghum pancakes were soft and fluffy, suitable for both the elderly and children. Dipped in fermented bean curd, they were incredibly delicious! Su Lu ate three large pancakes in a row, making his aunt roll her eyes.

"Have you eaten yet? Come with me to deliver your food." It was his aunt who pulled him away from the table.

After Su Lu and her sister-in-law came downstairs, her aunt took out a small bowl of steaming hot egg custard from the big pot, with a few drops of sesame oil on it.

The old man had already finished eating and gone to lie down, leaving only the old lady and little Jinbao at the table. The two of them immediately started drooling.

The aunt gave each of the old woman and the young boy a spoon: "Eat quickly, it will taste fishy when it gets cold."

"Does Qiu-ge have any?" the old lady asked, swallowing hard. Little Jinbao also looked at her mother.

"Yes, I left some in the pot for him," Auntie replied casually, knowing that the old lady was not only hard of hearing but also forgetful.

"Oh." The old lady understood what she meant and started eating the steamed egg custard with Xiao Jinbao, taking turns.

~~
Meanwhile, Su Lu followed her aunt through the streets and alleys toward the drying ground.

The aunt patted the food basket and said, "Open your mouth wide, let me see if you have a sore throat."

"..." Su Lu subconsciously did as he was told, and his aunt quickly stuffed a peeled hard-boiled egg into his mouth.

Su Lu's eyes widened in disbelief, and he couldn't close his mouth for a moment.

"You've been studying hard, let me give you something to eat." The aunt whispered, "Eat quickly, don't let anyone see, it won't be good if it gets to your aunt's ears."

"Ugh..." Su Lu almost choked. It took a lot of effort to bite the egg and swallow it, then she let out a long sigh and said, "My aunt is so kind."

"Of course," the aunt said with a smile. "I saw there was steamed egg custard in the pot; I guess there won't be any for you..."

"That's normal." Su Lu smiled wryly. With so many young and old people in his family, he would never get any of the good stuff.

"From now on, your aunt will provide you with an egg every day. Study hard, get into the academy, and give your aunt a good slap in the face," the aunt promised.

"Hmm." Su Lu nodded, since he was going to take the entrance exam for the academy anyway.

As they spoke, the two arrived at the drying ground.

Dust filled the air on the threshing ground. People used wooden shovels to scoop up the harvested sorghum and tossed it into the air against the wind. The light husks, broken leaves, and dust were blown away by the wind, while the heavier sorghum grains fell to the ground; this was called 'winnowing'.

However, it is difficult to remove all the sorghum grains at once; it is necessary to repeat the process multiple times to ensure that the grains are separated.

After winnowing, the sorghum must be sieved again to thoroughly remove impurities before it can be spread out on the drying ground to dry in the sun.

Seeing his father and brothers covered in dust, with sweat leaving muddy creases on their faces and necks, Su Lu felt a strong sense of unease. He suddenly realized that the little bit of hard work he had put into practicing calligraphy was really insignificant.

"It's filthy here, go back!" Su Youcai waved his hand to shoo people away, saying, "If you don't want to suffer like this, go to the academy!"

"Yes, Father!" Su Lu nodded emphatically, taking a deep breath of the air mixed with the smell of grain and dust.

~~
After returning home, Su Lu washed her face and went back to her room to begin her afternoon pen-control practice.

He drew a hundred vertical lines stroke by stroke until his arm ached terribly, clearly still recovering from the morning's fatigue. But the power of the spirit is strong; just thinking of his father and brothers sweating profusely on the threshing ground made it impossible for him to stop.

After carefully drawing the eight hundred lines that afternoon, he felt like his right arm no longer belonged to him.

This couldn't go on, so Su Lu decided to strengthen his muscles and try to develop muscular arms as soon as possible.

So he found a brick to use as a dumbbell and did six sets of dumbbell curls. To balance, he did six sets with his left hand as well.

My aunt was picking vegetable leaves in the courtyard when she saw this and pouted, "Are you stuffed? I told you not to do any work and you still eat so much."

She already had a sharp tongue, and after Su Lu insisted on studying, she became even more sarcastic.

Upon hearing this, Su Lu couldn't help but sigh inwardly, wishing she were mute...

Fortunately, he was mature enough not to let her affect his mood. But if he didn't fight back, people would think he was easy to bully. So he said with a serious smile, "Auntie, you don't know, this is called the 'brick-lifting memory method'... I was able to suddenly have a breakthrough because I dreamed of a big bearded man wearing a square scarf and leaning on a bamboo cane, who taught me this method."

"Nonsense." Auntie naturally didn't believe it.

“If you don’t believe me, think about how many words I knew before? And think about how I am now.” Su Lu said, continuing his dumbbell curls, lifting the brick in front of him again and again.

"Hiss, it really is..." Auntie gasped. She knew Su Luyuan better than anyone.

“Look at me, it looks like I’m lifting a brick, but actually I’m using it to memorize texts.” Su Lu then said seriously, “As long as I keep this posture, I can remember everything I see and recite it backwards.”

"Nonsense..." Auntie's tone revealed a hint of doubt.

"You won't believe me, just watch." Su Lu then picked up a brick and began reciting fluently the "Primer of Prosody" he had just learned the night before:

"The moon is veiled in mist, clouds emerge from the mountains. The night is deep, the night watchman's drum is running. The mountain colors are deep green, the waves ripple with green. The lamplight illuminates the dusk, music and chess while away the day. The willows comb the wind, their branches long like jade, the crabapple blossoms after the rain are like rouge..."

This thing was catchy, melodious, and particularly impressive, leaving my aunt stunned and unconsciously craning her neck again...

"Now you believe it, right? This is what they call 'If you want to memorize well, you need to exercise. If you want to memorize quickly, you have to lift bricks.'" After reciting the long passage, Su Lu placed the bricks on the windowsill and sighed regretfully.
"Alas, it's a pity that Auntie can't read, so telling you won't help."

After saying that, he ignored his dumbfounded aunt, washed his hands, and went inside. His aunt stopped picking vegetables, first looked back at the portrait of Su Dongpo hanging in the main room, then turned back to look at the brick, shook her head, and said, "Nonsense, only a fool would believe that."

~
As soon as Su Lu sat down at the table, he put the jokes behind him and began to memorize "The Primer of Prosody" for the third time.

This time, he used copying to memorize, firstly because it makes the memorization more reliable, and secondly because it helps him master the writing of traditional Chinese characters as quickly as possible.

Su Lu seriously considered creating a simplified/traditional Chinese character comparison table, focusing on memorizing the simplified characters, but after thinking it over, he felt this method was inappropriate. Firstly, encountering a character would require first checking if it was on the comparison table; secondly, it would reinforce the contrast between simplified and traditional characters in his mind. Wouldn't that turn his mother tongue into a foreign language?
Let's gradually wear down the simplified characters in our minds through daily copying, so that they can be replaced naturally.

This method, though slower, is more reliable. Since memorization already requires a lot of copying anyway, it also helps practice handwriting—a triple benefit. It's actually more efficient and less burdensome than simply memorizing the simplified/traditional Chinese conversion.

~~
After dinner, Su Youcai continued to teach Su Lu.

First came the homework check. Su Youcai took the calligraphy practice paper from his son and checked his penmanship practice for the day.

Not only did Su Lu complete the task twice as much, but he also avoided the common problem of writing too much or breaking down halfway through. He drew each line very carefully, from the first to the last.

It's clear that Su Lu was carefully controlling his brushstrokes. Although there were occasional flaws, that was because he was using a worn-out brush... In fact, Su Youcai deliberately gave Su Lu a worn-out brush so that his brush control flaws would be more clearly exposed, forcing him to control the pressure more precisely.

Of course, it's bound to be stressful and painful... but special training should look like special training. Anyway, Su Youcai isn't suffering, so who cares about this or that.

However, the unscrupulous father was quite satisfied. It was evident from his writing that Su Lu possessed a calm and composed mindset, and was also very persevering. The term 'mature beyond his years' would be most apt.

Su Youcai couldn't help but sigh inwardly, if he had had this mindset back then, why would he have had trouble passing the imperial examinations?

'Damn it, it's made me feel inferior again…' He chuckled bitterly to himself, picked up his pen, drew a set of arithmetic progression lines from short to long, then reversed and drew another set from long to short, instructing Su Lu:

"Tomorrow, practice drawing lines of varying lengths again to improve your pen control."

"Yes." Su Lu nodded and wrote down the assignment.

~~
Next came the recitation check. Su Youcai jokingly asked, "You didn't finish reciting it all again, did you?"

"Pretty much," Su Lu said with a smile. "Father is right, 'The Primer of Prosody' is quite easy to memorize."

"Even if it's easy to memorize, you can't memorize it all in one day!" Su Youcai, somewhat exasperated, coughed and said:

"Then let me test you. The orchid garden is fragrant and beautiful in the spring breeze—"

“The autumn moon casts uneven shadows on the bamboo pavilion,” Su Lu replied without hesitation.

“The yellow flowers along the three paths are covered with frost-like powder—” Su Youcai added.

“A courtyard of fragrant grasses, glistening with dewdrops,” Su Lu blurted out.

“Speaking of spring sorrows, two purple swallows—” Su Youcai said.

“A yellow gull is brought back from its midday slumber,” Su Lu said.

"Not bad, kid. Give me a few tough ones." Su Youcai asked about twenty questions in a row, and Su Lu answered them all accurately. He then thought for a moment and said, "Contentment is the mark of a wise man; Shu Guang wrote a letter saying he was getting old—"

"Bending over in humiliation, Tao Qian resigned his post and returned home." But even this couldn't stump Su Lu.

"Having seen it all so many times, how many people truly understand human nature?"

"Extensive knowledge and broad memory, endless career and extensive research..." This kind of rhyming couplet is indeed too easy to memorize. As long as Su Lu hears the first line, he hardly needs to think, and the second line will automatically pop into his mind.

Su Youcai refused to believe it and tested him on a hundred rhyming couplets in one go, and he didn't get a single one wrong.

"Your memory is really strange, kid. I thought it would take you at least two days to memorize it." He was completely convinced. But still wanting to test Su Lu's limits, he handed him a thin book called "Ancient Classics":
"This book is similar to 'Sound and Rhyme Primer,' also a rhyming book of 5,000 characters. However, it is divided into sections by the number of characters, rather than by rhyme groups, so it is more difficult to memorize. Let's see if you can memorize it in a day."

"..." Su Lu considered that he didn't need to memorize the "Hundred Family Surnames" and the "Thousand Character Classic" tomorrow. He only needed to repeat the "Primer of Prosody" for the fourth time, so the review task was still quite light. He nodded and said, "I'll give it a try."

"Hmm." Based on Su Youcai's understanding of Su Lu, this kid's words were pretty much the truth.

He had Su Lu recite "Classified Ancient Texts" as usual to see if there were any unfamiliar characters. As it turned out, there wasn't a single unfamiliar character; he knew them all…

Su Youcai couldn't help but sigh, "If I taught all students like this, how many more years could I live? Of course, that's assuming they don't have too much pride..."

And so, today's lesson came to a pleasant end.

~~
Meanwhile, in the inner room on the west side.

"Are you out of your mind?" Uncle looked at Aunt strangely. "What are you going to do with a broken brick inside the house?"

In her hands, the eldest aunt was holding the brick that Su Lu had placed on the windowsill. She said with great seriousness, "You may not believe it, but as long as you hold this, you can memorize anything you read at a glance."

"Nonsense!" The uncle was utterly speechless.

“This is a method passed down from your Su family ancestors. Why don’t you try it? It won’t cost you anything. If it works, Chun-ge’er won’t have to study so hard…” But his aunt insisted on shoving the brick into his hand.

“I won’t lift it!” the uncle refused.

"Can you lift it or not?" Auntie's almond-shaped eyes widened.

"I just can't get it, I'd rather die than get it!" the uncle said firmly. "You unlucky woman, you've been made a fool of!"

"If you can't get it, then forget it." The eldest aunt was also getting angry, shoving the brick under her pillow. "When Chun-ge comes back, I'll make him try it himself!"

(End of this chapter)