Gan Long wrote more than 40,000 poems in his life. There are 48,000 Tang poems, but there are more than 2,200 authors. Qianlong's fighting power is catching up with more than 2000 poets. But what is embarrassing is that Gan Long wrote so many poems, but none of them can be circulated. As for flying snow, it is now included in primary schools, and the first three sentences are just like nursery rhymes. Without the last sentence, "flying into the reeds will be gone."
However, although Gan Long's poems are not very good, there is no denying that his cultural level is still very high. It is said that during the Qianlong period, when Gan Long entered the palace to take the exam, he made a couplet of "Yan Suochi Liu Tang" for those who took part in the exam. One candidate shook his head after seeing the couplets and said, "It's too difficult to write well." Then they turned their heads and left. Those candidates who didn't leave thought for a long time and found it really difficult to be right, so they had to give up.
Later, it turned out that the candidate who was too difficult was awarded the top prize, and the ministers were greatly puzzled. Didn't everyone answer this question? Why does the first quitter become the champion? Gan Long explained: "My couplet is a quatrain. The first person who said it was too difficult saw the mystery at a glance and chose to give up directly. Those who haven't thought about it for a long time don't know the difficulties until they take the time to think, from which we can see the competition of these people. "
Yan Suochi Liu Tang was not written by Qianlong, but was first seen in the Collection of Notes of Zhongzhou Caotang by Chen Zisheng in Ming Dynasty. Chen Zisheng made three comparisons for this, namely, "Yandang Pool Liu Tang, the lamp hangs down the threshold wave", "Yandang Pool Liu Tang, the bonfire pin plug" and "Yandang Pool Liu Tang, the bell sinks the desk lamp".
The difficulty of Yansuotangliu lies in that the radical of five words contains five lines of "gold, wood, water, fire and earth", all of which are on the left radical, and the artistic conception depicted is also quite charming. A pond surrounded by green willows, shrouded in hazy smoke, paints a quiet picture. It is really difficult to make a couplet that conforms to both the five elements and the artistic conception, or the artistic conception is inconsistent, or the antithesis is not neat.
As for Qianlong's use of this pair of palace entrance examinations, it can only be seen as a story. After all, in the Qianlong period, in order to better govern the country and make the people completely lose their independent thinking ability, the imperial examination has basically been delineated. As long as candidates can judge the right and wrong of Confucius and Mencius, and replace their own thoughts with Confucius and Mencius, it is not far from being an official in China.
There is also the Daxing Literary Prison during the Qianlong period, which accidentally fell into the unjust prison. Even if Qianlong is in a leisurely mood, candidates dare not talk nonsense, and court exams can't be so trifling. He only took one-on-one exams. The general court examination is mainly to ask questions and test students' problems in governing the country and safeguarding the country.
There is also a saying that when Gan Long went down to Jiangnan, he met the Jiangnan expedition. The two candidates were neck and neck, so Gan Long tried together. One of them turned and left, and the other one thought for a long time and left angrily. So Ganlong ordered the first one to go first.
Viewed from the side, this story should highlight the difficulties of "Yan Suochi Liu Tang". For hundreds of years, many scholars have tried to make couplets, and recorded a heroic couplet "Paozhenhai Pagoda" in The Continuation of Bridge Piles, which has been recognized as a standard antithesis for more than 200 years, but strictly speaking, "Paozhenhai Pagoda" is far from "Yansuochi Liu Tang" in artistic conception.
There are still many people making couplets for this swan song of "Liu Tang Baked in Salt Pond", and there are also some hilarious couplets, such as "Teppanyaki in Shenzhen" and "Shaoguo Liquor in Bancheng". I don't know if you have a good couple. Welcome to leave a message for discussion!