Chapter 109 Ying Wu

In 1883, Ma Yifu was born in a scholarly family in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province. He received a good family education when he was young. In addition, he was talented, had an excellent memory, and was known as a child prodigy in the local area.He started to write poems at the age of 8, and could read "Selected Works" and "Chu Ci" at the age of 9. When he was nine years old, his father hired Zheng Motian, a well-known Juren at that time, to teach Ma Yifu to study at home.But not long after, Mr. Zheng resolutely resigned.The father thought that his son was a bad boy and didn't listen to the teaching, which made the teacher angry.After careful questioning, I found out that the student was exceptionally talented and intelligent, and the teacher felt ashamed that he was incompetent and didn't want to delay the student's future, so he resigned voluntarily.

After the teacher left, his father occasionally taught Ma Yifu to read in person.But Ma Yifu spends more time studying by himself.From then on, Ma Yifu read a lot of books day and night, laying a solid foundation of knowledge. In 1898, when 15-year-old Ma Yifu took the Shaoxing (known as Kuaiji) county examination, he ranked first, far above Zhou Shuren and Zhou Zuoren Kunzhong (Zhou Zuoren 34, Zhou Shuren 37).The test questions are to ask everyone to extract ancient Chinese sentences and piece them together into a text, and the article is required to be written naturally and smoothly, as if the author wrote it himself, without any trace of dependence.It is very difficult for those who do not have a solid foundation in ancient prose to write this kind of collection of sentences, so it can be seen that Ma Yifu has a deep foundation in ancient prose.

In a later examination abroad, Ma Yifu and Zhou Shuren entered the examination room together again, and Ma Yifu still ranked first.