The story of Tang Bohu's indifference to fame and fortune

Tang Bohu, also known as Tang Yin, was born in Suzhou in the Ming Dynasty. He has a gift since he was a child. At the age of sixteen, I took the scholar exam for the first time and won the first place, which caused a sensation in Suzhou.

At the age of twenty-nine, he went to Nanjing to take the provincial examination and won the first place in Xieyuan. Tang Bohu, a successful teenager, planned to take an exam in Beijing in the second year and embark on his career, but an unexpected thing changed everything.

This starts with a man named Xu Jing, who went to Beijing with Tang Bohu to catch the exam. Xu Jing is the son of a rich man in Jiangyin. This year, the examiners in Beijing were Cheng and Li Dongyang. They are very knowledgeable, but their questions are often so obscure that many candidates can't answer them. In order to get good grades, he bribed Cheng's servant privately and got the test questions. The examination questions are really difficult, and many candidates can't answer them, but two papers are well answered. Cheng casually said, "these two papers must be in harmony", but I didn't expect this sentence to lead to great disaster.

And visited Cheng many times after his arrival in Beijing, and asked him to preface his poems. This would have made others suspicious, and with what Cheng said, everyone suspected that Cheng missed the point.

So everyone began to beat the emperor in succession, hoping to investigate it. The emperor ordered the arrest of Cheng, Yu and others.

When he arrived in prison, he was tortured to extract a confession, saying that he bribed Cheng's servant and stole the test questions, but he also slandered knowing the test questions.

Of course, Tang Bohu achieved good results on his own, but others didn't believe him, which made Tang Bohu disheartened.

Although the matter finally came out, Tang Bohu, who achieved good results in the exam, was only sent to Zhejiang as a junior official. Tang Bohu thought it was a shame, unwilling to take office, and planned to stop being an official all his life.

Since then, Tang Bohu has traveled all over famous mountains and rivers, determined to devote his life to poetry, painting and calligraphy. Tang Bohu is gifted not only in literature, but also in painting. When I was very young, I learned from the great painter Shen Zhou. Through diligent study, he quickly mastered the painting skills and was praised by Shen Zhou.

The accumulation of childhood and his understanding of landscapes when he later abandoned his post made his paintings more artistic. While visiting all the famous mountains and rivers in China, he also painted many excellent works.

Then I returned to Suzhou, lived in a small building facing the street at the corner of the alley, and made a living by selling paintings. One summer, after swimming the lake alone, he went to a roadside hotel to drink. When he finished the account, he suddenly found that he had no money with him and no familiar people around him. He asked the liquor seller if he could get credit, but he was refused.

He saw the fan in his hand with his own hand-painted pictures on it. So he asked if he could pay the bill with the fan in his hand, but the other party refused.

Tang Bohu just shouted his fan. A monopoly was puzzled: "How much is a small fan worth?"

Tang Bohu handed the fan to the rich man to see for himself, but the rich man only looked at the fan and said it was worthless. He also threw the fan to the ground.

At this time, a scholar-like person picked up a fan and looked at it carefully, recognizing that it was written by Tang Bohu. After hearing this, the attitudes of people around you have changed. They surrounded Tang Bohu and rushed to buy the fans he painted, including the rich man.

Tang Bohu only sold it to that scholar. The scholar took out all the money, a * * *, only 12 taels of silver. The scholar was very embarrassed, but Tang Bohu only needed the scholar to pay him 5 taels of wine, and then gave the fan to the scholar.

Tang Bohu did not pursue fame and fortune in this way. He lived a poor and comfortable life until his death.