When Lin Shu was a child, his family was very poor, but he loved books too much to afford them, so he had to borrow them from others and return them at the appointed time. He once painted a coffin on the wall, next to which was written "If you study, you will be born, if you don't study, you will die in the coffin", and used these eight words as a motto to encourage and spur yourself. This famous saying means that if you live, you have to study. If you don't study, you might as well die. When he gets up at five o'clock, he often studies hard at midnight. Every night, he sat in front of the bright oil lamp sewn by his mother, holding a book and studying tirelessly. He won't go to bed until he has finished reading a book. Due to his poor family and the fatigue of study, he suffered from lung disease when he was 18 years old, and he often coughed up blood for ten years in a row, but he still insisted on studying hard in bed. By the age of 22, he had read more than 2,000 volumes of ancient books, and by the age of 30, he had read more than 1000 volumes.