1, no meat and no bamboo: "Eating without meat is better than living without bamboo" is a couplet written by Su Shi when he was growing vegetables in Dongpo, Huangzhou, and it was addressed to Su Xiaomei. The beautiful scenery on Dongpo is exotic flowers and plants. Su Shi is cheerful and romantic. When he was happy, Su Shi planted a large piece of bamboo in front of his house and watched his bamboo grow like mushrooms after rain, which naturally made him feel at ease. However, Su Xiaomei, who was born unruly, was unhappy, complaining that his brother wasted an acre of land and only knew how to have fun, but he didn't understand the hardships of life. In his view, we should plant more valuable herbs and vegetables, sell the money, live a good life and buy more fish to eat. So Su Shi wrote this couplet to his sister to persuade her. In Su Shi's eyes, people should live artistically under any circumstances. As a "four gentlemen", Mei Lanzhuju interprets life from different aspects. She should be brave and tenacious, live with heart and live with integrity. Su Shi admired her abstinence, especially the integrity of bamboo. Su Shi likes painting bamboo. He has a deep understanding of every leaf of bamboo and can appreciate some of the true meaning of life.

2. Get ahead: When Su Shi took the exam in Beijing, Ouyang Xiu, a famous literary master in the Northern Song Dynasty, presided over the exam. When he was examining and approving the paper, he was fascinated by Su Shi's gorgeous and superb writing style. In order to prevent favoritism, the papers at that time were all anonymous. Therefore, although Ouyang Xiu wanted to choose this article as the first, he felt that this article was very similar to that written by his favorite pupil Ceng Gong, and he was afraid of falling behind the crowd, so he finally rated the second. It was not until the list was published that Ouyang Xiu knew that the author of the article was Su Shi. After learning the truth, Ouyang Xiu regretted it, but Su Shi didn't care at all. Ouyang Xiu admired Su Shi's generosity and outstanding talent: "Such a talented young man should really make him stand out from the crowd (that's how idioms come from)!" And officially accepted Su Shi as an apprentice.

3. "Bones" are not cold: Su Dongpo lived in Huangzhou for several years. One night, he and his good friend monk Fo Yin went boating on the Yangtze River. When Su Dongpo raised his glass, he suddenly pointed to the riverbank and smiled without a word. Fo Yin looked around and saw a yellow dog gnawing at a bone. He realized something and threw a fan engraved with Su Dongpo's poems into the water. The two men looked at each other and couldn't help laughing. It turns out that this is a dumb couplet. The first part of Su Dongpo's couplet is: a dog gnaws at a river bone (monk), and the second part of Fo Yin's couplet is: Dongpo's corpse (Dongpo's poem).