"Reading thousands of volumes, writing is like a spirit" is a famous saying of Du Fu, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty. Later generations have given different interpretations to these two lines of poetry. Qiu Zhaoao's "Detailed Notes on Du Shi" in the Qing Dynasty has three explanations for the word "po" in "Studying breaks through ten thousand volumes". One of them says: "The chest contains ten thousand volumes, so it is possible to have both sides." There is spirit in writing." The second said: "The book is broken, which is the same as the three unique things compiled by Wei. If you are familiar with it, the scroll will be easy to grind." The third one says: "See through the truth of thousands of volumes." These three theories reflect different understandings of the word "broken". To sum it up: break through, break through, see through.

The so-called "breakthrough" means to read more and "have a mind full of thousands of volumes", which means to read a lot of books. Wang Chong, a famous thinker in the Han Dynasty, said: "Those who are not well-read, do not know about the past and the present, do not see things, and do not know whether they are different or not, are like those who are blind, deaf, and have a nose." Any scholar with outstanding achievements in ancient and modern times, at home and abroad, is all diligent. A studious and well-read person. Wang Chong himself read nearly 13,000 volumes in his life and was "well versed in the opinions of hundreds of schools of thought", so he was able to write the great work "Lunheng".

The so-called "burning" means "the book is broken" due to familiar reading. When Confucius read "The Book of Changes" in his later years, the cowhide ropes used to compile the bamboo slips were worn out many times, which was the so-called "Three Wonders of Wei's Compilation". According to actual needs, select some books to read repeatedly to gain in-depth understanding and deepen memory. This is an effective reading method. Su Dongpo has a poem that goes: "I don't get tired of reading old books a hundred times. If you read them carefully and think deeply, you will know yourself." This is a talk from experience. If you don't read a book, it will be shelved in a high cabinet, and the book will be no more than a piece of waste paper; if you read it in a hurry, you will glance at it, "press the book and you will be there, cover the book and forget it." What's the use of reading more?

The so-called "seeing through" means reading carefully and thoroughly understanding the principles in the book. In intensive reading, firstly, we must grasp the key points and prefer to be precise rather than miscellaneous; secondly, we must delve deeply into the subject and strive to master it. "There is an ocean of books, available in all department stores, and one cannot absorb them all with all his energy." Therefore, when reading, one must be good at choosing and picking out the essence, and one must not read indiscriminately. Once you have chosen the key points and determined the main direction of attack, you must study deeply and assiduously until you truly understand it. Lu Jiuyuan, a philosopher of the Song Dynasty, said: "Learning must be done without covering anything." This means that learning must reach a point where there is no confusion. If you don’t pay attention to rationality when reading, aimlessly, and just read too much, you will inevitably be like Zheng Banqiao said: "Reading thousands of volumes, there is no suitable master in your mind."

No matter what the meaning of the word "broken" is, "reading hundreds of thousands of books" is applicable to people who specialize in academic research. For those who are scholars, it is "all the books are worth seeing". The books of the Tang Dynasty ranged from a few thousand words to tens of thousands of words per volume, and tens of thousands of books contained no more than 100 million words. It is equivalent to the amount of text in 300 books of 32 format and 500 pages today. For those who specialize in academic research, this amount of reading is far from enough. Therefore, the word "wan" in Du's poem should take the meaning of "very many", that is, "read more to have a good foundation in mind".