There are four ways to write the word "fennel" for fennel beans, and this quote is from Lu Xun's Kong Yi Ji.

Original fragment:

"I secretly thought that I was still far from the rank of the shopkeeper, and that our shopkeeper never put fennel beans on the books; and, amused and impatient, lazily replied to him, "Who wants you to teach it, isn't it a back and forth back under the head of the grass?"

Kong Yiji showed a very happy look, tapping the long nails of two fingers on the counter, nodding his head and saying, "Right, right, right! There are four ways to write ...... the word back, you know?" I am more and more impatient, nu mouth to walk away. Kong Yiji just dipped his fingernails in the wine, want to write on the counter, see me unenthusiastic, then sighed again, showing a very sorry look.

"Kong Yijie" depicts Kong Yijie in the feudal corrupted thinking and under the poison of the imperial examination system, the spirit of pedantry, insensitive, life on the four bodies, poor and desperate, in the people's ridicule of bantering in the mix of time, and finally swallowed up by the feudal landlord class of the tragic image.

The book is not long, but it profoundly exposes the poisonous effect of the imperial examination system on the spirit of intellectuals and the "cannibalistic" nature of the feudal system at that time, and has a strong anti-feudal significance.

Expanded Information

Historical Background

Toward the end of the 19th century, the Qing government was corrupt and the people were in dire straits, and the imperial examination system, which had been practiced since the Sui and Tang dynasties, was still in full swing. A few scholars climbed to dominance, but most of the lower class intellectuals were poor and destitute. Kong Yiji, the protagonist of the novel "Kong Yiji," is such a typical character in Mr. Lu Xun's writing.

After the 1911 Xinhai Revolution, Yuan Shikai was proclaimed emperor, the restoration forces were rampant, and the fruits of the revolution were stolen. "Before and after the May Fourth Movement, the imperial examination system was abolished, but feudal culture and feudal education were still y rooted, and feudal education was still practiced in other ways, and the people were still in a state of lethargy and numbness.

The October Revolution of 1917, with a bang, sent Marxism-Leninism to China. Li Dazhao, an intellectual of the Chinese revolution, and others led and instigated the New Culture Movement, which railed against feudal culture and education. In order to angrily denounce the feudal system and culture, and to "depict the life of the society or a kind of life and invite the readers to take a look at it" in order to "draw the attention of salvation", Mr. Lu Xun, after "Diary of a Madman", wrote the novel "Kong Yijie" in the winter of 1918.

Baidu Encyclopedia - Kong Yijie