Fan Zhongyan was very diligent in studying when he was young, and he often studied hard all night. Although he lived a poor life, it did not shake his will to study. He tried to seek pleasure of life in books. At the age of 23, he went to the Academy of Yingtianfu, one of the four famous academies of the Song Dynasty, where he worked with established scholars and exchanged ideas with his fellow classmates. After reading a large portion of the Academy’s collection of books, his breadth of vision was greatly extended. His life at the academy paved the road along which he eventually became an erudite scholar. Besides, he developed into an expert on the classics of Confucianism and was well versed in poetry and prose.