Xiang Yang pored over it, and after seven days he had memorized all 2400-plus characters in the poem's 372 verses. With only a hazy understanding of what it meant, he started to copy it down. "I hoped to 'copy' it into the depths of my mind, so that later, when I understood the language, I could go back and ruminate on the poetry."
向陽痛下苦功，以 7 天的時間背下全文 372 句、二千四百多字，但詩中涵義仍然一知半解，於是開始抄寫，「當時希望把書『抄』進腦海裡，等將來能讀懂時再回來咀嚼。」