Zuo Si, a great literary figure of the Western Jin Dynasty, came from a humble family, was ugly in appearance, and stuttered when he spoke. Yet his writing was passionate and powerful, and he approached his craft with utmost seriousness. He once spent an entire year composing a rhapsody titled "Ode to the Qi Capital," but after it was finished, it made no impact at all.
But Zuo Si refused to give up, determined to write a new piece titled *Ode to the Three Capitals*—the capitals of the Three Kingdoms era: Shu's Chengdu, Wu's Jianye, and Wei's Yecheng. That year, when his sister Zuo Fen was chosen for the imperial palace, Zuo Si seized the chance to move to the capital Luoyang and continue his work.
Zuo Si had never been to Chengdu, so he sought advice from the imperial advisor Zhang Zai. Far from looking down on him, Zhang Zai, sensing Zuo Si's ambition to craft a masterpiece rivaling Ban Gu's "Two Capitals Rhapsody" and Zhang Heng's "Two Metropolises Rhapsody," offered encouragement. After asking about Zuo Si's plans and preparations, Zhang Zai warmly described the mountains and rivers of Shu's capital, Chengdu, in vivid detail.
When word spread that Zuo Si was writing *The Three Capitals Rhapsody*, the scholars of Luoyang mocked him for overreaching his abilities. But Zuo Si ignored their ridicule, immersing himself in his work with obsessive dedication. He placed paper and brushes everywhere in his home—his bedroom, study, courtyard, gate, even by the garden fence and the privy door—so that wherever he went, if a word or phrase came to mind, he would jot it down immediately.
After ten grueling years of relentless effort—writing, revising, and rewriting—the grand, richly detailed, and powerfully majestic *Sandu Fu* (Rhapsody on the Three Capitals) was finally completed.
At that time, the highly esteemed literary figure Huangfu Mi saw the "Three Capitals Rhapsody" and praised it endlessly, saying, "Ah! This is a successful masterpiece—I will write a preface for it!"
Huangfu Mi wrote a preface for the *Three Capitals Rhapsody* and recommended it to the imperial advisor Zhang Zai and the court secretary Liu Kui. After reading it, both were impressed by its quality, noting it covered famous landmarks, rare animals, and precious treasures, so they jointly annotated the work.
Soon, the widely learned Minister Zhang Hua saw the "Three Capitals Rhapsody" and could not help but exclaim, "Superbly written! It rivals the 'Two Capitals Rhapsody' and 'Two Metropolises Rhapsody,' truly a masterpiece for the ages."
After celebrities praised and promoted *The Odes of the Three Capitals*, the work spread rapidly through the capital as noble families sought to appear cultured, scholars wanted to learn its literary style, and officials followed the trend. The rush to copy it caused the price of paper in Luoyang to suddenly skyrocket.
Later, the idiom "Luoyang Paper Expensive" came to praise works that are deeply loved by the public and widely popular.
Source: *Book of Jin*, "Biography of Zuo Si"
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "洛阳纸贵" came to describe how works that are deeply loved by the public and widely popular.