At the age of 4, his father died of illness, and his mother took him to Suizhou (now Suixian County, Hubei Province) to live with his uncle. Ouyang Xiu's mother wants her son to study, but her family is poor and can't afford a pen and paper. She saw grass growing by the pond in front of her house, so she wrote on the mud with straw and taught Ouyang Xiu to read. Young Ouyang Xiu fell in love with reading very early under the education of his mother.