The story of "Sima Guang smashed the jar" has been questioned by many people, but this story has existed for a long time. Whether it is correct or not is difficult to verify. Ma Weidou, a famous cultural relic artist, questioned the truth of this story from a unique angle. The reason is that the technology of Song Dynasty can't burn a vat that may drown children. The technology of firing urns did not appear until the Yuan Dynasty, and so far no urns of the Song Dynasty have been unearthed.
We also try to question this story, because Sima Guang was only seven years old at that time, and his tool was a randomly picked stone. It can be inferred that Sima Guang is not only brilliant academically, but also a born Hercules. He is really both civil and military, and he has admired others since he was a child. According to the normal understanding, all seven-year-old children can do is that they are playing with mud and Sima Guang is smashing the jar. Everyone has seen how thick the cylinder is and it is not so easy to be hit. According to normal understanding, a seven-year-old child lacks the strength to smash a cylinder.
The opening is a cylinder and the necking is an urn. The cylinder mouth is larger than the cylinder mouth and the cylinder is higher than the cylinder. The manufacturing process of the urn is simpler than that of the cylinder, and the wall of the urn is much thinner than that of the cylinder, so the urn is more likely to be smashed. Some people will question whether there is an urn in the Song Dynasty. At the beginning of the Western Han Dynasty, I was jealous of Lady Qi and put her in the urn. It can be seen that the urn appeared in the Western Han Dynasty. There was also an allusion to "please enter the urn" in the Tang Dynasty, so there must be an urn in the Song Dynasty. Sima Guang's smashing of the jar is fake, because he didn't smash the jar, but also the urn.