Wang Xizhi wrote the famous Preface to the Poems Collected from the Orchid Pavilion.
The gathering described in the preface took place in 353 CE at the Orchid Pavilion near present-day Shaoxing. Wang Xizhi composed the text after a poetry gathering in which guests floated wine cups along a winding stream and wrote poems when a cup stopped beside them.
The original manuscript was traditionally regarded as lost, but later copies and tracing versions preserved its text and calligraphic reputation. The work is particularly associated with semi-cursive, or running-script, calligraphy and is often called the Lantingji Xu.
Wang Xizhi lived during the Eastern Jin dynasty and became known in later tradition as the “Sage of Chinese Calligraphy.” The preface is admired for its changing brush energy and structure, not merely for the literary content of its reflection on life and mortality.