Preface to Poems Written at the Orchid Pavilion

"Preface to Poems Written in the Orchid Pavilion" is Wang Xizhi's most famous Chinese calligraphy, created in 353, and has extremely high artistic value. This work is known as one of three outstanding masterpieces of calligraphy.
Wang Xizhi describes a gathering of 42 literary men at the Orchid Pavilion near Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province during the Chance Festival (also known as Spring Purification, Double Three, or March 3), where they sipped wine and wrote poetry.

Wang Xizhi wrote the foreword for a collection of poems that were composed for the occasion. Wang Xizhi and company played the ancient game of Qu Shui Liu Shan, in which participants threw bowls of rice wine down a winding river. Near whom the cup stopped, he had to drink wine and compose a verse.

"Prefaces to the Orchid Pavilion".

"In the ninth year of the Eternal Concord motto, when Jupiter is in the sign of Gui-chow, at the beginning of the last month of spring, in the Orchid Pavilion, which is located in Kuai Ji county, Shan Yin town, we perform a purification rite. Worthy circle gathered, young and old together converged where there are high mountains and steep cliffs, lush forests and slender bamboo; where clean and fast streams pour from the left and right, along the bends of which we send the bowl by swimming. We sit one by one, and although there are no bamboo flutes, no silk strings to whom the cup floats, that verse reads - this is enough to say enough about deep feelings.

On this day, the sky is bright, and the air is clean, the blessed wind blows peacefully. Looking up, the greatness is visible to the universe; bowing your head, you can see the diversity of the world. Everything that the eye embraces in the openness of the senses brings delight to both the eye and the ear, truly delighting.

Together, people are only time, which is as short as a nod of the head. Some, revealing their cherished thoughts, talk to each other in rooms; others, playing with allegories, give freedom to their spirit outside the walls. Although there are thousands of different [people] that strive for one thing and reject the other, and those who are at rest are not the same with those who are in vanity, but each time we enjoy what we meet, for a short time being content or enjoying ourselves, we all do not realize that old age is close. Trying to keep up with all this, we get tired, our feelings change along with events, and now only sad sighs remain. What we enjoyed before, in the blink of an eye becomes only a trace of the past - and all this cannot but sadden our feelings. Again, even though the length or the shortness of life follows nature, in the end it ends. The ancients said: "Birth and Death are of the same size." But isn't it bitter?

Every time I see what inspired the ancestors, it is as if two broken halves of one whole add up; it has never happened that, having touched the letters, I did not feel sadness - but I am not able to explain this feeling. I know for sure that "death and life are all empty lies" and "a long-liver dies young" are just silly arguments. As we now look at the past generations, so the next will look at us - isn't it sad? Therefore, I keep a record of all those who are here with me - I write down everything they told. Although other generations will come and everything will change, but what will inspire will remain unchanged. And those that will read us later will also awaken the feelings of cultural creation. "
(353 g.)