Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion

The Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion is a legendary Chinese literary gathering from 353 BCE. Respected calligrapher Wang Xizhi invited a group of esteemed scholars and poets to the scenic Orchid Pavilion, in modern-day Zhejiang province. They competed to write poems, then anthologized their works in a volume that has been preserved through generations of copies in paper, silk, and stone. Qian Gu, a landscape painter from the Ming Dynasty, modeled his 1560 rendition after an 11th-century composition by his predecessor Li Gonglin. Such copies were a way that artists refined their style while paying homage to the past. Read more about the Orchid Pavilion Gathering.