Orchid Pavilion Gathering

The Orchid Pavilion Gathering of 353 CE, also known as the Lanting Gathering, was a cultural and poetic event during the Jin dynasty (266–420) of the Six Dynasties era, in China. This event itself has a certain inherent and poetic interest in regard to the development of landscape poetry and the philosophical ideas of Zhuangzi.^[1] The gathering at the Orchid Pavilion is also famous for the artistry of the calligraphy of Wang Xizhi,^[2] who was both one of the participants as well as the author and calligrapher of the Lantingji Xu (Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion). Sun Chuo also wrote a preface, which is somewhat less famous.^[3]

The Orchid Pavilion Gathering of 42 literati included Xie An and Sun Chuo^[4] and Wang Pin-Chih at the Orchid Pavilion (Lanting) on Mount Kuaiji just south of Kuaiji (present-day Shaoxing in Zhejiang), during the Spring Purification Festival, on the third day of the third month, to compose poems and drink huangjiu. The gentlemen engaged in a drinking contest known as "floating goblets" (流觴; liúshāng): rice wine cups were floated down a small winding creek as the men sat along its banks; whenever a cup stopped, the man closest to the cup was required to empty it and write a poem. In the end, twenty-six of the participants composed thirty-seven poems.