The Orchid Pavilion Gathering (353 CE) was a cultural and poetic event during the Six Dynasties era, in China. This event itself has a certain inherent and poetic interest in regards to the development of landscape poetry and the philosophical ideas of Zhuangzi.[1] The gathering at the Orchid Pavilion is also famous for the excellent quality of the calligraphy of Wang Xizhi (321-379[2]), who was both one of the participants as well as the author and calligrapher of the Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion, not to mention the literary quality of this introduction.
The Orchid Pavilion Gathering of 42 literati included Xie An and Sun Chuo (孙绰, 320?-380?[3]) and Wang Pin-Chih (fl. 400) at the Orchid Pavilion near Shaoxing, Zhejiang, during the Spring Purification Festival, on the third day of the third month, to compose poems and enjoy the wine. The gentlemen had engaged in a drinking contest: 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.
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There is a Orchid Pavilion Calligraphy College in Shaoxing University. The musical artist Jay Chou has a song "蘭亭序" (Lán Tīng Xù Orchid Pavilion), by Vincent Fang. Many versions of reproductions of the calligraphic masterpiece Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion yet exist.