The source of allusions
On the third day of March in the ninth year of Yonghe (353), Wang Xizhi, a famous calligrapher and folk historian in Jin Dynasty, and 42 people, including Xie An and Sun Chuo, drank wine and wrote poems in Lanting, which became a much-told story. This Confucian style, appealing to both refined and popular tastes, has been passed down to this day. At that time, Wang Xizhi and others sat on the floor on both sides of Qingxi River in Lanting after the ceremony. They put the wine in the stream, slowly floated down from the upstream and crossed the winding stream. Whoever spins or stops in front of him has to improvise poetry and drink. According to historical records, in this competition, eleven people each wrote two poems, fifteen people each wrote a poem, sixteen people failed to write a poem, and each person was fined three times. Wang Xizhi collected everyone's poems, prefaced them with cocoon paper and eight-character pen, and wrote the world-famous Preface to Lanting, which was praised as "the best running book in the world" by later generations, and Wang Xizhi was also honored as "the book saint". Preface to Lanting Collection is also called Tiè.
The so-called "flowing water" is to choose an elegant and secluded place, where the literati sit by the water side of the winding waves in sequence, and one person puts a full glass of wine upstream to let it go down the river. Stop the glass in front of someone, take it and drink it, then get drunk or whisper or assist, and write a poem.