Thousand Character Classic - 千字文 Qiān zì wén-采编：苏造办智慧商显15510033533
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The longest and last of the three language primers for schoolchildren to learn by heart was the thousand character classic. It consists of 1,000 unique characters (except for one see below) chosen as much for calligraphy practice as for common usage of characters. It is a great achievement to not reuse the same character in such a long piece but it makes the meaning go through many contortions. It was intended to be read aloud (just like the other classics for schoolchildren) in two related groups of four characters, most rhyming with the last. To order these 1,000 characters so that they rhyme and also do not repeat is an amazing feat. It was written about 550CE towards the end of the Period of Disunity. The story is that Emperor Wu ➚ of the southern Liang dynasty (r. 502-549), centered at Nanjing, wanted a new calligraphy exercise for his son. He had one thousand characters penned by the great sage of calligraphy Wang Xizhi. The scholar Zhōu Xìngsì 周兴嗣 took on the task of ordering them so that they made some sort of sense. The legend has it that he completed it all in one night but at the cost of turning his hair white. A variant of the story has Wang's revered pieces of calligraphy accidentally jumbled up and Zhou Xingsi put them back into some sort of order.
It became one of the most hated pieces of world literature as generation after generation of schoolboys were forced to copy out all the characters and memorize the whole piece. It remains well known in many Asian countries that use some Chinese characters including Japan and Korea.
The text gives a summary of all sorts of thing, from cosmology to food but does concentrate somewhat on the correct behavior of a government official. It was the aspiration to be a well paid and respected official that boys (and it was only boys) went through mental torture trying to memorize the whole thing.
For further information about this very influential work please read the notes at the bottom of this very long page.
The longest and last of the three language primers for schoolchildren to learn by heart was the thousand character classic. It consists of 1,000 unique characters (except for one see below) chosen as much for calligraphy practice as for common usage of characters. It is a great achievement to not reuse the same character in such a long piece but it makes the meaning go through many contortions. It was intended to be read aloud (just like the other classics for schoolchildren) in t
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