Xie An
The Orchid Pavilion Gathering (353 CE) of 42 literati included Xie An and Sun Chuo at the Orchid Pavilion near Shaoxing, Zhejiang, during the Spring Purification Festival 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. The "Preface ("Lantingji Xu")" to the poems is particularly famous in regard to the art of calligraphy.