page_title: Lantingji Xu
section_title: Authenticity of the Lantingji Xu
hierarchical_section_title: Lantingji Xu / Authenticity of the Lantingji Xu
caption_attribution_description: English: 冠军帖
context_page_description: The Lantingji Xu or Lanting Xu, is a piece of Chinese calligraphy work generally considered to be written by the well-known calligrapher Wang Xizhi from the East Jin Dynasty.
  In the ninth year of the Emperor Yonghe, a Spring Purification Ceremony was held at Lanting, Kuaiji Prefecture where Wang was appointed as the governor at the time. During the event, forty-two literati gathered along the banks of a coursing stream and engaged in a drinking contest - cups of wine were drifting down from the upstream, and whenever a cup stopped in front of a guest, he had to compose a poem or otherwise drink the wine. At the end of the day, twenty-six literati composed thirty-seven poems in total and the Lantingji Xu, as a preface to the collection was produced by Wang on the spot. The original preface was long lost, but multiple copies with ink on papers or stone inscriptions remain until today.
context_section_description: Given there is not a single piece of original work of Wang survived in our time, the authenticity of the Lantingji Xu has been a subject of controversy particularly from the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1912) onwards. In the 1960s, the debate was intensified along with discoveries of more calligraphy rubbings and antique documentations.
  The voice of forgery, with a key representative Guo Moruo (1892 – 1978), the first President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, claims the Running Style only matured after the Tang dynasty as the artworks and records around the Han to Jin Dynasty imply a heavy dependence of using the Clerical script (evolved around 300 BCE) instead of the Running style, such examples include the stone inscriptions demonstrated in Figure 3 and 4. Moreover, the earliest anecdotes collection in China Shishuo Xinyu (“A New Account of Tales of the World”), annotated by writer Liu Xiaobiao (463 – 521), asserted that the preface written by Wang was actually named Linhe Xu (“The Preface to the Riverside Gathering”). The content of the Linhe Xu recorded in the Shishuo Xinyu, comparing with the Lantingji Xu manuscript, was shortened by a hundred and sixty-seven characters in the middle paragraph but added on forty more characters at the end. Guo also stated that the emotions manifested in the preface was overly pessimistic for an aristocrat so that it was not a true reflection of Wang’s temperament. As a result, by the early 1970s, the conclusion was almost reached that the Lantingji Xu scroll was a work forged by Wang’s descendant.
  The discussions revived from the 1980s, supporters of Wang’s Langtingji Xu countered the above arguments with rubbing examples such as Figure 5 and 6, suggesting the formation of the Running Style was already completed before Wang’s time. In addition, since the preface was named by the later ages of Wang, it is not surprising that more than one name may exist pointing to the same work. In fact, before Liu Xiaobiao’s annotations, the earlier version of the Shishuo Xinyu compiled by the first editor Liu Yiqing (403 – 444) was already referring to the preface by Wang as Lantingji Xu. The revision of the content may also be understandable as a common practice applied in the historical annotated books like the Shishuo Xinyu. When it comes to Wang’s ideology, by the time the preface was created, Wang was in his early fifties who had experienced chaos of the wars and disintegration of his nation. Hence, some scholars proposed that rather than pessimism, the content should be explained as a reflection of Wang’s Confucius, Buddhist and Taoist influences instead. These arguments, as a result, led to a broader recognition nowadays that the Lantingji Xu was originally produced by Wang.
caption: Figure 6 Zhangzhi, Guanjun Tie, 2nd century, stone rubbing. (Cursive Style)
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