Wang Xizhi in the context of Orchid Pavilion Gathering

Semi-cursive script, also known as running script, is a style of Chinese calligraphy that emerged during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD). The style is used to write Chinese characters and is abbreviated slightly where a character's strokes are permitted to be visibly connected as the writer writes, but not to the extent of the cursive style. This makes the style easily readable by readers who can read regular script and quickly writable by calligraphers who require ideas to be written down quickly. In order to produce legible work using the semi-cursive style, a series of writing conventions is followed, including the linking of the strokes, simplification and merging strokes, adjustments to stroke order and the distribution of text of the work.

One of the most notable calligraphers who used this style was Wang Xizhi (303–361). Wang is known for the Lantingji Xu ('Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection'), a work published in 353 which remains highly influential to calligraphers throughout the Sinosphere. Semi-cursive script is prominent in modern Chinese society despite the lack of official education for it, a status aided by the introduction of fountain pens.

Shaoxing is a prefecture-level city on the southern shore of Hangzhou Bay in northeastern Zhejiang province, China. Located on the south bank of the Qiantang River estuary, it borders Ningbo to the east, Taizhou to the southeast, Jinhua to the southwest, and Hangzhou to the west. As of the 2020 census, its population was 5,270,977 inhabitants among which, 2,958,643 (Keqiao, Yuecheng and Shangyu urban districts) lived in the built-up (or metro) area of Hangzhou–Shaoxing, with a total of 13,035,326 inhabitants.

Notable residents of Shaoxing include Wang Xizhi, the parents of Zhou Enlai, Lu Xun, and Cai Yuanpei. It is also noted for Shaoxing wine, meigan cai, and stinky tofu, and was featured on A Bite of China. Its local variety of Chinese opera sung in the local dialect and known as Yue opera is second in popularity only to Peking opera. In 2010, Shaoxing celebrated the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the city.

Chinese era names, also known as reign mottos, were titles used by various Chinese dynasties and regimes in Imperial China for the purpose of year identification and numbering. The first monarch to adopt era names was the Emperor Wu of Han in 140 BCE, and this system remained the official method of year identification and numbering until the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912 CE, when the era name system was superseded by the Republic of China calendar. Other polities in the Sinosphere—Korea, Vietnam and Japan—also adopted the concept of era name as a result of Chinese politico-cultural influence.

In Chinese painting, danqing (Chinese: 丹青; pinyin: dān qīng) refers to paintings on silk and Xuan paper. Danqing is painted with an ink brush, color ink, or Chinese pigments using natural plant, mineral, and both metal pigments and pigment blends. Danqing literally means "red and blue-green" in Chinese, or more academically, "vermillion and cyan"; they are two of the most used colors in ancient Chinese painting.

Danqing is typically colorful and vibrant, and uses different colors to depict vivid landscapes, scenery, figures, portraits, plants, and animals. Some of the fundamental colors used in danqing are white, yellow, red, blue-green, and black.

The Lantingji Xu (traditional Chinese: 蘭亭集序; simplified Chinese: 兰亭集序; pinyin: Lántíngjí Xù; lit. 'Preface to the Poems Collected from the Orchid Pavilion'), or Lanting Xu ("Orchid Pavilion Preface"), is a piece of Chinese calligraphy work generally considered to be written by the well-known calligrapher Wang Xizhi (303–361) from the Eastern Jin dynasty (317–420).

In the ninth year of the Emperor Yonghe (353 CE), a Spring Purification Ceremony was held at Lanting, Kuaiji Prefecture (today's Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province), 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 "winding stream" drinking contest: cups of wine were floated on the water downstream, 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.