During the Southern Dynasties, Emperor Wu of Liang commissioned Yin Tieshi to extract one thousand unique char…
During the Southern Dynasties, Emperor Wu of Liang commissioned Yin Tieshi to extract one thousand unique characters from the calligraphy of Wang Xizhi, each on a separate sheet of paper. These unordered characters were then handed to Zhou Xingsi, who composed them into a rhymed text with coherent meaning, thus creating the "Thousand Character Classic."