Thousand Character Classic - 千字文 (Qiānzì Wén)

The Thousand Character Classic (Chinese: 千字文; pinyin: Qiānzì Wén), also known as the Thousand Character Text, is a Chinese poem that has been used as a primer for teaching Chinese characters to children from the sixth century onward. It contains exactly one thousand characters, each used only once, arranged into 250 lines of four characters apiece and grouped into four line rhyming stanzas to make it easy to memorize. The Thousand Character Essay is the Chinese nation's earliest and most widespread basic literacy text still extant and in limited use today, mostly for calligraphy, personal improvement and preparation for study of classical Chinese. It was written by Zhou Xingsi (AD?-521) of the Southern dynasties' period Liang Dynasty, about 1,500 years ago.