Legend has it that Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty ordered a minister who was good at calligraphy to write the "Lanting Preface". Ouyang Xun's copy was the most realistic, so he carved it in stone. During the Qingli period of the Song Dynasty (1041-1048), Li Xuexu discovered it in Dingwu (now Zhengding, Hebei), so he called "Lanting Preface" written by Ouyang Xunlin the Dingwu version. Li Xuexuu put the mold on the stone and handed it over to the imperial palace, but his whereabouts were unknown later. The original stone was later owned by Xue Xiang, Xue Shaopeng and his son. When Xue Shaopeng carved the stone again, the five characters "turbulence, Dai, You, Liu and Tian" were missing. During the Daguan period (1107-1110), the original stone was placed in the Xuanhe Hall of Chang'an, but its whereabouts are unknown due to the Jingkang Rebellion.
This "Lanting Preface" was originally collected by Hao Tianting. Among the three copies of "Dingwu Lanting" collected by Hao, the best one contains the inscriptions and postscripts of all the officials in the Song Dynasty. Later, it was transferred to Wu Bing. The rubbings have Wu Bing's inscriptions and the white text " "Wu Bing's seal" (lower right corner), so it is called "Wu Bing edition", which is the so-called "five-character undamaged edition" before Xue Shaopeng lost five characters.
According to Mr. Qi Gong's "Text of Lanting Tie", this piece was collected by Renhe Xu Naipu and later flowed into Japan. The five characters are not damaged, but the rubbing is a little heavy, sometimes invading the mouth of the characters, and there are also places where later generations have inked, such as "Bei Ye" is changed to "Bei Fu", the hook of "Ye" is changed; "Sizuo" is changed to "Siwen" , all traces of the word "zuo" are lost. Later, there were people from the Song Dynasty who studied Huang Tingjian's writing style and recorded a comment by Empress Li, as well as Wang Rong, Wu Bing, Wei Su, Xiong Mengxiang, Zhang Shen, Ni Zan, Wang Yi, Zhang Shi, Shen Zhou, Wang Wenzhi, Yinghe, Yao Yuanzhi, Chongen , Wu Yusheng, Chen Jingtao, Chu Deyi and other postscripts.
