The Thousand Character Classic (千字文) is a Chinese poem used as a primer for teaching Chinese characters to children. It contains exactly one thousand unique Characters.
It is said that Emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty (r. 502-549) commissioned 周兴嗣 (pinyin: Zhou Xingsi, jyutping: Zau1 Hing3 Zi6) to compose this poem for his prince to practice calligraphy. The original title of the poem was 《次韵王羲之书千字》 and it is sung in the same way in which children learning Latin alphabet writing do with the "alphabet song".
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