Introduction
The Thousand Character Text (千字文；Qiānzì wén) is China's earliest and most widespread basic literacy text still extant, and it's still in limited use today in the study of calligraphy and classical Chinese. It was written by 周兴嗣 Zhōu Xìngsì (d. 521) of the 梁 Liáng dynasty, during what is now known as the Northern and Southern period of Chinese history.
As the story goes, the Liáng emperor 武 Wǔ (r. 502–547) sought a literacy text for his son. He had his scholars select a thousand unique characters from work that had been left behind by famed calligrapher 王羲之 Wáng Xīzhī (321–379) to be put to rhyme by Zhōu Xìngsì, a particularly well-learned and talented scholar. Zhōu had also written China's earliest extant example of a type of historical study known as a 实录 shílù—his being known as the 梁皇帝实录 Liáng huángdì shílù. For this new task, Zhōu crafted a rhyming text consisting entirely of four-character couplets with eight characters per line, divided into seven chapters. Allegedly, he wrote it all in only one night—legend has it that all of his hair had turned stark white before he had finished with his work. The child heir for whom the text was written would go on to close the circle: in his adulthood, he would compile the 文选 Wénxuǎn.
The resulting text was, in the centuries that followed, distributed throughout the Chinese-reading world and has ever since been a major source of inspiration for calligraphers, due in part to its unique feature of non-repeating characters—and for Chinese schoolteachers, tutors, students and general readers as well. This was especially true when a grasp of the classical written language was the key to success in a literary world. It was transmitted to Korea, where it was the most influential, becoming a basic part of literacy education that lasts well into modern times. Japan and Vietnam were similarly influenced. Interestingly, the author's distance in time from his country's recorded beginnings was about the same as our own distance from western classical antiquity. Japan was still in its prehistory during his lifetime.
Aside from Zhōu's passing on of his historical and cultural knowledge in succinct and simple poetry, the work's richness in grammatical forms and patterns and its classical elements of style and ellipsis made it a basic work to be mastered by all students in basic preparation for the traditional examination system in China, Korea and Vietnam, once the key to an official career. In 20th century South Korea it was the basis of hanja literacy education right down to the mid-1970s.
The necessary movement toward the vernacular written language in early 20th century China naturally moved the Thousand Character Text out of the educational mainstream and brought extensive criticism of it and of other traditional literacy texts, such as the Three Character Classic and Hundred Names, due to their outdated ideology, and general irrelevance to modern living and thought (and, to a certain degree, its inherent difficulty). Basically, the lexical items and structures aren't entirely relevant to the needs of modern life, and in the case of the ent over and over at higher levels. Of course, there was plenty of repetition in the rote memorization process. It was up to the teacher to expnad, or for the student to get adequate practice through self study and daily life. "Difficult to remember, easily forgotten" was a common criticism of Chinese character literacy training for children in modern times based on the traditional primers such as these.
Still, accumulated wisdom stands: why read Homer, Virgil, or Ovid? Must we reinvent ourselves and relearn constantly, the hard way, the lessons of long ago? The wisdom and relavency of much of the Thousand Character Text and of ancient China is startling in its clarity today, most clearly in its emphasis on the value of time and on the development of personal character, on doing what we now call "the right thing". And they are a rewarding introduction to the legends of early China and the Chinese view of the cosmos and life. The seven chapters deals with aspects of the world, nature, history, geography, society, and individual conduct while presenting, for practice, a basic set of characters at the core of the moral and intellectual world view of traditional China. Of course some of the content is superstitious, perhaps oppressive, or undemocratic, or gender biased by today's standards, but that is why a teacher is needed, to provide the historical understanding of the past, of its areas of darkness and ignorance, and place it in a constructive and progressive present context.
I have made extensive use of an illustrated modern GB Chinese text and introductory study notes published in China, edited by Xu Hairong in the 中国蒙学徒说 Zhōngguó méngxué túshuō series from 华夏出版社 Huáxià Chūbǎnshè (Beijing, 2001). It is apparently based on the very earliest commentary by the obscure Li Xian of the Northern Wèi. The simplified characters add a certain charm as well: hearkening back to an earlier time in the development of the Chinese language. It has been especially helpful in resolving the the differences between various texts I've seen in print and on the internet. The little Huáxià text, repleat with charming sketches that bring the text to life, also includes the other pīnyīn I have mentioned. The copy I have suffers only from a (very) few mistakes in pīnyīn transcription (mostly n/ng finals, probably typos in the first edition. Also, it duplicates a few characters that are now represented by a single simplified graph. To avoid this in a few places I used the permissible traditional forms (in brackets in the 新华字典 Xīnhuá Zìdiǎn) according to meaning, checking everything (including historical matters) with the other dictionaries old and new, including the 康熙词典 Kāngxī Zìdiǎn, 大汉和词典 Dàhànhé Cídiǎn, the ROC-era 词孩 Cíhǎi, Lù Ěrkuí's 词源 Cíyuán, 国语词典 Guóyǔ Cídiǎn, 中文大词典 Zhōngwén Dàcídiǎn, the Ricci Institute Sino-French Dictionary, and others. It is a bargain at 10元 (ISBN 7-5080-2584-9). Highly recommended, pocket sized for study at work in the paddy while perched between the horns of your Chinese ox. One of the above traditional primers, the aforementioned 三字经 Sān zìjīng, a work of the 10th–13th century 送 Sòng Dynasty, has been selected by the United Nations as part of the world heritage of children's literature. I hope that you enjoy these pages and your study of traditional Chinese and China through the Thousand Character Text. The time will be well spent. As the text tells us, in paraphrase, "an inch of time is more valuable than a foot of jade." To quote Franklin, at the dawn of the American republic some 1,300 years later: "if you treasure life, then treasure time, for time is the stuff of life itself."