The legendary Chinese leader Shun, among the Three August Ones and the Five Emperors that precede the semi-legendary Xia dynasty, had made the ingenious Yu, the Tamer of the Flood, his successor, passing over his own son.

(Later Chinese traditions will honor the legendary culture hero as shaper of the country’s waterways and the originator of bronze technology.)

The Daoist (Taoist) ritual known as Yu's Step, a dance in which one foot is dragged behind the other, commemorates the limp Yu supposedly developed as a result of his exhausting labors.)

The Si clan, from which Da Yu (Ta Yü), "Yu the Great," springs, inaugurates China’s Xia (Hsia) dynasty about 2070: this is the first dynasty to be described in Chinese historical records.

According to other Chinese literary sources, this earliest Chinese dynasty is derived from a leading member of the village agricultural units that cooperated in valley defense against perennial intrusions of mounted nomad bowmen from Mongolia and Manchuria to the north.

Yu dies, according to historical texts, at Mount Kuaiji (south of present day Shaoxing) while on a hunting tour on the southern frontier of his empire, and is buried here, where a mausoleum is built in his honor.

Instead of passing power to the person deemed most capable of rulership, Yu had passed power to his son, Qi, setting the precedence for dynastic rule.

The Xia Dynasty thus begins a period of family or clan control.

The royal Xia family eventually becomes corrupt, squandering the family fortune and good will of the people.

The fifth Xia king, Si Xiang, who rules in name only and spends most of his reign as a fugitive, is killed in a battle against Han Zhuo's two sons, Han Jiao and Han Yi; his pregnant queen manages to escape and gives birth a few months later to Si Shao Kang, a royal heir unknown to his people.

Sun Ce temporarily gives up attacking Ze Rong and focuses his forces on Qu'e.

After all the surrounding areas are taken over by Sun Ce, Liu Yao gives up the city and escapes south to Yuzhang (present-day Nanchang, Jiangxi), where he will later die.

As Sun Ce implements strict discipline among his troops, he wins the instant support of the local people and gathers many talented men, such as Chen Wu, Zhou Tai, Jiang Qin, Zhang Zhao, Zhang Hong, Qin Song, and Lü Fan.

He then pushes his force deeper into Yangzhou and conquers Kuaiji (present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang), whose governor Wang Lang surrenders.

Sun Ce makes Kuaiji his base city and strikes out at the wandering bandit army led by Yan Baihu.

Yan Baihu sends his younger brother Yan Yu to offer Sun Ce a position alongside Yan Baihu, but Sun Ce shows no mercy and personally slays the emissary.

As Yan Yu is known among Yan Baihu's men as a fierce warrior, his death strikes fear into their hearts and they are soon defeated.

Wang Xizhi, a member of an eminent family and a master of all types of calligraphic scripts, gains particular renown for his running script, or "hsing-shu," and his cursive script, or "ts'ao-shu."

Born in Linyi, Shandong, Wang spent most of his life in present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang.

He had learned the art of calligraphy from Lady Wei Shuo.

He excels in every script but particularly in semi-cursive script.

Unfortunately, none of his original works remains today.

An outstanding example of his work in “hsing-shu” is his Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion, the introduction to a collection of poems written by a number of poets during a gathering at Lanting near the town of Shaoxing for the Spring Purification Festival.

The original is lost, but the work is survived in a number of finely traced copies in existence, with the earliest and most well regarded copy being the one made between about 627 to 650 by Feng Chengsu; it is located in the Palace Museum in Beijing.

Experts consider his On the Seventeenth to be the best work in “ts'ao-shu.”

Traditionally referred to as the "Sage of Calligraphy", he leaves government service in 355 in his early fifties.

Wang Xizhi is particularly remembered for one of his hobbies, that of rearing geese.

Legend has it that he learned that the key to how to turn his wrist while writing was to observe how geese moved their necks.

There is a small porcelain cup depicting Wang Xizhi "walking geese" in the China Gallery of the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore.

The other side of the cup depicts a scholar "taking a zither to a friend".

Wang Xizhi has seven children, all of whom are notable calligraphers.

The most distinguished is his youngest son, Wang Xianzhi.

A Tang reproduction of one of Wang's calligraphy scrolls on silk with four lines, will be sold in China at an auction in 2010 for an amount equivalent to forty-six million dollars.

Xie Xuan, the Jin Dynasty general who is best known for repelling the Former Qin army at the Battle of Fei River, thus preventing the Former Qin emperor Fu Jiān from destroying Jin and uniting China, had after 386 apparently suffered a series of illnesses that had made it impossible for him to conduct any further campaigns and which also made him to repeatedly try to resign his command.

Eventually, he was made the governor of Kuaiji prefecture (roughly modern Shaoxing, Zhejiang)—an important, but almost entirely civilian, post.

He dies in 388 while still serving as the governor of Kuaiji.

…heads further southeast to attack Zhedong Circuit (headquartered in modern Shaoxing, Zhejiang) in winter 878, then, …