Copy of the “Half-Stele of Xingfu Temple” in running-standard script

During the Wanli reign period (1573-1620) of the Ming dynasty, a dredging project in the moat outside the southern wall of Chang'an (modern Xi'an, Shaanxi Province) exposed a broken grave stele from the Tang dynasty (618-907). This stele, which originally stood on the grounds of the Xingfu Temple located a short distance south of the city, contained the text that Bada Shanren transcribed in this twenty-leaf album.

The forms of the individual characters on the stone were ostensibly copied from authentic examples of running script by the famous calligrapher Wang Xizhi (ca. 303-ca. 361 C.E.), while an otherwise unidentified eighth-century monk named Daya was responsible for selecting, copying, and rearranging Wang's original characters into the new text. The stele originally contained thirty-five vertical lines of text with some fifty characters in each; however, only the bottom portion of the stone survived at the time of its discovery and each column of text was cut roughly in half. While these losses render a coherent reading (or translation) of the text impossible, numerous scholars and epigraphers have recognized the stele as one of the finest surviving examples of Wang Xizhi's calligraphy in running script, as it was understood and practiced during the Tang dynasty.

Bada Shanren's interest in the text was based solely on its calligraphic pedigree leading back to Wang Xizhi, but although he states in his postscript that he had "copied" the work, he actually executed this album in his own style of running-standard script, rather than as a close imitation of Wang's calligraphy. Working from a rubbing of the stone, such as the one displayed on the opposite wall, he wrote out the Half-Stele as a continuous whole and did not indicate breaks between the columns or places where the original text was missing. Despite some infelicities, Bada's rendition of the text is apparently among the earliest calligraphic transcriptions of the ancient stele known to survive.