Song of the Pipa is a seven-character ancient-style poem written by Bai Juyi in 816 CE, during the Yuanhe reign of Emperor Xianzong of Tang. After being accused of exceeding his office in memorializing the throne, Bai was demoted to Jiangzhou, and later to the post of Sima there. The following year, while seeing off a guest at Penpu, he encountered a pipa player and, moved by her story and his own fate, composed this famous poem. Dong Qichang was also a master connoisseur of painting and calligraphy, and his theory of the Northern and Southern schools deeply influenced painting after the late Ming. His calligraphy sought the ancients without becoming rigidly antiquarian. This running-script Song of the Pipa, in sixty lines, is one of his representative works and is now in the collection of the Beijing Museum.