Cai Wenji, whose surname is Cai Mingyan and given name Zhaoji, should be called Cai Zhaoji. But in the Western Jin Dynasty, Sima Yan became the emperor. Sima Yan's father was named Sima Zhao. In order to record, study and inherit Cai Wenji's deeds and works, literary historians changed Cai Zhaoji to Cai Wenji to avoid the taboo of Sima Zhao in the Western Jin Dynasty. Cai Wenji got married when she was fifteen years old, and completed three marriages in more than ten years. The first time she was married to the Wei family, a prominent family in Hedong; the second time she was married to King Zuoxian of the Huns; and the third time, Cao Cao acted as a matchmaker and she married the captain of the field who was younger than her. What's more, all of this wasn't done under her father's care. Her father Cai Yong was killed in the summer when she was sixteen. A weak woman who lost her parents at the age of sixteen, married three times during the turbulent Eastern Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period, and completed the long and soul-stirring erotic narrative poems "Eighteen Beats of Hujia" and "Poem of Sorrow and Indignation". These poems are still recited by students and are even regarded as classics. And her calligraphy, elegant and natural, is still beyond the reach of many modern calligraphers after nearly two thousand years. More importantly, after Cai Wenji received the true calligraphy biography from her father Cai Yong, she taught calligraphy to Zhong Yao. Zhong Yao passed it on to Mrs. Wei, and Mrs. Wei passed it on to Wang Xizhi. To this day, Wang Xizhi's status as the "Sage of Calligraphy" has not shaken at all.
