📖 How to Read: The poem can be read horizontally, vertically, diagonally, in spirals, and many other patterns. Each reading path reveals different 4, 6, or 8-line poems. Click characters to explore their meanings and build your own poem sequences.
Explore Su Hui's 4th century masterpiece - a 29×29 character grid containing thousands of readable poems in multiple directions
Main paths
Secondary paths
Tertiary paths
Structural
Connectors
Click characters in the grid to compose your own poem sequences.
Su Hui (蘇蕙) was a brilliant 4th-century Chinese poet during the Sixteen Kingdoms period. According to legend, she created this extraordinary work to win back her husband Dou Tao after he took a concubine and was transferred to a remote desert post. When he received the poem and read it, he was so moved that he immediately abandoned his concubine and returned to Su Hui.
The Xuanji Tu (Picture of the Turning Sphere) is a 29×29 grid of 841 characters. Su Hui's original was embroidered or woven in five colors on silk. The genius of the work lies in its multi-directional readability: the same grid can be read horizontally, vertically, and diagonally in multiple directions, revealing thousands of distinct rhyming poems of various lengths.
The central character 心 (xīn, "heart/mind") is the emotional and structural center of the entire composition, representing the heart from which all poems emanate and to which all paths lead.