1.
Loong Air
–
Loong Air is a Chinese airline with its headquarters in the Loong Air Office Building on the property of Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport in Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang. Its main hub is in Hangzhou, approved by the Civil Aviation Administration of China, it started domestic services in 2013. On 25 September 2013, the signed a memorandum of understanding with Airbus for the purchase of 20 Airbus A320 twin-engined aircraft. The companys full name is Zhejiang Loong Airlines Co. Ltd and it was originally a cargo airline named CDI Cargo Airlines, which started services in 2012 with one Boeing 737-300F freighter. Loong Air serves the Chinese domestic market with Hangzhou as its hub and its first flight started on 29 December 2013 from Hangzhou to Chongqing and Hangzhou to Shenzhen. As of June 2015 Sources： The Loong Air fleet consists of the following aircraft, ** The airline has a letter of intent with Bombardier for the purchase of 20 C-Series CS100
Loong Air
–
Airbus A320 with Loong Air livery at Toulouse-Blagnac airport
2.
Traditional Chinese characters
–
Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world
Traditional Chinese characters
–
Chinese characters
Traditional Chinese characters
–
Job announcement in a Filipino Chinese daily newspaper written in Traditional Chinese characters.
Traditional Chinese characters
–
A Series of Reading workbook in Traditional Chinese used in some Elementary schools in the Philippines.
3.
Simplified Chinese characters
–
Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time
Simplified Chinese characters
–
Chinese characters
Simplified Chinese characters
–
The slogan 战无不胜的毛泽东思想万岁 (Zhàn wúbù shèng de Máo Zédōng sīxiǎng wànsuì; Long live the invincible
Mao Zedong Thought) on
Xinhua Gate in Beijing.
Simplified Chinese characters
–
The first batch of Simplified Characters introduced in 1935 consisted of 324 characters.
4.
Standard Chinese
–
Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, and its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a language with topic-prominent organization. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants, Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There exist two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan, aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, while Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters. There are many characters that are identical between the two systems, in English, the governments of China and Hong Kong use Putonghua, Putonghua Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin, while those of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, use Mandarin. The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, history and it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or common tongue/speech, was different from the Guoyu. The former was a prestige variety, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different, Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called the speech of the modern man. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai, prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the term for Standard Chinese. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca, Huayu, or language of the Chinese nation, originally simply meant Chinese language, and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name Huayu to refer to Mandarin and it also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. The term Mandarin is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire, in English, Mandarin may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the language from other northern. Chinese has long had considerable variation, hence prestige dialects have always existed. Confucius, for example, used yǎyán rather than colloquial regional dialects, rime books, which were written since the Northern and Southern dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times
Standard Chinese
–
A poster outside of high school in
Yangzhou urges people to speak Putonghua
Standard Chinese
–
Zhongguo Guanhua (中国官话/中國官話), or Medii Regni Communis Loquela ("Middle Kingdom's Common Speech"), used on the frontispiece of an early Chinese grammar published by
Étienne Fourmont (with
Arcadio Huang) in 1742
5.
Hanyu Pinyin
–
Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
Hanyu Pinyin
–
A school slogan asking elementary students to speak
Putonghua is annotated with pinyin, but without tonal marks.
Hanyu Pinyin
–
In
Yiling,
Yichang,
Hubei, text on road signs appears both in Chinese characters and in Hanyu Pinyin
6.
Bopomofo
–
Zhuyin fuhao, Zhuyin or Bopomofo is a system of phonetic notation for the transcription of spoken Chinese, particularly the Mandarin dialect. The first two are traditional terms, whereas Bopomofo is the term, also used by the ISO. Consisting of 37 characters and four marks, it transcribes all possible sounds in Mandarin. Zhuyin was introduced in China by the Republican Government in the 1910s and used alongside the Wade-Giles system, the Wade system was replaced by Hanyu Pinyin in 1958 by the Government of the Peoples Republic of China, and at the International Organization for Standardization in 1982. The informal name Bopomofo is derived from the first four syllables in the ordering of available syllables in Mandarin Chinese. The four Bopomofo characters that correspond to these syllables are placed first in a list of these characters. The same sequence is used by other speakers of Chinese to refer to other phonetic systems. The original formal name of the system was Guóyīn Zìmǔ and Zhùyīn Zìmǔ and it was later renamed Zhùyīn Fúhào, meaning phonetic symbols. In official documents, Zhuyin is occasionally called Mandarin Phonetic Symbols I, in English translations, the system is often also called either Chu-yin or the Mandarin Phonetic Symbols. A romanized phonetic system was released in 1984 as Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II, the Commission on the Unification of Pronunciation, led by Wu Zhihui from 1912 to 1913, created a system called Zhuyin Zimu, which was based on Zhang Binglins shorthand. A draft was released on July 11,1913, by the Republic of China National Ministry of Education and it was later renamed first Guoyin Zimu and then, in April 1930, Zhuyin Fuhao. The last renaming addressed fears that the system might independently replace Chinese characters. Zhuyin remains the predominant phonetic system in teaching reading and writing in school in Taiwan. It is also one of the most popular ways to enter Chinese characters into computers and smartphones, in elementary school, particularly in the lower years, Chinese characters in textbooks are often annotated with Zhuyin as ruby characters as an aid to learning. Additionally, one newspaper in Taiwan, the Mandarin Daily News. In teaching Mandarin, Taiwan institutions and some communities use Zhuyin as a learning tool. The Zhuyin characters were created by Zhang Binglin, and taken mainly from regularised forms of ancient Chinese characters, the modern readings of which contain the sound that each letter represents. It is to be noted that the first consonants are articulated from the front of the mouth to the back, /b/, /p/, /m/, /f/, /d/, /t/, /n/, Zhuyin is written in the same stroke order rule as Chinese characters
Bopomofo
–
An example of a Zhuyin keypad for Taiwan.
Bopomofo
–
Table showing Zhuyin in
Gwoyeu Romatzyh.
7.
Gan Chinese
–
Gan is a member of the Sinitic languages of the Sino-Tibetan language family, and Hakka is the closest Chinese variety to Gan in terms of phonetics. Different dialects of Gan exist, the Nanchang dialect is taken as representative. Like all other varieties of Chinese, there is an amount of mutual unintelligibility between Gan Chinese and other varieties. Within the variation of Chinese dialects, Gan has more similarities with Mandarin than with Yue or Min, scholars in mainland China use Gan or Gan dialect. Jiāngxī huà is commonly used in Chinese, but since the borders of the language do not follow the borders of the province, this name is not geographically exact. Xi, an ancient name, now used, arising from the fact that most Gan speakers live south of the Yangtze River. Most Gan speakers live in the middle and lower reaches of the Gan River, the area of the Fu River. There are also many Gan speakers living in eastern Hunan, eastern Hubei, southern Anhui, northwest Fujian, in the early years of the Han Dynasty, Nanchang was established as the capital of the Yuzhang Commandery, along with the 18 counties of Jiangxi Province. The population of the Yuzhang Commandery increased to 1,670,000 from 350,000, the Yuzhang Commandery ranked fourth in population among the more than 100 contemporary commanderies of China. As the largest commandery of Yangzhou, Yuzhang accounted for two fifths of the population and Gan gradually took shape during this period, as a result of continuous warfare in the region of central China, the first large-scale emigration in the history of China took place. Large numbers of people in central China relocated to southern China in order to escape the bloodshed and at this time, also, during this period, ancient Gan began to be exposed to the northern Mandarin dialects. After centuries of rule by the Southern Dynasties, Gan still retained many original characteristics despite having absorbed some elements of Mandarin, up until the Tang Dynasty, there was little difference between old Gan and the contemporary Gan of that era. During this period, following hundreds of years of migration, Gan spread to its current areas of distribution, Guanhua evolved into a standard language based on Beijing Mandarin, owing largely to political factors. At the same time, the differences between Gan and Guan-hua continued to more pronounced. However, because Jiangxi borders on Jianghuai, a Guanhua, Xiang, after 1949, as a dialect in Mainland China, Gan faced a critical period. The impact of Mandarin is quite evident today as a result of governmental language campaigns. Currently, many youths are unable to master Gan expressions, there are differences within the Gan speaking region. For example, in Anfu county, which was categorized as Ji-Cha, people from one region cannot even understand people from the other region if they were not well educated or exposed to the other dialects
Gan Chinese
–
tones of Gan
Gan Chinese
–
Gan ua (Gan) written in
Chinese characters
8.
Cantonese
–
Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a variety of Chinese spoken in the city of Guangzhou in southeastern China. It is the prestige variety of Yue, one of the major subdivisions of Chinese. In mainland China, it is the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong and some neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. In Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese serves as one of their official languages and it is also spoken amongst overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and throughout the Western World. When Cantonese and the closely related Yuehai dialects are classified together, Cantonese is viewed as vital part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swathes of southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau. Although Cantonese shares some vocabulary with Mandarin, the two varieties are mutually unintelligible because of differences in pronunciation, grammar and lexicon, sentence structure, in particular the placement of verbs, sometimes differs between the two varieties. This results in the situation in which a Cantonese and a Mandarin text may look similar, in English, the term Cantonese is ambiguous. Cantonese proper is the variety native to the city of Canton and this narrow sense may be specified as Canton language or Guangzhou language in English. However, Cantonese may also refer to the branch of Cantonese that contains Cantonese proper as well as Taishanese and Gaoyang. In this article, Cantonese is used for Cantonese proper, historically, speakers called this variety Canton speech or Guangzhou speech, although this term is now seldom used outside mainland China. In Guangdong province, people call it provincial capital speech or plain speech. In Hong Kong and Macau, as well as among overseas Chinese communities, in mainland China, the term Guangdong speech is also increasingly being used among both native and non-native speakers. Due to its status as a prestige dialect among all the dialects of the Cantonese or Yue branch of Chinese varieties, the official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English, as defined in the Hong Kong Basic Law. The Chinese language has different varieties, of which Cantonese is one. Given the traditional predominance of Cantonese within Hong Kong, it is the de facto official spoken form of the Chinese language used in the Hong Kong Government and all courts and it is also used as the medium of instruction in schools, alongside English. A similar situation exists in neighboring Macau, where Chinese is an official language along with Portuguese. As in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominant spoken variety of Chinese used in life and is thus the official form of Chinese used in the government. The variant spoken in Hong Kong and Macau is known as Hong Kong Cantonese, Cantonese first developed around the port city of Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta region of southeastern China
Cantonese
–
Street in
Chinatown, San Francisco. Cantonese has traditionally been the dominant Chinese variant among Chinese populations in the Western world.
Cantonese
–
Gwóngdūng Wah / gwong 2 dung 1 waa 6 (Cantonese) written in
traditional Chinese (left) and
simplified Chinese (right) characters
Cantonese
–
Chinese dictionary from Tang dynasty. Modern Cantonese pronunciation is more similar to Middle Chinese from this era than other Chinese varieties.
9.
Southern Min
–
Southern Min, or Minnan, is a branch of Min Chinese spoken in certain parts of China including southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and southern Zhejiang, and in Taiwan. The Min Nan dialects are spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia. In common parlance, Southern Min usually refers to Hokkien, including Amoy and Taiwanese Hokkien, the Southern Min dialect group also includes Teochew, though Teochew has limited mutual intelligibility with Hokkien. Hainanese is not mutually intellgible with other Southern Min and is considered a separate branch of Min. Southern Min is not mutually intelligible with Eastern Min, Pu-Xian Min, any other Min branch, Hakka, Cantonese, Shanghainese or Mandarin. Southern Min dialects are spoken in the part of Fujian. The variant spoken in Leizhou, Guangdong as well as Hainan is Hainanese and is not mutually intelligible with other Southern Min or Teochew, Hainanese is classified in some schemes as part of Southern Min and in other schemes as separate. Puxian Min was originally based on the Quanzhou dialect, but over time became heavily influenced by Eastern Min, eventually losing intellegility with Minnan. A forms of Southern Min spoken in Taiwan, collectively known as Taiwanese, Southern Min is a first language for most of the Hoklo people, the main ethnicity of Taiwan. The correspondence between language and ethnicity is not absolute, as some Hoklo have very limited proficiency in Southern Min while some non-Hoklo speak Southern Min fluently, there are many Southern Min speakers also among Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Many ethnic Chinese immigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian and brought the language to what is now Burma, Indonesia and present-day Malaysia and Singapore. In general, Southern Min from southern Fujian is known as Hokkien, Hokkienese, many Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese also originated in the Chaoshan region of Guangdong and speak Teochew language, the variant of Southern Min from that region. Southern Min-speakers form the majority of Chinese in Singapore, with the largest group being Hokkien, despite the similarities the two groups are rarely seen as part of the same Minnan Chinese subgroups. The variants of Southern Min spoken in Zhejiang province are most akin to that spoken in Quanzhou, the variants spoken in Taiwan are similar to the three Fujian variants and are collectively known as Taiwanese. Those Southern Min variants that are known as Hokkien in Southeast Asia also originate from these variants. The variants of Southern Min in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong province are known as Teochew or Chaozhou. Teochew is of importance in the Southeast Asian Chinese diaspora, particularly in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sumatra. The Philippines variant is mostly from the Quanzhou area as most of their forefathers are from the aforementioned area, the Southern Min language variant spoken around Shanwei and Haifeng differs markedly from Teochew and may represent a later migration from Zhangzhou
Southern Min
–
Koa-a books, Min Nan written in Chinese characters
Southern Min
–
Distribution of Southern Min.
10.
Hokkien
–
Hokkien /hɒˈkiɛn/ is a group of Southern Min dialects spoken throughout Southeastern China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and by other overseas Chinese. Hokkien originated in southern Fujian, the Min-speaking province and it is closely related to Teochew, though there is limited mutual intelligibility, and is somewhat more distantly related to Hainanese and Leizhou dialect. Besides Hokkien, there are also other Min and Hakka dialects in Fujian province, the term Hokkien is etymologically derived from the Southern Min pronunciation for Fujian, the province from which the language hails. The variety is known by other terms such as the more general Min Nan or Southern Min. Fujianese and Fukienese are also used, although they are somewhat imprecise, the term Hokkien is not usually used in Mainland China or Taiwan. Conversely Hokkien is the name in Southeast Asia in both English, Chinese or other languages. Speakers of Hokkien, particularly those in Southeast Asia, typically refer to Hokkien as a dialect, people in Taiwan most often refer to Hokkien as the Taiwanese language, with Minnan and Holo also being used and 福建話 is not as common. Hokkien originated in the area of Fujian province, an important center for trade and migration. The major pole of Hokkien varieties outside of Fujian is Taiwan, the Taiwanese version mostly have origins with the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou variants, but since then, the Amoy dialect is becoming the modern prestige standard for the language. There are many Hokkien speakers among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia as well as in the United States, many ethnic Han Chinese emigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian, and brought the language to what is now Burma, Indonesia and present day Malaysia and Singapore. Many of the Hokkien dialects of this region are similar to Taiwanese and Amoynese. Hokkien is reportedly the native language of up to 80% of the Chinese people in the Philippines, Hokkien speakers form the largest group of overseas Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. Southern and part of western Fujian is home to four principal Hokkien dialects, Chinchew, Amoy, Chiangchew and Longyan, originating from the cities of Quanzhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou and Longyan. As Xiamen is the city of southern Fujian, Amoy is considered the most important, or even the prestige dialect. It is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, same as Amoy dialect, the varieties of Hokkien spoken in Taiwan are hybrids of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, and are collectively known as Taiwanese Hokkien or just Taiwanese. Used by a majority of the population, it bears much importance from a socio-political perspective, the varieties of Hokkien in Southeast Asia originate from these dialects. The Singaporeans, Southern Malaysians and people in Indonesias Riau and surrounding islands variant is from the Quanzhou area and they speak a distinct form of Quanzhou Hokkien called Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien. Among ethnic Chinese inhabitants of Penang, and other states in Northern Malaysia and Medan, with areas in North Sumatra, Indonesia
Hokkien
–
Distribution of Min Nan dialects. Hokkien is dark green.
11.
Old Chinese
–
Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty. The latter part of the Zhou period saw a flowering of literature, including works such as the Analects, the Mencius. These works served as models for Literary Chinese, which remained the standard until the early twentieth century, thus preserving the vocabulary. Old Chinese was written with a form of Chinese characters. Although the script is not alphabetic, most characters were created by adapting a character for a similar-sounding word. Most recent reconstructions also describe Old Chinese as a language without tones, but having consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, most researchers trace the core vocabulary of Old Chinese to Sino-Tibetan, with much early borrowing from neighbouring languages. During the Zhou period, the originally monosyllabic vocabulary was augmented with polysyllabic words formed by compounding, several derivational affixes have also been identified. However the language lacked inflection, and indicated grammatical relationships using word order, the earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at the Yinxu site near modern Anyang identified as the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1250 BC. These are the bones, short inscriptions carved on tortoise plastrons and ox scapulae for divinatory purposes. The language written is undoubtedly an early form of Chinese, but is difficult to due to the limited subject matter. Only half of the 4,000 characters used have been identified with certainty, little is known about the grammar of this language, but it seems much less reliant on grammatical particles than Classical Chinese. From early in the Western Zhou period, around 1000 BC, even longer pre-Classical texts on a wide range of subjects have also been transmitted through the literary tradition. The oldest parts of the Book of Documents, the Classic of Poetry and the I Ching also date from the early Zhou period, a greater proportion of this more varied vocabulary has been identified than for the oracular period. The four centuries preceding the unification of China in 221 BC constitute the Chinese classical period in the strict sense, there are many bronze inscriptions from this period, but they are vastly outweighed by a rich literature written in ink on bamboo and wooden slips and silk. Although these are perishable materials, and many books were destroyed in the burning of books and burying of scholars in the Qin dynasty, other texts have been transmitted as copies. Such works from this period as the Analects, the Classic of Filial Piety, the Mencius, the Classical Chinese of such works formed the basis of Literary Chinese, which remained the written standard until the early twentieth century. Each character of the script represented a single Old Chinese word, most scholars believe that these words were monosyllabic, though some have recently suggested that a minority of them had minor presyllables
Old Chinese
–
Zhou dynasty bronze inscription
Old Chinese
–
Seal script on bamboo strips from the
Warring States period
12.
Reconstructions of Old Chinese
–
Several authors have produced reconstructions of Old Chinese phonology, beginning with the Swedish sinologist Bernard Karlgren in the 1940s and continuing to the present day. Although the various notations appear to be different, they correspond with each other on most points. By the 1970s, it was agreed that Old Chinese had fewer points of articulation than Middle Chinese, a set of voiceless sonorants. Since the 1990s, most authors have agreed on a six-vowel system, several other kinds of evidence are less comprehensive, but provide valuable clues. These include Min dialects, early Chinese transcriptions of foreign names, Middle Chinese, or more precisely Early Middle Chinese, is the phonological system of the Qieyun, a rhyme dictionary published in 601, with many revisions and expansions over the following centuries. These dictionaries indicated pronunciation by dividing a syllable into an initial consonant, according to its preface, the Qieyun did not reflect a single contemporary dialect, but incorporated distinctions made in different parts of China at the time. The fact that the Qieyun system contains more distinctions than any single form of speech means that it retains additional information about the history of the language. The large number of initials and finals are unevenly distributed, suggesting hypotheses about earlier forms of Chinese, often characters sharing a phonetic element are still pronounced alike, as in the character 中, which was adapted to write the words chōng and zhōng. In other cases the words in a series have very different sounds both in Middle Chinese and in modern varieties. Since the sounds are assumed to have been similar at the time the characters were chosen, the first systematic study of the structure of Chinese characters was Xu Shens Shuowen Jiezi. The Shuowen was mostly based on the seal script standardized in the Qin dynasty. Earlier characters from bones and Zhou bronze inscriptions often reveal relationships that were obscured in later forms. Rhyme has been a consistent feature of Chinese poetry, while much old poetry still rhymes in modern varieties of Chinese, Chinese scholars have long noted exceptions. This was attributed to lax rhyming practice of early poets until the late-Ming dynasty scholar Chen Di argued that a former consistency had been obscured by sound change and this implied that the rhyming practice of ancient poets recorded information about their pronunciation. Scholars have studied various bodies of poetry to identify classes of rhyming words at different periods, the oldest such collection is the Shijing, containing songs ranging from the 10th to 7th centuries BC. The systematic study of Old Chinese rhymes began in the 17th century, gus analysis was refined by Qing dynasty philologists, steadily increasing the number of rhyme groups. A final revision by Wang Li in the 1930s produced the set of 31 rhyme groups. The Min dialects are believed to have split off before the Middle Chinese stage, for example, the following dental initials have been identified in reconstructed proto-Min, Other points of articulation show similar distinctions within stops and nasals
Reconstructions of Old Chinese
–
The start of the first rhyme class (東 dōng "east") of the
Guangyun rhyme dictionary
13.
Legendary creature
–
A legendary creature is an animal or part human described in non-historical stories that sometimes involve the supernatural. In the classical era, monstrous creatures such as the Cyclops, other creatures, such as the unicorn, were claimed in accounts of natural history by various scholars of antiquity. Some legendary creatures have their origin in traditional mythology and were believed to be creatures, for example dragons, griffins. Others were based on real encounters, originating in garbled accounts of travelers tales, such as the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, a variety of mythical animals appear in the art and stories of the Classical era. For example in the Odyssey, monstrous creatures include the Cyclops, Scylla, in other tales there appear the Medusa to be defeated by Perseus, the Minotaur to be destroyed by Theseus, and the Hydra to be killed by Heracles, while Aeneas battles with the harpies. These monsters thus have the function of emphasising the greatness of the heroes involved. Some classical era creatures, such as the centaur, chimaera, Triton, similarly, sphinxes appear as winged lions in Indian art. In Medieval art, animals, both real and mythical, played important roles and these included decorative forms as in Medieval jewellery, sometimes with their limbs intricately interlaced. Animal forms were used to add humour or majesty to objects, in Christian art, animals carried symbolic meanings, where for example the lamb symbolised Christ, a dove indicated the Holy Spirit, and the classical griffin represented a guardian of the dead. Medieval bestiaries included animals regardless of reality, the basilisk represented the devil. One function of animals in the Middle Ages was allegory. Unicorns, for example, were described as swift and unable to be caught by traditional methods. It was believed that the way for one to catch this beast was to lead a virgin to its dwelling. Then, the unicorn was supposed to leap into her lap and go to sleep, in terms of symbolism, the unicorn was a metaphor for Christ. Unicorns represented the idea of innocence and purity, in the King James Bible, Psalm 92,10 states, My horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn. This is because the translators of the King James erroneously translated the Hebrew word reem as unicorn, later versions translate this as wild ox. The unicorn’s small size signifies the humility of Christ, another common legendary creature which served allegorical functions within the Middle Ages was the dragon. Dragons were identified with serpents, though their attributes were greatly intensified, the dragon was supposed to have been larger than all other animals
Legendary creature
–
A carving of a dragon from
Imperial City, Huế in Vietnam
Legendary creature
–
Harry Kellar 's supernatural creatures
14.
Chinese mythology
–
Chinese mythology includes creation myths and legends, such as myths concerning the founding of Chinese culture and the Chinese state. As in many mythologies, Chinese mythology has in the past been believed to be, at least in part. Some myths are widely shared across multiple ethnic groups, but may exist as versions with some differences, historians have written evidence of Chinese mythological symbolism from the 12th century BC in the Oracle bone script. Legends were passed down for over a thousand years before being written in such as Classic of Mountains. Other myths continued to be passed down through oral traditions like theater, imperial historical documents and philosophical canons such as Book of Rites, Records of the Grand Historian, Book of Documents, and Lüshi Chunqiu all contain Chinese myths. Some myths survive in theatrical or literary formats as plays or novels, books in the shenmo genre of vernacular fiction revolve around gods and monsters. Examples include, Shangdi, also sometimes Huángtiān Dàdì, appeared as early as the Shang dynasty, in later eras, he was more commonly referred to as Huángtiān Shàngdì. The use of Huángtiān Dàdì refers to the Jade Emperor and Tian, Yu Di appeared in literature after the establishment of Taoism in China, his appearance as Yu Huang dates back to beyond the times of Yellow Emperor, Nüwa, or Fuxi. Tian appeared in literature c.700 BC, possibly earlier as dating depends on the date of the Shujing, there are no creation-oriented narratives for Tian. The qualities of Tian and Shangdi appear to have merged in later literature and are now worshiped as one entity in, for example, the extent of the distinction between Tian and Shangdi is debated. Nüwa appeared in no earlier than c.350 BC. Her companion, Fuxi, was her brother and husband and they are sometimes worshiped as the ultimate ancestor of all humankind, and are often represented as half-snake, half-humans. It is sometimes believed that Nüwa molded humans from clay for companionship and she repaired the sky after Gong Gong damaged the pillar supporting the heavens. Pangu, written about by Taoist author Xu Zheng c.200 AD, was claimed to be the first sentient being and creator, “making the heavens and these legendary rulers ruled between c.2850 BC to 2205 BC, before the Xia dynasty. The list of names comprising the Three August Ones and Five Emperors vary widely among sources, Emperor Ku, great-grandson of the Huang Emperor and nephew of Zhuanxu. Yao, son of Ku, Yaos elder brother succeeded Ku, Shun, successor of Yao, who passed over his own son and made Shun his successor because of Shuns ability and morality. These rulers are generally regarded as morally upright and benevolent, examples to be emulated by latter day kings, historically, when Qin Shi Huang united China in 221 BC, he felt that his achievements had surpassed those of all the rulers who had gone before him. He combined the ancient titles of Huáng and Dì to create a new title, Huángdì, Shun passed on his place as emperor to Yu the Great
Chinese mythology
–
"Nine Dragons"
handscroll section, by Chen Rong, 1244 AD, Chinese
Song dynasty,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA.
Chinese mythology
–
Nüwa and Fuxi represented as half-snake, half-human creatures.
Chinese mythology
–
Dragon-gods, from Myths and Legends of China, 1922 by
E. T. C. Werner
Chinese mythology
–
Spirit of the well, from Myths and Legends of China, 1922 by
E. T. C. Werner
15.
Chinese folklore
–
Chinese folklore encompasses the folklore of China, and includes songs, poetry, dances, puppetry, and tales. It often tells stories of human nature, historical or legendary events, love, the main influences on Chinese folk tales have been Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. Some folktales may have arrived from India along with Buddhism, others have no known western counterparts, Chinese folktales include a vast variety of forms such as myths, legends, fables, etc. A number of collections of tales, such as Pu Songlings Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. Chinese folklore has provided inspiration for Chinese writers and poets for centuries, folk songs which were originally partnered with dance and other styles of performing arts, provided inspiration for courtly poetry. Classical fiction began in the Han Dynasty and was modeled after oral traditions, while Yuan, Chinese folklore has provided inspiration for visual imagery by Chinese weavers, painters and watercolorists, florists. One of the most striking examples is a funerary banner that contains a number of stories from early China. Modern iterations of traditional Chinese stories can be found internationally as well as in native Chinese literature, laurence Yeps The Magic Paintbrush, Maxine Hong Kingstons The Woman Warrior, and Walt Disney Pictures Mulan all borrow from Chinese folklore traditions. The Classic of Poetry, the earliest known Chinese collection of poetry, contains 160 folk songs in addition to courtly songs and hymns. One tradition holds that Confucius himself collected these songs, while another says that an emperor compiled them as a means to gauge the mood of the people and the effectiveness of his rule. It is believed that Confucius did encourage his followers to study the songs contained in the Classic of Poetry, helping to secure the Classic of Poetrys place among the Five Classics. Around the 1910s, Chinese folklore began to gain popularity as an area of study with the beginnings of the movement to formally adopt Vernacular Chinese as the language of education, when writers neglected these sources, they lost touch with the people of the nation. A new emphasis on the study of folklore, Hu concluded, a rising sense of national identity was also partially responsible for spurring the new interest in traditional folklore. Some folklore enthusiasts also hoped to further social reforms by their work, to help improve the condition of the Chinese people, it was believed, it was necessary to understand their ideas, beliefs, and customs. Pre-Communist and Communist thinkers were especially energetic in this belief, in the time leading up to the founding of the Communist Party of China, many folk songs and stories were collected by Communist thinkers and scholars. Some folk tales and folk plays that exist today may in fact have been written by Communist authors to emphasise particular social morals. Chinese literature Chinese mythology Dance of China Music of China Lou Tsu-kuang, Asian Folklore, Women of China, Women in Chinese Folklore
Chinese folklore
–
The reunion of
The Weaver Girl and the Cowherd. Artwork in the
Summer Palace in
Beijing.
Chinese folklore
–
The Journey to eternal life of Lady Dai (Xin Chui). Mawangdui,
Hunan Province, about 168
before the Common Era.
16.
Bixi (mythology)
–
Bixi or Bi Xi, is a figure from Chinese mythology. One of the 9 sons of the Dragon King, he is depicted as a dragon with the shell of a turtle and they are also used at the bases of bridges and archways. Sculptures of Bixi are traditionally rubbed for good luck, which can cause conservation issues and they can be found throughout East Asia in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, and even the Russian Far East. The tradition of tortoise-mounted stelae originated no later than early 3rd century, according to the 1957 survey by Chêng Tê-kun, the earliest extant tortoise-borne stele is thought to be the one at the tomb of Fan Min, in Lushan County, Yaan, Sichuan. Victor Segalen had earlier identified the stele as a Han dynasty monument, present-day authors agree, the bixi tradition flourished during the Ming and Qing dynasties. He tightened the rules in 1396, leaving only the highest nobility, the type of dragons crowning the tortoise-born stele, and the type and number of other statuary at the tomb site, were prescribed by the same regulations as well. At the Hongwu Emperors own mausoleum, a huge bixi holding the so-called Shengde stele welcomes visitors at the Sifangcheng pavilion at the entrance of the mausoleum complex. The Hongwu Emperors tortoise tradition was continued by the later Ming and Qing emperors, occasionally, a foreign head of state was honored with a bixi as well, as it happened to the sultan of Brunei Abdul Majid Hassan, who died during his visit to China in 1408. The sultans grave, with a suitably royal bixi-based monument, was discovered in Yuhuatai District south of Nanjing in 1958, after an ancient Christian stele was unearthed in Xian in 1625, it, too, was put on the back of a tortoise. In 1907, this so-called Nestorian Stele was moved to the Stele Forest Museum along with its tortoise and these days, long-lost bixi continue to be unearthed during archaeological excavations nad construction work. Among the most remarkable finds is the discovery of a huge 1200-year-old in Zhengding in June 2006, the stone turtle is 8.4 m long,3.2 m wide, and 2.6 m tall, and weighs 107 tons. It has since moved to Zhengdings Kaiyuan Temple. The concept of a tortoise-borne, dragon-crowned stele was early adopted by Chinas northern neighbors and it is now in the provincial capital, Tsetserleg. Among them, the most accessible one is probably Bayanchur Khans s Terhin-Gol stele, later, the Jurchen Jin dynasty and the Mongol Yuan dynasty erected tortoise-based monuments as well, some of which have been preserved in Russias Ussuriysk and Mongolias Karakorum. In Japan, this form of tortoise-supported stele is primarily at the graves of prominent Kamakura period figures. Another large collection of tortoise-borne stelae, spanning 17th through 19th centuries, otherwise, the form does not seem to have been particularly popular in earlier or later times. In Korea, tortoise-borne stelae are known already during the Three Kingdoms of Korea period, monuments of this type have been preserved from the later Goryeo dynasty as well, such as the Stele of Bongseon Honggyeongsa. Vietnam also has a tradition of tortoise-born stelae, where they commemorate emperor Lê Lợi as well as the graduates of the Confucian academy at Hanois Temple of Literature
Bixi (mythology)
–
The
Harvard Bixi, donated by its
Chinese alumni
Bixi (mythology)
–
A dragon-headed bixi with a stele in memory of the
Qianlong Emperor 's rebuilding of the Chinese Bridge
Bixi (mythology)
–
A modern (1995) monument in Beijing
Bixi (mythology)
–
The Vinh Lang stele from
Lê Lợi 's mausoleum, erected in the 6th year of Thuận Thiên reign (1433)
17.
Chiwen
–
Chiwen is a chinese dragon, and one of the 9 sons of the dragon in Chinese mythology. He is depicted in imperial roof decorations and other ornamental motifs in traditional Chinese architecture and this Chinese dragon name chiwen 螭吻 compounds chi 螭 hornless dragon, young dragon and wen 吻 mouth, lips, kiss. Chishou 螭首 and Chitou 螭頭 are related architectural ornaments or waterspouts, chiwen and Chishou are not the character in chinese mythology. Chiwen 螭吻 is alternatively written chiwen 鴟吻, using the homophonous Chinese character chi 鴟 owl, sparrowhawk, the chiwei 鴟尾 and chimeng 鴟甍 are additional birdlike roof decorations. The chiwen is listed second or third among the Long sheng jiuzi 龍生九子, Nine Dragons, each one of those creatures have a protective function. The Nine dragon are also used in place names, such as Kowloon, in Hong Kong. According to the Ming Dynasty Wuzazu 五雜俎, The chi-wen, which like swallowing, are placed on both ends of the ridgepoles of roofs, welch describes chiwen as the dragon who likes to swallow things. This is the fish-like, hornless dragon with a very truncated body and large and his presence on roofs is also said to guard against fires. This dragon is found on the roofs of traditional Chinese homes today. In Fengshui theory, a chiwen or chiwei supposedly protects against not only fire, the Japanese language borrowed these names for architectural roof decorations as Sino-Japanese vocabulary. Shibi 鴟尾 ornamental roof-ridge tile is more used than chifun 螭吻 or shifun 鴟吻. In Japanese mythology, the Shachihoko 鯱 a mythical fish with a carps arched tail, tigers head and this 鯱 is a kokuji Chinese character invented in Japan that can also be read shachi for orca. The Dragon in China and Japan, partial text available on Google Books. The Nine Dragon Scroll, The Circle of the Dragon
Chiwen
–
A chishou
gargoyle
Chiwen
–
A golden
shachihoko on the roof of
Nagoya Castle
Chiwen
–
chishou at
Taiwan Confucian Temple.
Chiwen
–
Chiwen on the roof of Longyin Temple, Chukou,
Taiwan
18.
Snake
–
Snakes are elongated, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales, many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with their highly mobile jaws. To accommodate their bodies, snakes paired organs appear one in front of the other instead of side by side. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of claws on either side of the cloaca. Additionally, sea snakes are widespread throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans, more than 20 families are currently recognized, comprising about 500 genera and about 3,400 species. They range in size from the tiny,10.4 cm -long thread snake to the reticulated python of 6.95 meters in length, the fossil species Titanoboa cerrejonensis was 12.8 meters long. Snakes are thought to have evolved from either burrowing or aquatic lizards, perhaps during the Jurassic period, the diversity of modern snakes appeared during the Paleocene period. The oldest preserved descriptions of snakes can be found in the Brooklyn Papyrus, most species are nonvenomous and those that have venom use it primarily to kill and subdue prey rather than for self-defense. Some possess venom potent enough to cause injury or death to humans. Nonvenomous snakes either swallow prey alive or kill by constriction, the word ousted adder, as adder went on to narrow in meaning, though in Old English næddre was the general word for snake. The other term, serpent, is from French, ultimately from Indo-European *serp-, the fossil record of snakes is relatively poor because snake skeletons are typically small and fragile making fossilization uncommon. Fossils readily identifiable as snakes first appear in the record during the Cretaceous period. The earliest known snake fossils come from the marine simoliophiids. Based on comparative anatomy, there is consensus that snakes descended from lizards, pythons and boas—primitive groups among modern snakes—have vestigial hind limbs, tiny, clawed digits known as anal spurs, which are used to grasp during mating. The families Leptotyphlopidae and Typhlopidae also possess remnants of the pelvic girdle, front limbs are nonexistent in all known snakes. This is caused by the evolution of Hox genes, controlling limb morphogenesis, the axial skeleton of the snakes’ common ancestor, like most other tetrapods, had regional specializations consisting of cervical, thoracic, lumbar, sacral, and caudal vertebrae. Early in snake evolution, the Hox gene expression in the axial skeleton responsible for the development of the thorax became dominant, as a result, the vertebrae anterior to the hindlimb buds all have the same thoracic-like identity. In other words, most of a skeleton is an extremely extended thorax
Snake
Snake
Snake
–
Fossil of Archaeophis proavus.
Snake
–
An adult Barbados threadsnake,
Leptotyphlops carlae, on an
American quarter dollar.
19.
Dragon
–
A dragon is a legendary creature, typically scaled or fire-spewing and with serpentine, reptilian or avian traits, that features in the myths of many cultures around world. The two most well-known cultural traditions of dragon are The European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Balkans, most are depicted as reptilian creatures with animal-level intelligence, and are uniquely six-limbed. The Chinese dragon, with counterparts in Japan, Korea and other East Asian, most are depicted as serpentine creatures with above-average intelligence, and are quadrupeds. The two traditions may have evolved separately, but have influenced each other to a certain extent, the English word dragon and Latin word draco derives from Greek δράκων, dragon, serpent of huge size, water-snake. The Greek and Latin term referred to any great serpent, not necessarily mythological, a dragon is a mythological representation of a reptile. In antiquity, dragons were mostly envisaged as serpents, but since the Middle Ages, it has become common to them with legs. Dragons are usually shown in modern times with a body like a huge lizard, the European dragon has bat-like wings growing from its back. A dragon-like creature with wings but only a pair of legs is known as a wyvern. The association of the serpent with a monstrous opponent overcome by a deity has its roots in the mythology of the Ancient Near East, including Canaanite, Hittite. Humbaba, the fire-breathing dragon-fanged beast first described in the Epic of Gilgamesh, is described as a dragon with Gilgamesh playing the part of dragon-slayer. The folk-lore motif of the dragon guarding gold may have come from earlier Bronze Age customs of introducing serpents to village granaries to deter rats or mice. Although dragons occur in many legends around the world, different cultures have varying stories about monsters that have been grouped together under the dragon label, some dragons are said to breathe fire or to be poisonous, such as in the Old English poem Beowulf. They are commonly portrayed as serpentine or reptilian, hatching from eggs and they are sometimes portrayed as hoarding treasure. Some myths portray them with a row of dorsal spines, European dragons are more often winged, while Chinese dragons resemble large snakes. Dragons can have a number of legs, none, two, four, or more when it comes to early European literature. Dragons are often held to have spiritual significance in various religions. In many Asian cultures, dragons were, and in some still are, revered as representative of the primal forces of nature, religion. They are associated with wisdom—often said to be wiser than humans—and longevity and they are commonly said to possess some form of magic or other supernatural power, and are often associated with wells, rain, and rivers
Dragon
–
Sculpture of Mario the Magnificent, the dragon mascot of
Drexel University, by
Eric Berg
Dragon
–
Carved imperial Chinese dragons at
Nine-Dragon Wall,
Beihai Park,
Beijing
Dragon
–
Dragon
Dragon
–
Saint George Killing the Dragon, 1434/35, by
Martorell
20.
Emperor of China
–
The emperor was also referred to as the Son of Heaven, a title that predates the Qin unification and recognized as the ruler of all under heaven. In practice not every Emperor held supreme power in China, although this was usually the case, Emperors from the same family are classified in historical periods known as dynasties. During the Yuan and Qing dynasties China was ruled by ethnic Mongols, the orthodox historical view sees these as non-native dynasties that became sinicized, though some recent scholars argue that the interaction between politics and ethnicity was far more complex. Nevertheless, in both cases these rulers claimed the Mandate of Heaven to assume the role of traditional Confucian emperors in order to rule over China proper and he called himself Shi Huangdi, the First Emperor. In the 3rd century BC, the two titles had not previously been used together, on that account, some modern scholars translate the title as thearch. On occasion, the father of the emperor was still alive. Such an emperor was titled the Tai Shang Huang, the Grand Imperial Sire, the practice was initiated by the First Emperor, who gave the title as a posthumous name to his own father. Liu Bang, who established the Han dynasty, was the first to become emperor while his father yet lived and it was said he granted the title during his fathers life because he would not be bowed to by his own father, a commoner. Owing to political fragmentation, over the centuries, it has not been uncommon to have numerous claimants to the title of Emperor of All China, the Chinese political concept of the Mandate of Heaven essentially legitimized those claimants who emerged victorious. Thus, Kublai Khan was simultaneously Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor of China, on one count, from the Qin dynasty to the Qing dynasty, there were 557 emperors including the rulers of minor states. The Emperors words were considered sacred edicts and his written proclamations directives from above, in theory, the Emperors orders were to be obeyed immediately. He was elevated above all commoners, nobility and members of the Imperial family, addresses to the Emperor were always to be formal and self-deprecatory, even by the closest of family members. In practice, however, the power of the emperor varied between different emperors and different dynasties and these emperors ruled as absolute monarchs throughout their reign, maintaining a centralized grip on the country. During the Song dynasty, the power was significantly overshadowed by the power of the chancellor. The emperors position, unless deposed in a rebellion, was always hereditary, as a result, many emperors ascended the throne while still children. During these minorities, the Empress Dowager would possess significant power, where Empresses Dowager were too weak to assume power, court officials often seized control. Court eunuchs had a significant role in the structure, as emperors often relied on a few of them as confidants. In a few places, eunuchs wielded vast power, one of the most powerful eunuchs in Chinese history was Wei Zhongxian during the Ming dynasty, occasionally, other nobles seized power as regents
Emperor of China
–
Qin Shi Huang
21.
Yongle Emperor
–
The Yongle Emperor, personal name Zhu Di, was the third emperor of the Ming dynasty in China, reigning from 1402 to 1424. Zhu Di was the son of the Hongwu Emperor, the founder of the Ming dynasty. He was originally enfeoffed as the Prince of Yan in May 1370, amid the continuing struggle against the Mongols of the Northern Yuan dynasty, Zhu Di consolidated his own power and eliminated rivals such as the general Lan Yu. In 1402, he overthrew his nephew and occupied the imperial capital, Nanjing, after which he was proclaimed Emperor and adopted the era name Yongle. Eager to establish his own legitimacy, Zhu Di voided the Jianwen Emperors reign and established a wide-ranging effort to destroy or falsify records concerning his childhood and this included a massive purge of the Confucian scholars in Nanjing and grants of extraordinary extralegal authority to the eunuch secret police. One favorite was Zheng He, who employed his authority to launch major voyages of exploration into the South Pacific, the difficulties in Nanjing also led the Yongle Emperor to re-establish Beiping as the new imperial capital. He repaired and reopened the Grand Canal and, between 1406 and 1420, directed the construction of the Forbidden City and he was also responsible for the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, considered one of the wonders of the world before its destruction by the Taiping rebels in 1856. These scholars completed the monumental Yongle Encyclopedia during his reign, the Yongle Emperor died while personally leading a military campaign against the Mongols. He was buried in the Changling Tomb, the central and largest mausoleum of the Ming Dynasty Tombs located north of Beijing, the Yongle Emperor was born Zhu Di on 2 May 1360, the fourth son of the new leader of the central Red Turbans, Zhu Yuanzhang. Zhu Yuanzhang would later rise to become the Hongwu Emperor, the first emperor of the Ming dynasty, according to surviving Ming historical records, Zhu Dis mother was the Hongwu Emperors primary consort, Empress Ma, the view Zhu Di himself maintained. Zhu Di grew up as a prince in a loving, caring environment and his father supplied nothing but the best education and, trusting them alone, reestablished the old feudal principalities for his many sons. Similarly, when the Hongwu Emperor sent large forces to the north, the Hongwu Emperor was long-lived and survived his first heir, Zhu Biao, the Crown Prince. He worried about his succession and issued a series of instructions for his family. These instructions made it clear that the rule would pass only to children from the primary consort, excluding the Prince of Yan in favour of Zhu Yunwen. When the Hongwu Emperor died on 24 June 1398, Zhu Yunwen succeeded his grandfather as the Jianwen Emperor, in direct violation of the dynastic instructions, the Prince of Yan attempted to mourn his father in Nanjing, bringing a large armed guard with him. The imperial army was able to him at Huaian and. Faced with certain hostility, Zhu Di pretended to fall ill, in the first year, Zhu Di survived the initial assaults by superior forces under Geng Bingwen and Li Jinglong thanks to superior tactics and capable Mongol auxiliaries. By 1402, he knew enough to be able to avoid the main hosts of the army while sacking Xuzhou, Suzhou
Yongle Emperor
–
Yongle Emperor
Yongle Emperor
–
The Yongle Emperor observing court eunuchs playing
cuju, an ancient Chinese game similar to
soccer.
Yongle Emperor
–
The abandoned base for a
giant stele that the Yongle Emperor ordered to be made for his father in 1405
Yongle Emperor
–
The Yongle Emperor
22.
Proverb
–
A proverb is a simple and concrete saying, popularly known and repeated, that expresses a truth based on common sense or experience. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim, Proverbs fall into the category of formulaic language. Proverbs are often borrowed from languages and cultures, and sometimes come down to the present through more than one language. Both the Bible and medieval Latin have played a role in distributing proverbs across Europe. Mieder has concluded that cultures that treat the Bible as their major spiritual book contain between three hundred and five hundred proverbs that stem from the Bible, however, almost every culture has examples of its own unique proverbs. Defining a “proverb” is a difficult task, Proverb scholars often quote Archer Taylor’s classic “The definition of a proverb is too difficult to repay the undertaking. An incommunicable quality tells us this sentence is proverbial and that one is not, hence no definition will enable us to identify positively a sentence as proverbial”. Another common definition is from Lord John Russell “A proverb is the wit of one, Alan Dundes, however, rejects including such sayings among truly proverbs, “Are weather proverbs proverbs. The definition of “proverb” has also changed over the years. For example, the following was labeled “A Yorkshire proverb” in 1883, in other languages and cultures, the definition of “proverb” also differs from English. In the Chumburung language of Ghana, aŋase are literal proverbs and akpare are metaphoric ones. ”Among the Bini of Nigeria, the first relates to historical events, the second relates to current events, and the third was “linguistic ornamentation in formal discourse”. Among the Balochi of Pakistan and Afghanistan, there is a word batal for ordinary proverbs, There are also language communities that combine proverbs and riddles in some sayings, leading some scholars to create the label proverb riddles. Haste makes waste A stitch in time saves nine Ignorance is bliss Mustnt cry over spilled milk and you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar. You can lead a horse to water, but you cant make him drink and those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, fortune favours the bold Well begun is half done. A little learning is a dangerous thing A rolling stone gathers no moss and it aint over till the fat lady sings It is better to be smarter than you appear than to appear smarter than you are. Good things come to those who wait, a poor workman blames his tools. A dog is a mans best friend, an apple a day keeps the doctor away If the shoe fits, wear it
Proverb
–
Play poster from 1899.
Proverb
–
"Spilt Milk" album by Jellyfish.
Proverb
–
"Fleet Foxes" album cover with Netherlandish Proverbs.
Proverb
–
"Who will bell the cat?", comes from the end of a story.
23.
Pinyin
–
Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
Pinyin
–
A school slogan asking elementary students to speak
Putonghua is annotated with pinyin, but without tonal marks.
Pinyin
–
In
Yiling,
Yichang,
Hubei, text on road signs appears both in Chinese characters and in Hanyu Pinyin
24.
Liu Bang
–
Emperor Gaozu of Han, born Liu Bang, was the founder and first emperor of the Han dynasty, reigning from 202 –195 BC. He was one of the few dynasty founders in Chinese history with humble origin from the peasant class, before coming to power, Liu Bang initially served as a minor patrol officer for the Qin dynasty in his hometown Pei County, within the conquered state of Chu. With the First Emperors death and the Qin Empires subsequent political chaos, Liu Bang renounced his government position and he won the race against fellow rebel leader Xiang Yu to invade the Qin heartland and forced the surrender of the last Qin emperor in 206 BC. Within the year, Liu Bang broke out with his army and conquered the Three Qins, in 202 BC, Liu Bang emerged victorious following the Battle of Gaixia, unified most of China under his control, and established the Han dynasty with himself as the founding emperor. During his reign, Liu Bang reduced taxes and corvée, promoted Confucianism and he also initiated the policy of heqin to maintain a de jure peace between the Han Empire and the Xiongnu after losing the Battle of Baideng in 200 BC. He died in 195 BC and was succeeded by his son, in imperial Han myth, Liu Bang was a descendant of the mythical Emperor Yao, who descended from the Yellow Emperor. It is a practice among many ancient Chinese noble families to claim descent from the mythical Yellow Emperor. Liu Bang was born to a peasant family in Fenyu Village, Zhongyang Township and his parents names were not recorded in history, they were simply referred to as Liu Taigong and Liu Ao. According to legend, before Liu Bangs birth, his mother was caught in a rainstorm, at that moment, lightning struck and the sky darkened. Liu Bangs father went to fetch his wife home and saw a dragon hovering above her and she became pregnant and later gave birth to Liu Bang. The young Liu Bang was outspoken, charismatic and of great generosity, Liu Bang persisted in his idling ways and depended on his brothers family for food and lodging. When he grew older, he became a friend and live-in companion of a former retainer of Lord Xinling named Zhang Er. After Qin dynasty conquered Chu, Zhang Er went into hiding and he nevertheless forged close relationships with most of the local county bureaucrats, and earned himself a small reputation in the district. Liu Bang was once sent for statute labour in the capital Xianyang, awed by the majestic sight of the royal convoy, he exclaimed, Wow, this is how a great man should be. One day, Lü Wen, a wealthy and influential gentry from Shanfu County who had moved to Pei County, was putting on a feast to host the local elites. Xiao He, who was in charge of helping Lü Wen collect gifts from the visitors, Liu Bang went there without bringing any money and said, I offer 10,000 coins. Lü Wen chatted with Liu Bang, and said, I used to predict fortunes for many people and he then offered his daughter Lü Zhis hand in marriage to Liu Bang. After they were wed, Lü Zhi bore Liu Bang a son Liu Ying, Liu Bang was tasked with escorting a group of convicts to Mount Li to build the First Emperors mausoleum
Liu Bang
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A portrait of Emperor Gaozu in
Sancai Tuhui.
Liu Bang
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Changling (長陵), the tomb of Emperor Gaozu in Xianyang, Shaanxi.
25.
Tang dynasty
–
The Tang dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. It is generally regarded as a point in Chinese civilization. Its territory, acquired through the campaigns of its early rulers, rivaled that of the Han dynasty. The dynasty was founded by the Lǐ family, who seized power during the decline, the dynasty was briefly interrupted when Empress Wu Zetian seized the throne, proclaiming the Second Zhou dynasty and becoming the only Chinese empress regnant. In two censuses of the 7th and 8th centuries, the Tang records estimated the population by number of registered households at about 50 million people. Various kingdoms and states paid tribute to the Tang court, while the Tang also conquered or subdued several regions which it controlled through a protectorate system. Besides political hegemony, the Tang also exerted a powerful influence over neighboring states such as those in Korea, Japan. Like the previous Sui dynasty, the Tang dynasty maintained a service system by recruiting scholar-officials through standardized examinations and recommendations to office. This civil order was undermined by the rise of military governors known as jiedushi during the 9th century. Chinese culture flourished and further matured during the Tang era, it is considered the greatest age for Chinese poetry. Two of Chinas most famous poets, Li Bai and Du Fu, belonged to this age, as did many famous painters such as Han Gan, Zhang Xuan, there was a rich variety of historical literature compiled by scholars, as well as encyclopedias and geographical works. The adoption of the title Tängri Qaghan by the Tang Emperor Taizong in addition to his title as emperor was eastern Asias first simultaneous kingship, there were many notable innovations during the Tang, including the development of woodblock printing. Buddhism became an influence in Chinese culture, with native Chinese sects gaining prominence. However, Buddhism would later be persecuted by the state, subsequently declining in influence, although the dynasty and central government were in decline by the 9th century, art and culture continued to flourish. This family was known as the Longxi Li lineage, which includes the Tang poet Li Bai, the Tang Emperors also had Xianbei maternal ancestry, from Emperor Gaozu of Tangs Xianbei mother Duchess Dugu. He had prestige and military experience, and was a first cousin of Emperor Yang of Sui, Li Yuan rose in rebellion in 617, along with his son and his equally militant daughter Princess Pingyang, who raised and commanded her own troops. In winter 617, Li Yuan occupied Changan, relegated Emperor Yang to the position of Taishang Huang or retired emperor, and acted as regent to the puppet child-emperor, Emperor Gong of Sui. On the news of Emperor Yangs murder by General Yuwen Huaji on June 18,618, Li Yuan declared himself the emperor of a new dynasty, the Tang
Tang dynasty
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History of China
Tang dynasty
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Tang dynasty circa 700
Tang dynasty
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Portrait painting of
Emperor Yang of Sui, commissioned in 643 by
Taizong, painted by
Yan Liben (600–673)
Tang dynasty
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Emperor Taizong (r. 626–649) receives
Gar Tongtsen Yülsung, ambassador of
Tibet, at his court; painted in 641 AD by
Yan Liben (600–673)
26.
Yuan dynasty
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The Yuan dynasty, officially the Great Yuan, was the empire or ruling dynasty of China established by Kublai Khan, leader of the Mongolian Borjigin clan. His realm was, by point, isolated from the other khanates and controlled most of present-day China and its surrounding areas. Some of the Mongolian Emperors of the Yuan mastered the Chinese language, while others used their native language. The Yuan dynasty is considered both a successor to the Mongol Empire and an imperial Chinese dynasty and it was the khanate ruled by the successors of Möngke Khan after the division of the Mongol Empire. In official Chinese histories, the Yuan dynasty bore the Mandate of Heaven, following the Song dynasty, the dynasty was established by Kublai Khan, yet he placed his grandfather Genghis Khan on the imperial records as the official founder of the dynasty as Taizu. In addition to Emperor of China, Kublai Khan also claimed the title of Great Khan, supreme over the other khanates, the Chagatai, the Golden Horde. As such, the Yuan was also referred to as the Empire of the Great Khan. However, while the claim of supremacy by the Yuan emperors was at times recognized by the khans, their subservience was nominal. In 1271, Kublai Khan imposed the name Great Yuan, establishing the Yuan dynasty, dà Yuán is from the clause 大哉乾元 in the Commentaries on the Classic of Changes section regarding Qián. The counterpart in Mongolian language was Dai Ön Ulus, also rendered as Ikh Yuan Üls or Yekhe Yuan Ulus, in Mongolian, Dai Ön is often used in conjunction with the Yeke Mongghul Ulus, resulting in Dai Ön Yeke Mongghul Ulus, meaning Great Mongol State. Nevertheless, both terms can refer to the khanate within the Mongol Empire directly ruled by Great Khans before the actual establishment of the Yuan dynasty by Kublai Khan in 1271. Genghis Khan united the Mongol and Turkic tribes of the steppes and he and his successors expanded the Mongol empire across Asia. Under the reign of Genghis third son, Ögedei Khan, the Mongols destroyed the weakened Jin dynasty in 1234, Ögedei offered his nephew Kublai a position in Xingzhou, Hebei. Kublai was unable to read Chinese but had several Han Chinese teachers attached to him since his early years by his mother Sorghaghtani and he sought the counsel of Chinese Buddhist and Confucian advisers. Möngke Khan succeeded Ögedeis son, Güyük, as Great Khan in 1251 and he granted his brother Kublai control over Mongol held territories in China. Kublai built schools for Confucian scholars, issued paper money, revived Chinese rituals and he adopted as his capital city Kaiping in Inner Mongolia, later renamed Shangdu. Many Han Chinese and Khitan defected to the Mongols to fight against the Jin, two Han Chinese leaders, Shi Tianze, Liu Heima, and the Khitan Xiao Zhala defected and commanded the 3 Tumens in the Mongol army. Liu Heima and Shi Tianze served Ogödei Khan, Liu Heima and Shi Tianxiang led armies against Western Xia for the Mongols
Yuan dynasty
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History of China
Yuan dynasty
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Yuan dynasty circa 1294
Yuan dynasty
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Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty
Yuan dynasty
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Painting of a 14th-century Yuan dynasty
junk
27.
Son of Heaven
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The Son of Heaven is a universal emperor who rules tianxia comprising all under heaven which translates from the ancient Chinese into English as ruler of the whole world. The title Son of Heaven comes from the Mandate of Heaven and they declared that Heaven had revoked the mandate from the Shang and given it to the Zhou in retaliation for Shang corruption and misrule. Heaven bestowed the mandate to whomever was best fit to rule, the title held the emperor responsible for the prosperity and security of his people through the threat of losing the mandate. The ancient Han Chinese imperial title of tianzi was later adopted by the Emperor of Japan during the Asuka period, Japan sent diplomatic missions to China, then under the rule of the Sui dynasty, forming cultural and commercial ties. The Yamato state modeled their government after the Confucian imperial bureaucracy, a mission in 607 delivered a message that greeted the Sui emperor by saying that the Son of Heaven in the land where the sun rises. To the Son of Heaven in the land where the sun sets, the Japanese title was less conditional than its Chinese counterpart. There was no divine mandate that punished the emperor for failing to rule justly, the right to rule of the Japanese emperor, descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu, was absolute. The Vietnamese title Thiên tử was more similar to the Chinese Son of Heaven, a divine mandate gave the Vietnamese emperor the right to rule, but it was based on his ability to govern and not his lineage. The Son of Heaven was often one of several titles adopted by East Asian monarchs, Emperor Taizong of Tang held the Chinese Son of Heaven title and the Central Asian title of Tengeri Qaghan, which he gained after defeating the Tujue. Japanese monarchs employed the title of tennō, a name that also appeals to the connection to Heaven. Tian / Shangdi Heaven worship All Under Heaven Emperor of China Tian Kehan Sinocentrism Celestial Empire Imperial Chinese tributary system Pax Sinica Beasley, the Japanese Experience, A Short History of Japan. The Evolution of Government in China, heritage of China, Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, Imperial Politics and Symbolics in Ancient Japan, The Tenmu Dynasty, 650–800. H. J. Van Derven, ed. Warfare in Chinese History, vietnam and the Chinese Model, A Comparative Study of Vietnamese and Chinese Government in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century
Son of Heaven
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Son of Heaven was a title of the
Qianlong Emperor.
Son of Heaven
–
The
Emperor of Japan ruled as a divine descendant of the sun goddess
Amaterasu.
28.
Qin dynasty
–
The Qin dynasty was the first dynasty of Imperial China, lasting from 221 to 206 BCE. The strength of the Qin state was increased by the Legalist reforms of Shang Yang in the fourth century BC. It is also the shortest dynasty in Chinese history, lasting only 15 years with two emperors, Qin administration was by no means purely punitive, and was not harsher than was generally prevalent at the time. Though often anathema to Legalist philosophy, Confucianism and its values too coexisted with Legalism during the reign of the First Emperor, Qin administrative documents considered such matters as filial piety, and one circulated letter reads that The purpose of all standards. Is to teach and lead the people, rid them of dissoluteness and depravity. during its reign over China, the Qin sought to create an imperial state unified by highly structured political power and a stable economy able to support a large military. This allowed for the construction of projects, such as a wall on the northern border. For years, local rulers built walls along Chinas northern border to protect their villages from invaders, Three hundred thousand peasants and convicts were forced to work on this 1,400 mile wall. The Qin dynasty introduced reforms, currency, weights and measures were standardized. The Qins military was revolutionary in that it used the most recently developed weaponry, transportation, an attempt to restrict criticism and purge all traces of old dynasties led to the supposed burning of books and burying of scholars later espoused by Confucians. Despite its military strength, the Qin dynasty did not last long, the advisors squabbled among themselves, however, resulting in both their deaths and that of the second Qin emperor. Popular revolt broke out a few later, and the weakened empire soon fell to a Chu lieutenant. Despite its rapid end, the dynasty influenced future Chinese empires, particularly the Han, in the 9th century BC, Feizi, a supposed descendant of the ancient political advisor Gao Yao, was granted rule over Qin City. The modern city of Tianshui stands where this city once was, during the rule of King Xiao of Zhou, the eighth king of the Zhou dynasty, this area became known as the state of Qin. In 897 BC, under the regency of Gonghe, the became a dependency allotted for the purpose of raising and breeding horses. One of Feizis descendants, Duke Zhuang, became favoured by King Ping of Zhou, as a reward, Zhuangs son, Duke Xiang, was sent eastward as the leader of a war expedition, during which he formally established the Qin. The state of Qin first sent an expedition into central China in 672 BC. By the dawn of the fourth century BC, however, the tribes had all been either subdued or conquered. The resulting city greatly resembled the capitals of other Warring States, notably, Qin Legalism encouraged practical and ruthless warfare
Qin dynasty
–
Qin dynasty,
circa 210 BC.
Qin dynasty
–
History of China
Qin dynasty
–
Marble bust of statesman Shang Yang
Qin dynasty
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Map of the Warring States. Qin is shown in pink
29.
Qing dynasty
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It was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The Qing multi-cultural empire lasted almost three centuries and formed the base for the modern Chinese state. The dynasty was founded by the Jurchen Aisin Gioro clan in Manchuria, in the late sixteenth century, Nurhaci, originally a Ming vassal, began organizing Banners, military-social units that included Jurchen, Han Chinese, and Mongol elements. Nurhaci formed the Jurchen clans into an entity, which he renamed as the Manchus. By 1636, his son Hong Taiji began driving Ming forces out of Liaodong and declared a new dynasty, in 1644, peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng conquered the Ming capital, Beijing. The Ten Great Campaigns of the Qianlong Emperor from the 1750s to the 1790s extended Qing control into Central Asia, the early rulers maintained their Manchu ways, and while their title was Emperor, they used khan to the Mongols and they were patrons of Tibetan Buddhism. They governed using Confucian styles and institutions of government and retained the imperial examinations to recruit Han Chinese to work under or in parallel with Manchus. They also adapted the ideals of the system in dealing with neighboring territories. The Qianlong reign saw the apogee and initial decline in prosperity. The population rose to some 400 million, but taxes and government revenues were fixed at a low rate, corruption set in, rebels tested government legitimacy, and ruling elites did not change their mindsets in the face of changes in the world system. Following the Opium War, European powers imposed unequal treaties, free trade, the Taiping Rebellion and the Dungan Revolt in Central Asia led to the deaths of some 20 million people, most of them due to famines caused by war. In spite of disasters, in the Tongzhi Restoration of the 1860s, Han Chinese elites rallied to the defense of the Confucian order. The initial gains in the Self-Strengthening Movement were destroyed in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895, in which the Qing lost its influence over Korea, New Armies were organized, but the ambitious Hundred Days Reform of 1898 was turned back by Empress Dowager Cixi, a conservative leader. Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries competed with reformist monarchists such as Kang Youwei, after the deaths of Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor in 1908, the hardline Manchu court alienated reformers and local elites alike. The Wuchang Uprising on October 11,1911, led to the Xinhai Revolution, General Yuan Shikai negotiated the abdication of Puyi, the last emperor, on February 12,1912. Nurhaci declared himself the Bright Khan of the Later Jin state in both of the 12–13th century Jurchen Jin dynasty and of his Aisin Gioro clan. His son Hong Taiji renamed the dynasty Great Qing in 1636, there are competing explanations on the meaning of Qīng. The character Qīng is composed of water and azure, both associated with the water element and this association would justify the Qing conquest as defeat of fire by water
Qing dynasty
–
History of China
Qing dynasty
–
Flag (1889–1912)
Qing dynasty
–
An Italian map showing the "Kingdom of the
Nüzhen " or the "
Jin Tartars", who "have occupied and are at present ruling China", north of
Liaodong and
Korea, published in 1682
Qing dynasty
–
Qing era brush container
30.
Flag of the Qing dynasty
–
It became the first national flag of China and is usually referred to as the Yellow Dragon Flag. Ruling China from 1644 until the overthrow of the monarchy during the Xinhai Revolution, between 1889 and 1912, the dynasty represented itself with the dragon flag. Throughout the history of Chinas imperial dynasties, yellow was considered the color of successive Chinese emperors. The legendary first emperor of China was known as the Yellow Emperor, members of the imperial family of China at that time were the only ones allowed to display the color yellow in buildings and on garments. The Emperor of China usually used a Chinese dragon as a symbol of his imperial power, generally, a five-clawed dragon was used for emperors only. In Chinese culture, a pearl is shown on top of the dragons head. The pearl is associated with wealth, good luck, and prosperity, the design of the flag was largely based on the Plain Yellow Banner of the Eight Banners. The Arrow Incident of 1856 occurred as a result of Chinese civilian vessels flying foreign flags as the Qing dynasty had no flag at the time. In 1862, sailors from the Chinese and British navies clashed at Wuhan on the Yangtze River. The triangular version of the dragon flag was restricted to naval and governmental use only, no civilian ships were permitted to fly the yellow pennant. However, on some occasions and at international exhibitions, this flag was used to represent China. As a result, he petitioned the court for permission. Seeing Western countries flying national flags on official occasions, Li Hongzhang also asked Empress Dowager Cixi to select a flag for the Qing dynasty. Among the proposals for use of the Ba gua flag, the Yellow dragon flag, in 1888, the imperial court promulgated the naval flag as the Qing national flag. Also, mustard yellow was used in the flag of Manchukuo in deference to the Qing dynasty, the blue dragon was featured in the Twelve Symbols national emblem, which was the state emblem of China from 1913-1928. Navy of Qing dynasty Navy of Qing dynasty adopted the flag in the canton of naval flags in 1909. Chinese Eastern Railway Flag of Chinese Eastern Railway adopted a combination of Qing dynasty, the flag was not updated until 1915. Flag of Bhutan Media related to Flags of the Qing Dynasty at Wikimedia Commons
Flag of the Qing dynasty
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Plain Yellow Banner in Eight Banners
Flag of the Qing dynasty
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Qing Dynasty
_-_China-6219.jpg)
.svg)
.svg)
Media related to Chinese dragon at Wikimedia Commons
