1.
You (vessel)
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A you is a lidded vessel that was used for liquid offerings by the Chinese of the Zhou and Shang Dynasties. It sometimes lacks taotie in favor of smoother surfaces, sometimes these vessels are zoomorphic, especially in the form of two owls back to back. Usually the handle of the you is in the form of a loop that attaches on either side of the lid and they can be quadruped or have a single base. Ringing Thunder- Tomb Treasures from Ancient China, San Diego, San Diego Museum of Art. The great bronze age of China, an exhibition from the Peoples Republic of China, a catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
2.
Zhou dynasty
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The Zhou dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang dynasty and preceded the Qin dynasty. This period of Chinese history produced what many consider the zenith of Chinese bronze-ware making, the dynasty also spans the period in which the written script evolved into its almost-modern form with the use of an archaic clerical script that emerged during the late Warring States period. He even received sacrifice as a harvest god, the term Hòujì was probably an hereditary title attached to a lineage. Jus son Liu, however, led his people to prosperity by restoring agriculture and settling them at a place called Bin, tai later led the clan from Bin to Zhou, an area in the Wei River valley of modern-day Qishan County. Taibo and Zhongyong had supposedly fled to the Yangtze delta. Jilis son Wen bribed his way out of imprisonment and moved the Zhou capital to Feng, the Zhou enfeoffed a member of the defeated Shang royal family as the Duke of Song, which was held by descendants of the Shang royal family until its end. This practice was referred to as Two Kings, Three Reverences, according to Nicholas Bodman, the Zhou appear to have spoken a language not basically different in vocabulary and syntax from that of the Shang. A recent study by David McCraw, using lexical statistics, reached the same conclusion, the Zhou emulated extensively Shang cultural practices, perhaps to legitimize their own rule, and became the successors to Shang culture. At the same time, the Zhou may also have connected to the Xirong, a broadly defined cultural group to the west of the Shang. According to the historian Li Feng, the term Rong during the Western Zhou period was used to designate political and military adversaries rather than cultural. The proto-Zhou were first located in the Shaanxi-Shanxi highland, where they absorbed elements from the Guangshe culture, King Liu moved his people to the lower Fen Valley and to the western bank of the Yellow River, where they resumed agriculture. His son Qing Jie, led the Zhou to the valley of the Jing River. They stayed there until Dan Fu moved again to the Wei Valley in order to avoid incursion by the Rongdi nomads. During this period, the Zhou mingled with the Qiang people, in all these stages, the advanced Shang bronze culture constantly imparted its influence on the Zhou. The Qi area was the region in all these influences would come to fruition. The contact among the proto-Zhou, the native Shaanxi Longshan, the Qiang, King Wu maintained the old capital for ceremonial purposes but constructed a new one for his palace and administration nearby at Hao. Although Wus early death left a young and inexperienced heir, the Duke of Zhou assisted his nephew King Cheng in consolidating royal power. Wary of the Duke of Zhous increasing power, the Three Guards, Zhou princes stationed on the eastern plain, to maintain Zhou authority over its greatly expanded territory and prevent other revolts, he set up the fengjian system
3.
Shanghai Museum
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The Shanghai Museum is a museum of ancient Chinese art, situated on the Peoples Square in the Huangpu District of Shanghai, China. Rebuilt at its current location in 1996, it is considered one of Chinas first world-class modern museums, the museum was founded in 1952 and was first open to the public in the former Shanghai Racecourse club house, now at 325 West Nanjing Road. The former Shanghai Municipal Museum was also merged into the new Shanghai Museum, in 1959 the museum moved into the Zhonghui Building at 16 South Henan Road, which previously housed insurance companies and bank offices. During the metal-gathering campaign of the Great Leap Forward, Shanghai Museum participated in rescuing bronzeware from metal that had been confiscated or donated and were sent to be melted down, before the Cultural Revolution, a tradition formed whereby Shanghais wealthy collectors would make annual donations to the museum. The museums work largely halted as a result of the Cultural Revolution, the growth of its collections put enormous pressure on the museums cramped premises. When a new museum was omitted from Shanghais five-year reconstruction plan in 1992, after seeing the dilapidated rooms of the Zhonghui Building, Huang agreed to allocate a prime site on the Peoples Square, but the museum had to raise its own building funds. Ma raised US$25 million by leasing the old building to a Hong Kong developer and he also made many trips abroad to solicit donations, mainly from the Shanghai diaspora who had fled to Hong Kong after the Communist revolution, raising another $10 million. The money still ran short, but he won another 140 million yuan from the city government to complete the building. Construction of the current building started in August 1993 and it was inaugurated on October 12,1996 to wide acclaim. It is 29.5 meters high with five floors, covering an area of 39,200 m². Designed by local architect Xing Tonghe, the building is designed in the shape of an ancient bronze cooking vessel called a ding and it is said that the inspiration for the design was specifically provided by the Da Ke Ding, now on exhibit in the museum. The building has a top and a square base, symbolizing the ancient Chinese perception of the world as round sky. The museum has a collection of over 120,000 pieces, including bronze, ceramics, calligraphy, furniture, jades, ancient coins, paintings, seals, sculptures, minority art and foreign art. The Shanghai Museum houses several items of importance, including one of three extant specimens of a transparent bronze mirror from the Han Dynasty. It has eleven galleries and three special exhibition halls. The collection contains 1783 pieces from the Greeks to the Mongol Empire, ancient Chinese Ceramic Gallery The Shanghai Museum. Shanghai, Shanghai Classics Publishing House,1996
4.
Tomb of Fu Hao
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The Tomb of Fu Hao is an archaeological site at Yinxu, the ruins of the ancient Shang dynasty capital Yin, within the modern city of Anyang in Henan Province, China. It is to date the only Shang royal tomb found intact with its contents, in 1976 archaeologists probing the area around Yinxu with a long shovel, called a Luoyang shovel, recovered some samples of red lacquer. The burial pit uncovered, officially titled tomb number 5, is a pit,5.6 metres by 4 m. The tomb has been dated to around BCE1200 and identified, from inscriptions on ritual bronzes and her tomb, one of the smaller tombs, is one of the best-preserved Shang dynasty royal tombs and the only one not to have been looted before excavation. Inside the pit was evidence of a wooden chamber 5 meters long,3.5 m wide and 1.3 m high containing a wooden coffin that has since completely rotted away. The floor level housed the royal corpse and most of the utensils, there is also evidence above ground of a structure built over the tomb that probably served as an ancestral hall for holding memorial ceremonies, this has since been restored. Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, from some 800 years later, website on the tomb 10 minute documentary feature, part 1 of 7
5.
Gu (vessel)
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A gu is type of ancient Chinese ritual bronze vessel from the Shang and Zhou dynasties. It was used to drink wine or to offer ritual libations, a gu is tall and slender, with a slightly flared base that tapers to a slim center section before widening again into a trumpet-like mouth, wider than the base. Its surface is decorated with taotie. A gu from the Shang dynasty was among the 13 works of art stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on 18 March 1990, along with paintings by Rembrandt, the gu vessel was known for its use as a wine drinking vessel. It is said to have developed from other elaborate cups that also had high stems and were found in Neolithic cultures, inscriptions have been found on ancient vessels stating that it was common to drink wine in Chinese cultures. The creation of a such as the gu makes sense in modern times because of its shape. The long stem made it easy to hold and sip from, while allowing it to take on unique. Throughout the hundreds of Neolithic to early dynastic sites discovered in China, the form, shapes, and décor, provide hints to the every vessel’s function as well as the early beliefs that inspired them. Early Chinese religion has been difficult for scholars to understand due to a lack of archaeological evidence on Neolithic religious philosophies. The gu was a wine vessel to be found in high class areas. This wine vessel has been found in such as meeting areas were high class Chinese members would gather for wine with one another. The gu vessel can be unique in a number of ways, the more elegant styled vessels with more relief and design would be found more commonly in the high class surroundings. The simpler, tall and narrow, gu vessels would be throughout the familys households. According to the Tsun family, the gu vessel was found to be listed under the Wine Containers list of artifacts that have found in the Shang civilizations. This allows archaeologists to focus on locations of gu vessels to help indicate the status of the site. In Book 6, verse 25, of the Confucian Analects, the only evidence we have of ritual use of this vessel is its strong association with wine, spirits, and high class rulers. Later engraved vessels help support the significance of ritual wine drinking as part of ritual ceremony. The gu vessel appears in an engraving of a ritual scene found on a yi vessel discovered in a tomb in Shaanxi in which the gu being used in the engraving highly resembles the gu of the Shang
6.
Chinese language
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Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases mutually unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language, the varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin, followed by Wu, Min, and Yue. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. Standard Chinese is a form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It is the language of China and Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six languages of the United Nations. The written form of the language, based on the logograms known as Chinese characters, is shared by literate speakers of otherwise unintelligible dialects. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is the spoken language and official in Hong Kong and Macau. It is also influential in Guangdong province and much of Guangxi, dialects of Southern Min, part of the Min group, are widely spoken in southern Fujian, with notable variants also spoken in neighboring Taiwan and in Southeast Asia. Hakka also has a diaspora in Taiwan and southeast Asia. Shanghainese and other Wu varieties are prominent in the lower Yangtze region of eastern China, Chinese can be traced back to a hypothetical Sino-Tibetan proto-language. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty, as the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have sought to promulgate a unified standard. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, in addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach, and are often also sensitive border zones. Without a secure reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan, the structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, the earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BCE in the late Shang dynasty
7.
Bronze Age
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The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems. The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
8.
Shang dynasty
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The Shang dynasty or Yin dynasty, according to traditional historiography, ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from such as the Book of Documents, Bamboo Annals. The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project dated them from c.1600 to 1046 BC, the Shang dynasty is the earliest dynasty of traditional Chinese history supported by archaeological evidence. Tens of thousands of bronze, jade, stone, bone, the Anyang site has yielded the earliest known body of Chinese writing, mostly divinations inscribed on oracle bones – turtle shells, ox scapulae, or other bones. More than 20,000 were discovered in the scientific excavations during the 1920s and 1930s. The inscriptions provide critical insight into many topics from the politics, economy, many events concerning the Shang dynasty are mentioned in various Chinese classics, including the Book of Documents, the Mencius and the Zuo Zhuan. Working from all the documents, the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian assembled a sequential account of the Shang dynasty as part of his Records of the Grand Historian. His history describes some events in detail, while in other cases only the name of a king is given, a closely related, but slightly different, account is given by the Bamboo Annals. The Annals were interred in 296 BC, but the text has a complex history, the name Yīn is used by Sima Qian for the dynasty, and in the current text version of the Bamboo Annals for both the dynasty and its final capital. It has been a name for the Shang throughout history. Since the Records of Emperors and Kings by Huangfu Mi, it has often used specifically to describe the later half of the Shang dynasty. In Japan and Korea, the Shang are still referred to almost exclusively as the Yin dynasty, however it seems to have been a Zhou name for the earlier dynasty. The word does not appear in the bones, which refer to the state as Shāng. It also does not appear in securely-dated Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, xie is said to have helped Yu the Great to control the Great Flood and for his service to have been granted a place called Shang as a fief. Sima Qian relates that the dynasty itself was founded 13 generations later, when Xies descendant Tang overthrew the impious and cruel final Xia ruler in the Battle of Mingtiao. The Records recount events from the reigns of Tang, Tai Jia, Tai Wu, Pan Geng, Wu Ding, Wu Yi and the final king Di Xin. According to the Records, the Shang moved their capital five times, Di Xin, the last Shang king, is said to have committed suicide after his army was defeated by Wu of Zhou. Legends say that his army and his equipped slaves betrayed him by joining the Zhou rebels in the decisive Battle of Muye, according to the Yi Zhou Shu and Mencius the battle was very bloody
9.
Grave goods
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Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body. They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods may be classed as a type of votive deposit, most grave goods recovered by archaeologists consist of inorganic objects such as pottery and stone and metal tools but organic objects that have since decayed were also placed in ancient tombs. Funerary art is a term but generally means artworks made specifically to decorate a burial place. Where grave goods appear, grave robbery is a potential problem, etruscans would scratch the word śuθina, Etruscan for from a tomb, on grave goods buried with the dead to discourage their reuse by the living. The tomb of pharaoh Tutankhamun is famous because it was one of the few Egyptian tombs that was not thoroughly looted in ancient times, Grave goods can be regarded as a sacrifice intended for the benefit of the deceased in the afterlife. Closely related are customs of worship and offerings to the dead, in modern western culture related to All Souls Day, in East Asia the hell bank note. Also closely related is the custom of retainer sacrifice, where servants or wives of a deceased chieftain are interred with the body, evidence for intentional burial is found in Neanderthal sites from 130,000 years ago or earlier. In Homo sapiens burials beginning about 100,000 years ago, the body of the deceased was sprinkled with red ochre, and offerings of food, tools, and fresh flowers may have been deposited in the grave. Beads made of basalt deposited in graves in the Fertile Crescent date to the end of the Upper Paleolithic, the distribution of grave goods are a potential indicator of the social stratification of a society. It is also possible that burial goods indicate a level of concern and consciousness in regard to an afterlife, the expression of social status in rich graves is taken to extremes in the royal graves of the Bronze Age. In the Theban Necropolis in Ancient Egypt, the pyramids and the graves in the Valley of the Kings are among the most elaborate burials in human history. This trend is continued into the Iron Age, an example of an extremely rich royal grave of the Iron Age is the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang. In the sphere of the Roman Empire, early Christian graves lack grave goods, in the Christian Middle Ages, high-status graves are marked on the exterior, with tomb effigies or expensive tomb stones rather than by the presence of grave goods. The importance of goods, from the simple behavioural and technical to the metaphysical. However, care must be taken to avoid naive interpretation of grave goods as a sample of artefacts in use in a culture. Because of their context, grave goods may represent a special class of artifacts. Burial Grave field Necropolis Mingqi, the traditional Chinese burial goods The Earliest Beads, Treasures From the Ancient World, Museum of Ancient and Modern Art, at muma. org
10.
Jade
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Jade is an ornamental green rock. The middle member of series with an intermediate composition is called actinolite. The higher the content, the greener the colour. Jadeite is a sodium- and aluminium-rich pyroxene, the precious form of jadeite jade is a microcrystalline interlocking growth of jadeite crystals. The English word jade is derived from the Spanish term piedra de ijada or loin stone, from its reputed efficacy in curing ailments of the loins, nephrite is derived from lapis nephriticus, a Latin translation of the Spanish piedra de ijada. Nephrite and jadeite were used from prehistoric periods for hardstone carving, jadeite has about the same hardness as quartz. Nephrite is slightly softer but tougher than jadeite and it was not until the 19th century that a French mineralogist, Alexis Damour, determined that jade was in fact two different minerals. Among the earliest known jade artifacts excavated from prehistoric sites are simple ornaments with bead, button, additionally, jade was used for adze heads, knives, and other weapons, which can be delicately shaped. As metal-working technologies became available, the beauty of jade made it valuable for ornaments and decorative objects. Jadeite measures between 6.0 and 7.0 Mohs hardness, and nephrite between 6.0 and 6.5, so it can be worked with quartz or garnet sand, of the two, jadeite is rarer, documented in fewer than 12 places worldwide. Translucent emerald-green jadeite is the most prized variety, both historically and today, Burma and Guatemala are the principal sources of modern gem jadeite. In the area of Mogaung in the Myitkyina District of Upper Burma, jadeite formed a layer in the dark-green serpentine, Canada provides the major share of modern lapidary nephrite. Nephrite jade was used mostly in pre-1800 China as well as in New Zealand, the Pacific Coast and the Atlantic Coast of North America, Neolithic Europe, in addition to Mesoamerica, jadeite was used by Neolithic Japanese and European cultures. Dushan Jade was being mined as early as 6000 BC, in the Yin Ruins of the Shang Dynasty in Anyang, Dushan Jade ornaments were unearthed in the tomb of the Shang kings. Jade was used to create many utilitarian and ceremonial objects, from indoor decorative items to jade burial suits, Jade was considered the imperial gem. There, white and greenish nephrite jade is found in quarries and as pebbles. The river jade collection is concentrated in the Yarkand, the White Jade, jadeite, with its bright emerald-green, pink, lavender, orange and brown colours was imported from Burma to China only after about 1800. The vivid green variety became known as Feicui or Kingfisher Jade, in the history of the art of the Chinese empire, jade has had a special significance, comparable with that of gold and diamonds in the West
11.
Tin
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Tin is a chemical element with symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a metal in group 14 of the periodic table. It is obtained chiefly from the mineral cassiterite, which contains tin dioxide, Tin shows a chemical similarity to both of its neighbors in group 14, germanium and lead, and has two main oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4. Tin is the 49th most abundant element and has, with 10 stable isotopes, metallic tin is not easily oxidized in air. The first alloy used on a scale was bronze, made of tin and copper. After 600 BC, pure metallic tin was produced, pewter, which is an alloy of 85–90% tin with the remainder commonly consisting of copper, antimony, and lead, was used for flatware from the Bronze Age until the 20th century. In modern times, tin is used in alloys, most notably tin/lead soft solders. Another large application for tin is corrosion-resistant tin plating of steel, inorganic tin compounds are rather non-toxic. Because of its low toxicity, tin-plated metal was used for packaging as tin cans. However, overexposure to tin may cause problems with metabolizing essential trace elements such as copper and zinc, Tin is a soft, malleable, ductile and highly crystalline silvery-white metal. When a bar of tin is bent, a sound known as the tin cry can be heard from the twinning of the crystals. Tin melts at the low temperature of about 232 °C, the lowest in group 14, the melting point is further lowered to 177.3 °C for 11 nm particles. β-tin, which is stable at and above room temperature, is malleable, in contrast, α-tin, which is stable below 13.2 °C, is brittle. α-tin has a cubic crystal structure, similar to diamond. α-tin has no properties at all because its atoms form a covalent structure in which electrons cannot move freely. It is a dull-gray powdery material with no common uses other than a few specialized semiconductor applications and these two allotropes, α-tin and β-tin, are more commonly known as gray tin and white tin, respectively. Two more allotropes, γ and σ, exist at temperatures above 161 °C, in cold conditions, β-tin tends to transform spontaneously into α-tin, a phenomenon known as tin pest. Commercial grades of tin resist transformation because of the effect of the small amounts of bismuth, antimony, lead
12.
Lead
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Lead is a chemical element with atomic number 82 and symbol Pb. When freshly cut, it is bluish-white, it tarnishes to a dull gray upon exposure to air and it is a soft, malleable, and heavy metal with a density exceeding that of most common materials. Lead has the second-highest atomic number of the stable elements. Lead is a relatively unreactive post-transition metal and its weak metallic character is illustrated by its amphoteric nature and tendency to form covalent bonds. Compounds of lead are found in the +2 oxidation state. Exceptions are mostly limited to organolead compounds, like the lighter members of the group, lead exhibits a tendency to bond to itself, it can form chains, rings, and polyhedral structures. Lead is easily extracted from its ores and was known to people in Western Asia. A principal ore of lead, galena, often bears silver, Lead production declined after the fall of Rome and did not reach comparable levels again until the Industrial Revolution. Nowadays, global production of lead is about ten million tonnes annually, Lead has several properties that make it useful, high density, low melting point, ductility, and relative inertness to oxidation. In the late 19th century, lead was recognized as poisonous, Lead is a neurotoxin that accumulates in soft tissues and bones, damaging the nervous system and causing brain disorders and, in mammals, blood disorders. A lead atom has 82 electrons, arranged in a configuration of 4f145d106s26p2. The combined first and second ionization energies—the total energy required to remove the two 6p electrons—is close to that of tin, leads upper neighbor in group 14. This is unusual since ionization energies generally fall going down a group as an elements outer electrons become more distant from the nucleus, the similarity is caused by the lanthanide contraction—the decrease in element radii from lanthanum to lutetium, and the relatively small radii of the elements after hafnium. The contraction is due to shielding of the nucleus by the lanthanide 4f electrons. The combined first four ionization energies of lead exceed those of tin, for this reason lead, unlike tin, mostly forms compounds in which it has an oxidation state of +2, rather than +4. Relativistic effects, which become particularly prominent at the bottom of the periodic table, as a result, the 6s electrons of lead become reluctant to participate in bonding, a phenomenon called the inert pair effect. A related outcome is that the distance between nearest atoms in crystalline lead is unusually long, the lighter group 14 elements form stable or metastable allotropes having the tetrahedrally coordinated and covalently bonded diamond cubic structure. The energy levels of their outer s- and p-orbitals are close enough to allow mixing into four hybrid sp3 orbitals
13.
Simplified Chinese characters
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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
14.
Traditional Chinese characters
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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
15.
Pinyin
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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
16.
Chinese art
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Chinese art is visual art that, whether ancient or modern, originated in or is practiced in China or by Chinese artists. The Chinese art in the Republic of China and that of overseas Chinese can also be considered part of Chinese art where it is based in or draws on Chinese heritage, early stone age art dates back to 10,000 BC, mostly consisting of simple pottery and sculptures. After this early period Chinese art, like Chinese history, is classified by the succession of ruling dynasties of Chinese emperors. After contacts with Western art became increasingly important from the 19th century onwards, traditional Chinese painting involves essentially the same techniques as Chinese calligraphy and is done with a brush dipped in black or colored ink, oils are not used. As with calligraphy, the most popular materials on which paintings are made of paper, the finished work can be mounted on scrolls, such as hanging scrolls or handscrolls. Traditional painting can also be done on album sheets, walls, lacquerware, folding screens, the two main techniques in Chinese painting are, Gong-bi, meaning meticulous, uses highly detailed brushstrokes that delimits details very precisely. It is often coloured and usually depicts figural or narrative subjects. It is often practised by artists working for the court or in independent workshops. Bird-and-flower paintings were often in this style and this style is also referred to as xie yi or freehand style. Artists from the Han to the Tang dynasties mainly painted the human figure, much of what is known of early Chinese figure painting comes from burial sites, where paintings were preserved on silk banners, lacquered objects, and tomb walls. Many early tomb paintings were meant to protect the dead or help their souls get to paradise, others illustrated the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, or showed scenes of daily life. Most Chinese portraits showed a formal full-length frontal view, and were used in the family in ancestor veneration, Imperial portraits were more flexible, but were generally not seen outside the court, and portraiture formed no part of Imperial propaganda, as in other cultures. Many critics consider landscape to be the highest form of Chinese painting, the time from the Five Dynasties period to the Northern Song period is known as the Great age of Chinese landscape. In the south, Dong Yuan, Juran, and other artists painted the rolling hills and rivers of their native countryside in peaceful scenes done with softer and these two kinds of scenes and techniques became the classical styles of Chinese landscape painting. Chinese ritual bronzes from the Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties come from a period of over a thousand years from c,1500, and have exerted a continuing influence over Chinese art. They are cast with complex patterned and zoomorphic decoration, but avoid the human figure, smaller figures in pottery or wood were placed in tombs for many centuries afterwards, reaching a peak of quality in the Tang Dynasty. Buddhism is also the context of all large portrait sculpture, in total contrast to other areas in medieval China even painted images of the emperor were regarded as private. Imperial tombs have spectacular avenues of approach lined with real and mythological animals on a scale matching Egypt, and smaller versions decorate temples and palaces
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Xia dynasty
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The Xia dynasty is the first dynasty in traditional Chinese history. It is described in ancient historical chronicles such as the Bamboo Annals, the Classic of History, according to tradition, the dynasty was established by the legendary Yu the Great after Shun, the last of the Five Emperors gave his throne to him. The Xia was later succeeded by the Shang dynasty, the Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project concluded that the Xia existed between 2070 and 1600 BCE. The first documentary reference to the Xia dates from more than a years later. Therefore, despite efforts by Chinese archaeologists to link the Xia with Bronze Age Erlitou archaeological sites, the Xia dynasty was described in classic texts such as the Classic of History, the Bamboo Annals, and the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian. According to tradition, the Huaxia were the people of the Han Chinese. Traditional histories trace the development of the Xia to the legendary Three Sovereigns, according to ancient Chinese texts, before the Xia dynasty was established, battles were frequent between the Xia tribe and Chi Yous tribe. The Xia tribe slowly developed around the time of Zhuanxu, one of the Five Emperors, based on this, tradition ascribes the ancestry of the Xia clan to Zhuanxu. Gun, the father of Yu the Great, is the earliest recorded member of the Xia clan, when the Yellow River flooded, many tribes united together to control and stop the flooding. Gun was appointed by Emperor Yao to stop the flooding and he ordered the construction of large blockades to block the path of the water. The attempt of Gun to stop the flooding lasted for nine years, after nine years, Yao had already given his throne to Shun. Yu was highly trusted by Shun, so Shun appointed him to finish his fathers work, Yu was dedicated to his work. People praised his perseverance and were inspired, so much so that other tribes joined in the work, yus success in stopping the flooding increased agricultural production. The Xia tribes power increased and Yu became the leader of the surrounding tribes, soon afterwards Shun sent Yu to lead an army to suppress the Sanmiao tribe, which continuously abused the border tribes. After defeating them, he exiled them south to the Han River area and this victory strengthened the Xia tribes power even more. As Shun aged, he thought of a successor and relinquished the throne to Yu, yus succession marks the start of the Xia dynasty. As Yu neared death he passed the throne to his son, Qi, instead of passing it to the most capable candidate, the Xia dynasty began a period of family or clan control. It is believed that Zhenxun was one of the capitals of the dynasty, jie, the last king, was said to be corrupt
18.
Chinese ceramics
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Chinese ceramics show a continuous development since pre-dynastic times and are one of the most significant forms of Chinese art and ceramics globally. The first pottery was made during the Palaeolithic era, Porcelain is so identified with China that it is still called china in everyday English usage. Most later Chinese ceramics, even of the finest quality, were made on an industrial scale, many of the most important kiln workshops were owned by or reserved for the Emperor, and large quantities of ceramics were exported as diplomatic gifts or for trade from an early date. The earliest Chinese pottery was earthenware, which continued in production for utilitarian uses throughout Chinese history, but was increasingly less used for fine wares. Porcelain, on a Western definition, is a term comprising all ceramic ware that is white and translucent. The Chinese tradition recognizes two categories of ceramics, high-fired and low-fired, so doing without stoneware, which in Chinese tradition is mostly grouped with porcelain. Terms such as porcellaneous or near-porcelain may be used for stonewares with porcelain-like characteristics, the Erya defined porcelain as fine, compact pottery. Chinese pottery can also classified as being either northern or southern, the kiln types were also different. Southern materials have high silica, low alumina and high potassium oxide, the northern materials are often very suitable for stoneware, while in the south there are also areas highly suitable for porcelain. Chinese porcelain is made by a combination of the following materials. Porcelain stone - decomposed micaceous or feldspar rocks, historically known as petunse. Feldspar Quartz In the context of Chinese ceramics, the term lacks a universally accepted definition. This in turn has led to confusion about when the first Chinese porcelain was made, claims have been made for the late Eastern Han dynasty, the Three Kingdoms period, the Six Dynasties period, and the Tang dynasty. Chinese kiln technology has always been a key factor in the development of Chinese pottery, the Chinese developed effective kilns capable of firing at around 1, 000°C before 2000 BC. These were updraft kilns, often built below ground, two main types of kiln were developed by about 200 AD and remained in use until modern times. Both could reliably produce the temperatures of up to 1300°C or more needed for porcelain, in the late Ming, the egg-shaped kiln or zhenyao was developed at Jingdezhen, but mainly used there. This was something of a compromise between the types, and offered locations in the firing chamber with a range of firing conditions. According to Science, pottery dating from 20,000 years ago were found at the Xianrendong Cave site
19.
Ding (vessel)
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Ding were prehistoric and ancient Chinese cauldrons, standing upon legs with a lid and two facing handles. They are one of the most important shapes used in Chinese ritual bronzes and they were made in two shapes, round vessels with three legs and rectangular ones with four, the latter often called fanding. They were used for cooking, storage, and ritual offerings to the gods or to ancestors, under the Zhou, the ding and the privilege to perform the associated rituals became symbols of authority. In Chinese history and culture, possession of one or more ancient ding is often associated with power, therefore, the ding is often used as an implicit symbolism for power. The term inquiring of the ding is often used interchangeably with the quest for power, in the early Bronze Age of China, the use of wine and food vessels served a religious purpose. While ding were the most important food vessels, wine vessels were the more prominent ritual bronzes of this time, likely due to the belief in Shamanism, Ding were used to make ritual sacrifices, both human and animal, to ancestors. They varied in size, but were quite large, indicating that whole animals were likely sacrificed. The sacrifices were meant to appease ancestors due to the Shang belief that spirits had the capability to affect the world of the living, if the ancestors were happy, the living would be blessed with good fortune. During the Early Western Zhou Dynasty, the people underwent a political and cultural change, King Wu of Zhou believed that the Shang people were drunkards. He believed that their over-consumption of wine led their king to lose the Mandate of Heaven, because of this belief, food vessels replaced wine vessels in importance. Bronze vessels underwent what has been the Ritual Revolution and this theory suggests that because there was a change in decor as well as the types and variations of vessels found in tombs, their function shifted from solely religious to a more secular one. Instead of sacrificing food to ancestors, the Zhou used ding to show off the status of the deceased to both the living and spirits. For example, emperors were buried with nine ding, feudal lords with seven, ministers with five, the vessels served as symbols of authority for the elite far into the Warring States period. This is the period to which the oldest examples of bronze dings date, inscriptions found on dings and zhongs are used to study bronzeware script. The most commonly believed bronze vessel casting process of ancient Chinese vessels is the mold process. The model would then be shaved down to form the core, when the bronze had cooled, the clay would be broken away from the vessel, and the process was complete. A newer variation on the mold process was put forth as a way to explain asymmetrical faces on vessels which, as a rule. It was proposed that décor was not made on a model and then transferred to the outer mold layer, décor was added in a variety of ways
20.
Gui (vessel)
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A gui is a type of bowl-shaped ancient Chinese ritual bronze vessel used to hold offerings of food, probably mainly grain, for ancestral tombs. As with other shapes, the ritual bronzes followed early pottery versions for domestic use, the shape changed somewhat over the centuries but constant characteristics are a circular form, with a rounded, wide, profile or shape from the side, standing on a narrower rim or foot. There are usually two, or sometimes four, handles, and there may be a cover or a square base, the Kang Hou Gui, an 11th-century BC example in the British Museum was chosen as object 23 in the A History of the World in 100 Objects. The British Museum bowl inscription on the inside of the bowl tells that King Wus brother, Kang Hou, the inscription relates a rebellion by remnants of the Shang, and its defeat by the Zhou, which helps us to date it. Because historians know exactly when this unsuccessful rebellion against the Zhou dynasty took place then the bowl can be dated very accurately, ringing Thunder- Tomb Treasures from Ancient China. San Diego, San Diego Museum of Art, the great bronze age of China, an exhibition from the Peoples Republic of China. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, media related to Gui at Wikimedia Commons The development of the Gui, illustrated by examples in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 12th century B. C. Shang dynasty late 11th–early 10th century B. C, western Zhou early 9th century B. C
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Eurasian Steppe
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The Eurasian Steppe, also called the Great Steppe or the steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome. It stretches from Romania, Moldova through Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Xinjiang and Mongolia to Manchuria, with one major exclave located mostly in Hungary, the Eurasian Steppe extends thousands of miles from near the mouth of the Danube River almost to the Pacific Ocean. It is bounded on the north by the forests of Russia and Siberia, there is no clear southern boundary although the land becomes increasingly dry as one moves south. The steppe narrows at two points, dividing it into three major parts, the Western Steppe begins near the mouth of the Danube and extends northeast almost to Kazan and then southeast to the southern tip of the Ural Mountains. Its northern edge was a band of forest-steppe which has now been obliterated by the conversion of the whole area to agricultural land. In the southeast the Black Sea-Caspian Steppe extends between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea to the Caucasus Mountains, in the west, the Great Hungarian Plain is an island of steppe separated from the main steppe by the mountains of Transylvania. On the north shore of the Black Sea, the Crimean Peninsula has some interior steppe, the Ural Mountains extend south to a point about 650 km northeast of the Caspian Sea. This is not a barrier to movement, but the area near the Caspian is quite dry. The Central Steppe or Kazakh Steppe extends from the Urals to Dzungaria, in the southeast is the densely populated Fergana Valley and west of it the great oasis cities of Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara along the Zarafshan River. The southern area has a history, while in the north. On the east side of the former Sino-Soviet border mountains extend north almost to the forest zone with only limited grassland in Dzungaria, Xinjiang is the northwestern province of China. The east-west Tien Shan Mountains divide it into Dzungaria in the north, Dzungaria is bounded by the Tarbagatai Mountains on the west and the Mongolian Altai Mountains on the east, neither of which is a significant barrier. Dzungaria has good grassland around the edges and a central desert and it often behaved as a westward extension of Mongolia and connected Mongolia to the Kazakh steppe. To the north of Dzungaria are mountains and the Siberian forest, to the south and west of Dzungaria, and separated from it by the Tianshan Mountains, is an area about twice the size of Dzungaria, the oval Tarim Basin. The Tarim Basin formed an island of civilization in the center of the steppe. The Northern Silk Road went along the north and south sides of the Tarim Basin, at the west end of the basin the Pamir Mountains connect the Tien Shan Mountains to the Himalaya Mountains. To the south, the Kunlun Mountains separate the Tarim Basin from the thinly peopled Tibetan Plateau, the Mongol Steppe includes both Mongolia and the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. The two are separated by a dry area marked by the Gobi Desert
22.
Uranium
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Uranium is a chemical element with symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons, Uranium is weakly radioactive because all its isotopes are unstable. The most common isotopes in natural uranium are uranium-238 and uranium-235, Uranium has the highest atomic weight of the primordially occurring elements. Its density is about 70% higher than that of lead, and it occurs naturally in low concentrations of a few parts per million in soil, rock and water, and is commercially extracted from uranium-bearing minerals such as uraninite. In nature, uranium is found as uranium-238, uranium-235, Uranium decays slowly by emitting an alpha particle. The half-life of uranium-238 is about 4.47 billion years, many contemporary uses of uranium exploit its unique nuclear properties. Uranium-235 is the naturally occurring fissile isotope, which makes it widely used in nuclear power plants. However, because of the amounts found in nature, uranium needs to undergo enrichment so that enough uranium-235 is present. Uranium-238 is fissionable by fast neutrons, and is fertile, meaning it can be transmuted to fissile plutonium-239 in a nuclear reactor, another fissile isotope, uranium-233, can be produced from natural thorium and is also important in nuclear technology. In sufficient concentration, these maintain a sustained nuclear chain reaction. This generates the heat in nuclear reactors, and produces the fissile material for nuclear weapons. Depleted uranium is used in kinetic energy penetrators and armor plating, Uranium is used as a colorant in uranium glass, producing lemon yellow to green colors. Uranium glass fluoresces green in ultraviolet light and it was also used for tinting and shading in early photography. The 1789 discovery of uranium in the mineral pitchblende is credited to Martin Heinrich Klaproth, eugène-Melchior Péligot was the first person to isolate the metal and its radioactive properties were discovered in 1896 by Henri Becquerel. An ensuing arms race during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union produced tens of thousands of weapons that used uranium metal. The security of those weapons and their fissile material following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 is a concern for public health. When refined, uranium is a white, weakly radioactive metal
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Thorium
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Thorium is a chemical element with symbol Th and atomic number 90. A radioactive actinide metal, thorium is one of only two significantly radioactive elements that occur naturally in large quantities as a primordial element. It was discovered in 1829 by the Norwegian amateur mineralogist Morten Thrane Esmark and identified by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who named it after Thor, a thorium atom has 90 protons and therefore 90 electrons, of which four are valence electrons. Thorium metal is silvery and tarnishes black when exposed to air, Thorium is weakly radioactive, all of its known isotopes are unstable. Thorium-232, which has 142 neutrons, is the most stable isotope of thorium and accounts for all natural thorium. Thorium is estimated to be three to four times more abundant than uranium in the Earths crust, and is chiefly refined from monazite sands as a by-product of extracting rare earth metals. Thorium was once used as the light source in gas mantles and as an alloying material. Thorium is still used as an alloying element in TIG welding electrodes. Thorium is predicted to be able to replace uranium as fuel in nuclear reactors. Thorium is a soft, paramagnetic, bright silvery radioactive actinide metal, in the periodic table, it is located to the right of the actinide actinium, to the left of the actinide protactinium, and below the lanthanide cerium. Pure thorium is very ductile and, as normal for metals, can be cold-rolled, swaged, at room temperature, thorium metal has a face-centred cubic crystal structure, additionally, it has two other forms at exotic conditions, one at high temperature and one at high pressure. The properties of thorium vary widely depending on the amount of impurities in the sample, the purest thorium specimens usually contain about a tenth of a percent of the dioxide. These values lie intermediate between those of its neighbours actinium and protactinium, showing the continuity of trends across the early actinides, thoriums melting point of 1750 °C is above both that of actinium and that of protactinium. After thorium, there is a new smooth trend downward in the points of the early actinides from thorium to plutonium where the number of f electrons increases from about 0. Thorium has a modulus of 54 GPa, comparable to those of tin. The hardness of thorium is similar to that of steel, so heated pure thorium can be rolled in sheets. Nevertheless, while thorium is nearly half as dense as uranium and plutonium, Thorium becomes superconductive below 1.4 K. Thorium can also form alloys with many other metals. With chromium and uranium, it forms eutectic mixtures, and thorium is completely miscible in both solid and liquid states with its lighter congener cerium, as such, 232Th still occurs naturally today, four-fifths of the thorium present at Earths formation has survived to the present
24.
Yangtze
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The Yangtze River, known in China as the Cháng Jiāng or the Yángzǐ Jiāng, is the longest river in Asia and the third-longest in the world. The river is the longest in the world to flow entirely within one country and it drains one-fifth of the land area of the Peoples Republic of China and its river basin is home to one-third of the countrys population. The Yangtze is the sixth-largest river by volume in the world. The Yangtze River plays a role in the history, culture. The prosperous Yangtze River Delta generates as much as 20% of the PRCs GDP, for thousands of years, the river has been used for water, irrigation, sanitation, transportation, industry, boundary-marking and war. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is the largest hydro-electric power station in the world, in recent years, the river has suffered from industrial pollution, agricultural run-off, siltation, and loss of wetland and lakes, which exacerbates seasonal flooding. Some sections of the river are now protected as nature reserves, a stretch of the upstream Yangtze flowing through deep gorges in western Yunnan is part of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In mid-2014 the Chinese government announced it was building a transport network, comprising railways, roads and airports. Because the source of the Yangtze was not ascertained until modern times, Yangtze was actually the name of Chang Jiang for the lower part from Nanjing to the river mouth at Shanghai. In modern Chinese, Yangtze is still used to refer to the part of Chang Jiang from Nanjing to the river mouth. Yangtze never stands for the whole Chang Jiang, Chang Jiang is the modern Chinese name for the lower 2,884 km of the Yangtze from its confluence with the Min River at Yibin in Sichuan Province to the river mouth at Shanghai. Chang Jiang literally means the Long River, in Old Chinese, this stretch of the Yangtze was simply called Jiang/Kiang 江, a character of phono-semantic compound origin, combining the water radical 氵 with the homophone 工. Krong was probably a word in the Austroasiatic language of local peoples such as the Yue, similar to *krong in Proto-Vietnamese and krung in Mon, all meaning river, it is related to modern Vietnamese sông and Khmer kôngkea. By the Han Dynasty, Jiang had come to any river in Chinese. The epithet 長, means long, was first formally applied to the river during the Six Dynasties period, various sections of Chang Jiang have local names. From Yibin to Yichang, the river through Sichuan and Chongqing Municipality is also known as the Chuan Jiang or Sichuan River, in the Hubei Province, the river is also called the Jing Jiang or the Jing River after Jingzhou. In Anhui Province, the takes on the local name Wan Jiang after the shorthand name for Anhui. And Yangzi Jiang t 揚子江s 扬子江, p Yángzǐjiāng) or the Yangzi River, the name likely comes from an ancient ferry crossing called Yangzi or Yangzijin
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Erlitou culture
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The Erlitou culture was an early Bronze Age urban society and archaeological culture that existed in the Yellow River valley from approximately 1750 to 1530 BC. The culture was named after the site discovered at Erlitou in Yanshi, the culture was widely spread throughout Henan and Shanxi and later appeared in Shaanxi and Hubei. Chinese archaeologists generally identify the Erlitou culture as the site of the Xia dynasty, the Erlitou culture may have evolved from the matrix of Longshan culture. Originally centered around Henan and Shanxi Province, the spread to Shaanxi. After the rise of the Erligang culture, the site at Erlitou diminished in size, discovered in 1959 by Xu Xusheng, Erlitou is the largest site associated with the culture, with palace buildings and bronze smelting workshops. Erlitou monopolized the production of bronze vessels, including the earliest recovered dings. The city is on the Yi River, a tributary of the Luo River, the city was 2.4 km by 1.9 km, however, because of flood damage only 3 km2 are left. The site is divided into four phases, each of roughly 50 years, during Phase I, covering 100 ha, Erlitou was a rapidly growing regional center with estimated population of several thousand, but not yet an urban civilization or capital. Urbanization began in Phase II, expanding to 300 ha with a population around 11,000, a palace area of 12 ha was demarcated by four roads. It contained the 150x50 m Palace 3, composed of three courtyards along a 150-meter axis, and Palace 5, a bronze foundry was established to the south of the palatial complex that was controlled by the elite who lived in palaces. The city reached its peak in Phase III, and may have had a population of around 24,000, the palatial complex was surrounded by a 2-meter thick rammed earth wall and Palaces 1,7,8,9 were built. The earthwork volume of rammed earth for the base of largest Palace 1 is 20,000 m³ at least, Palaces 3 and 5 were abandoned and replaced by 4200 m2 Palace 2 and Palace 4. In Phase IV the population decreased to around 20,000, Palace 6 was built as an extension of Palace 2, and Palaces 10 and 11 were built. Phase IV overlaps with the Lower phase of the Erligang culture, around 1600 to 1560 BC, about 6 km northeast of Erlitou, Eligang cultural walled city was built at Yanshi, which coincide with an increase in production of arrowheads at Erlitou. This situation might indicate that the Yanshi City was competing for power, production of bronzes and other elite goods ceased at the end of Phase IV, at the same time as the Erligang city of Zhengzhou was established 85 km to the east. There is no evidence of destruction by fire or war, but during the Upper Erligang phase all the palaces were abandoned, and Erlitou was reduced to a village of 30 ha. A major goal of archaeology in China has been the search for the capitals of the Xia and Shang dynasties described in traditional accounts as inhabiting the Yellow River valley. The discovery of writing in the form of bones at Yinxu in Anyang definitively established the site as the last capital of the Shang
26.
Song dynasty
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The Song dynasty was an era of Chinese history that began in 960 and continued until 1279. It succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, coincided with the Liao and Western Xia dynasties and it was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or true paper money nationally and the first Chinese government to establish a permanent standing navy. This dynasty also saw the first known use of gunpowder, as well as the first discernment of true north using a compass, the Song dynasty is divided into two distinct periods, Northern and Southern. During the Northern Song, the Song capital was in the city of Bianjing. The Southern Song refers to the period after the Song lost control of its half to the Jurchen Jin dynasty in the Jin–Song Wars. During this time, the Song court retreated south of the Yangtze, the Southern Song dynasty considerably bolstered its naval strength to defend its waters and land borders and to conduct maritime missions abroad. To repel the Jin, and later the Mongols, the Song developed revolutionary new military technology augmented by the use of gunpowder, in 1234, the Jin dynasty was conquered by the Mongols, who took control of northern China, maintaining uneasy relations with the Southern Song. Möngke Khan, the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire and his younger brother Kublai Khan was proclaimed the new Great Khan, though his claim was only partially recognized by the Mongols in the west. In 1271, Kublai Khan was proclaimed the Emperor of China, after two decades of sporadic warfare, Kublai Khans armies conquered the Song dynasty in 1279. The Mongol invasion led to a reunification under the Yuan dynasty, the population of China doubled in size during the 10th and 11th centuries. The Northern Song census recorded a population of roughly 50 million, much like the Han and this data is found in the Standard Histories. However, it is estimated that the Northern Song had a population of some 100 million people and this dramatic increase of population fomented an economic revolution in pre-modern China. The expansion of the population, growth of cities, and the emergence of a national economy led to the withdrawal of the central government from direct involvement in economic affairs. The lower gentry assumed a role in grassroots administration and local affairs. Appointed officials in county and provincial centers relied upon the gentry for their services, sponsorship. Social life during the Song was vibrant, citizens gathered to view and trade precious artworks, the populace intermingled at public festivals and private clubs, and cities had lively entertainment quarters. The spread of literature and knowledge was enhanced by the expansion of woodblock printing. Technology, science, philosophy, mathematics, and engineering flourished over the course of the Song, although the institution of the civil service examinations had existed since the Sui dynasty, it became much more prominent in the Song period
27.
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
28.
Qianlong Emperor
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The Qianlong Emperor was the sixth emperor of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and the fourth Qing emperor to rule over China proper. This turned around in his years, the Qing empire began to decline with rampant corruption and wastefulness in his court. Hongli was adored both by his grandfather, the Kangxi Emperor and his father, the Yongzheng Emperor, some historians argue that the main reason why the Kangxi Emperor appointed the Yongzheng Emperor as his successor was because Hongli was his favourite grandson. He felt that Honglis mannerisms were similar to his own. As a teenager, Hongli was very capable in martial arts, after his fathers enthronement in 1722, Hongli was made a qinwang under the title Prince Bao of the First Rank. For many years, the Yongzheng Emperor did not designate any of his sons as the crown prince, Hongli went on inspection trips to the south, and was known to be an able negotiator and enforcer. He was also appointed as the regent on occasions when his father was away from the capital. Honglis accession to the throne was already foreseen before he was proclaimed emperor before the assembled imperial court upon the death of the Yongzheng Emperor. The name in the box was to be revealed to other members of the family in the presence of all senior ministers only upon the death of the emperor. When the Yongzheng Emperor died suddenly in 1735, the will was taken out and read before the entire Qing imperial court, Hongli adopted the era name Qianlong, which is composed of the characters 乾 and 隆 and which collectively mean Lasting Eminence. The Qianlong Emperor was a military leader. Immediately after ascending the throne, he sent armies to suppress the Miao rebellion and his later campaigns greatly expanded the territory controlled by the Qing Empire. This was made not only by Qing military might, but also by the disunity. Under the Qianlong Emperors reign, the Dzungar Khanate was incorporated into the Qing Empires rule and renamed Xinjiang, while to the west, the incorporation of Xinjiang into the Qing Empire resulted from the final defeat and destruction of the Dzungars, a coalition of Western Mongol tribes. The Qianlong Emperor then ordered the Dzungar genocide, historian Peter Perdue has argued that the decimation of the Dzungars was the result of an explicit policy of massacre launched by the Qianlong Emperor. Khalkha Mongol rebels under Prince Chingünjav had plotted with the Dzungar leader Amursana, the Qing army crushed the rebellion and executed Chingünjav and his entire family. Poems glorifying the Qing conquest and genocide of the Dzungar Mongols were written by Zhao, Zhao Yi wrote the Yanpu zaji in brush-notes style, where military expenditures of the Qianlong Emperors reign were recorded. The Qianlong Emperor was praised as being the source of eighteenth-century peace, the Dzungar genocide has been compared to the Qing extermination of the Jinchuan Tibetan people in 1776, which also occurred during the Qianlong Emperors reign
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Taotie
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The taotie is both one of the four evil fiends in Chinese mythology and a motif commonly found on Chinese ritual bronze vessels from the Shang and Zhou dynasty. The design typically consists of a mask, described as being frontal, bilaterally symmetrical, with a pair of raised eyes. Some argue that the design can be traced back to jade pieces found in Neolithic sites such as the Liangzhu culture. In ancient Chinese mythology like Classic of Mountains and Seas, taotie is one of the four creatures of the world or four fiends along with Hundun, Qiongqi. On the opposite side, there are Four Holy Creatures in Chinese mythology which called Azure Dragon, Vermilion Bird, White Tiger, the once-popular belief that the faces depicted the animals used in the sacrificial ceremonies has now more or less been rejected. As one scholar writes art styles always carry some social references and it is interesting that even Shang divination inscriptions shed no light on the meaning of the taotie. The word taotie itself was glossed by a Zuo Zhuan commentator as glutton, nonetheless, the association of the term taotie with the motif on the Zhou bronzes is sufficiently ancient. It comes from the passage in the Lu’s Spring and Autumn Annals, The taotie on Zhou bronzes has a head. When it eats people, it does not swallow them, in Sarah Allans view, association between gluttony and the dings use for food sacrifices to the insatiable spirits of the dead is significant. To alien clans and tribes, it symbolized fear and force, to its own clan or tribe and this religious concept, this dual nature, was crystallized in its strange, hideous features. What appears so savage today had a historical, rational quality in its time, as it was with Homer’s epic poems and African masks, so it was with the taotie, in whose hideous features was concentrated a deep-seated historic force. It is because of this irresistible historic force that the mystery, li Zehou further notes, Some scholars consider that the meaning of taotie is not eating people but making a mysterious communication between people and Heaven. During the Ming dynasty, a number of compiled lists of traditional motifs seen in architecture and applied art. Some scholars believed that the Taotie motif is a reference to Chi You and is used to serve as a warning to people who covet power, according to notes by the Qing dynasty painter Luo Ping/Luo Pin, Huang Di ordered his men to have Chi You beheaded. Seeing that Chi Yous head was separated from his body, later sages had his image engraved on sacrificial vessels as a warning to those that would covet power and wealth. In the Book of Imaginary Beings Jorge Luis Borges interpreted the figures as representing a dog-headed, double-bodied monster that represented greed, the Tao Tei are the primary antagonists in the 2017 historical-fantasy epic film The Great Wall. Chang, Art, Myth, and Ritual, The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China. Li, Zehou, The Path of Beauty, A Study of Chinese Aesthetics, Oxford in Asia paperbacks, New York, Oxford University Press, pp. 30–31, ISBN 0-19-586526-X, there is an excerpt on taotie at AsianArt Study Guide
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Houmuwu ding
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The Houmuwu ding, formerly called Simuwu ding, is a rectangular bronze ding of the ancient Chinese Shang dynasty. It is the largest piece of bronzeware to survive anywhere in the ancient world. It was unearthed in Wuguan Village, Anyang, Henan in 1939, the ding is named for the inscription in bronze ware script on the interior wall, which reads 后母戊, meaning Queen Mother Wu. This identifies the dedicatee as the wife of King Wu Yi of Shang, the dedicator was presumably her son, King Wen Ding. The inscription was originally misinterpreted as 司母戊, but since the 1970s scholars have reached the consensus that the first character should be read as Hou, the National Museum of China has officially corrected its name. The ding is of the type, with four legs. It is 133 centimetres high,110 centimetres wide, and 79 centimetres deep, compared to earlier ding, such as the Duling rectangular ding, it is wider and its walls are thicker, making it much more massive. Each side has a space in the middle, surrounded by a band of decoration featuring taotie. There are two handles, each decorated on the exterior with two facing each other, their jaws closing around a human head in between them, an image which is also found on Fu Hao battle axes
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Zun
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Used in religious ceremonies to hold wine, the zun has a wide lip to facilitate pouring. Vessels have been found in the shape of a dragon, an ox, a goose, one notable zun is the He zun. The zun is a used as a ritual container to hold wine in ancient Chinese. It is a wine cup, with no handles or legs. The mouth of the vessel is normally seen as broader than the rest of the body, as a ritual container, its function is to provide the offering of wine to the deceased through ceremonial practices. Depending on the type of zun vessel, for example the Xi zun, not only was it used to store wine and this is the only bronze piece discovered known to combine the two functions. The zun comes in various shapes, notably as a round or square vase-like form, through these forms they appear in unique shapes varying different animals. Often, these vessels are found with distinctive and defined decor with unique symbolism, the most noticeable symbol through the decor is the taotie, known as the demon-face or the face of a sacrificial animal in early Chinese art. This type of face is a motif found in Chinese ritual bronzes during the Shang dynasty. It is has also defined as a mask, vividly shown as two symmetrical bodies that are joined together. The most visible feature of the mask on the vessel is the protruding animal eyes projecting from the surface in which stares at the viewer. These protruding eyes has also defined as the eyes of a predator. The zun can be seen in a variety of different vessel forms from an amount of decoration to detailed. Some are square, some cylindrical while others are modeled after animals, some of the animals they are modeled after are an elephant, ox, sheep, horse, rhinoceros and a bird. The basic shape used throughout many is cylindrical and the shape itself is repeated, some Zuns are tall and slender while others may be short and round. The decoration used on the vessels varies not only in content, the height of the relief may give off the impression of texture or it may emphasize the form of the vessel by being smooth and round like the vessel. The taller vessel forms may have flanges on the sides that start at the upper lip, some characteristics of early Shang zuns consisted of a flaring mouth, high neck and a large body. The zuns also had wide shoulders and a foot ring, during the early Western Zhou there was a zun modeled after a gu but was thicker, larger and the body portion is swelled more than that of a gu
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Western Zhou
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The Western Zhou period was the first half of the Zhou dynasty of ancient China. It began when King Wu of Zhou overthrew the Shang dynasty at the Battle of Muye, the dynasty was successful for about seventy-five years and then slowly lost power. The former Shang lands were divided into fiefs which became increasingly independent of the king. In 771, the Zhou were driven out of the Wei River valley, few records survive from this early period and accounts from the Western Zhou period cover little beyond a list of kings with uncertain dates. King Wu died two or three years after the conquest, because his son, King Cheng of Zhou was young, his brother, the Duke of Zhou assisted the young and inexperienced king as regent. Wus other brothers, concerned about the Duke of Zhous growing power, formed an alliance with other regional rulers, the Duke of Zhou stamped out this rebellion and conquered more territory to bring other people under Zhou rule. The Duke formulated the Mandate of Heaven doctrine to counter Shang claims to a right of rule. With a feudal system, royal relatives and generals were given fiefs in the east, including Luoyang, Jin, Ying, Lu, Qi. While this was designed to maintain Zhou authority as it expanded its rule over an amount of territory. When the Duke of Zhou stepped down as regent, the remainder of Chengs reign, the fourth king, King Zhao of Zhou led an army south against Chu and was killed along with a large part of the Zhou army. The fifth king, King Mu of Zhou is remembered for his visit to the Queen Mother of the West. Territory was lost to the Xu Rong in the southeast, the reigns of the next four kings are poorly documented. The ninth king is said to have boiled the Duke of Qi in a cauldron, the tenth king, King Li of Zhou was forced into exile and power was held for fourteen years by the Gonghe Regency. Lis overthrow may have accompanied by Chinas first recorded peasant rebellion. When Li died in exile, Gonghe retired and power passed to Lis son King Xuan of Zhou, King Xuan worked to restore royal authority, though regional lords became less obedient later in his reign. The twelfth and last king of the Western Zhou period was King You of Zhou, some scholars have surmised that the sack of Haojing might have been connected to a Scythian raid from the Altai before their westward expansion. Most of the Zhou nobles withdrew from the Wei River valley and this was the start of the Eastern Zhou period, which is customarily divided into the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period. It is possible that the Zhou kings derived most of their income from lands in the Wei valley
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Metropolitan Museum of Art
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially the Met, is located in New York City and is the largest art museum in the United States, and is among the most visited art museums in the world. Its permanent collection contains two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, on the edge of Central Park along Manhattans Museum Mile, is by area one of the worlds largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains a collection of art, architecture. On March 18,2016, the museum opened the Met Breuer museum at Madison Avenue in the Upper East Side, it extends the museums modern, the Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, Indian, and Islamic art. The museum is home to collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, as well as antique weapons. Several notable interiors, ranging from first-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day and it opened on February 20,1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, the museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. A number of interiors, ranging from 1st century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Mets galleries. In addition to its permanent exhibitions, the Met organizes and hosts traveling shows throughout the year. The director of the museum is Thomas P. Campbell, a long-time curator and it was announced on February 28th,2017 that Campbell will be stepping down as the Mets director and CEO, effective June. On March 1st,2017 the BBC reported that Daniel Weiss shall be the acting CEO until a replacement is found, Beginning in the late 19th century, the Met started to acquire ancient art and artifacts from the Near East. From a few tablets and seals, the Mets collection of Near Eastern art has grown to more than 7,000 pieces. The highlights of the include a set of monumental stone lamassu, or guardian figures. The Mets Department of Arms and Armor is one of the museums most popular collections. Among the collections 14,000 objects are many pieces made for and used by kings and princes, including armor belonging to Henry VIII of England, Henry II of France, Rockefeller donated his more than 3, 000-piece collection to the museum. The Mets Asian department holds a collection of Asian art, of more than 35,000 pieces, the collection dates back almost to the founding of the museum, many of the philanthropists who made the earliest gifts to the museum included Asian art in their collections
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Jue (vessel)
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A jue is a shape of Chinese ritual bronze, a tripod vessel or goblet used to serve or warm wine. It was used for ceremonial purposes by the Chinese of the Xia, Shang, often the jue had a handle, sometimes in the shape of a dragon. It also has two protuberances on the top of the vessel, which were used when lifting the vessel out of heat. As with other shapes, the surface may be decorated with taotie, ringing Thunder- Tomb Treasures from Ancient China. San Diego, San Diego Museum of Art, the great bronze age of China, an exhibition from the Peoples Republic of China, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on jues
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Guang (vessel)
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A guang or gong is a particular shape used in Chinese art for vessels, originally made as Chinese ritual bronzes in the Shang dynasty, and sometimes later in Chinese porcelain. They are a type of ewer which was used for pouring rice wine at ritual banquets, the guang has a single thick foot, and a thick hollow body that represents one or more stylized animals. Guangs have a handle at one end and a spout at the other. The back and animal head at the end usually are a removable lid. Their main period of use was during the Shang and Zhou dynasties, from around 1700 to 900 BCE, the Ritual wine server, Indianapolis Museum of Art,60.43 is a fine example from about 1100 BC. This use, for storage and serving, is suggested through the form of the vessel and it is typically supported by one oval-shaped foot, while the bronze itself takes the form of several animals and fantastical creatures metamorphosed. Each guang also has a neck and head, which serve as the channel for the wine. A lid accompanies the vessel to complete the form, according to Robert Bagley, this lid is the chief idiosyncrasy, or characteristic, of the guang, for it is where the largest relief and decoration often takes place. Guang bronze vessels were used not only in life to honor the deceased, because of this, the ritual vessels are not only apotropaic but useful to the living as well. They are both everyday functioning items, but also objects which serve religious and spiritual purposes, the Guang is distinguishable by its zoomorphic lid and handle, and its one-footed base. Some guang lids also depict animals, typically birds, at the back of the vessel facing or transitioning into the handle, the animals on the lid and handle are presented in the round. The surface of the vessel is decorated in low- to mid-relief and this relief may depict the bodies belonging to creatures rendered on the lid or other complete animal figures. It is not uncommon for one animal to transition directly into another, the lower sections of the guang are also often divided into registers and quadrants by flanges. This flange can be the central divider of a taotie, a mask-like creature motif with curving horns, other surface embellishments include geometric background shapes such as the squared-spiral, the lei-wen. These were used both to fill in empty space between more representational imagery and sometimes as smaller detail in those images. See Also, Shang Dynasty The guang, one of many types of Chinese ritual bronze vessels, is late to come into the world of bronze vessels, and lasts a very short amount of time. The earliest account of guang vessels comes from late in the Shang dynasty, during the Anyang Period and these vessels were distinct from other guang objects in early Chinese history because of their decoration. In the Shang Dynasty, the guang featured ornamentation which had not been fully developed, in a late twelfth century to early eleventh century guang, the decoration is lacking on the bottom register, but more innovative in design in the lid and upper registers
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Jia (vessel)
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A jia is a ritual vessel type found in both pottery and bronze forms, it was used to hold libations of wine for the veneration of ancestors. It was made either with four legs or in the form of a tripod, the earliest evidence of the Jia vessel type appears during the Neolithic Period. It was a prominent form during the Shang and early Western Zhou dynasties, the vessels had a ceremonial function. They were decorated with varying designs and zoomorphic motifs, possibly symbolizing varying religious beliefs. There are several theories as to the origin and meaning of the symbolic iconography, Early Chinese scholars extended their traditional beliefs as regarded the symbolic meanings of the designs and motifs. They believed them to have a religious, cosmic, or mythical function, the Western historian Max Loehr has argued that the designs and motifs are ornamental and have no inherent symbolic meaning. There are no extant texts or sources contemporary with the creation of the Shang bronzes that offer descriptions or explanations of the meanings of the Jia vessels. The Jia bronze type functioned as a wine vessel, the bronze vessels were used at feasts as drinking vessels, they were exhibited in ancestral halls and temples, and most prominently buried in tombs for use in the afterlife. These bronze vessels were not for use, as the ancients typically used lacquerware or earthenware for eating and drinking. The Shang were practitioners of a form of worship, which incorporated ritual sacrifices. They would make their offerings based on a calendar of ritual sacrifices, the sacrifices would include the presentation of food and drink, depending on the vessel type. The bronze vessels were used to prepare, and or present these offerings, when it comes to the décor of the jia vessel, simple designs are most common. The lack of design is due to the jia vessel being one of the oldest vessel forms. As time progressed, vessel décor got more elaborate, while one simple band of décor was prevalent in Early Shang times, towards the middle and late Shang periods more than one band of décor was more common. As the Zhou period began it was not unlikely to see a jia covered in ornamentation, the vessel shape changed to accommodate the change in decoration, and vice versa. When more elaborate designs are seen it is normally the taotie motif, the taotie motif shows two dragon-like figures in profile, that together to form the taotie mask. Whorl circles were also a common decoration on the jia vessel, the décor on the jia can be classified by Max Loehrs five styles of Anyang bronzes. Style I is classified by thin thread relief designs, they are described as being light and airy, Style II uses a thicker ribbon relief
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Ritual wine server (guang), Indianapolis
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An elaborately decorated ritual wine server in the guang shape is a Chinese ritual bronze wine vessel, accession number 60.43, in the permanent Asian collection at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It dates to about 1100 BCE in the Shang dynasty period, the piece is currently on display in the Arthur R. & Frances D. This ritual wine server, referred to in Chinese as a guang, is a bronze, adorning the surface of the vessel are three primary decorative animal motifs, including fifteen imaginary creatures cast in relief along the sides. The first animal depicted is apparent in the shape and design of the removable lid. Here a battle-horned beast dominates the wide spout, with its large head merging seamlessly with reverse-S shaped bodies descending to the base of the vessel, under the spout, the beast’s forepaws appear posed in a position indicating the animal is rearing up on its hind legs. The second animal motif is that of a taotie, a designed to look like a monstrous animal. The taotie cast into this vessel sits at the end of the lid, depicted with zoomorphic horns, the final animal motif consists of a scaled, serpent-like dragon along the rear register of the vessel. This dragon is curved to look back upon its own tail, cast into the underside of the lid is a Chinese character, likely a signature from the vessel’s original owner depicting the owner’s tribe sign. This particular clan sign has also been noted within several other artifacts dated from this period. For example, a lei vessel in the Shanghai Museum collection, in the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst Köln is a fangyi vessel that also carries the same emblem. A third example is the Metropolitan Museum of Art zun vessel and this has led some scholars to believe that this wine vessel may have been only one of several pieces designed by a single workshop for one influential customer. Cast during the Shang dynasty, this vessel is representative of the highly evolved piece-mold technologies developed within China’s Bronze Age. Additionally, the Chinese technique of using piece-mold casting was considered extremely sophisticated compared to the method used by other world cultures during their own Bronze Ages. During piece-mold casting, the object to be created is first designed as a model and these clay pieces are then decorated or stamped with intricate designs before being fired back together, creating a mold for the bronze casting. For vessels such as one, the central cavity of the container would have been created by placing a core inside the mold before casting with molten bronze. By casting the objects into molds already decorated with designs, craftsmen were able to use this technique to attain a level of definition than in any previously utilized casting methods. Furthermore, unlike other early bronze wine vessels, guang have no history of prior ceramic prototypes, marking them as unique casts specifically from the Shang. Wine vessels such as this one were likely the property of an owner and according to Chinese traditions of the time
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Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng
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The Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng is an important archaeological site in Suizhou, Hubei, China, dated sometime after 433 BC. The tomb contained the remains of Marquis Yi of Zeng, and is one of a handful of ancient Chinese royal tombs to have been discovered intact, Zeng was a minor state subordinate to its powerful neighbor, Chǔ. The tomb was made around 433 BC, either at the end of the Spring, the Peoples Liberation Army accidentally discovered the tomb in 1977 while destroying a hill to build a factory at Leigudun. The tomb was constructed of wooden timbers and covers an area of 220 square meters. The tomb is divided into four chambers, resembling the layout of a palace of the day. The northern chamber is the smallest and contained military artifacts, the eastern chamber contained the tomb of Marquis Yi, who was buried in a wooden lacquer coffin nested inside a larger lacquer coffin. This chamber also contained eight other coffins that held the remains of eight women, the western chamber contained thirteen coffins that held the remains of thirteen other women. The central chamber is the largest, and contained a large ensemble of musical instruments. In 1981, a less well-preserved and smaller tomb was discovered about 100 meters away and this tomb contained a less extravagant set of 36 bronze bells and other musical instruments. The bells are two-toned, producing two distinct tones when struck at the center or the side, this property is enabled because the bells have an almond-shaped cross-section, the bells cover a range of five octaves. The bells were inscribed with music notations that detailed the relationship among the standards of Zeng, Chu. Other musical instruments in the ensemble include stone chimes, various string instruments were also discovered in the tombs, including se, qin and zhu. Once the gourd matured, it would take the shape of the mold that conformed to the musical properties of the instrument. Along with the Late Shang dynasty tomb of Fu Hao, the tomb one of the largest sets of ritual bronze vessels to be properly recorded at the site. The tomb had a total of 88 vessels and implements such as ladles and shovels, the decoration of the vessels is highly elaborate, with many protruding elements. The largest vessel is a unique pan wine vessel in two pieces,33 cm high and nearly as wide, there is a matching set of 9 of the smaller li type of cauldron. Other vessels include a set of 8 covered gui for holding grain,4 fǔ square sacrificial vessels,10 cups on legs, four fou, in addition to aesthetic artifacts, the tomb contained a trove of weaponry, including arrowheads, dagger-axes spear tips and chariot wheel spokes. This tomb is important in the history of Ancient Chinese glass, as it contains 173 eye beads that were made in a western Asian style, similar to some found in Gilan, Iran
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Dui (vessel)
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A dui is a type of Chinese ritual bronze vessel used in the late Zhou dynasty and the Warring States period of ancient China. It was a container used as a ritual vessel. Most Dui consist of two bowls supported on three legs, the Dui is typically spherical in shape, possessing a half-domed bowl on bottom with a similarly shaped container fitting on top. Shapes vary from circular, ovular, or subcircular, the vessel stands on either a single pedestal or is supported by three legs. The three legs would permit heating of the food within, each vessel sports two handles, either set or unfixed rings adorn the bottom portion of the vessel, allowing for easy transport. The containers themselves possess highly intricate detailing, varying in geometric, many of these carvings assume biomorphic forms, depicting typical animal imagery found throughout ancient China such as cats, snakes, dragons or birds. Much of the designs are in-laid with metal, though few complete renditions still exist, from the specimen found from the Warring States period, proof of copper in-lay can be found in swirling spherical patterns that accentuate the shape of the Dui. Incised geometric patterning along with cat-like outlines emanate from the container, simple linear patterning covers the vessel in clearly defined registers, while high-relief rope bands separate the basin from the lid. From the Warring States period, ovular forms become subcircular shapes, four fantastical creatures adorn the lid of this periods example, forming upright rings. Animal pendant masks hold moveable rings in their mouths, allowing for easy transport, in-lay patterning surfaces in this example too, with turquoise and silver in typical registers. Curvilinear patterns accentuate the shape, the prominent bands of decoration portray symmetrical bird figures with intertwining bodies encircling the vessel. Border designs consist of S-shaped bands around the foot, lid, in some examples the two symmetric hemispheres could be used individually or as a bowl with lid when facilitating the ritual process. Lidded varieties are evidenced by the lack of supporting structure on each bowl, the vessel might be displayed prominently within a temple or hall but also found use during feasts commemorating ancestors. At times, the vessel was produced solely for burial, in later periods the vessel became a symbol of societal prominence and the religious aspect receded. The dui functioned and was created in the Late Zhou dynasties, the dui is one of the earliest types of near-spherical shape of vessel. In the middle of the Spring and Autumn period, people began to use the dui as a warming and serving food vessel. According to scholar K. C. Chang, the term dui was said to have written in the catalogue incorrectly by cataloguers from the Song dynasty. First seen in Eastern Zhou, dui means gobular vessel, but in Shang and Western Zhou, Dui was transcribed into the modern equivalent of gui
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Warring States period
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The Warring States Period derives its name from the Record of the Warring States, a work compiled early in the Han dynasty. The political geography of the era was dominated by the Seven Warring States, namely, Qin, The State of Qin was in the far west, with its core in the Wei River Valley and Guanzhong. This geographical position offered protection from the states of the Central Plains, the Three Jins, Northeast of Qin, on the Shanxi plateau, were the three successor states of Jin. These were, Han, south, along the Yellow River, Zhao, the northernmost of the three. Qi, located in the east of China, centred on the Shandong Peninsula, described as east of Mount Tai, Chu, located in the south of China, with its core territory around the valleys of the Han River and, later, the Yangtze River. Yan, located in the northeast, centred on modern-day Beijing, late in the period Yan pushed northeast and began to occupy the Liaodong Peninsula Besides these seven major states, some minor states also survived into the period. Yue, On the southeast coast near Shanghai was the State of Yue, Sichuan, In the far southwest were the States of Ba and Shu. These were non-Zhou states that were conquered by Qin late in the period, in the Central Plains comprising much of modern-day Henan Province, many smaller city states survived as satellites of the larger states, though they were eventually to be absorbed as well. Zhongshan, Between the states of Zhao and Yan was the state of Zhongshan, the Spring and Autumn period was initiated by the eastward flight of the Zhou court. There is no one single incident or starting point for the Warring States era, some proposed starting points are as follows,481 BC, Proposed by Song-era historian Lü Zuqian, since it is the end of the Spring and Autumn Annals. 476–475 BC, The author, Sima Qian, of Records of the Grand Historian who chose the year of King Yuan of Zhou. 403 BC, The year when Han, Zhao and Wei were officially recognised as states by the Zhou court, author Sima Guang of Zizhi Tongjian tells us that the symbol of eroded Zhou authority should be taken as the start of the Warring States era. The Spring and Autumn period led to a few states gaining power at the expense of many others, during the Warring States period, many rulers claimed the Mandate of Heaven to justify their conquest of other states and spread their influence. Other major states also existed, such as Wu and Yue in the southeast, the last decades of the Spring and Autumn era were marked by increased stability, as the result of peace negotiations between Jin and Chu which established their respective spheres of influence. This situation ended with the partition of Jin, whereby the state was divided between the houses of Han, Zhao and Wei, and thus enabled the creation of the seven major warring states. This allowed other clans to gain fiefs and military authority, and decades of struggle led to the establishment of four major families. The Battle of Jinyang saw the allied Han, Zhao and Wei destroy the Zhi family, with this, they became the de facto rulers of most of Jins territory, though this situation would not be officially recognised until half a century later. The Jin division created a vacuum that enabled during the first 50 years expansion of Chu and Yue northward
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Hubei Provincial Museum
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Hubei Provincial Museum is one of the best-known museums in China, with a large amount of State-level historic and cultural relics. Established in 1953, the moved to its present location in 1960. Since 1999 a number of new buildings have been added, the museum is located in the Wuchang District of Wuhan, Hubei Province, not far from the west shore of Wuhans East Lake. It has a collection of over 200,000 objects, including the Sword of Goujian, an ancient set of bells and extensive artifacts from the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng. List of museums in China Official website of Hubei Provincial Museum Hubei museum on China Travel Guide Hubei Provincial Museum at Google Cultural Institute
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Hu (vessel)
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A hu is a type of wine vessel that has a pear-shaped cross-section. Its body swells and flares into a neck, creating S-shaped profile. While it is similar to you vessel, hu usually has a longer body, the shape of hu probably derives from its ceramic prototype prior to the Shang dynasty. They usually have handles on the top or rings attached to each side of neck, many extant hu lack lids while those excavated in such tombs as Fu Haos indicate that this type of vessel might be originally made with lids. Although it is often to see hu having a circular body, there also appears hu in square and flat rectangular forms, called fang hu. In addition, hu often came to be found in a pair or in a set together with other types of vessels. As wine had played an important part in the Shang ritual, the bronze hu vessel has not been found prior to the Shang period. During this period, there are two types of hu vessels. One has a mouth and long neck, the other has wide mouth. The décor on the hu in the Shang period was dominated by taotie motif, square form of hu began to appear in the end of the Shang dynasty. Because this form of hu is still uncommon at this time, its appearance in the tomb marks the owners wealth. Hu in the Western Zhou period was undergone several changes, larger hu vessels seem to become more common after the first half of mid-Western Zhou. This is possibly a response to changes in ritual, nevertheless, hu from the Western Zhou dynasty still mainly served as a wine vessel for the uses of ritual. In addition to the change in size, hus previous taotie design was replaced by other types of animal. Hu found during this time were not from tombs, but hoards left by Zhou people. Therefore, the burial context provides less clues about their functions. The East Zhou dynasty was subdivided into two periods, Spring and Autumn period and Warring States Period, the East Zhou witnessed the decline of central government and the rise of feudal states. It is a time of political disunity, powerful feudal lords barely paid allegiance to Zhou kings, whose domain drastically dwindled during this time
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Pitcher (container)
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In US English, a pitcher is a container with a spout used for storing and pouring contents which are liquid in form. In English speaking countries outside North America, a jug is any container with a handle, generally a pitcher also has a handle, which makes pouring easier. A ewer is a pitcher, often decorated, with a base. An example of a ewer is the Americas Cup given to the winner of the Americas Cup sailing regatta match, the word pitcher comes from the 13th century Middle English word picher, which means earthen jug. The word picher is linked to the Old French word pichier which is the version of the word bichier. The pitcher’s origin goes as far back to the Medieval Latin word bicarium from the Greek word bikos, compare with Dutch beker, German Becher and English beaker. An early mention of a pitcher was when the Biblical Book of Genesis mentions of Rebekah coming to Abrahams servant bearing a vessel with water. Another excerpt from the Bible mentions empty pitchers with lamps given by Gideon to three hundred men divided into three companies, in the Book of Judges. Other religions have been known to use such water vessels, one of which is the notable Pitcher of Marwan Ibn Mohammad which predates 8th century AD. The artifact was acquired and unearthed by archeologists on May 15,1930, currently it is on display at the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo, ewers were also popular works of art during the Tang Dynasty in China. These items once coveted by the classes of China became commonplace artifacts regardless of socioeconomic status. Little pitchers have big ears is a proverb, the phrase depicts a child as the pitcher with ears hearing what people around them say or do, which is stored inside. The adults are also cautioned that the children not be as naïve as they are perceived to be. Amphora Aquamanile Bridge spouted vessel Hydria Jar Jug Oenochoe Porron
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History of Chinese archaeology
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Chinese archaeology has been practiced since the Song Dynasty with early practices of antiquarianism. Scholar-officials claimed to have discovered ancient bronze vessels that were created as far back as the Shang dynasty, which bore the written characters of the Shang era. Some attempted to recreate these bronze vessels by using imagination alone, not by observing tangible evidence of relics, the Kaogutu or Illustrated Catalogue of Examined Antiquity compiled by Lü Dalin is one of the oldest known catalogues to systematically describe and classify ancient artifacts which were unearthed. Song scholars established a system of dating these artifacts by examining their inscriptions, decorative motif styles. Bruce G. Trigger asserts that archaeology as a discipline of its own never developed in China and was considered a branch of historiography instead. Chinese ritual bronzes History of archaeology Science and technology of the Song dynasty Clunas, superfluous Things, Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China. The Cambridge Illustrated History of China, fairbank, John King, Goldman, Merle, China, A New History. Cambridge, London, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, fraser, Julius Thomas, Haber, Francis C. Time, Science, and Society in China and the West, amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, ISBN 0-87023-495-1. Preliminary Notes on Sung Archaeology, The Journal of Asian Studies, a History of Archaeological Thought, Second Edition
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