Spring and Autumn period
The Spring and Autumn period was a period in Chinese history from 771 to 476 BC which corresponds to the first half of the Eastern Zhou Period. The period's name derives from the Spring and Autumn Annals, a chronicle of the state of Lu between 722 and 479 BC, which tradition associates with Confucius. During this period, the Zhou royal authority over the various feudal states started to decline, as more and more dukes and marquesses obtained de facto regional autonomy, defying the king's court in Luoyi, waging wars amongst themselves; the gradual Partition of Jin, one of the most powerful states, marked the end of the Spring and Autumn period, the beginning of the Warring States period. In 771 BC, the Quanrong invasion destroyed the Western Zhou and its capital Haojing, forcing the Zhou king to flee to the eastern capital Luoyi; the event ushered in the Eastern Zhou dynasty, divided into the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods. During the Spring and Autumn period, China's feudal system of fengjian became irrelevant.
The Zhou court, having lost its homeland in the Guanzhong region, held nominal power, but had real control over only a small royal demesne centered on Luoyi. During the early part of the Zhou dynasty period, royal relatives and generals had been given control over fiefdoms in an effort to maintain Zhou authority over vast territory; as the power of the Zhou kings waned, these fiefdoms became independent states. The most important states came together in regular conferences where they decided important matters, such as military expeditions against foreign groups or against offending nobles. During these conferences one vassal ruler was sometimes declared hegemon; as the era continued and more powerful states annexed or claimed suzerainty over smaller ones. By the 6th century BC most small states had disappeared and just a few large and powerful principalities dominated China; some southern states, such as Chu and Wu, claimed independence from the Zhou, who undertook wars against some of them. Amid the interstate power struggles, internal conflict was rife: six élite landholding families waged war on each other inside Jin, political enemies set about eliminating the Chen family in Qi, the legitimacy of the rulers was challenged in civil wars by various royal family members in Qin and Chu.
Once all these powerful rulers had established themselves within their respective dominions, the bloodshed focused more on interstate conflict in the Warring States period, which began in 403 BC when the three remaining élite families in Jin – Zhao and Han – partitioned the state. After the Zhou capital was sacked by the Marquess of Shen and the Quanrong barbarians, the Zhou moved the capital east from the now desolated Zongzhou in Haojing near modern Xi'an to Wangcheng in the Yellow River Valley; the Zhou royalty was closer to its main supporters Jin, Zheng. In Chengzhou, Prince Yijiu was crowned by his supporters as King Ping. However, with the Zhou domain reduced to Chengzhou and nearby areas, the court could no longer support the six army groups it had in the past; the Zhou court would never regain its original authority. Though the king de jure retained the Mandate of Heaven, the title held little actual power. With the decline of Zhou power, the Yellow River drainage basin was divided into hundreds of small, autonomous states, most of them consisting of a single city, though a handful of multi-city states those on the periphery, had power and opportunity to expand outward.
A total of 148 states are mentioned in the chronicles for this period, 128 of which were absorbed by the four largest states by the end of the period. Shortly after the royal family's move to Chengzhou, a hierarchical alliance system arose where the Zhou king would give the title of hegemon to the leader of the state with the most powerful military; this political framework retained the fēngjiàn power structure, though interstate and intrastate conflict led to disregard for feudal customs, respect for the Ji family, solidarity with other Zhou peoples. The king's prestige legitimized the military leaders of the states, helped mobilize collective defense of Zhou territory against "barbarians". Over the next two centuries, the four most powerful states—Qin, Jin, Qi and Chu—struggled for power; these multi-city states used the pretext of aid and protection to intervene and gain suzerainty over the smaller states. During this rapid expansion, interstate relations alternated between low-level warfare and complex diplomacy.
Duke Yin of Lu ascended the throne in 722 BC. From this year on the state of Lu kept an official chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals, which along with its commentaries is the standard source for the Spring and Autumn period. Corresponding chronicles are known to have existed in other states as well, but all but the Lu chronicle have been lost. In 717 BC, Duke Zhuang of Zheng went to the capital for an audience with King Huan. During the encounter the duke felt he was not trea
Qin dynasty
The Qin dynasty was the first dynasty of Imperial China, lasting from 221 to 206 BC. Named for its heartland in Qin state, the dynasty was founded by Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of Qin; the strength of the Qin state was increased by the Legalist reforms of Shang Yang in the fourth century BC, during the Warring States period. In the mid and late third century BC, the Qin state carried out a series of swift conquests, first ending the powerless Zhou dynasty, conquering the other six of the Seven Warring States, its 15 years was the shortest major dynasty in Chinese history, consisting of only two emperors, but inaugurated an imperial system that lasted from 221 BC, with interruption and adaptation, until 1912 CE. The Qin sought to create a state unified by structured political power and a large military supported by a stable economy; the central government moved to undercut aristocrats and landowners to gain direct administrative control over the peasantry, who comprised the overwhelming majority of the population and labour force.
This allowed ambitious projects involving three hundred thousand peasants and convicts, such as connecting walls along the northern border developing into the Great Wall of China. The Qin introduced a range of reforms such as standardized currency, measures, a uniform system of writing, which aimed to unify the state and promote commerce. Additionally, its military used the most recent weaponry and tactics, though the government was heavy-handedly bureaucratic. Han dynasty Confucians portrayed the dynasty as a monolithic tyranny, notably citing a purge known as the burning of books and burying of scholars although some modern scholars dispute the veracity of these accounts; when the first emperor died in 210 BC, two of his advisers placed an heir on the throne in an attempt to influence and control the administration of the dynasty. These advisors squabbled among themselves, resulting in both of their deaths and that of the second Qin Emperor. Popular revolt broke out and the weakened empire soon fell to a Chu general, Xiang Yu, proclaimed Hegemon-King of Western Chu, Liu Bang, who founded the Han dynasty.
Despite its short reign, the dynasty influenced the future of China the Han, its name is thought to be the origin of the European name for China. In the 9th century BC, Feizi, a supposed descendant of the ancient political advisor Gao Yao, was granted rule over Qin City; the modern city of Tianshui stands. During the rule of King Xiao of Zhou, the eighth king of the Zhou dynasty, this area became known as the state of Qin. In 897 BC, under the Gonghe Regency, the area became a dependency allotted for the purpose of raising and breeding horses. One of Feizi's descendants, Duke Zhuang, became favoured by King Ping of Zhou, the thirteenth king in that line; as a reward, Zhuang's son, Duke Xiang, was sent eastward as the leader of a war expedition, during which he formally established the Qin. The state of Qin first began a military expedition into central China in 672 BC, though it did not engage in any serious incursions due to the threat from neighbouring tribesmen. By the dawn of the fourth century BC, the neighbouring tribes had all been either subdued or conquered, the stage was set for the rise of Qin expansionism.
Lord Shang Yang, a Qin statesman of the Warring States period, advocated a philosophy of Legalism, introducing a number of militarily advantageous reforms from 361 BC until his death in 338 BC. Yang helped construct the Qin capital, commencing in the mid-fourth century BC Xianyang; the resulting city resembled the capitals of other Warring States. Notably, Qin Legalism encouraged ruthless warfare. During the Spring and Autumn period, the prevalent philosophy had dictated war as a gentleman's activity. For example, when Duke Xiang of Song was at war with the state of Chu during the Warring States period, he declined an opportunity to attack the enemy force, commanded by Zhu, while they were crossing a river. After allowing them to cross and marshal their forces, he was decisively defeated in the ensuing battle; when his advisors admonished him for such excessive courtesy to the enemy, he retorted, "The sage does not crush the feeble, nor give the order for attack until the enemy have formed their ranks."The Qin disregarded this military tradition, taking advantage of their enemy's weaknesses.
A nobleman in the state of Wei accused the Qin state of being "avaricious, eager for profit, without sincerity. It knows nothing about etiquette, proper relationships, virtuous conduct, if there be an opportunity for material gain, it will disregard its relatives as if they were animals." It was this Legalist thought combined with strong leadership from long-lived rulers, openness to employ talented men from other states, little internal opposition that gave the Qin such a strong political base. Another advantage of the Qin was that they had a efficient army and capable generals, they utilised the newest developments in weaponry and transportation as well, which many of their enemies lacked. These latter developments allowed greater mobility over several different terrain types which were most common in many regions of China. Thus, in both ideology and practice, the Qin were militarily superior; the Qin Empire had a geographical advantage due to its fertility and strategic position, protected by mountains that made the state a natural stronghold.
Its expanded agricultural output helped sustain Qin's large army with food and natural resources.
Casting
Casting is a manufacturing process in which a liquid material is poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, allowed to solidify. The solidified part is known as a casting, ejected or broken out of the mold to complete the process. Casting materials are metals or various time setting materials that cure after mixing two or more components together. Casting is most used for making complex shapes that would be otherwise difficult or uneconomical to make by other methods. Casting is a 7000-year-old process; the oldest surviving casting is a copper frog from 3200 BC. In metalworking, metal is heated until it becomes liquid and is poured into a mold; the mold is a hollow cavity that includes the desired shape, but the mold includes runners and risers that enable the metal to fill the mold. The mold and the metal are cooled until the metal solidifies; the solidified part is recovered from the mold. Subsequent operations remove excess material caused by the casting process.
Plaster and other chemical curing materials such as concrete and plastic resin may be cast using single-use waste molds as noted above, multiple-use'piece' molds, or molds made of small rigid pieces or of flexible material such as latex rubber. When casting plaster or concrete, the material surface lacks transparency. Topical treatments are applied to the surface. For example and etching can be used in a way that give the appearance of metal or stone. Alternatively, the material is altered in its initial casting process and may contain colored sand so as to give an appearance of stone. By casting concrete, rather than plaster, it is possible to create sculptures, fountains, or seating for outdoor use. A simulation of high-quality marble may be made using certain chemically-set plastic resins with powdered stone added for coloration with multiple colors worked in; the latter is a common means of making washstands, washstand tops and shower stalls, with the skilled working of multiple colors resulting in simulated staining patterns as is found in natural marble or travertine.
Raw castings contain irregularities caused by seams and imperfections in the molds, as well as access ports for pouring material into the molds. The process of cutting, shaving or sanding away these unwanted bits is called "fettling". In modern times robotic processes have been developed to perform some of the more repetitive parts of the fettling process, but fettlers carried out this arduous work manually, in conditions dangerous to their health. Fettling can add to the cost of the resulting product, designers of molds seek to minimize it through the shape of the mold, the material being cast, sometimes by including decorative elements. Casting process simulation uses numerical methods to calculate cast component quality considering mold filling and cooling, provides a quantitative prediction of casting mechanical properties, thermal stresses and distortion. Simulation describes a cast component's quality up-front before production starts; the casting rigging can be designed with respect to the required component properties.
This has benefits beyond a reduction in pre-production sampling, as the precise layout of the complete casting system leads to energy and tooling savings. The software supports the user in component design, the determination of melting practice and casting methoding through to pattern and mold making, heat treatment, finishing; this saves costs along the entire casting manufacturing route. Casting process simulation was developed at universities starting from the early'70s in Europe and in the U. S. and is regarded as the most important innovation in casting technology over the last 50 years. Since the late'80s, commercial programs are available which make it possible for foundries to gain new insight into what is happening inside the mold or die during the casting process. Centrifugal casting Core plug Die casting Glass casting Investment casting Lost-foam casting Lost-wax casting Molding Mycelium: Casting with mycelium Permanent mold casting Rapid casting Sand casting Slipcasting Campbell, Casting, Butterworth-Heinemann, ISBN 0-7506-4790-6
Erhai Lake
Erhai or Er Lake, is an alpine fault lake in Yunnan province, China. Its name means "Ear-shaped Sea", due to its shape as seen by travellers. Erhai was known as Yeyuze or Kunming Lake in ancient times. Erhai is situated at 1,972 metres above sea level. In size, the North-South length of the lake is 40 kilometres and the East-West width is 7–8 kilometres, its area is 250 square kilometres, making it the second largest highland lake of China, after Dianchi Lake. Its circumference reaches 116 kilometres, its average depth is of 11 metres and the total storage capacity of 2.5 billion cubic metres. The lake serves as a backdrop to all of Dali City and sandwiches Dali Town in the west against the Cang Mountain; the lake's head is at Shangguan Town, its northern extremity, its southernmost point is at Xiaguan Town. The lake receives water from the Miju and Mici Rivers in the north, the Bolou River in the east, smallers streams from the Cang Mountains in the west. Yangbi River, to the south, is the lake's outlet and flows into the Lancang River.
The lakeshore can be explored by hiking. Highlights include the Butterfly Springs on the Western bank. Islands on the lake – including Guanyin Ge, Jinsuo Island, Nanzhao Folklore Island and Xiaoputuo Island – are available for visits; the lake is an important food source for the local people, who are famous for their fishing method: their trained cormorants catch fish and return them to fishmongers. The birds are prevented from swallowing their fish by rings fixed around their neck. There was, a rich biodiversity in Erhai, it is one of three major Yunnan lakes with a high number of endemics, the two other being Fuxian and Dian. Of the 23 fish species and subspecies known from Erhai, 8 are endemic: Cyprinus barbatus, C. daliensis, C. longipectoralis, C. megalophthalmus, Paracobitis erhaiensis, Poropuntius daliensis, P. exiguus and Zacco taliensis. Among these, only C. barbatus and C. longipectoralis have been recorded since the year 2000. A few of the non-endemic natives have been extirpated from the lake.
In contrast, the lake is now home to more than 10 introduced fish species. A few native hydrophytes have disappeared from the lake; the lake used to be a royal deer ranch for the Nanzhao Kingdom. Google Earth view Erhai Lake
Sima Qian
Sima Qian was a Chinese historian of the early Han dynasty. He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for his Records of the Grand Historian, a Jizhuanti-style general history of China, covering more than two thousand years from the Yellow Emperor to his time, during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, a work that had much influence for centuries afterwards on history-writing not only in China, but in Korea and Vietnam as well. Although he worked as the Court Astrologer generations refer to him as the Grand Historian for his monumental work. Sima Qian was born at Xiayang in Zuopingyi around 145 BC, though some sources give his birth year as around 135 BC. Around 136 BC, his father, Sima Tan, received an appointment to the low-ranking position of "grand historian"; the grand historian's primary duty was to formulate the yearly calendar, identifying which days were ritually auspicious or inauspicious, present it to the emperor prior to New Year's Day. Besides these duties, the grand historian was to travel with the emperor for important rituals and to record the daily events both at the court and within the country.
By his account, by the age of ten Sima was able to "read the old writings" and was considered to be a promising scholar. Sima grew up in a Confucian environment, Sima always regarded his historical work as an act of Confucian filial piety to his father. In 126 BC, around the age of twenty, Sima Qian began an extensive tour around China as it existed in the Han dynasty, he started his journey from the imperial capital, Chang'an went south across the Yangtze River to Changsha, where he visited the Miluo River site where the ancient poet Qu Yuan was traditionally said to have drowned himself. He went to seek the burial place of the legendary Xia dynasty rulers Yu on Mount Kuaiji and Shun in the Jiuyi Mountains, he went north to Huaiyin to see the grave of Han dynasty general Han Xin continued north to Qufu, the hometown of Confucius, where he studied ritual and other traditional subjects. After his travels, Sima was chosen to be a Palace Attendant in the government, whose duties were to inspect different parts of the country with Emperor Wu in 122 BC.
Sima had one daughter. In 110 BC, at the age of thirty-five, Sima Qian was sent westward on a military expedition against some "barbarian" tribes; that year, his father fell ill due to the distress of not being invited to attend the Imperial Feng Sacrifice. Suspecting his time was running out, he summoned his son back home to complete the historical work he had begun. Sima Tan wanted to follow the Annals of Spring and Autumn—the first chronicle in the history of Chinese literature. Fueled by his father's inspiration, Sima Qian started to compile Shiji, which became known in English as the Records of the Grand Historian, in 109 BC, completing it around 94 BC. Three years after the death of his father, Sima Qian assumed his father's previous position as Court Astrologer. In 105 BC, Sima was among the scholars chosen to reform the calendar; as a senior imperial official, Sima was in the position to offer counsel to the emperor on general affairs of state. In 99 BC, Sima Qian became embroiled in the Li Ling affair, where Li Ling and Li Guangli, two military officers who led a campaign against the Xiongnu in the north, were defeated and taken captive.
Emperor Wu attributed the defeat to Li Ling, with all government officials subsequently condemning him for it. Sima was the only person to defend Li Ling, whom he respected. Emperor Wu interpreted Sima's defence of Li as an attack on his brother-in-law, Li Guangli, who had fought against the Xiongnu without much success, sentenced Sima to death. At that time, execution could be commuted either by castration. Since Sima did not have enough money to atone his "crime", he chose the latter and was thrown into prison, where he endured three years, he described his pain thus: "When you see the jailer you abjectly touch the ground with your forehead. At the mere sight of his underlings you are seized with terror... Such ignominy can never be wiped away." Sima called his castration "the worst of all punishments". In 96 BC, on his release from prison, Sima chose to live on as a palace eunuch to complete his histories, rather than commit suicide as was expected of a gentleman-scholar, disgraced with castration.
As Sima Qian himself explained in his Letter to Ren An: If the lowest slave and scullion maid can bear to commit suicide, why should not one like myself be able to do what has to be done? But the reason I have not refused to bear these ills and have continued to live, dwelling in vileness and disgrace without taking my leave, is that I grieve that I have things in my heart which I have not been able to express and I am shamed to think that after I am gone my writings will not be known to posterity. Too numerous to record are the men of ancient times who were rich and noble and whose names have yet vanished away, it is only those who were masterful and sure, the extraordinary men, who are still remembered.... I too have entrusted myself to my useless writings. I have gathered up and brought
Caucasian race
The Caucasian race is a grouping of human beings regarded as a biological taxon, depending on which of the historical race classifications used, have included some or all of the ancient and modern populations of Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa. First introduced in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen School of History, the term denoted one of three purported major races of humankind. In biological anthropology, Caucasoid has been used as an umbrella term for phenotypically similar groups from these different regions, with a focus on skeletal anatomy, cranial morphology, over skin tone. Ancient and modern "Caucasoid" populations were thus held to have ranged in complexion from white to dark brown. Since the second half of the 20th century, physical anthropologists have moved away from a typological understanding of human biological diversity towards a genomic and population-based perspective, have tended to understand race as a social classification of humans based on phenotype and ancestry as well as cultural factors, as the concept is understood in the social sciences.
Although Caucasian / Caucasoid and their counterparts Negroid and Mongoloid have been used less as a biological classification in forensic anthropology, the terms remain in use by some anthropologists. In the United States, the root term Caucasian has often been used in a different, societal context as a synonym for white or of European, Middle Eastern, or North African ancestry, its usage in American English has been criticized. The traditional anthropological term Caucasoid is a conflation of the demonym Caucasian and the Greek suffix eidos, implying a resemblance to the native inhabitants of the Caucasus. In its usage as a racial category, it contrasts with the terms Negroid and Australoid; the term Caucasian referred in a narrow sense to the native inhabitants of the Caucasus region. In his The Outline of History of Mankind, the German philosopher Christoph Meiners first used the concept of a "Caucasian" race in its wider racial sense. Meiners acknowledged two races: the Caucasian or beautiful, the Mongolian or ugly.
His Caucasian race encompassed all of the ancient and most of the modern native populations of Europe, the aboriginal inhabitants of West Asia, the autochthones of Northern Africa, the Indians, the ancient Guanches. In his earlier racial typology, Meiners put forth that Caucasians had the "whitest, most blooming and most delicate skin". In a series of articles, Meiners boasts about the superiority of Germans among Europeans, describes non-German Europeans' color as "dirty whites", in an unfavorable comparison with Germans; such views were typical of early proto-scientific attempts at racial classification, where skin pigmentation was regarded as the main difference between races. This view was shared by the French naturalist Julien-Joseph Virey, who believed that the Caucasians were only the palest-skinned Europeans, it was Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a German professor of medicine and a member of the British Royal Society, who came to be considered one of the founders of the discipline of anthropology, who gave the term a wider audience, by grounding it in the new methods of craniometry and Linnean taxonomy.
Blumenbach did not credit Meiners with his taxonomy, although his justification points to Meiners' aesthetic viewpoint of Caucasus origins: Caucasian variety – I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because its neighborhood, its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgian. Blumenbach would assert that of the various Caucasian varieties, the Northern European type represented the perfect form. In contrast to Meiners, Blumenbach was a monogenist – he considered all humans to have a shared origin and to be a single species. Blumenbach, like Meiners, did rank his Caucasian grouping higher than other groups in terms of mental faculties or potential for achievement. In various editions of On the Natural Variety of Mankind, Blumenbach expanded on Meiners' popular idea and defined five human races based on color, using popular racial terms of his day, justified with scientific terminology, cranial measurements, facial features, he established Caucasian as the "white race", Mongoloid as the "yellow race", Malayan as the "brown race", Ethiopian as the "black race", American as the "red race".
In the 3rd edition of his On the Natural Variety of Mankind, Blumenbach moved skin tone to second-tier importance after noticing that poorer European people whom he observed worked outside became darker skinned through sun exposure. He noticed that darker skin of an "olive-tinge" was a natural feature of some European populations closer to the Mediterranean Sea. Alongside the anthropologist Georges Cuvier, Blumenbach classified the Caucasian race by cranial measurements and bone morphology in addition to skin pigmentation, thus considered more than just the palest Europeans as archetypes for the Caucasian race. Following Meiners, Blumenbach described the Caucasian race as con
_-_Yunnan_Provincial_Museum_-_DSC02253.JPG)
_-_Yunnan_Provincial_Museum_-_DSC02226.JPG)
