1.
Sancai Tuhui
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This encyclopedia is organized into 106 chapters in 14 categories, with text and illustrations for the articles. Reproductions of this encyclopedia are still in print in China, art and Daily Life, Knowledge and Social Space in Late-Ming Riyong Leishu
2.
Chinese ancestral name
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Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam and among overseas Chinese communities. In ancient times two types of surnames existed, namely xing or lineage names, and shi or clan names, Chinese family names are patrilineal, passed from father to children. Women do not normally change their surnames upon marriage, except in places with more Western influences such as Hong Kong, traditionally Chinese surnames have been exogamous. The colloquial expressions laobaixing and bǎixìng are used in Chinese to mean ordinary folks, prior to the Warring States period, only the ruling families and the aristocratic elite had surnames. Historically there was also a difference between clan names or xing and lineages names or shi, Xing were surnames held by the noble clans. They generally are composed of a nü radical which has taken by some as evidence they originated from matriarchal societies based on maternal lineages. Another hypothesis has been proposed by sinologist Léon Vandermeersch upon observation of the evolution of characters in oracular scripture from the Shang dynasty through the Zhou, the female radical seems to appear at the Zhou period next to Shang sinograms indicating an ethnic group or a tribe. This combination seems to designate specifically a female and could mean lady of such or such clan, prior to the Qin Dynasty China was largely a fengjian society. In this way, a nobleman would hold a shi and a xing, after the states of China were unified by Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC, surnames gradually spread to the lower classes and the difference between xing and shi blurred. Many shi surnames survive to the present day, according to Kiang Kang-Hu, there are 18 sources from which Chinese surnames may be derived, while others suggested at least 24. The following are some of the sources, Xing, These were usually reserved for the central lineage of the royal family. Of these xings, only Jiang and Yao have survived in their form to modern days as frequently occurring surnames. Royal decree by the Emperor, such as Kuang, state name, Many nobles and commoners took the name of their state, either to show their continuing allegiance or as a matter of national and ethnic identity. These are some of the most common Chinese surnames, name of a fief or place of origin, Fiefdoms were often granted to collateral branches of the aristocracy and it was natural as part of the process of sub-surnaming for their names to be used. An example is Di, Marquis of Ouyangting, whose descendants took the surname Ouyang, there are some two hundred examples of this identified, often of two-character surnames, but few have survived to the present. Names of an ancestor, Like the previous example, this was also a common origin with close to 500 or 600 examples,200 of which are two-character surnames, often an ancestors courtesy name would be used. For example, Yuan Taotu took the character of his grandfathers courtesy name Boyuan as his surname. Sometimes titles granted to ancestors could also be taken as surnames, seniority within the family, In ancient usage, the characters of meng, zhong, shu and ji were used to denote the first, second, third and fourth eldest sons in a family
3.
Given name
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A given name is a part of a persons personal name. It identifies a person, and differentiates that person from other members of a group, such as a family or clan. The term given name refers to the fact that the name usually is bestowed upon a person and this contrasts with a surname, which is normally inherited, and shared with other members of the childs immediate family. Given names are used in a familiar and friendly manner in informal situations. In more formal situations the surname is commonly used, unless it is necessary to distinguish between people with the same surname. The idioms on a basis and being on first-name terms allude to the familiarity of addressing another by a given name. The order given name – family name, commonly known as the Western order, is used throughout most European countries and in countries that have cultures predominantly influenced by Western Europe. The order family name – given name, commonly known as the Eastern order, is used in East Asia, as well as in Southern and North-Eastern parts of India. The order given name - fathers family name - mothers family name is used in Spanish-speaking countries to acknowledge the families of both parents. Today the order can also be changed legally in Spain using given name - mothers family name - fathers family name, under the common Western naming convention, people may have one or more forenames. If more than one, there is usually a main forename for everyday use, sometimes however two or more forenames may carry equal weight. There is no particular ordering rule for forenames – often the main forename is at the beginning, a childs given name or names are usually chosen by the parents soon after birth. If a name is not assigned at birth, one may be given at a ceremony, with family. In most jurisdictions, a name at birth is a matter of public record, inscribed on a birth certificate. In western cultures, people normally retain the same name throughout their lives. However, in some cases names may be changed by petitioning a court of law. People may also change their names when immigrating from one country to another with different naming conventions, in France, the agency can refer the case to a local judge. Some jurisdictions, like in Sweden, restrict the spelling of names, parents may choose a name because of its meaning
4.
King Wen of Zhou
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King Wen of Zhou was king of Zhou during the late Shang dynasty in ancient China. Although it was his son Wu who conquered the Shang following the Battle of Muye, a large number of the hymns of the Classic of Poetry are praises to the legacy of King Wen. Some consider him the first epic hero of Chinese history, born Ji Chang, Wen was the son of Tai Ren and Ji Jili, the king of a small state along the Wei River in present-day Shaanxi. His father was betrayed and executed by the Shang king Wen Ding in the late 12th century BC and he married Tai Si and had at least ten sons. At one point, King Zhou of Shang, fearing Wens growing power and his second son, King Wu, followed his fathers wishes and crushed the Shang at Muye, creating the imperial Zhou dynasty. A burial mound in Zhouling town, Xianyang, Shaanxi was once thought to be the resting place of King Wen. In the Qing dynasty the tomb was fitted with a headstone bearing Wens name and incorporated into a complex in his honor. Nearby tombs were thought to be those of Wens successors King Wu, modern archeology has since concluded that the five tombs are not old enough to be from the Zhou dynasty, and are more likely to be those of Han dynasty royals. The true location of King Wens tomb is unknown, although it is likely to be in the Xianyang-Xian area. Many of the older odes from the Classic of Poetry are hymns in praise of King Wen, King Wen is also credited with having stacked the eight trigrams in their various permutations to create the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching. He is also said to have written the judgments which are appended to each hexagram, the most commonly used sequence of the 64 hexagrams is attributed to him and is usually referred to as the King Wen sequence. In 196 BC, Han Gaozu gave King Wen the title Greatest of All Kings, Ci Hai Bian Ji Wei Yuan Hui. Shanghai Ci Shu Chu Ban She,1979 Wu, K. C
5.
Tai Si
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Tai Si was the wife of King Wen of Zhou and is revered as a highly respected woman of ancient China. Particularly respected by Wu Zetian, Chinas only Empress regnant, Tai Si, Tai Si is said to be born in the Youxin clan of the ancestral name Si, from what is now Heyang County, Shaanxi Province. Han Dynasty historian Sima Qian wrote that she was originally from the older State of Qi or State of Zeng, both in and around modern-day Henan Province. The traditional story regarding Tai Sis rise to queen says that the future King Wen of Zhou and her beauty so captivated Chang that he initially thought she was a goddess or angel. Tai Si proved a woman of benevolence, wisdom, and simple tastes, because the Wei River was not bridged, Chang set out to build one by constructing a number of boats that were arranged end-to-end to form a floating path across the river. Tai Si was impressed, and they were married, after Tai Si joined her husbands family, she is said to have quickly gained favor with the other women of the royal family through her diligent work ethic and demeanor. She and the king had ten sons together, and Tai Si is said to have been a teacher and mother, such that all of the sons were men of upright virtue
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.
Standard Chinese
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Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, and its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a language with topic-prominent organization. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants, Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There exist two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan, aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, while Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters. There are many characters that are identical between the two systems, in English, the governments of China and Hong Kong use Putonghua, Putonghua Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin, while those of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, use Mandarin. The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, history and it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or common tongue/speech, was different from the Guoyu. The former was a prestige variety, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different, Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called the speech of the modern man. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai, prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the term for Standard Chinese. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca, Huayu, or language of the Chinese nation, originally simply meant Chinese language, and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name Huayu to refer to Mandarin and it also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. The term Mandarin is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire, in English, Mandarin may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the language from other northern. Chinese has long had considerable variation, hence prestige dialects have always existed. Confucius, for example, used yǎyán rather than colloquial regional dialects, rime books, which were written since the Northern and Southern dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times
8.
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
9.
Cantonese
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Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a variety of Chinese spoken in the city of Guangzhou in southeastern China. It is the prestige variety of Yue, one of the major subdivisions of Chinese. In mainland China, it is the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong and some neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. In Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese serves as one of their official languages and it is also spoken amongst overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and throughout the Western World. When Cantonese and the closely related Yuehai dialects are classified together, Cantonese is viewed as vital part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swathes of southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau. Although Cantonese shares some vocabulary with Mandarin, the two varieties are mutually unintelligible because of differences in pronunciation, grammar and lexicon, sentence structure, in particular the placement of verbs, sometimes differs between the two varieties. This results in the situation in which a Cantonese and a Mandarin text may look similar, in English, the term Cantonese is ambiguous. Cantonese proper is the variety native to the city of Canton and this narrow sense may be specified as Canton language or Guangzhou language in English. However, Cantonese may also refer to the branch of Cantonese that contains Cantonese proper as well as Taishanese and Gaoyang. In this article, Cantonese is used for Cantonese proper, historically, speakers called this variety Canton speech or Guangzhou speech, although this term is now seldom used outside mainland China. In Guangdong province, people call it provincial capital speech or plain speech. In Hong Kong and Macau, as well as among overseas Chinese communities, in mainland China, the term Guangdong speech is also increasingly being used among both native and non-native speakers. Due to its status as a prestige dialect among all the dialects of the Cantonese or Yue branch of Chinese varieties, the official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English, as defined in the Hong Kong Basic Law. The Chinese language has different varieties, of which Cantonese is one. Given the traditional predominance of Cantonese within Hong Kong, it is the de facto official spoken form of the Chinese language used in the Hong Kong Government and all courts and it is also used as the medium of instruction in schools, alongside English. A similar situation exists in neighboring Macau, where Chinese is an official language along with Portuguese. As in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominant spoken variety of Chinese used in life and is thus the official form of Chinese used in the government. The variant spoken in Hong Kong and Macau is known as Hong Kong Cantonese, Cantonese first developed around the port city of Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta region of southeastern China
10.
Jyutping
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Jyutping is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, an academic group, in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanisation Scheme, the LSHK promotes the use of this romanisation system. The name Jyutping is a contraction consisting of the first Chinese characters of the terms Jyut6jyu5, only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables. ^ ^ ^ Referring to the pronunciation of these words. There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese, however, as three of the nine are entering tones, which only appear in syllables ending with p, t, and k, they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping. Jyutping and the Yale Romanisation of Cantonese represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they differ in the following, The vowels eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping, the initial j represents /j/ in Jyutping whereas y is used instead in Yale. The initial z represents /ts/ in Jyutping whereas j is used instead in Yale, the initial c represents /tsʰ/ in Jyutping whereas ch is used instead in Yale. In Jyutping, if no consonant precedes the vowel yu, then the initial j is appended before the vowel, in Yale, the corresponding initial y is never appended before yu under any circumstances. Jyutping defines three finals not in Yale, eu /ɛːu/, em /ɛːm/, and ep /ɛːp/ and these three finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6, lem2, and gep6. To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in Jyutping whereas Yale traditionally uses tone marks together with the letter h. Jyutping and Cantonese Pinyin represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they have differences, The vowel oe represents both /ɵ/ and /œː/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping. The vowel y represents /y/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas both yu and i are used in Jyutping, the initial dz represents /ts/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas z is used instead in Jyutping. The initial ts represents /tsʰ/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas c is used instead in Jyutping. To represent tones, the numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in Cantonese Pinyin, however, only the numbers 1 to 6 are used in Jyutping
11.
Southern Min
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Southern Min, or Minnan, is a branch of Min Chinese spoken in certain parts of China including southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and southern Zhejiang, and in Taiwan. The Min Nan dialects are spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia. In common parlance, Southern Min usually refers to Hokkien, including Amoy and Taiwanese Hokkien, the Southern Min dialect group also includes Teochew, though Teochew has limited mutual intelligibility with Hokkien. Hainanese is not mutually intellgible with other Southern Min and is considered a separate branch of Min. Southern Min is not mutually intelligible with Eastern Min, Pu-Xian Min, any other Min branch, Hakka, Cantonese, Shanghainese or Mandarin. Southern Min dialects are spoken in the part of Fujian. The variant spoken in Leizhou, Guangdong as well as Hainan is Hainanese and is not mutually intelligible with other Southern Min or Teochew, Hainanese is classified in some schemes as part of Southern Min and in other schemes as separate. Puxian Min was originally based on the Quanzhou dialect, but over time became heavily influenced by Eastern Min, eventually losing intellegility with Minnan. A forms of Southern Min spoken in Taiwan, collectively known as Taiwanese, Southern Min is a first language for most of the Hoklo people, the main ethnicity of Taiwan. The correspondence between language and ethnicity is not absolute, as some Hoklo have very limited proficiency in Southern Min while some non-Hoklo speak Southern Min fluently, there are many Southern Min speakers also among Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Many ethnic Chinese immigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian and brought the language to what is now Burma, Indonesia and present-day Malaysia and Singapore. In general, Southern Min from southern Fujian is known as Hokkien, Hokkienese, many Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese also originated in the Chaoshan region of Guangdong and speak Teochew language, the variant of Southern Min from that region. Southern Min-speakers form the majority of Chinese in Singapore, with the largest group being Hokkien, despite the similarities the two groups are rarely seen as part of the same Minnan Chinese subgroups. The variants of Southern Min spoken in Zhejiang province are most akin to that spoken in Quanzhou, the variants spoken in Taiwan are similar to the three Fujian variants and are collectively known as Taiwanese. Those Southern Min variants that are known as Hokkien in Southeast Asia also originate from these variants. The variants of Southern Min in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong province are known as Teochew or Chaozhou. Teochew is of importance in the Southeast Asian Chinese diaspora, particularly in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sumatra. The Philippines variant is mostly from the Quanzhou area as most of their forefathers are from the aforementioned area, the Southern Min language variant spoken around Shanwei and Haifeng differs markedly from Teochew and may represent a later migration from Zhangzhou
12.
Hokkien
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Hokkien /hɒˈkiɛn/ is a group of Southern Min dialects spoken throughout Southeastern China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and by other overseas Chinese. Hokkien originated in southern Fujian, the Min-speaking province and it is closely related to Teochew, though there is limited mutual intelligibility, and is somewhat more distantly related to Hainanese and Leizhou dialect. Besides Hokkien, there are also other Min and Hakka dialects in Fujian province, the term Hokkien is etymologically derived from the Southern Min pronunciation for Fujian, the province from which the language hails. The variety is known by other terms such as the more general Min Nan or Southern Min. Fujianese and Fukienese are also used, although they are somewhat imprecise, the term Hokkien is not usually used in Mainland China or Taiwan. Conversely Hokkien is the name in Southeast Asia in both English, Chinese or other languages. Speakers of Hokkien, particularly those in Southeast Asia, typically refer to Hokkien as a dialect, people in Taiwan most often refer to Hokkien as the Taiwanese language, with Minnan and Holo also being used and 福建話 is not as common. Hokkien originated in the area of Fujian province, an important center for trade and migration. The major pole of Hokkien varieties outside of Fujian is Taiwan, the Taiwanese version mostly have origins with the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou variants, but since then, the Amoy dialect is becoming the modern prestige standard for the language. There are many Hokkien speakers among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia as well as in the United States, many ethnic Han Chinese emigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian, and brought the language to what is now Burma, Indonesia and present day Malaysia and Singapore. Many of the Hokkien dialects of this region are similar to Taiwanese and Amoynese. Hokkien is reportedly the native language of up to 80% of the Chinese people in the Philippines, Hokkien speakers form the largest group of overseas Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. Southern and part of western Fujian is home to four principal Hokkien dialects, Chinchew, Amoy, Chiangchew and Longyan, originating from the cities of Quanzhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou and Longyan. As Xiamen is the city of southern Fujian, Amoy is considered the most important, or even the prestige dialect. It is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, same as Amoy dialect, the varieties of Hokkien spoken in Taiwan are hybrids of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, and are collectively known as Taiwanese Hokkien or just Taiwanese. Used by a majority of the population, it bears much importance from a socio-political perspective, the varieties of Hokkien in Southeast Asia originate from these dialects. The Singaporeans, Southern Malaysians and people in Indonesias Riau and surrounding islands variant is from the Quanzhou area and they speak a distinct form of Quanzhou Hokkien called Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien. Among ethnic Chinese inhabitants of Penang, and other states in Northern Malaysia and Medan, with areas in North Sumatra, Indonesia
13.
Old Chinese
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Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty. The latter part of the Zhou period saw a flowering of literature, including works such as the Analects, the Mencius. These works served as models for Literary Chinese, which remained the standard until the early twentieth century, thus preserving the vocabulary. Old Chinese was written with a form of Chinese characters. Although the script is not alphabetic, most characters were created by adapting a character for a similar-sounding word. Most recent reconstructions also describe Old Chinese as a language without tones, but having consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, most researchers trace the core vocabulary of Old Chinese to Sino-Tibetan, with much early borrowing from neighbouring languages. During the Zhou period, the originally monosyllabic vocabulary was augmented with polysyllabic words formed by compounding, several derivational affixes have also been identified. However the language lacked inflection, and indicated grammatical relationships using word order, the earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at the Yinxu site near modern Anyang identified as the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1250 BC. These are the bones, short inscriptions carved on tortoise plastrons and ox scapulae for divinatory purposes. The language written is undoubtedly an early form of Chinese, but is difficult to due to the limited subject matter. Only half of the 4,000 characters used have been identified with certainty, little is known about the grammar of this language, but it seems much less reliant on grammatical particles than Classical Chinese. From early in the Western Zhou period, around 1000 BC, even longer pre-Classical texts on a wide range of subjects have also been transmitted through the literary tradition. The oldest parts of the Book of Documents, the Classic of Poetry and the I Ching also date from the early Zhou period, a greater proportion of this more varied vocabulary has been identified than for the oracular period. The four centuries preceding the unification of China in 221 BC constitute the Chinese classical period in the strict sense, there are many bronze inscriptions from this period, but they are vastly outweighed by a rich literature written in ink on bamboo and wooden slips and silk. Although these are perishable materials, and many books were destroyed in the burning of books and burying of scholars in the Qin dynasty, other texts have been transmitted as copies. Such works from this period as the Analects, the Classic of Filial Piety, the Mencius, the Classical Chinese of such works formed the basis of Literary Chinese, which remained the written standard until the early twentieth century. Each character of the script represented a single Old Chinese word, most scholars believe that these words were monosyllabic, though some have recently suggested that a minority of them had minor presyllables
14.
Reconstructions of Old Chinese
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Several authors have produced reconstructions of Old Chinese phonology, beginning with the Swedish sinologist Bernard Karlgren in the 1940s and continuing to the present day. Although the various notations appear to be different, they correspond with each other on most points. By the 1970s, it was agreed that Old Chinese had fewer points of articulation than Middle Chinese, a set of voiceless sonorants. Since the 1990s, most authors have agreed on a six-vowel system, several other kinds of evidence are less comprehensive, but provide valuable clues. These include Min dialects, early Chinese transcriptions of foreign names, Middle Chinese, or more precisely Early Middle Chinese, is the phonological system of the Qieyun, a rhyme dictionary published in 601, with many revisions and expansions over the following centuries. These dictionaries indicated pronunciation by dividing a syllable into an initial consonant, according to its preface, the Qieyun did not reflect a single contemporary dialect, but incorporated distinctions made in different parts of China at the time. The fact that the Qieyun system contains more distinctions than any single form of speech means that it retains additional information about the history of the language. The large number of initials and finals are unevenly distributed, suggesting hypotheses about earlier forms of Chinese, often characters sharing a phonetic element are still pronounced alike, as in the character 中, which was adapted to write the words chōng and zhōng. In other cases the words in a series have very different sounds both in Middle Chinese and in modern varieties. Since the sounds are assumed to have been similar at the time the characters were chosen, the first systematic study of the structure of Chinese characters was Xu Shens Shuowen Jiezi. The Shuowen was mostly based on the seal script standardized in the Qin dynasty. Earlier characters from bones and Zhou bronze inscriptions often reveal relationships that were obscured in later forms. Rhyme has been a consistent feature of Chinese poetry, while much old poetry still rhymes in modern varieties of Chinese, Chinese scholars have long noted exceptions. This was attributed to lax rhyming practice of early poets until the late-Ming dynasty scholar Chen Di argued that a former consistency had been obscured by sound change and this implied that the rhyming practice of ancient poets recorded information about their pronunciation. Scholars have studied various bodies of poetry to identify classes of rhyming words at different periods, the oldest such collection is the Shijing, containing songs ranging from the 10th to 7th centuries BC. The systematic study of Old Chinese rhymes began in the 17th century, gus analysis was refined by Qing dynasty philologists, steadily increasing the number of rhyme groups. A final revision by Wang Li in the 1930s produced the set of 31 rhyme groups. The Min dialects are believed to have split off before the Middle Chinese stage, for example, the following dental initials have been identified in reconstructed proto-Min, Other points of articulation show similar distinctions within stops and nasals
15.
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
16.
King Wu of Zhou
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King Wu of Zhou was the first king of the Zhou dynasty of ancient China. The chronology of his reign is disputed but is thought to have begun around 1046 BC. King Wus ancestral name was Ji and given name Fa and he was the second son of King Wen of Zhou and Queen Tai Si. Upon his succession, Fa worked with his father-in-law Jiang Ziya to accomplish an unfinished task, in 1048 BC, Fa marched down the Yellow River to the Mengjin ford and met with more than 800 dukes. He constructed an ancestral tablet naming his father Chang King Wen and placed it on a chariot in the middle of the host, considering the timing unpropitious, though, in 1046 BC, King Wu took advantage of Shang disunity to launch an attack along with many neighboring dukes. The Battle of Muye destroyed Shangs forces and King Zhou of Shang set his palace on fire, a burial mound in Zhouling town, Xianyang, Shaanxi was once thought to be King Wus tomb. It was fitted with a headstone bearing Wus name in the Qing dynasty, modern archeology has since concluded that the tomb is not old enough to be from the Zhou dynasty, and is more likely to be that of a Han dynasty royal. The true location of Wus tomb remains unknown, but is likely to be in the Xianyang-Xian area, Wu is considered one of the great heroes of China, together with Yellow Emperor and Yu the Great. Father, King Wen of Zhou Mother, Tai Si Wife, Yi Jiang, daughter of Jiang Ziya Children, King Cheng of Zhou Shu of Yu Shu Yu of Tang Marquis of Ying Marquis of Han
17.
King Cheng of Zhou
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King Cheng of Zhou or King Cheng of Chou was the second king of the Chinese Zhou Dynasty. The dates of his reign are 1042-1021 BCE or 1042/35-1006 BCE and his parents were King Wu of Zhou and Queen Yi Jiang. King Cheng was young when he ascended the throne and his uncle, Duke of Zhou, fearing that Shang forces might rise again under the possible weak rule of a young ruler, became the regent and supervised government affairs for several years. Duke of Zhou established the capital at Luoyang, and later defeated a rebellion by Cheng’s uncles Cai Shu, Guan Shu. King Cheng later stabilized Zhou Dynasty’s border by defeating several tribes along with the Duke of Zhou
18.
Rebellion of the Three Guards
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After the fall of the Shang dynasty, King Wu of Zhou had appointed his brothers Guanshu, Caishu and Huoshu as the Three Guards of the East to secure the newly conquered Shang lands. After his death and his young son King Chengs coronation, King Wus brother Dan and this aroused the anger of the Three Guards who suspected Dan of usurpation and believed that they should serve as regents. Allied with many separatist eastern nobles, Shang loyalists under Prince Wu Geng, the latter then launched a second eastern campaign to put down the rebellion, and defeated the rebels in three years, killing or disempowering their leaders. In doing so, he further expanded the Zhou kingdom into eastern China. Edward L. Shaughnessy called the rebellion a succession crisis that has come to be seen as defining moment not only for the Western Zhou dynasty, after King Wu of Zhou had captured Yin in 1046 BC, the Zhou dynasty officially supplanted the old Shang rule. Most of the vassal states, however, remained loyal to the fallen Shang dynasty. King Wu recognized this, and appointed the last Shang king Di Xins son Wu Geng as the deputy ruler of the east and he hoped that by doing so, the Zhou could rule the eastern lands through a Shang prince. But not only the states of the Central Plain wanted to restore the Shang dynasty, among them, only the state of Xue in southern Shandong welcomed the rise of the Zhou dynasty, as it had long fought the Shang for independence. These two quickly became the two most powerful figures at the court, King Wu died around 1043 BC, leaving the throne to his eldest son, Song, to be known as King Cheng of Zhou. Duke of Zhou, however, claimed that King Cheng was too young to rule, either way, he declared himself regent for Cheng and took over the court. Despite some initial criticism, Dan managed to win over the most important court members, together with his half-brother Duke of Shao and King Cheng, he formed a ruling triumvirate with himself as de facto leader. In the East, however, Duke of Zhous takeover caused great resentment among the Three Guards, furthermore, Guanshu was older than Dan, and the traditional line of seniority would have favored him as regent. In 1042 BC, the year of Duke of Zhous regency, Guanshu and Caishu finally instigated Wu Geng. The two rebellious brothers quickly convinced Huoshu of the rightfulness of their cause, uniting the Three Guards against the Duke of Zhou and they and the Shang loyalists were soon joined by many independent-minded nobles, especially from the southeast. Large swaths of the Zhou dynastys eastern realm rose against the government at Fenghao. Furthermore, the rebels were able to gain several external allies, led by the states of Pugu and Yan, powerful Shang sympathizers, most of the Dongyi polities of Shandong rallied to the rebel cause. Even some Huaiyi tribes, which controlled the Huai River region and had connection to either the Zhou or the Shang. Among them was the state of Xu, which would grow into one of the Zhou dynastys greatest enemies
19.
I Ching
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The I Ching, or Classic of Changes, is an ancient divination text and the oldest of the Chinese classics. The I Ching uses a type of divination called cleromancy, which produces apparently random numbers. Four numbers,6 to 9, are turned into a hexagram, the hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and paralleled with many other traditional names for the processes of change such as yin and yang and Wu Xing. The core of the I Ching is a Western Zhou divination text called the Changes of Zhou, various modern scholars suggest dates ranging between the 10th and 4th centuries BC for the assembly of the text in approximately its current form. It is possible that other systems existed at this time. The name Zhou yi literally means the changes of the Zhou dynasty, the changes involved have been interpreted as the transformations of hexagrams, of their lines, or of the numbers obtained from the divination. Feng Youlan proposed that the word for changes originally meant easy, as in a form of divination easier than the oracle bones, there is also an ancient folk etymology that sees the character for changes as containing the sun and moon, the cycle of the day. Modern Sinologists believe the character to be derived either from an image of the sun emerging from clouds, the Zhou yi was traditionally ascribed to the Zhou cultural heroes King Wen of Zhou and the Duke of Zhou, and was also associated with the legendary world ruler Fu Xi. The Zhou yi itself does not contain this legend and indeed says nothing about its own origins, the Rites of Zhou, however, also claims that the hexagrams of the Zhou yi were derived from an initial set of eight trigrams. During the Han dynasty there were various opinions about the relationship between the trigrams and the hexagrams. The basic unit of the Zhou yi is the hexagram, a composed of six stacked horizontal lines. Each line is broken or unbroken. The received text of the Zhou yi contains all 64 possible hexagrams, along with the name, a short hexagram statement. The book opens with the first hexagram statement, yuán hēng lì zhēn, edward Shaughnessy describes this statement as affirming an initial receipt of an offering, beneficial for further divining. The word zhēn was also used for the divine in the oracle bones of the late Shang dynasty. It also carried meanings of being or making upright or correct, the names of the hexagrams are usually words that appear in their respective line statements, but in five cases an unrelated character of unclear purpose appears. The hexagram names could have been chosen arbitrarily from the line statements, the line statements, which make up most of the book, are exceedingly cryptic. Each line begins with a word indicating the number, base,2,3,4,5, top
20.
Classic of Poetry
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It is one of the Five Classics traditionally said to have been compiled by Confucius, and has been studied and memorized by scholars in China and neighboring countries over two millennia. Since the Qing dynasty, its rhyme patterns have also analysed in the study of Old Chinese phonology. Early references refer to the anthology as the 300 Poems, with a typically inexact use of three hundred. The Odes first became known as a jīng, or a book, in the canonical sense. The same word shi later became a term for poetry. In English, lacking an exact equivalent for the Chinese, the translation of the word shi in this regard is generally as poem, song, before its elevation as a canonical classic, the Classic of Poetry was known as the Three Hundred Songs or the Songs. The Classic of Poetry contains the oldest chronologically authenticated Chinese poems, the majority of the Odes date to the Western Zhou period. A final section of 5 Eulogies of Shang purports to be songs of the Shang Dynasty as handed down by their descendents in the state of Song. According to the Eastern Han scholar Zheng Xuan, the latest material in the Shijing was the song Tree-stump Grove in the Odes of Chen, dated to the middle of the Spring and Autumn period. The content of the Poetry can be divided into two sections, the Airs of the States, and the eulogies and hymns. The Airs of the States are shorter lyrics in simple language that are generally ancient folk songs which record the voice of the common people. They often speak of love and courtship, longing for an absent lover, soldiers on campaign, farming and housework and they also include hymns used in sacrificial rites and songs used by the aristocracy in their sacrificial ceremonies or at banquets. Whatever the origin of the various Shijing poems as folk songs or not, in other words, they show an overall literary polish together with some general stylistic consistency. About 95% of lines in the Poetry are written in a four-syllable meter, lines tend to occur in syntactically related couplets, with occasional parallelism, and longer poems are generally divided into similarly structured stanzas. All but six of the Eulogies consist of a single stanza, almost all of the Airs, however, consist of three stanzas, with four-line stanzas being most common. Although a few rhyming couplets occur, the pattern in such four-line stanzas required a rhyme between the second and fourth lines. Often the first or third lines would rhyme with these, or with each other and this style later became known as the shi style for much of Chinese history. One of the characteristics of the poems in the Classic of Poetry is that they tend to possess elements of repetition and variation
21.
Rites of Zhou
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The Rites of Zhou, originally known as Officers of Zhou is actually a work on bureaucracy and organizational theory. It was renamed by Liu Xin to differentiate it from a chapter in the Book of History by the same name. To replace a lost work, it was included along with the Book of Rites and the Etiquette and Ceremonial – becoming one of three ancient ritual texts listed among the classics of Confucianism. The book appeared in the middle of the 2nd century BC, when it was found and included in the collection of Old Texts in the library of Prince Liu De and its first editor was Liu Xin, who credited it to the Duke of Zhou. Tradition since at least the Song dynasty continued this attribution, with the claim that Liu Xins edition was the final one. In the 12th century, it was given recognition by being placed among the Five Classics as a substitute for the long-lost sixth work. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, following Kang Youwei, currently, a few holdouts continue to insist on a Western Zhou date while the majority follow Qian Mu and Gu Jiegang in assigning the work to about the 3rd century BC. The work consists mainly of lists of Zhou dynasty bureaucrats, stating what the function of each office is. Sometimes though the mechanical listing is broken off by pieces of philosophical exposition on how a given office contributes to social harmony, the division of chapters follows the six departments of the Zhou dynasty government. The bureaucrats within a department come in five ranks, minister, councilor, senior clerk, middle clerk, there is only one minister per department -the department head-, but the other four ranks all have multiple holders spread across various specific professions. A part of the Winter Offices, the Record of Trades, contains important information on technology, architecture, city planning, a passage records that, The master craftsman constructs the state capital. He makes a square nine li on one side, each side has three gates, within the capital are nine north-south and nine east-west streets. The north-south streets are nine tracks in width. New examinations on the composition of the Zhouguan and on the culture, nylan, Michael, The Five Confucian Classics, New Haven,2001, ISBN 0-300-08185-5, Chapter 4, The Three Rites Canon pp. 168–202. Boltz, William G. Chou li in, Early Chinese Texts, a Biliographical Guide, pp. 24–32, Berkeley, Society for the Study of Early China,1993, ISBN 1-55729-043-1. Karlgren, Bernhard, The Early History of the Chou li and Tso chuan Texts in, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquites,3, pp. 1–59 Rites of Zhou Rites of Zhou
22.
Yayue
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Yayue was originally a form of classical music and dance performed at the royal court in ancient China. The basic conventions of yayue were established in the Western Zhou, together with law and rites, it formed the formal representation of aristocratic political power. The word ya was used during the Zhou dynasty to refer to a form of used in court collected in Shijing. Yayue is therefore regarded in the Confucian system as the form of music that is refined, improving, and essential for self-cultivation. It means the kind of ceremonial music used in court. The court yayue has largely disappeared from China, although there are attempts at its reconstruction. In Taiwan yayue is performed as part of a Confucian ceremony, other forms of yayue are still found in parts of East Asia, notably the gagaku in Japan, aak in Korea, and nhã nhạc in Vietnam. Although the same word is used, the music not necessarily correspond to Chinese yayue. The Korean aak however preserved elements of Song dynasty yayue long lost in China, according to tradition, yayue was created by the Duke of Zhou under commission from King Wu of Zhou, shortly after the latters conquest of Shang. Incorporated within yayue were elements of shamanistic or religious traditions, as well as early Chinese folk music, Dance was also closely associated with yayue music, each yayue pieces may have a ceremonial or ritual dance associated with it. The most important yayue piece of the Zhou dynasty were the Six Great Dances, each associated with a legendary or historical figure - Yunmen Dajuan, Daxian, Daqing, Daxia, the Book of Rites records a number of situations where yayue might be performed. These included ceremonies in honour of Heaven and Earth, the gods or the ancestors, there were also detailed rules on the way they were to be performed at diplomatic meetings. Yayue was also used in activities, such as aristocratic archery contests, during hunting expeditions. Yayue was characterised by its rigidity of form, when performed, it was stately and formal, serving to distinguish the aristocractic classes. It was sometimes accompanied by lyrics. Some of these are preserved in the Book of Songs, with the decline of the importance ceremony in the interstate relations of the Spring and Autumn period, so did yayue. Confucius famously lamented the decline of music and the rites. Marquess Wen of Wei was said to prefer the popular music of Wey and Zheng to the ancient court music, much of the yayue of the Zhou dynasty continued into the Qin dynasty
23.
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
24.
Luoyang
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Luoyang, formerly romanized as Loyang, is a city located in the confluence area of Luo River and Yellow River in Central China. It is a city in western Henan province. It borders the capital of Zhengzhou to the east, Pingdingshan to the southeast, Nanyang to the south, Sanmenxia to the west, Jiyuan to the north. Situated on the plain of China, Luoyang is one of the cradles of Chinese civilization. The name Luoyang originates from the location on the north or sunny side of the Luo River. Since the river flows from west to east and the sun is to the south of the river, Luoyang has had several names over the centuries, including Luoyi and Luozhou, though Luoyang has been its primary name. It has been called, during various periods, Dongdu, Xijing, during the rule of Wu Zetian, the city was known as Shendu The greater Luoyang area has been sacred ground since the late Neolithic period. This area at the intersection of the Luo river and Yi River was considered to be the center of China. Because of this aspect, several cities – all of which are generally referred to as Luoyang – have been built in this area. In 2070 BC, the Xia Dynasty king Tai Kang moved the Xia capital to the intersection of the Luo and Yi, in 1600 BC, Tang of Shang defeated Jie, the final Xia Dynasty king, and built Western Bo, a new capital on the Luo River. The ruins of Western Bo are located in Luoyang Prefecture, in the 1136 BC a settlement named Chengzhou was constructed by the Duke of Zhou for the remnants of the captured Shang nobility. The Duke also moved the Nine Tripod Cauldrons to Chengzhou from the Zhou Dynasty capital at Haojing, a second Western Zhou capital, Wangcheng was built 15 km west of Chengzhou. Wangcheng became the capital of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty in 771 BC, the Eastern Zhou Dynasty capital was moved to Chengzhou in 510 BC. Later, the Eastern Han Dynasty capital of Luoyang would be built over Chengzhou, modern Luoyang is built over the ruins of Wangcheng, which are still visible today at Wangcheng Park. In 25 AD, Luoyang was declared the capital of the Eastern Han Dynasty on November 27 by Emperor Guangwu of Han, for several centuries, Luoyang was the focal point of China. In AD68, the White Horse Temple, the first Buddhist temple in China, was founded in Luoyang, the temple still exists, though the architecture is of later origin, mainly from the 16th century. An Shigao was one of the first monks to popularize Buddhism in Luoyang, in 190 AD, Chancellor Dong Zhuo ordered his soldiers to ransack, pillage, and raze the city as he retreated from the coalition set up against him by regional lords from across China. The court was moved to the more defensible western city of Changan
25.
Shangdi
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Shangdi is the pinyin romanization of two Chinese characters. The word itself is derived from Three Huang and Five Di, including Yellow Emperor, the originator of the Chinese civilization. However, 帝 refers to the High God of Shang, thus means deity, thus, the name Shangdi should be translated as Highest Deity, but also have the implied meaning of Primordial Deity or First Deity in Classical Chinese. The deity preceded the title and the emperors of China were named after him in their role as Tianzi, Shangdi seems to have ruled a hierarchy of other gods controlling nature, as well as the spirits of the deceased. These ideas were later mirrored or carried on by the Taoist Jade Emperor, Shangdi was probably more transcendental than immanent, only working through lesser gods. Shangdi was considered too distant to be worshiped directly by ordinary mortals, the emperors could thus successfully entreat Shangdi directly. Many of the oracle bone inscriptions record these petitions, usually praying for rain, in the later Shang and Zhou dynasties, Shangdi was conflated with Heaven. Shangdi was not just a tribal but instead a good moral force. It could thus be lost and even inherited by a new dynasty, nonetheless, the connection of many rituals with the Shang clan meant that Shang nobles continued to rule several locations and to serve as court advisors and priests. Likewise, the Shangs lesser houses, the shi knightly class, developed directly into the learned Confucian gentry and scholars who advised the Zhou rulers on courtly etiquette, the Confucian classics carried on and ordered the earlier traditions, including the worship of Shangdi. All of them include references, The Four Books mention Shangdi as well but, as it is a later compilation, by the time of the Han dynasty, the influential Confucian scholar Zheng Xuan glossed, Shangdi is another name for Heaven. Dong Zhongshu said, Heaven is the authority, the king of gods who should be admired by the king. In later eras, he was known by the name Heavenly Ruling Highest Deity and, in this usage. In Shang sources, Di is already described as the supreme ordainer of the events occur in nature, such as wind, lightning and thunder. All the gods of nature are conceived as his envoys or manifestations, Shang sources also attest his cosmological Five Ministries. Di, or Tian, as later texts explain, did not receive cult for being too remote for living humans to sacrifice to directly, instead, an intermediary such as an ancestor was necessary to convey to Di the offerings of the living. According to this interpretation, this identification had profound political implications, moreover, Kui is frequently appealed in horizontal relationship with other powers, undermining any portrait of him as the apex of the pantheon. Especially intriguing is the fact that palatial and ceremonial structures of these cultures were carefully aligned to the celestial pole, the interpretation of Shangdi as the celestial pole, Taiyi and as Ku the progenitor of the Shang is not contradictory
26.
Tian
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Tiān is one of the oldest Chinese terms for heaven and a key concept in Chinese mythology, philosophy, and religion. During the Shang Dynasty, the Chinese referred to their god as Shàngdì or Dì. During the following Zhou Dynasty, Tiān became synonymous with this figure, Heaven worship was, before the 20th century, an orthodox state religion of China. In Taoism and Confucianism, Tiān is often translated as Heaven and is mentioned in relationship to its aspect of Dì. These two aspects of Daoist cosmology are representative of the nature of Taoism. They are thought to maintain the two poles of the Three Realms of reality, with the middle realm occupied by Humanity, the ancient oracle and bronze ideograms for dà 大 depict a stick figure person with arms stretched out denoting great, large. The oracle and bronze characters for tiān 天 emphasize the cranium of this great, either with a square or round head, two variant Chinese characters for tiān 天 heaven are 兲 and the Daoist coinage 靝. The sinologist Herrlee Creel, who wrote a study on The Origin of the Deity Tien. For three thousand years it has believed that from time immemorial all Chinese revered Tien 天, Heaven, as the highest deity. But the new materials that have available in the present century. It appears rather that Tien is not named at all in the Shang inscriptions, Tien appears only with the Chou, and was apparently a Chou deity. After the conquest the Chou considered Tien to be identical with the Shang deity Ti, first, Creel analyzes all the tian and di occurrences meaning god, gods in Western Zhou era Chinese classic texts and bronze inscriptions. His corpus of authenticated Western Zhou bronzes mention tian 91 times, second, Creel contrasts the disparity between 175 occurrences of di or shangdi on Shang era oracle inscriptions with at least 26 occurrences of tian. Upon examining these 26 oracle scripts that scholars have identified as tian 天 heaven, god, according to tradition, Tang of Shang assembled his subjects to overthrow King Jie of Xia, the infamous last ruler of the Xia Dynasty, but they were reluctant to attack. The king said, Come, ye multitudes of the people, listen all to my words. It is not I, the child, who dare to undertake what may seem to be a rebellious enterprise. Now, ye multitudes, you are saying, Our prince does not compassionate us, I have indeed heard these words of you all, but the sovereign of Hsiâ is an offender, and, as I fear God, I dare not but punish him. Now you are saying, What are the crimes of Hsiâ to us, the king of Hsiâ does nothing but exhaust the strength of his people, and exercise oppression in the cities of Hsiâ
27.
Fengjian
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The Zhou kings enfeoffed their fellow warriors and relatives, creating large domains of land. The Fengjian system they created allocated a region or piece of land to an individual and these eventually rebelled against the Zhou Kings, and developed into their own kingdoms, thus ending the centralized rule of the Zhou dynasty. But scholarship has suggested that fengjian otherwise lacks some of the aspects of feudalism. Each state was independent and had its own tax and legal systems along with unique currency, the nobles were required to pay regular homage to the king and to provide him with soldiers at the time of war. This structure played an important part in the structure of Western Zhou which was expanding its territories in the east. Zongfa, which applied to all classes, governed the primogeniture of rank. The eldest son of the consort would inherit the title and retained the rank within the system. Other sons from the consort, concubines, and mistresses would be given titles one rank lower than their father, as time went by, all terms had lost their original meanings nonetheless. Zhuhou, Dafu, and Shi became synonyms of court officials, any male member of the nobility or gentry could be called a gongzi. The well-field system was a Chinese land distribution method existing between the ninth century BC to around the end of the Warring States period, while all fields were aristocrat-owned, the private fields were managed exclusively by serfs and the produce was entirely the farmers. It was only produce from the fields, worked on by all eight families, that went to the aristocrats. As part of a larger feudal fēngjiàn system, the system became strained in the Spring. When the system became economically untenable in the Warring States period and it was first suspended in the state of Qin by Shang Yang and other states soon followed suit. As part of the turning the clock back reformations by Wang Mang during the short-lived Xin Dynasty, Marxist historians in China have described Chinese ancient society as largely feudal. Fengjian is particularly important to Marxist historiographical interpretation of Chinese history in China, the first to propose the use of this term for the Chinese society was Marxist historian and one of the leading writers of 20th-century China, Guo Moruo in the 1930s. This situation is supposed to have prevailed in China after the decline of the Shang dynasty, one of the reasons for the shift to feudal states is claimed to be the introduction of iron technology. There land fiefs were granted by lords or the ruler to knights, who were considered the ‘vassals’, who in return promised loyalty to the lord and provided military support during periods of war. In China, instead of a salary each noble was given land by the Zhou ruler along with the living on it who worked on the land
28.
Ancient Chinese urban planning
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Ancient Chinese urban planning is the application of the traditional principles of Chinese architecture to urban design. Urban planning originated during the urbanization of the Yellow River valley in the Neolithic Age, the process in China, as elsewhere in the world, is related to the process of centralizing power in a political state. Although several cultures formed competing states, the ancestor of the Chinese state was Longshan culture. Therefore, the earliest Chinese urban planning was a synthesis of Longshan traditional cosmology, geomancy, astrology and this synthesis generated a diagram of the cosmos, which placed man, state, nature, and heaven in harmony. The city was planned in the context of this diagram to maintain harmony and balance. Urbanization begins at Banpo on the Zhongyuan plain of the Yellow River, Banpo grew from a typical Yangshao village in both size and organization until the construction of the Great Hall ca.4000 BC. Like Eridu in Mesopotamia, Banpo in East Asia was the first instance of specialized architecture, physically, Banpo was composed of 200 round pit houses and the Great Hall across 5 hectares and surrounded by a ditch. These pit houses were sited for solar gain by aligning the door to the Yingshi asterism just after the winter solstice, already, at this early stage the principle of south-facing entry was firmly established. As in other Neolithic communities, life at Banpo was synchronized to the year, which was timed by the movement of the Big Dipper. The Book of Odes describes this annual cycle, Beginning in spring, adolescents swam through the flood waters at the triangular confluence of two rivers. They emerged shivering, and in this state they were infused with the souls of ancestors buried in the earth who had reemerged at the springs of the Yellow River, in this energized state they procreated in a location deemed to possess magical earth energy. These locations were unsuitable for agriculture, usually a hill, consecrated procreation was essential to maintaining the cycle of life. When the flood receded, the triangle was divided into fields between the families. In autumn there was a festival at the completion of the harvest. In winter, the men left their homes and retired to the Great Hall, the needs and beliefs of Banpo society created the prototype Chinese urban form. The springtime sacred procreation sites became, in time, the Holy Place called bo, moreover, the connection between ancestors, earth, and fertility developed into a theory of qi energy and fengshui geomancy. The Book of Burial elaborates this theory, man is considered concentrated Qi, when his bones are returned to the earth they become re-energized by Qi. The living descendants are affected by the Qi generated from the bones of their ancestors, in this theory, the world was an active matrix of Qi into which graves, houses, and cities must be carefully inserted by fengshui principals to maintain harmony
29.
Lu (state)
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Lu was a vassal state during the Zhou dynasty of ancient China. Founded in the 11th century BC, its rulers were from a branch of the House of Ji that ruled the Zhou dynasty. The first duke was Boqin, a son of the Duke of Zhou, Lu was the home state of Confucius as well as Mozi, and as such has an outsized cultural influence among the states of the Eastern Zhou and in history. The Annals of Spring and Autumn, for instance, was written with the Lu rulers years as their basis, another great work of Chinese history, Zuo Zhuan was also written in Lu. The states capital was in Qufu and its territory covered the central. It was bordered to the north by the state of Qi. The position of Lu on the frontiers of the Western Zhou state, facing the non-Zhou peoples in states such as Lai. Lu was one of states founded in eastern China at the very beginning of the Zhou dynasty, in order to extend Zhou rule far from its capital at Zongzhou. Throughout Western Zhou times, it played an important role in stabilising Zhou control in modern-day Shandong, during the early Spring and Autumn period, Lu was one of the strongest states and a rival of Qi to its north. Under Duke Yin and Duke Huan of Lu, Lu defeated both Qi and Song on several occasions, at the same time, it undertook expeditions against other minor states. This changed by the middle of the period, as Lus main rival, Qi, although a Qi invasion was defeated in the Battle of Changshao in 684 BC, Lu would never regain the upper hand against its neighbour. Meanwhile, the power of the dukes of Lu was eventually undermined by the feudal clans of Jisun 季孫, Mengsun 孟孫. The domination of the Three Huan was such that Duke Zhao of Lu, in attempting to regain power, was exiled by them and it would not be until Duke Mu of Lus reign, in the early Warring States period, that power eventually returned to the dukes again. In 249 BC King Kaolie of the state of Chu invaded and annexed Lu, Duke Qing, the last ruler of Lu, became a commoner. The main line of the Duke of Zhous descendants came from his firstborn son, the Duke of Zhous offspring held the title of Wujing Boshi. 東野家族大宗世系 Family Tree of the descendants of the Duke of Zhou in Chinese Duke Huan of Lus son through Qingfu was the ancestor of Mencius, the genealogy is found in the Mencius family tree. List of Lu rulers based on the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian
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Wu Zetian
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Wu was the only Empress regnant of China in more than four millennia. Wu was the concubine of Emperor Taizong, after his death, she married his successor—his ninth son, Emperor Gaozong, officially becoming Gaozongs huanghou in 655, although having considerable political power prior to this. After Gaozongs debilitating stroke in 660, Wu Zetian became administrator of the court, besides her career as a political leader, Wu Zetian also had an active family life. One of her grandsons became the renowned Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, in Chinese history and literature, Wu Zetian was known by various names and titles. Mention of her in the English language has increased their number. The exact birth name of Wu Zetian is no longer retrievable and she changed her name to Wu Zhao after rising to power, often written as 武曌, with 瞾 being one of the invented characters by Wu. Wu was her surname, which she retained, according to traditional Chinese practice, after marriage to Gaozong. Emperor Taizong gave her the art name Wu Mei, meaning glamorous, during her life, and posthumously, Wu Zetian was awarded various official titles. Both hou and huangdi are titles, born Wu Zhao, she is not properly known as Wu Hou until receiving this title in 655, nor is she properly known as Wu Zetian, her regnal name, until 690, when she took the title, huangdi. Various Chinese titles have been translated into English as empress, including empress in both the sense of empress consort and empress regnant, generally the emperor was male and his chief spouse was given a title such as Huanghou, often translated as empress or more specific empress consort. Since the time of Qin Shi Huang the Emperor of China used the title Huangdi, Wu Zetian was the only woman in the history of China to assume the title of Huangdi. Wu Zetian is said to be the woman in Chinese history to wear the yellow robe as a monarch. The Wu family clan originated in Wenshui County, Bingzhou, the birthplace of Wu Zetian is not documented in preserved historical literature and remains controversial. Some argue that Wu Zetian was born in Lizhou, while others insist she was born in the imperial capital of Changan. She lived from 17 February 624 –16 December 705, Wu Zetian was born in the seventh year of the reign of Emperor Gaozu of Tang. In the same year, an eclipse of the sun was visible across China. Her father Wu Shihuo was engaged in the business and the family was relatively well off. Her mother was from the powerful Yang family, during the final years of Emperor Yang of Sui, Li Yuan stayed in the Wu household many times and became close to the Wu family, whilst holding appointments in both Hedong and Taiyuan
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Emperor Zhenzong
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Emperor Zhenzong of Song, personal name Zhao Heng, was the third emperor of the Song dynasty in China. He reigned from 997 to his death in 1022 and his personal name was originally Zhao Dechang, but was changed to Zhao Yuanxiu in 983, Zhao Yuankan in 986, and finally Zhao Heng in 995. He was the son of his predecessor, Emperor Taizong. Emperor Zhenzongs reign was noted for the consolidation of power and the strengthening of the Song Empire, the empire prospered, and its military might was further reinforced. However, it would mark the beginning of a foreign policy towards the Khitan-led Liao dynasty in the north that would ultimately result in humiliation. In 1004, the Khitans waged war against the Song Empire, Emperor Zhenzong, leading his army, struck back at the Khitans. Despite initial successes, in 1005, Emperor Zhenzong concluded the Shanyuan Treaty, the admission of inferiority would come to plague the foreign affairs of the Song Empire, while the payments slowly depleted the empires coffers. He was responsible for ordering the shipment of 30,000 bushels of quick-maturing rice seed from the Fujian Province to the lower Yangtze basin in 1011–1012, Emperor Zhenzong stressed the importance of Taoism at his imperial court. It was during his reign that the so-called Heavenly Texts, which glorified the Zhao family, were allegedly discovered and this was followed up by imperial sacrificial ceremonies carried out at Mount Tai. From 1013 to 1015, the emperor issued official decrees deifying the Jade Emperor as the highest ruler of Heaven, Champa rice was introduced to China from Champa during Emperor Zhenzongs reign. Among the artifacts were a white marble tablet from the Tang dynasty, gold nails, and bands made out of metal. It was not until after Ma died, that his wife went to Taiwan in 1971 from the United States to bring the artifacts to Chiang Kai-shek, who turned them over to the Taipei National Palace Museum
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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
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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
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Shaanxi
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Shaanxi, formerly romanized as Shensi, is a province of the Peoples Republic of China. Officially part of the Northwest China region, it lies in central China, bordering the provinces of Shanxi, Henan, Hubei, Chongqing, Sichuan, Gansu, Ningxia and it covers an area of over 205,000 km2 with about 37 million people. Xian—which includes the sites of the former Chinese capitals Fenghao and Changan—is the provincial capital, Xianyang, which served as the Qin capital, is located nearby. The other prefecture-level cities into which the province is divided are Ankang, Baoji, Hanzhong, Shangluo, Tongchuan, Weinan, Yanan and Yulin. Shaanxi comprises the Wei Valley and much of the surrounding fertile Loess Plateau, stretching from the Qin Mountains and Shannan in the south to the Ordos Desert in the north. Along with areas of adjacent Shanxi and Henan, it formed the cradle of Chinese civilization, with its Guanzhong region sheltering the capitals of the Zhou, Qin, Han, Jin, Sui, and Tang dynasties. It does not include the territory of the Yellow Rivers Ordos Loop, with the Great Wall of China separating it from the grasslands. The name Shaanxi is a romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of the Chinese name 陕西. Because the Mandarin pronunciation of Shaanxi and its eastern neighbor Shanxi differ only in tone, the Peoples Republic of China therefore adopted the special official spelling Shaanxi for occasions when such marks are omitted. The first syllable is derived from Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization, which reflects the tones of the vowels in their spelling. The second syllable—which would be shi in Gwoyeu Romatzyh—is instead given its usual pinyin spelling xi, when tone marks are noted, it is spelled Shǎnxī rather than Shǎanxī or Shaǎnxī. Shaanxi is considered one of the cradles of Chinese civilization, thirteen feudal dynasties established their capitals in the province during a span of more than 1,100 years, from the Zhou Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty. Under the Han Dynasty, the Northern Silk Road was expanded to advance exploration and this Northern Silk Road is the northernmost of the Silk Roads and is about 2,600 kilometres in length. It connected the ancient Chinese capital of Xian to the west over the Wushao Ling Pass to Wuwei, under the Ming dynasty, Shaanxi was incorporated into Gansu but was again separated in the Qing dynasty. One of the most devastating earthquakes in history occurred near Hua Shan, in part of Shaanxi Province on January 23,1556. The end of the short-lived Jiangxi Soviet signalled the beginning of the Long March by Mao Zedong, the Lantian Man site, with hominin fossils of one million years ago, was found in Lantian County in northwestern Shaanxi province, near the city of Xian. Scientists classify Lantian Man as a subspecies of Homo erectus, the fossils are displayed at the Shaanxi History Museum, Xian, China. In between the Loess Plateau and the Qinling lies the Wei River Valley, or Guanzhong, a cradle of early Chinese civilization, going clockwise, Shaanxi borders Shanxi, Henan, Hubei, Chongqing, Sichuan, Gansu, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia
35.
Analects
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It is believed to have been written during the Warring States period, and it achieved its final form during the mid-Han dynasty. During the late Song dynasty the importance of the Analects as a work was raised above that of the older Five Classics. They were very important for Confucianism and Chinas overall morals, Confucius believed that the welfare of a country depended on the moral cultivation of its people, beginning from the nations leadership. He believed that individuals could begin to cultivate a sense of virtue through ren. He taught that a sense of virtue was his primary prerequisite for leadership. His primary goal in educating his students was to produce ethically well-cultivated men who would carry themselves with gravity, speak correctly, the work is therefore titled Lunyu meaning edited conversations or selected speeches. The view however was challenged by Qing dynasty philologist Cui Shu who argued on linguistic ground that the last five books are later than the rest of the work. Many modern scholars now believe that the work was compiled over a period of two hundred years, with some questioning the authenticity of some of the sayings. A Han dynasty writer Wang Chong however claimed that the Analects that existed during the Han dynasty was incomplete, at least three times the amount of those do not exist in the Analects at all. According to the Han dynasty scholar Liu Xiang, there were two versions of the Analects that existed at the beginning of the Han dynasty, the Lu version and the Qi version. The Lu version contained twenty chapters, and the Qi version contained twenty-two chapters, of the twenty chapters that both versions had in common, the Lu version had more passages. Each version had its own masters, schools, and transmitters, the old text version got its name because it was written in characters not used since the earlier Warring States period, when it was assumed to have been hidden. According to the Han dynasty scholar Huan Tan, the old version had four hundred characters different from the Lu version. Of these twenty-seven differences, the text only agrees with the old text version in two places. This text was recognized by Zhang Yus contemporaries and by subsequent Han scholars as superior to either individual version, the Qi version was lost for about 1800 years but re-found during the excavation of the tomb of Marquis of Haihun that was found 2011. No complete copies of either the Lu version or the old version of the Analects exist today. Archaeologists have since discovered two handwritten copies of the Analects that were written around 50 BC, during the Western Han dynasty and they are known as the Dingzhou Analects, and the Pyongyang Analects, after the location of the tombs in which they were found. The Dingzhou Analects was discovered in 1973, but no transcription of its contents was published until 1997, the Pyongyang Analects was discovered in 1992
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Confucius
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Confucius was a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history. The philosophy of Confucius emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and his followers competed successfully with many other schools during the Hundred Schools of Thought era only to be suppressed in favor of the Legalists during the Qin Dynasty. Following the victory of Han over Chu after the collapse of Qin, aphorisms concerning his teachings were compiled in the Analects, but only many years after his death. Confuciuss principles had a basis in common Chinese tradition and belief and he championed strong family loyalty, ancestor veneration, and respect of elders by their children and of husbands by their wives. He also recommended family as a basis for ideal government and he espoused the well-known principle Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself, the Golden Rule. Confucius is also a deity in Daoism. According to tradition, three generations before Confucius time, his ancestors had migrated from the Song state to the Lu state, Confucius was a descendant of the Shang dynasty Kings through the Dukes of Song. Confucius family and personal name respectively was Kong Qiu, in Chinese, he is most often known as Kongzi. He is also known by the honorific Kong Fuzi, in the Wade–Giles system of romanization, the honorific name is rendered as Kung Fu-tzu. The Latinized name Confucius is derived from Kong Fuzi, and was first coined by 16th-century Jesuit missionaries to China, within the Analects, he is often referred to simply as the Master. In 1 AD, Confucius was given his first posthumous name, in 1530, he was declared the Extremely Sage Departed Teacher. He is also known separately as the Great Sage, First Teacher and it is generally thought that Confucius was born on September 28,551 BC. His birthplace was in Zou, Lu state and his father Kong He, also known as Shuliang He, was an officer in the Lu military. Kong died when Confucius was three years old, and Confucius was raised by his mother Yan Zhengzai in poverty and his mother would later die at less than 40 years of age. At age 19 he married his wife Qiguan, and a year later the couple had their first child, Qiguan and Confucius would later have two daughters together, one of whom is thought to have died early in her life as a child. Confucius was educated at schools for commoners, where he studied and learned the Six Arts, Confucius was born into the class of shi, between the aristocracy and the common people. When his mother died, Confucius is said to have mourned for three years, as was the tradition, the Lu state was headed by a ruling ducal house. Under the duke were three families, whose heads bore the title of viscount and held hereditary positions in the Lu bureaucracy
