Platform (2000 film)
Platform is a 2000 Chinese film written and directed by Jia Zhangke. The film is set in and around the city of Fenyang, Shanxi province, China. It follows a group of twenty-something performers as they face personal and societal changes, the dialogue is a mixture of local speech, mainly Jin Chinese and Mandarin. The film has been called an epic of grassroots and it is named after a popular song about waiting at a railway platform. Platform has garnered acclaim from critics in the years since its release. The film starts in 1979 in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, a theatre troupe of young adults in Fenyang performs state-approved material. The troupe includes Cui Minliang and his friends, Yin Ruijuan, Zhang Jun, Cui asks Yin if she is his girlfriend, but she replies that she is not. The troupe leaves their hometown and travels throughout the country for years during the 1980s. Yin stays behind in Fenyang and becomes a tax collector, the authorities find out about the illegal sexual relationship between Zhang and Zhong, and Zhong leaves the group, never to return.
As China undergoes massive social changes, the troupe alters their performances, jaded by his years on the road, reunites with Yin. Another film by Jia Zhangke, Still Life, was voted the third best film, platform placed 32 on Slant Magazines list of the 100 best films of the 2000s and was named as one of Sight & Sounds films of the 2000s. The film has a 79% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
Datong
It had a population of 3,318,057 at the 2010 census of whom 1,629,035 lived in the built up area made of 3 out of 4 urban districts, namely Chengqu and Nanjiao District. The town was founded as Píngchéng in 200 BC during the Han dynasty, located near the Great Wall Pass to Inner Mongolia, it blossomed during the following period and became a stop-off point for camel caravans moving from China into Mongolia and beyond. It was sacked at the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, pingcheng became the capital of Northern Wei from 398 AD until 494 AD, when the well-known Yungang Grottoes were constructed during the part of this period. The city was renamed Datong in 1048 AD and it was the Xijing of the Jurchen Jin dynasty prior to being sacked by the Mongols. It was sacked again at the end of the Ming dynasty in 1649 AD, Datong was close to the Beidi kingdom of Tai, which was conquered by the Zhou dynasty in 457 BC. It bordered on the Hu nomads and traded in horses, Tai was a commandery or county. Datong is the northernmost city of Shanxi, and is located in the Datong Basin, with an area spanning latitude 39° 03–40°44 N.
The urban area is surrounded on three sides by mountains, with only to the east and southwest. Within the prefecture-level city elevations generally increase from southeast to northwest, Datong borders Ulanqab to the northwest and Zhangjiakou to the east, Shuozhou to the southwest and Xinzhou to the south. The well-known Datong Volcanic Arc lies nearby in the Datong Basin, Datong has a continental, monsoon-influenced steppe climate, influenced by the 1,000 metres + elevation, with rather long, very dry winters, and very warm summers. Monthly mean temperatures range from −10.6 °C in January to 22.0 °C in July, Due to the aridity and elevation, diurnal temperature variation is often large, averaging 13.3 °C annually. There barely is any precipitation during winter, and more than ¾ of the precipitation occurs from June to September. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 54% in July to 66% in October, sunshine is abundant year-round, kuang District is largely made up of separate mines throughout the metropolitan area.
The Yungang Grottoes are a collection of caves located 16 km west of Datong. There are over 50,000 carved images and statues of Buddhas and bodhisattvas within these grottoes, most of these icons are around 1000 years old. Within the city itself, there are a few surviving sites of historical interest such as the Nine-Dragon Wall, the Huayan Monastery, further afield is the Hanging Temple built into a cliff face near Mount Heng. Most of the sites in this region date to the Tang and Ming dynasties. The railway locomotive works began to attract increasing numbers of enthusiasts from the 1970s
Pinyin
Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia 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 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, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
Prefecture-level city
Prefectural level cities form the second level of the administrative structure. Administrative chiefs of prefectural level cities generally have the rank as a division chief of a national ministry. Since the 1980s, most former prefectures have been renamed into prefectural level cities, a prefectural level city is a city and prefecture that have been merged into one unified jurisdiction. The larger prefectural level cities span over 100 kilometres, prefectural level cities nearly always contain multiple counties, county level cities, and other such sub-divisions. To distinguish a prefectural level city from its urban area. The first prefectural level cities were created on 5 November 1983, over the following two decades, prefectural level cities have come to replace the vast majority of Chinese prefectures, the process is still ongoing. Most provinces are composed entirely or nearly entirely of prefectural level cities and Zhengzhou are the largest prefectural level cities with populations approaching or exceeding some sub-provincial cities. A sub-prefecture-level city is a city with powers approaching those of prefectural level cities.
There are total of three classification of prefecture-level city, Regular prefectural level city which consist of counties, county level cities, consolidated district-governed prefectural level city which only consist of districts as it subdivisions. Thus, Indiana is indicated on the map by a point, which is distinct from, and enclosed by, in China, large cities such as City of Xianning may, in reality, contain both urban and rural elements. Moreover, they may enclose counties or other cities, on a less detailed map, City of Xianning would be indicated by a point, more or less corresponding to the coordinates of its city government. Other populous areas may be exhibited as points, such as County of Tongshan, with no indication that County of Tongshan is, in fact, enclosed by City of Xianning. On a more detailed map, City of Xianning would be drawn as an area, similar to a county of the United States and this convention may lead to difficulty in the identification of places mentioned in older sources.
For example, Guo Moruo writes that he was born in Town of Shawan, within Prefecture of Leshan, and attended primary school in Town of Jiading. A modern map is unlikely to show either town, because it is too small, and Jiading, because it is the seat of City of Leshan, and is therefore indicated on the map by a point labelled Leshan. A more detailed map would show Shawan as a district within City of Leshan, statistics of China such as population and industrial activity are generally reported along prefectural city lines. Thus, the relatively unknown City of Huangshi has 2.5 million residents, more than most European capitals, but upon closer inspection, Huangshi contains several other cities, such as City of Daye. If a person wished to calculate the population of the area of Huangshi, and had a map of Huangshi, and a table of its population by district
Xiao Wu
Xiao Wu known as The Pickpocket is a 1997 Chinese movie directed by Jia Zhangke. Xiao Wu was filmed in the city of Fenyang in 16 mm, the film is set in 1997, with the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong being mentioned in the background. The place is a provincial town and poor. Xiao Wu is one of a group of pickpockets, most of whom have moved on to small traders. One of them, formerly a friend, is getting married and decides not to invite Xiao Wu. He drifts around, discontent with this, but makes no effort to change and he acquires a girlfriend, a prostitute who takes a liking to him, but she drops him when she gets some better prospect. He visits his poor-peasant family but ends up quarrelling with his parents, finally he gets arrested and we last see him handcuffed in the middle of the street with a disapproving crowd watching him. There is a big crack-down on crime, something mentioned at the start of the film, while a student in the mid-1990s, Jia Zhangke remained a relative unknown at Chinas prestigious Beijing Film Academy.
With their support, Jia was able to work on Xiao Wu. Xiao Wu was shot on a mere 400,000 RMB budget, Xiao Wu was praised by the American filmmaker Martin Scorsese, a noted fan of Jias works
Fen River
The Fen River drains the center of Shanxi Province, China. The Fen and the Wei Rivers are the two largest tributaries of the Yellow River, the river is 694 km long and drains an area of 39,417 km2,25. 3% of the area of Shanxi Province. The Fen River is the longest river in Shanxi province, northern China and it is the second longest tributary of the Yellow River. The Fen River in Taiyuan city is throughout from north to south, the lower Fen was part of the core area of ancient China and held the capital of the state of Jin near Houma. The river nurtured the 2500-year-old Sanjin Civilization and has since called the Mother River of People in Shanxi. In Taiyuan city, the Fen River valley area has fertile water resource, for this reason, there are two valleys of the south region of further south. One of the valleys is the Fen River valley, it had led to the Yellow River, the second valley is the Su River, which was along the north edge of Zhongtiao Mountain, and it was forming another triangular basin.
The Fen River valley offered different routes of communication in Wei River valley, modern cities on or near the Fen from north to south are, Linfen, Hejin. Fenyang, although named after the river, is actually some 20-plus km to the west of it, as with any river that flows through a city, the Fen River added extra charm to the city of Taiyuan. The construction of dams upstream, reduced the once-abundant flow of the river to a trickle. Before the 1950s, Fen River valley’s flood areas is 13.34 ten thousand hectares, due to the influence of the water conservancy facilities, the water logging is almost inexistence, huge areas of saline-alkali soil are reformed. In the 1990s, the government of Taiyuan built artificial. The surface area of these amounts to 1.7 million square meters and, along with newly created vegetation of 1.3 million square meters on the banks. The vegetation consist of 183 species trees and other green plants, the No.1 Fen River reservoir, built in 1960, is the biggest artificial reservoir in Shanxi province, it is the scenic spot in the province.
The length from south to north is 15 kilometers, the width is 5 kilometers, the area is 32 square kilometers. In 2000, the No.2 Fen River Reservoir was built about 50 kilometers downstream the No.1 Fen River Reservoir, the pollution of Fen River reservoir has become a serious problem. Because of the rise of population and the development of economy, the industrial, great quantities of sewage are indiscriminately discharged into the riverbed downstream of the Nos.1 and 2 reservoirs. However, the government is trying to fix the problem
County-level city
A county-level municipality, county-level city, or county city is a county-level administrative division of mainland China. County-level cities are governed by prefecture-level divisions, but a few are governed directly by province-level divisions. Most county-level cities were created in the 1980s and 1990s by replacing counties, a county-level city is a city and county that have been merged into one unified jurisdiction. As such it is simultaneously a city, which is an entity. County-level cities are not cities in the strictest sense of the word, since they usually contain rural areas many times the size of their urban and this is because the counties that county-level cities have replaced are themselves large administrative units containing towns and farmland. To distinguish a city from its actual urban area, the term 市区 shìqū. In France, an equivalent of a city is an agglomeration community. For example, in New South Wales such a unit may often be called a city, city of Blue Mountains is made of a number of towns.
Another example would be municipal government in the Canadian province of Ontario and this agglomeration includes all of the townships in the county of Kent, with cities and towns like Wallaceberg, Dresden, Wheatley. This amalgamation as it is referred to, was controversial when it was forced upon the constituents through provincial legislation. Today, instead of each city having its own mayor and city councillors, as of January 2017, there are 360 County-level city in total, A sub-prefecture-level city is a county-level city with powers approaching those of prefecture-level cities. Examples include, Qianjiang and Jiyuan, administrative divisions of China Counties of the Peoples Republic of China Prefecture-level city List of cities in China
Jia Zhangke
Jia Zhangke is a Chinese film director and screenwriter. He is generally regarded as a figure of the Sixth Generation movement of Chinese cinema. Jias early films, a trilogy based in his home province of Shanxi, were made outside of Chinas state-run film bureaucracy. Beginning in 2004, Jias status in his own country rose when he was allowed to direct his fourth film, The World. Jias films have received praise and have been recognized internationally, notably winning the Venice Film Festivals top award Golden Lion for Still Life. NPR critic John Powers described him as perhaps the most important filmmaker working in the world today, Jia was born in Fenyang, China. His interest in film began in the early 1990s, as an art student at the Shanxi University in Taiyuan, on a lark, Jia attended a screening of Chen Kaiges masterpiece, Yellow Earth. The film, according to Jia, was changing. Jia would eventually make it to Chinas prestigious Beijing Film Academy in 1993, as a film theory major, while a student at the Beijing Film Academy, Jia would make three short films to hone his skills.
The first, a short documentary on tourists in Tiananmen Square entitled One Day in Beijing, was made in 1994 on self-raised funds. Though Jia has referred to his first directorial effort as inconsequential and naive, he described the short day. But it was Jias second directorial effort, the short film Xiao Shan Going Home and it was a film that helped establish Jias style and thematic interests and, in Jias words, was a film that truly marks the beginning of my career as a filmmaker. Xiao Shan would eventually screen abroad where it won a top prize at the 1997 Hong Kong Independent Short Film & Video Awards. creative team, with their support, Jia was able to begin work on Xiao Wu, which would become his first feature film. Before graduating, Jia would make one more film, Du Du. The film, little seen and rarely available, was for Jia an exercise of experimentation and technique, for Jia, the film was an important learning experience, even if he was not terribly proud of the end result. Upon graduation, Jia embarked on his first feature-length film, with producer Li Kit Ming, Xiao Wu, a film about a pickpocket in Jias native Fenyang, emerged from Jias desire to capture the massive changes that had happened to his home in the past few years.
Additionally, the film was a rejection of what Jia felt was the fifth generations increasing tendency to move away from the reality of modern China and into the realm of historical legend. Shot on a mere 400,000 RMB budget, Xiao Wu would prove to be a success on the international film circuit
Changzhi
Changzhi is a prefecture-level city in Shanxi Province, China. Historically, the city was one of the 36 administrative areas extant under the reign of the first emperor of a unified China, literally speaking, Changzhi means eternal peace in Chinese. Nowadays, Changzhi is a centre in Shanxi. Convenient transportations are facilitated by 4 controlled-access highways,2 railways,3 national highways and 1 airport, internal transportation is built with bus and taxi network. Besides, the city is a commercial and industrial centre in south-eastern area of Shanxi. In 2011, its GDP increasing rate ranked the 1st out of 11 prefecture-level cities in the province, local environment, especially Air Quality Index, is monitored by Chinas Ministry of Environmental Protection and city government. A record of air quality has been kept and published by local government. To read the data, just visit http, //www. czshb. gov. cn or directly type http, //202.97.152.195, 85/cz/ribao/index. asp for details of daily or real-time air quality.
Changzhi is still on her way to a modern city with satisfied air quality. Data from the 6th National Population Census in 2010 reported the city was home for 3,334,564 residents, in ancient times the area around Changzhi（Including jincheng ） was known as Shangdang. Changzhi was the site of the Shangdang Campaign, the first battle between the Kuomintang and the Peoples Liberation Army after the end of World War II, the campaign began in August 1945 and lasted until October. It began when the local Shanxi warlord, Yan Xishan, attempted to retake the region from Communist forces, Yans forces were eventually defeated by an army led by Liu Bocheng, who was named one of Chinas Ten Great Marshals. Lius political commissar was Deng Xiaoping, who became Chinas paramount leader, the campaign ended with the complete destruction of Yans army, most of which joined the Communists after surrendering. Following the Shangdang Campaign, the Communists remained in control of the region until they won the war in 1949.
The area under the control of Peoples Government of Changzhi City is divided into 13 local government districts
