1.
County-level city
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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, villages, 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, Thamesville, 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, Xiantao, Qianjiang, Tianmen and Jiyuan, administrative divisions of China Counties of the Peoples Republic of China Prefecture-level city List of cities in China
2.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
3.
Provinces of China
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Provinces, formally provincial-level administrative divisions or first-level administrative divisions, are the highest-level Chinese administrative divisions. There are 34 such divisions, classified as 23 provinces, four municipalities, five autonomous regions, the Peoples Republic of China claims sovereignty over the territory administered by the Republic of China, claiming most of it as its Taiwan Province. The ROC also administers some offshore islands which form Fujian Province and these were part of an originally unified Fujian province, which since the stalemate of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 has been divided between the PRC and ROC. Note that every province has a Communist Party of China provincial committee, the committee secretary is in effective charge of the province, rather than the nominal governor of the provincial government. The government of each province is nominally led by a provincial committee. The committee secretary is first-in-charge of the province, second-in-command is the governor of the provincial government, the Peoples Republic of China claims the island of Taiwan and its surrounding islets, including Penghu, as Taiwan Province. The territory is controlled by the Republic of China, a municipality or direct-controlled municipality is a higher level of city which is directly under the Chinese government, with status equal to that of the provinces. In practice, their status is higher than that of common provinces. The governor of each region is usually appointed from the respective minority ethnic group. A special administrative region is an autonomous and self-governing subnational subject of the Peoples Republic of China that is directly under the Central Peoples Government. Each SAR has an executive as head of the region. The regions government is not fully independent, as policy and military defence are the responsibility of the central government. Notes,1, as of 20102, per km23, km24, Abbreviation in the parentheses is informal 5, Since founding in 1949, however, the PRC has never controlled Taiwan. Taiwan currently administers Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, the subject of whether or not Taiwan is part of China is often debated, with no clear conclusion. The Ming Dynasty kept the system set up by the Yuan Dynasty, however. By the time of the establishment of the Qing Dynasty in 1644 there were 18 provinces, in addition, there was a zongdu, a general military inspector or governor general, for every two to three provinces. Outer regions of China were not divided into provinces, military leaders or generals oversaw Manchuria, Xinjiang, and Mongolia, while vice-dutong and civilian leaders headed the leagues, a subdivision of Mongolia. The ambans supervised the administration of Tibet, in 1884 Xinjiang became a province, in 1907 Fengtian, Jilin, and Heilongjiang were made provinces as well
4.
Shanxi
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Shanxi is a province of China, located in the North China region. Its one-character abbreviation is 晋, after the state of Jin that existed here during the Spring, the name Shanxi means West of the Mountains, a reference to the provinces location west of the Taihang Mountains. Shanxi borders Hebei to the east, Henan to the south, Shaanxi to the west, the capital of the province is Taiyuan. In the Spring and Autumn period, the state of Jin was located in what is now Shanxi and it underwent a three-way split into the states of Han, Zhao and Wei in 403 BC, the traditional date taken as the start of the Warring States period. By 221 BC, all of states had fallen to the state of Qin. The Han Dynasty ruled Shanxi as the province of Bingzhou, during the invasion of northern nomads in the Sixteen Kingdoms period, several regimes including the Later Zhao, Former Yan, Former Qin, and Later Yan continuously controlled Shanxi. They were followed by Northern Wei, a Xianbei kingdom, which had one of its earlier capitals at present-day Datong in northern Shanxi, the Tang Dynasty originated in Taiyuan. During the Tang Dynasty and after, present day Shanxi was called Hédōng, empress Wu Zetian, Chinas only female ruler, was born in Shanxi. Shanxi was initially home to the jiedushi of Hedong, Li Cunxu, shi Jingtang, founder of the Later Jin, the third of the Five Dynasties, ceded a piece of northern China to the Khitans in return for military assistance. This territory, called The Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, included a part of northern Shanxi, the ceded territory became a major problem for Chinas defense against the Khitans for the next 100 years, because it lay south of the Great Wall. He founded his dynasty by launching a coup against the Turkic Later Han Emperor. In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, the sixteen ceded prefectures continued to be an area of contention between Song China and the Liao Dynasty. Later the Southern Song Dynasty abandoned all of North China, including Shanxi, the Mongol Yuan Dynasty divided China into provinces but did not establish Shanxi as a province. Shanxi only gained its present name and approximate borders during the Ming Dynasty which were of the same landarea, with the collapse of the Qing dynasty, Shanxi became part of the newly established Republic of China. During most of the Republic of Chinas period of rule over mainland China, Yan Xishan devoted himself to modernizing Shanxi and developing its resources during his reign over the province. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japan occupied much of the province after winning the Battle of Taiyuan, Shanxi was also a major battlefield between the Japanese and the Chinese communist guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army during the war. The soldiers of Shanxi province under Yan Xishan viciously fought against the invading Japanese, right after the defeat of Japan, much of the Shanxi countryside became important bases for the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the ensuing Chinese Civil War. Shanxi was eventually conquered by the communists, resulting in the warlord Yan Xishans retreat to Taiwan Island, for centuries, Shanxi served as the center of trade and banking, the Shanxi merchants were once synonymous with wealth
5.
Prefecture-level city
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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, shijiazhuang 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, Bloomington, Indiana is indicated on the map by a point, which is distinct from, and enclosed by, in China, however, 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 also 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, Shawan, 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, furthermore, 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
6.
Time in China
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The time in China follows a single standard time offset of UTC+08,00, despite China spanning five geographical time zones. The official national standard time is called Beijing Time domestically and China Standard Time internationally, daylight saving time has not been observed since 1991. The special administrative regions maintain their own authorities, with standards called Hong Kong Time. These have been equivalent to Beijing time since 1992, in addition, a second time standard is used in Xinjiang, two hours less than the Beijing Time, which is called Ürümqi Time or Xinjiang Time. In 1912, the Republic of China established five standard time zones, namely Kunlun, Sinkiang-Tibet, Kansu-Szechwan, Chungyuan, and Changpai. The unified time zone policy was adopted by the Communist Party of China or the Central People’s Government some time between 27 September 1949 and 6 October 1949, the date is unknown. However, recent research suggests that the policy was most likely adopted on 27 September 1949, daylight saving time was observed from 1986 to 1991. In 1997 and 1999, Hong Kong and Macau were transferred to China from the United Kingdom and Portugal, although the sovereignty of the SARs belongs to China, they retain their own policies regarding time zones for historical reasons. Due to their locations, both are within the UTC+08,00 time zone, which is the same as the national standard — Beijing time. Xinjiang Time, also known as Ürümqi Time, is set due to its location in the westernmost part of the country. The time offset is UTC+06,00, which is two hours behind Beijing, and is shared with neighbouring Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Currently, timezone usage within Xinjiang is roughly split along the divide, with most ethnic Han following Beijing time. Some local authorities are now using both time standard side by side, the coexistence of two timezones within the same region causes some confusion among the local population, especially when inter-racial communication occur. Some ethnic Han in Xinjiang might not be aware of the existence of the UTC+6 Xinjiang Time because of language barrier, regardless, Beijing Time users in Xinjiang usually schedule their daily activities two hours later than those who live in eastern China. As such, stores and offices in Xinjiang are commonly opening from 10am to 7pm Beijing Time and this is known as the work/rest time in Xinjiang. Hong Kong maintains its own time authority after transfer of sovereignty in 1997, the Hong Kong Time is UTC+08,00 all year round, and daylight saving time has not been used since 1979. Greenwich Mean Time was adopted as the basis in 1904, before that, local time was determined by astronomical observations at Hong Kong Observatory using a 6-inch Lee Equatorial and a 3-inch Transit Circle. Macau maintains its own time authority after transfer of sovereignty in 1999, the Macau Standard Time is the time in Macau
7.
Chinese characters
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Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. In Standard Chinese, and sometimes also in English, they are called hànzì. They have been adapted to write a number of languages including, Japanese, where they are known as kanji, Korean, where they are known as hanja. Collectively, they are known as CJK characters, in English, they are sometimes called Han characters. Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world, Chinese characters number in the tens of thousands, though most of them are minor graphic variants encountered only in historical texts. Studies in China have shown that literacy in written Chinese requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters. In Japan,2,136 are taught through secondary school, the characters used in Japan are distinct from those used in China in many respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, in South Korea, when Chinese characters are used they are of the traditional variant and are almost identical to those used in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Old Chinese, most words were monosyllabic and there was a correspondence between characters and words. Rather, a character almost always corresponds to a syllable that is also a morpheme. However, there are a few exceptions to this correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes. Modern Chinese has many homophones, thus the same syllable may be represented by many characters. A single character may also have a range of meanings, or sometimes quite distinct meanings, cognates in the several varieties of Chinese are generally written with the same character. They typically have similar meanings, but often quite different pronunciations and these foreign adaptations of Chinese pronunciation are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations, and have been useful in the reconstruction of Middle Chinese. When the script was first used in the late 2nd millennium BC, words of Old Chinese were generally monosyllabic, increasing numbers of polysyllabic words have entered the language from the Western Zhou period to the present day. The process has accelerated over the centuries as phonetic change has increased the number of homophones and it has been estimated that over two thirds of the 3,000 most common words in modern Standard Chinese are polysyllables, the vast majority of those being disyllables. The most common process has been to form compounds of existing words, words have also been created by adding affixes, reduplication and borrowing from other languages. Polysyllabic words are written with one character per syllable
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.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
10.
Fen River
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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 also 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, Taiyuan, Linfen, Houma, 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, however, 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, today, 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, shrubs and other green plants, the No.1 Fen River reservoir, built in 1960, is the biggest artificial reservoir in Shanxi province, it is also 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, domestic, 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
11.
Jia Zhangke
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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, Shanxi, 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, however, 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
12.
Xiao Wu
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Xiao Wu also 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, dirty 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
13.
Platform (2000 film)
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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 then leaves the group, never to return. As China undergoes massive social changes, the troupe alters their performances, Cui, 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
14.
Mountains May Depart
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Mountains May Depart is a 2015 drama film directed by Jia Zhangke. The film is Jias eighth feature film and it competed for the Palme dOr at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. It has also selected to be shown in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. It was released in China on 30 October 2015, the film has three parts, set in 1999,2014 and in Australia in the year 2025, respectively. Zhao Tao Zhang Yi Liang Jingdong Dong Zijian Sylvia Chang Rong Zishan Liang Yonghao Liu Lu Yuan Wenqian The film earned CN¥32.22 million at the Chinese box office, mountains May Depart holds a 79/100 average on review aggregation site Metacritic. Derek Elley of Film Business Asia gave it a 5 out of 10, calling the film a weakly written saga of friendship goes way off the rails in the final part
15.
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
16.
Dwarkanath Kotnis
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Known for his dedication and perseverance, he has been regarded as an example for Sino-Indian friendship and collaboration. Along with the Canadian Dr. Norman Bethune, he continues to be revered by the Chinese people, in April 2005, both their graves were covered completely in flowers donated by the Chinese people during the Qingming Festival, a day used by the Chinese to commemorate their ancestors. Dwarkanath Kotnis was born to a middle class Marathi family in Solapur, Maharashtra and he studied medicine at the Seth G. S. Medical College of the University of Bombay, in 1938, after the Japanese invasion of China, the communist General Zhu De requested Jawaharlal Nehru to send some physicians to China. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, the President of the Indian National Congress and he arranged to send a team of volunteer doctors and an ambulance by collecting a fund of Rs 22,000 on the All-Indian China Day and China Fund days on 7–9 July. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose also wrote an article in Modern Review on Japans role in the Far East, the key aspect of this mission was that it was a helping hand from a nation itself struggling for freedom, to another nation also struggling for its freedom. The mission was reinforced with Nehrus visit to China in 1939, dwarkanath Kotnis, born in a middle class Maharashtrian family from Solapur on 10 October 1910, had then graduated from the Seth G S Medical College, Mumbai and was preparing for post-graduation. He asked permission of his family to volunteer for service abroad, dwarkanaths younger sister Manorama recalls that her brother wanted to travel around the world and practice medicine at different places. She said most members of the family knew little about China at that time, a medical team of five doctors was dispatched as the Indian Medical Mission Team in September 1938. Deepak, B. R. India-China Relations in the First Half of the 20th Century. All, except Dr. Kotnis, returned to India safely, the team first arrived in China at the port of Hankou, Wuhan. The 28-year-old Doctor came as a part of the five member team, in 1939, Dr. Kotnis joined the Eighth Route Army at the Jin-Cha-Ji border near the Wutai Mountain Area, after his efforts all across the northern China region. His job as a battlefront doctor was stressful, where there was always a shortage of medicines. In one long-drawn out battle against Japanese troops in 1940, Dr. Kotnis performed operations for up to 72 hours and he treated more than 800 wounded soldiers during the battle. He was eventually appointed as the Director of the Dr. Bethune International Peace Hospital named after the famous Canadian surgeon Norman Bethune, in 1940, Dr. Kotnis met Guo Qinglan, a nurse at the Bethune Hospital. They first met at the inauguration of Dr. Norman Bethunes tomb, Kotnis could write and speak Chinese, which amazed her. The couple got married in December 1941 and they had a son on 23 August 1942, who was named Yinhua – meaning India and China, at the suggestion of Nie Rongzhen. Dr. Kotnis wrote letters to his family regularly and he sounded very happy in the letters. People used to come to him for his help
17.
Baijiu
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Baijiu, also known as shaojiu or archaically as sorghum wine, is a Chinese alcoholic beverage made from grain. Báijiǔ literally means white alcohol or liquor, and is a distilled spirit. The jiuqu starter culture used in the production of baijiu mash is usually made of pulverized wheat grains. Because of its clarity, baijiu can appear similar to several other East Asian liquors and it is closer to vodka in strength and mouth-feel. Chinese liquor, which has made for over 5000 years, is characterized by a double semisolid-state fermentation using fungi as the main microbial starter for the saccharification. This is a feature of liquors produced in the Far East. The brewing of Chinese baijiu mainly uses grain except for a few that use fruit, the Chinese traditionally serve baijiu either warm or at room temperature in a small ceramic bottle. They then pour the baijiu into small cups, Baijiu may be purchased as a set of items consisting of bottles of baijiu, a small heater, and four to six small cups. The serving method and containers are similar to those used for sake and soju, Baijiu is generally sold in glass or ceramic bottles and consumed in shot glasses, much like vodka. It is traditional to drink baijiu with food rather than on its own, in 2007, a report in Time magazine mentioned integrating baijiu into cocktails. Low grades of baijiu can be inexpensive, a bottle of roughly 250 ml may be purchased for the same price as a can of beer. However, higher grades, which are aged for many years. The highest grade of Wuliangye retails for CN¥26,800, some popular varieties of baijiu include Moutai, kaoliang, erguotou, Luzhou Laojiao, and Wuliangye. Unlike huangjiu, which has a variety of classification methods. Baijiu has a distinctive smell and taste that is valued in Chinese culinary culture. Connoisseurs of the beverage focus especially on its fragrance, even so, during the competition, experts rated various baijiu based on their taste rather than aroma. Furthermore, many categories are simply an advertising hype, in order to distinguish a particular brand from other brands. Sauce fragrance, A highly fragrant distilled liquor of bold character, named for its similarity in flavor to Chinese fermented bean pastes, to the Western palate, sauce fragrance baijiu can be quite challenging
18.
Taiyuan
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Taiyuan is the capital and largest city of Shanxi province in North China. It is one of the main manufacturing bases of China, throughout its long history, Taiyuan was the capital or provisional capital of many dynasties in China, hence the name Lóngchéng. The two Chinese characters of the name are 太 and 原, referring to the location where the Fen River leaves the mountains. Throughout its long history, the city had various names, including Bīngzhōu, during the Tang dynasty and subsequent Five Dynasties, the status of the city of Taiyuan was elevated to be the Northern Capital, hence the name Běidū, and Běijīng. Taiyuan is an ancient city with more than 2500 years of urban history and it was the capital or secondary capital of Zhao, Former Qin, Eastern Wei, Northern Qi, Northern Jin, Later Tang, Later Jin, Later Han, Northern Han. Its strategic location and rich history make Taiyuan one of the economic, political, military, from about 859 BC the area around modern-day Taiyuan was occupied by the Rong people. In 662 BC the Rong were driven out by the Di people, during the Spring and Autumn period, the state of Jin emerged to the south of Taiyuan. In 541 BC, the Jin army led by General Xun Wu, drove out the Di Tribes, during the Battle of Jinyang in 453 BC, Zhi Yao diverted the flow of the Fen River to inundate the city of Jinyang, caused significant damage to the Zhao. Later, Zhao Xiangzi alerted Wei and Han, who decided to ally with Zhao. On the night of May 8,453 BC, Zhao troops broke the dams of the Fen River and let the flood the Zhi armies. After the Tripartition of Jin in 403 BC, the state of Jin, Jinyang, was chosen as the capital of Zhao, by Zhao Ji. Later, the capital of Zhao was moved to Handan, in 248 BC, the state of Qin attacked Zhao under General Mengao, and obtained the area around Jinyang from Zhao. Qin set up the Commandery of Taiyuan, with the city of Jinyang as its administrative center, in 246 BC, there was an uprising in Jinyang, and it was quickly quelled by Mengao. In 221 BC, Qin conquered the rest of China, Qin established thirty-six commanderies on its territory, and Taiyuan was one of them. In 202 BC, Emperor Gaozu Liu Bang established the Han dynasty, Later, King Xin of Han moved the capital from Jinyang to Mayi with the approval from the emperor Gaozu. However, King Xin of Han conspired with the Xiongnu against Gaozu, in 196 BC, King Xin of Han was killed after he lost a battle. And the vassal state of Han was replaced by the state of Dai. During the tumultuous Three Kingdoms, the population of Taiyuan decreased significantly due to constant warfares, Taiyuan was ruled by Gongsun Zan, Yuan Shao, and then by Cao Cao, and was part of Cao Wei afterwards
19.
Datong
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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, Kuangqu 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 later 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 later 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, cold, 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
20.
Yangquan
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Yangquan is a prefecture-level city in the east of Shanxi province, Peoples Republic of China. Situated at the edge of the Loess Plateau and the west side of the Taihang Mountains. According to the 2010 Census, Yangquan has a population of 1,368,502 inhabitants,95,386 more than in 2000, Yangquan has a rather dry, monsoon-influenced humid continental climate, with cold and very dry winters, and hot, somewhat humid summers. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from −3.4 °C in January to 24.0 °C in July, the diurnal temperature variation, not exceeding 13 °C in any month, is not large for provincial standards. China National Highway 207 The Beijing–Kunming Expressway Co-founder of Baidu, Robin Li was born, author of The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin was born and raised in Yangquan. Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, United Kingdom Mount Vernon, New York, United States Travel China Guide, Yangquan
