1.
Lantern Festival
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The Lantern Festival or the Spring Lantern Festival is a Chinese festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunisolar Chinese calendar. It marks the day of the traditional Chinese New Year celebrations. As early as the Western Han Dynasty, it had become a festival with great significance, during the Lantern Festival, children go out at night to temples carrying paper lanterns and solve riddles on the lanterns. In ancient times, the lanterns were fairly simple, and only the emperor, in modern times, lanterns have been embellished with many complex designs. For example, lanterns are now made in the shape of animals. The lanterns can symbolize the people letting go of their past selves and getting new ones, the lanterns are almost always red to symbolize good fortune. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, it is commercialized as the Chinese equivalent of Valentines Day and it is not to be confused with the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is sometimes also known as the Lantern Festival in locations such as Singapore and Malaysia. Now the Chinese Lantern Festival is becoming popular in Western countries, in London, the United Kingdom has the Magical Lantern Festival. The first month of the Chinese Lunar month is called the yuan month, the fifteenth day is the first full moon of that lunisolar year. People will try to solve puzzles on lanterns, eat lots of food like rice balls named after the festival, (also known as tangyuan. There are many different beliefs about the origin of the Lantern Festival, however, one likely origin is the celebration of the declining darkness of winter and communitys ability to move about at night with human-made light, namely, lanterns. During the Han Dynasty, the festival was connected to Ti Yin, one legend tells us that it was a time to worship Taiyi, the God of Heaven in ancient times. The belief was that the God of Heaven controlled the destiny of the human world and he had sixteen dragons at his beck and call and he decided when to inflict drought, storms, famine or pestilence upon human beings. Beginning with Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, the emperor would ask Taiyi to bring favorable weather and good health to him and his people. Wudi of the Han Dynasty directed special attention to this event, in 104 BCE, he proclaimed it to be one of the most important celebrations and the ceremony would last throughout the night. Another legend associates the Lantern Festival with Taoism, Tianguan is the Taoist god responsible for good fortune. His birthday falls on the day of the first lunar month. It is said that Tianguan likes all types of entertainment, so followers prepare various kinds of activities during which they pray for good fortune, another legend associates the Lantern Festival with an ancient warrior name Lan Moon, who led a rebellion against the tyrannical king in ancient China
2.
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
3.
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
4.
Administrative village
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An administrative village is the lowest level of government administration in Indonesia. It could be a village or a kelurahan, a village is headed by a village chief, who is elected by popular vote. A kelurahan is headed by a lurah, a civil servant appointed by local government, a village is divided non-administratively into local communities which manage a certain number of households. In Aceh, a village is called as gampong, since the implementation of regional autonomy in 2001, the larger nagari has been introduced in place of the desa as the lowest government unit in West Sumatra. Village is the lowest level of government administration in Indonesia, a village is divided into several community groups, which are further divided into neighbourhood groups. In Java, the desa is divided further into smaller units called dusun or dukuh, these units are the same as rukun warga
5.
Taman Sari, Jakarta
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Taman Sari is a subdistrict of West Jakarta, Jakarta, Indonesia. It is the smallest subdistrict of West Jakarta, Taman Sari is bounded by Central Jakarta to the south and to the east, and by North Jakarta to the north. Taman Sari subdistrict contains the area of Jakarta Old Town. This area is the oldest area of Jakarta and a center of administration of Batavia during the 17th century and this historic area is located within the Pinangsia sdministrative village, the northern part of Taman Sari subdistrict. The original core area of Taman Sari was near the intersection of Prinsenlaan, the larger northern area had an en suite bathroom and toilet for each property, while the southern area had communal sanitary facility. Despite its central location, the proved to be a failure. Native population did not want to settle in Taman Sari because of the Western-centric house layout, in 1918, five years after it was implemented, the city council of Batavia decided to demolish the project. The project became a process for kampong-improvement projects in the Indies that requirement of the locals cannot be blindly designed with a Dutch model. Glodok administrative village, on the part of Taman Sari, is the largest Chinatown in Jakarta. The subdistrict of Taman Sari is divided into eight kelurahan or administrative villages, the area is Jakartas oldest and largest China town. M. Ontwerpen aan de stad - Stedenbouw in Nederlands-Indië en Indonesië
6.
Indonesia
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Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a unitary sovereign state and transcontinental country located mainly in Southeast Asia with some territories in Oceania. Situated between the Indian and Pacific oceans, it is the worlds largest island country, with more than seventeen thousand islands. At 1,904,569 square kilometres, Indonesia is the worlds 14th-largest country in terms of area and worlds 7th-largest country in terms of combined sea. It has an population of over 260 million people and is the worlds fourth most populous country. The worlds most populous island, Java, contains more than half of the countrys population, Indonesias republican form of government includes an elected legislature and president. Indonesia has 34 provinces, of which five have Special Administrative status and its capital and countrys most populous city is Jakarta, which is also the most populous city in Southeast Asia and the second in Asia. The country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, other neighbouring countries include Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, Palau, and the Indian territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Despite its large population and densely populated regions, Indonesia has vast areas of wilderness that support the second highest level of biodiversity. The country has abundant natural resources like oil and natural gas, tin, copper, agriculture mainly produces rice, palm oil, tea, coffee, cacao, medicinal plants, spices and rubber. Indonesias major trading partners are Japan, United States, China, the Indonesian archipelago has been an important region for trade since at least the 7th century, when Srivijaya and then later Majapahit traded with China and India. Local rulers gradually absorbed foreign cultural, religious and political models from the early centuries CE, Indonesian history has been influenced by foreign powers drawn to its natural resources. Indonesia consists of hundreds of native ethnic and linguistic groups. The largest – and politically dominant – ethnic group are the Javanese, a shared identity has developed, defined by a national language, ethnic diversity, religious pluralism within a Muslim-majority population, and a history of colonialism and rebellion against it. Indonesias national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, articulates the diversity that shapes the country, Indonesias economy is the worlds 16th largest by nominal GDP and the 8th largest by GDP at PPP, the largest in Southeast Asia, and is considered an emerging market and newly industrialised country. Indonesia has been a member of the United Nations since 1950, Indonesia is a member of the G20 major economies and World Trade Organization. The name Indonesia derives from the Greek name of the Indós, the name dates to the 18th century, far predating the formation of independent Indonesia. In 1850, George Windsor Earl, an English ethnologist, proposed the terms Indunesians—and, his preference, in the same publication, one of his students, James Richardson Logan, used Indonesia as a synonym for Indian Archipelago. However, Dutch academics writing in East Indies publications were reluctant to use Indonesia, they preferred Malay Archipelago, the Netherlands East Indies, popularly Indië, the East, and Insulinde
7.
Chinatown
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A Chinatown is historically any ethnic enclave, of Chinese or Han people outside of Mainland China or Taiwan, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as Chinatown exist throughout the world, including the Americas, Europe, Africa, Australasia, a Chinatown, as a Chinese enclave, is defined as. Any small, distinct area or group enclosed or isolated within a larger group, the development of most Chinatowns typically start with mass migration to an area having zero or very few Chinese. The Oxford Dictionary defines Chinatown as, a district of any non-Chinese town, especially a city or seaport, in which the population is predominantly of Chinese origin. However, some Chinatowns may have little to do with China, some Vietnamese enclaves are in fact a citys second Chinatown, and some Chinatowns are in fact pan-Asian, meaning they could also be counted as a Koreatown or Little India. One example includes Asiatown in Cleveland, Ohio and it was initially referred to as a Chinatown but was subsequently renamed due to the influx of non-Chinese Asian Americans who opened businesses there. Today the district acts as a factor for the Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Nepalese. As isolated from the population as Hispanics. This contrasts with narrower definitions, where the only described Chinatown in a city setting. In some cities in Spain, the term denotes an area, neighborhood or district where prostitution or other related to the sex industry are concentrated. Some examples of this are the Chinatown of Salamanca and the Chinatown of Barcelona, trading centres populated predominantly by Chinese men and their native spouses have long existed throughout Southeast Asia. Emigration to other parts of the world from China accelerated in the 1860s with the signing of the Treaty of Peking, early emigrants came primarily from the coastal provinces of Guangdong and Fujian in southeastern China – where the people generally speak Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew and Hokkien. As conditions in China have improved in recent decades, many Chinatowns have lost their initial mission, as net migration slows, the smaller Chinatowns have slowly decayed, often to the point of becoming purely historical and no longer serving as ethnic enclaves. Binondos Chinatown located in Manila, Philippines is the oldest Chinatown in the world, several Asian Chinatowns, although not yet called by that name, have a long history. Those in Nagasaki, Japan, Binondo in Manila, Hoi An, glodok, the Chinese quarter of Jakarta, Indonesia, dates to 1740. Chinese presence in India dates back to the 5th century AD, a Chinatown first appeared in the Indian city of Calcutta and subsequently in Mumbai and Chennai. The first Chinese settler in Calcutta was Young Atchew around 1780, the Chinatown centered on Yaowarat Road in Bangkok, Thailand, was founded at the same time as the city itself, in 1782. Many Chinese immigrants arrived in Liverpool in the late 1850s in the employ of the Blue Funnel Shipping Line, the commercial shipping line created strong trade links between the cities of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Liverpool, mainly in the importation of silk, cotton and tea
8.
Jakarta
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Jakarta /dʒəˈkɑːrtə/, officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta, is the capital and most populous city of the Republic of Indonesia. Located on the northwest coast of the worlds most populous island of Java, Jakarta is the economic, cultural and political centre. The official metropolitan area, known as Jabodetabek, is the second largest in the world, established in the fourth century, the city became an important trading port for the Kingdom of Sunda. It was the de facto capital of the Dutch East Indies, today, the city has continued as the capital of Indonesia since the countrys independence was declared in 1945. Jakarta is listed as a city in the 2012 Globalization and World Cities Study Group. Based on the global metro monitor by the Brookings Institution, in 2014, Jakarta has grown more rapidly than Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, and Bangkok. Jakarta has been home to multiple settlements along with their names, Sunda Kelapa, Jayakarta, Batavia, Djakarta. Its current name derives from the word Jayakarta, the origins of this word can be traced to the Old Javanese and ultimately to the Sanskrit language. Jayakarta translates as victorious deed, complete act, or complete victory, Jakarta is nicknamed the Big Durian, the thorny strongly-odored fruit native to the region, as the city is seen as the Indonesian equivalent of the US city of New York. In the colonial era, the city was known as Koningin van het Oosten, initially in the 17th century for the urban beauty of downtown Batavias canals, mansions. After expanding to the south in the 19th century, this came to be more associated with the suburbs, with their wide lanes, many green spaces. The area in and around modern Jakarta was part of the fourth century Sundanese kingdom of Tarumanagara, following the decline of Tarumanagara, its territories, including the Jakarta area, became part of the Hindu Kingdom of Sunda. From 7th to early 13th century port of Sunda was within the sphere of influence of the Srivijaya maritime empire. According to the Chinese source, Chu-fan-chi, written circa 1225, Chou Ju-kua reported in the early 13th century Srivijaya still ruled Sumatra, the source reports the port of Sunda as strategic and thriving, pepper from Sunda being among the best in quality. The people worked in agriculture and their houses were built on wooden piles, the harbour area became known as Sunda Kelapa and by the fourteenth century, it was a major trading port for Sunda kingdom. The first European fleet, four Portuguese ships from Malacca, arrived in 1513 when the Portuguese were looking for a route for spices, in 1527, Fatahillah, a Javanese general from Demak attacked and conquered Sunda Kelapa, driving out the Portuguese. Sunda Kelapa was renamed Jayakarta, and became a fiefdom of the Sultanate of Banten which became a major Southeast Asia trading centre, through the relationship with Prince Jayawikarta from the Sultanate of Banten, Dutch ships arrived in Jayakarta in 1596. In 1602, the English East India Companys first voyage, commanded by Sir James Lancaster, arrived in Aceh and this site became the centre of English trade in Indonesia until 1682
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