1.
Chongqing
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Chongqing, formerly transliterated as Chungking, is a major city in Southwest China and one of the Five national central cities in China. Administratively, it is one of Chinas four direct-controlled municipalities, the municipality was created on 14 March 1997, succeeding the sub-provincial city administration that was part of Sichuan Province. Chongqings population as of 2015 is just over 30 million with a population of 18.38 million. The official abbreviation of the city, Yu, was approved by the State Council on 18 April 1997 and this abbreviation is derived from the old name of a part of the Jialing River that runs through Chongqing and feeds into the Yangtze River. Chongqing was also a Sichuan province municipality during the Republic of China administration, Chongqing has a significant history and culture and serves as the economic centre of the upstream Yangtze basin. It is a manufacturing centre and transportation hub, a July 2012 report by the Economist Intelligence Unit described it as one of Chinas 13 emerging megacities. Tradition associates Chongqing with the State of Ba, the Ba people supposedly established Chongqing during the Spring and Autumn period after moving from their first capital Yicheng in Hubei under pressure from Chu. This new capital was first named Jiangzhou, in 316 BC, however, the state of Ba was conquered by the State of Qin. Jiangzhou subsequently remained under Qin Shi Huangs rule during the Qin Dynasty, the successor of the Qin State, and under the control of Han Dynasty emperors. Jiangzhou was subsequently renamed during the Southern and Northern Dynasties to Chu Prefecture, then in 581 AD to Yu Prefecture, the name Yu however survives to this day as an abbreviation for Chongqing, and the city centre where the old town stood is also called Yuzhong. It received its current name in 1189, after Prince Zhao Dun of the Southern Song Dynasty described his crowning as king, in his honour, Yu Prefecture was therefore renamed Chongqing subprefecture marking the occasion of his enthronement. In 1362, Ming Yuzhen, a peasant rebelling leader, established the Daxia Kingdom at Chongqing for a short time, in 1621, another short-lived kingdom of Daliang was established by She Chongming with Chongqing as its capital. The Manchus later conquered the province, and during the Qing Dynasty, immigration to Chongqing, in 1890, the British Consulate General was opened in Chongqing. The following year, the city became the first inland commerce port open to foreigners, the French, German, US and Japanese consulates were opened in Chongqing in 1896–1904. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, it was Generalissimo Chiang Kai-sheks provisional capital, the city was also visited by Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Supreme Commander of SEAC which was itself headquartered in Ceylon, modern day Sri Lanka. Chiang Kai Shek as Supreme Commander in China worked closely with Stilwell, the Japanese Air Force heavily bombed it. Due to its mountainous environment, many people were saved from the bombing, due to the bravery, contributions and sacrifices made by the local people during World War II, Chongqing became known as the City of Heroes. Many factories and universities were relocated from eastern China to Chongqing during the war, in late November 1949 the Nationalist KMT government fled the city
2.
Great Hall of the People (Chongqing)
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The Great Hall of the People, also translated as the Chongqing Peoples Auditorium, located in central Chongqing, China, is a large hall for political meetings and cultural events. The Hall is located in Yuzhong District, and serves as one of the symbols of Chongqing. The exterior resembles the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, construction of the Hall began in June 1951 and completed in April 1954, with the involvement of Deng Xiaoping, who was the First Secretary of the Communist Partys Southwest Bureau at the time. The building includes an auditorium and three adjoining parts to the east, south, and north. It covers a area of 66,000 m2. The building is 65 meters high, the circular domed auditorium is 55 meters high and its internal diameter is 46.33 meters. The auditorium is encircled by five storey of additional viewing areas and has a capacity of 4,200 people. The building is symmetric, with colonnades and wings, the building can be viewed from the Peoples Square below. Opposite is the Three Gorges Museum and it is currently the meeting place of the municipal legislative bodies - the Peoples Congress and Peoples Political Consultative Conference. Great Hall of the People, Beijing Media related to Great Hall of the People (Chongqing at Wikimedia Commons}
3.
Monument to the People's Heroes
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It is located in the southern part of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, to the north of Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. The architect of the monument was Liang Sicheng, with elements designed by his wife. The civil engineer, Chen Zhide was also instrumental in realising the final product, the monument has also served as the centre of large-scale mourning activities that later developed into protest and unrest, such as the deaths of Premier Zhou Enlai and Hu Yaobang. The monument has an height of 37.94 metres. It weighs over 10,000 tonnes and contains about 17,000 pieces of marble and granite from Qingdao, Shandong Province, and the nearby Fangshan District. Eternal glory to the heroes of the people who laid down their lives in the war of liberation. The conduct of activities at the Monument to the Peoples Heroes is regulated by the Major Events Administration Office of the Tiananmen Area Administrative Committee. Strict rules apply to conduct within the vicinity of the monument, since the protests of 1989, the government has prohibited climbing the monument beyond the protective barrier without prior approval, as well as photography and filming. Today, those intending to lay wreaths at the monument must apply five days in advance, certain domestic groups, such as police and military units, would also sometimes lay wreaths at the monument. History of Beijing Satellite photo of the Monument
4.
Tiananmen Square
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Tiananmen Square is a city square in the centre of Beijing, China, named after the Tiananmen located to its north, separating it from the Forbidden City. The square contains the Monument to the Peoples Heroes, the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the Peoples Republic of China in the square on October 1,1949, Tiananmen Square is within the top ten largest city squares in the world. It has great significance as it was the site of several important events in Chinese history. Outside China, the square is best known for the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Tiananmen, a gate in the wall of the Imperial City, was built in 1415 during the Ming dynasty. In the 17th century, fighting between Li Zichengs rebel forces and the forces of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty caused heavy damage to, or even destroyed, Tiananmen Square was designed and built in 1651, and has since been enlarged by four times its original size in the 1950s. Near the centre of the square stood the Great Ming Gate, the gate to the Imperial City, renamed Great Qing Gate during the Qing dynasty. This gate had a status as the Gate of the Nation. It normally remained closed, except when the Emperor passed through, commoner traffic was diverted to side gates at the western and eastern ends of the square, respectively. Because of this diversion in traffic, a marketplace, called Chess Grid Streets, was developed in the big. In 1860, during the Second Opium War, when British and French troops invaded Beijing, they pitched camp near the gate and briefly considered burning down the gate and they decided ultimately to spare the Forbidden City and instead burn down the Old Summer Palace. When the forces of the Eight-Nation Alliance besieged Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, they damaged the office complexes. After the Boxer Rebellion ended, the became a space for the foreign powers to assemble their military forces. In 1954, the Gate of China was demolished, allowing for the enlargement of the square, in November 1958, a major expansion of Tiananmen Square started, which was completed after only 11 months, in August 1959. This followed the vision of Mao Zedong to make the square the largest and most spectacular in the world, in that process, a large number of residential buildings and other structures have been demolished. On its southern edge, the Monument to the Peoples Heroes has been erected, the year after Maos death in 1976, a mausoleum was built near the site of the former Gate of China, on the main north-south axis of the square. In connection with this project, the square was further increased in size to become fully rectangular, the urban context of the square was altered in the 1990s with the construction of National Grand Theatre in its vicinity and the expansion of the National Museum. Used as a meeting place since its creation, its flatness is contrasted by the 38-metre high Monument to the Peoples Heroes
5.
Xicheng District
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Xicheng District is a district of Beijing. Xicheng District spans 32 square kilometres, making it the largest portion of the old city, Xicheng is subdivided into 15 subdistricts of the city proper of Beijing. The former Xuanwu District was merged into Xicheng on July 2010, the Xidan commercial district, Beijing Financial Street, Beihai Park, Jingshan Park, Shichahai and Zhongnanhai are within its jurisdiction. The popular Houhai bar area is also in Xicheng Precinct, before the communist takeover, most royalties and aristocrats resided in the precinct. The oldest Catholic church in Beijing, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception is located in Xicheng, there are 15 subdistricts in the district, COSCO has its headquarters in the Ocean Plaza building in Xicheng. The Xinhua News Agency has its headquarters in the Dacheng Plaza in Xicheng, in addition Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and the State Grid Corporation of China also have their headquarters in Xicheng. The Chinese Ministry of Education is headquartered in Xidan, Xicheng District, the China Food and Drug Administration is headquartered in Xicheng District. Beijing No.4 High School is also in Xicheng District, one school in Niujie, the Beijing Xuanwu Huimin Elementary School, serves the Hui people living in the area. It used to be in Xuanwu District, the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education, the local education authority, used to be headquartered in Xicheng District. The Central Conservatory of Music is based in Xicheng, near Fuxingmen, official website of Xicheng District Government Photo Gallery of Houhai area Includes 20 high quality photographs Photo Gallery of Qianhai area Includes 20 high quality photographs
6.
Beijing
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Beijing is the capital of the Peoples Republic of China and the worlds third most populous city proper. It is also one of the worlds most populous capital cities, the city, located in northern China, is governed as a direct-controlled municipality under the national government with 16 urban, suburban, and rural districts. Beijing is the second largest Chinese city by population after Shanghai and is the nations political, cultural. It is home to the headquarters of most of Chinas largest state-owned companies, and is a hub for the national highway, expressway, railway. The citys history dates back three millennia, as the last of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, Beijing has been the political centre of the country for much of the past eight centuries. Beijing was the largest city in the world by population for much of the second millennium A. D, the city is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, parks, gardens, tombs, walls and gates. Its art treasures and universities have made it centre of culture, encyclopædia Britannica notes that few cities in the world have served for so long as the political headquarters and cultural centre of an area as immense as China. Siheyuans, the traditional housing style, and hutongs, the narrow alleys between siheyuans, are major tourist attractions and are common in urban Beijing. The city hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics and was chosen to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, many of Beijings 91 universities consistently rank among the best in China, of which Peking University and Tsinghua University are ranked in the top 60 universities in the world. Beijings Zhongguancun area is known as Chinas Silicon Valley and Chinas center of innovation. According to the 2016 InterNations Expat Insider Survey, Beijing ranked first in Asia in the subcategory Personal Finance Index, expats live primarily in urban districts such as Dongcheng and Chaoyang in the east, or in suburban districts such as Shunyi. Over the past 3,000 years, the city of Beijing has had other names. The name Beijing, which means Northern Capital, was applied to the city in 1403 during the Ming Dynasty to distinguish the city from Nanjing, the English spelling is based on the pinyin romanisation of the two characters as they are pronounced in Standard Mandarin. Those dialects preserve the Middle Chinese pronunciation of 京 as kjaeng, the single Chinese character abbreviation for Beijing is 京, which appears on automobile license plates in the city. The official Latin alphabet abbreviation for Beijing is BJ, the earliest traces of human habitation in the Beijing municipality were found in the caves of Dragon Bone Hill near the village of Zhoukoudian in Fangshan District, where Peking Man lived. Homo erectus fossils from the date to 230,000 to 250,000 years ago. Paleolithic Homo sapiens also lived more recently, about 27,000 years ago. Archaeologists have found neolithic settlements throughout the municipality, including in Wangfujing, the first walled city in Beijing was Ji, a city from the 11th to 7th century BC
7.
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
8.
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
9.
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
10.
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
11.
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
