1.
Jiangsu
–
Jiangsu, formerly romanized as Kiangsu, is an eastern-central coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China. It is one of the provinces in manufacturing electronics and apparel items. Jiangsu is the third smallest, but the fifth most populous, Jiangsu has the second-highest GDP of Chinese provinces, after Guangdong. Jiangsu borders Shandong in the north, Anhui to the west, Jiangsu has a coastline of over 1,000 kilometres along the Yellow Sea, and the Yangtze River passes through the southern part of the province. Since the Sui and Tang dynasties, Jiangsu has been an economic and commercial center. Cities such as Yangzhou, Nanjing, Wuxi, Suzhou and Shanghai are all major Chinese economic hubs, since the initiation of economic reforms in 1990, Jiangsu has become a focal point for economic development. It is widely regarded as Chinas most developed province measured by its Human Development Index, Jiangsu is home to many of the worlds leading exporters of electronic equipment, chemicals and textiles. It has also been Chinas largest recipient of foreign investment since 2006. Its 2014 nominal GDP was more than 1 trillion US dollars and its name is a compound of the first elements of the names of the two cities of Jiangning and Suzhou. The abbreviation for this province is 苏, the character of its name. The state of Wu was subjugated in 473 BC by the state of Yue, Yue was in turn subjugated by the powerful state of Chu from the west in 333 BC. Eventually the state of Qin swept away all the other states, during the Three Kingdoms period, southern Jiangsu became the base of the Eastern Wu whose capital, Jiankang, is modern Nanjing. When nomadic invasions overran northern China in the 4th century, the court of the Jin Dynasty moved to Jiankang. Cities in southern and central Jiangsu swelled with the influx of migrants from the north, Jiankang remained as the capital for four successive Southern Dynasties and became the largest commercial and cultural center in China. The Tang Dynasty relied on southern Jiangsu for annual deliveries of grain and it was during the Song Dynasty, which saw the development of a wealthy mercantile class and emergent market economy in China, that south Jiangsu emerged as a center of trade. From then onwards, south Jiangsu, especially cities like Suzhou or Yangzhou, would be synonymous with opulence. Today south Jiangsu remains one of the richest parts of China, the Mongols took control of China in the thirteenth century. The Ming Dynasty, which was established in 1368 after driving out the Mongols who had occupied China, following a coup by Zhu Di, however, the capital was moved to Beijing, far to the north
2.
Qing dynasty
–
It was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The Qing multi-cultural empire lasted almost three centuries and formed the base for the modern Chinese state. The dynasty was founded by the Jurchen Aisin Gioro clan in Manchuria, in the late sixteenth century, Nurhaci, originally a Ming vassal, began organizing Banners, military-social units that included Jurchen, Han Chinese, and Mongol elements. Nurhaci formed the Jurchen clans into an entity, which he renamed as the Manchus. By 1636, his son Hong Taiji began driving Ming forces out of Liaodong and declared a new dynasty, in 1644, peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng conquered the Ming capital, Beijing. The Ten Great Campaigns of the Qianlong Emperor from the 1750s to the 1790s extended Qing control into Central Asia, the early rulers maintained their Manchu ways, and while their title was Emperor, they used khan to the Mongols and they were patrons of Tibetan Buddhism. They governed using Confucian styles and institutions of government and retained the imperial examinations to recruit Han Chinese to work under or in parallel with Manchus. They also adapted the ideals of the system in dealing with neighboring territories. The Qianlong reign saw the apogee and initial decline in prosperity. The population rose to some 400 million, but taxes and government revenues were fixed at a low rate, corruption set in, rebels tested government legitimacy, and ruling elites did not change their mindsets in the face of changes in the world system. Following the Opium War, European powers imposed unequal treaties, free trade, the Taiping Rebellion and the Dungan Revolt in Central Asia led to the deaths of some 20 million people, most of them due to famines caused by war. In spite of disasters, in the Tongzhi Restoration of the 1860s, Han Chinese elites rallied to the defense of the Confucian order. The initial gains in the Self-Strengthening Movement were destroyed in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895, in which the Qing lost its influence over Korea, New Armies were organized, but the ambitious Hundred Days Reform of 1898 was turned back by Empress Dowager Cixi, a conservative leader. Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries competed with reformist monarchists such as Kang Youwei, after the deaths of Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor in 1908, the hardline Manchu court alienated reformers and local elites alike. The Wuchang Uprising on October 11,1911, led to the Xinhai Revolution, General Yuan Shikai negotiated the abdication of Puyi, the last emperor, on February 12,1912. Nurhaci declared himself the Bright Khan of the Later Jin state in both of the 12–13th century Jurchen Jin dynasty and of his Aisin Gioro clan. His son Hong Taiji renamed the dynasty Great Qing in 1636, there are competing explanations on the meaning of Qīng. The character Qīng is composed of water and azure, both associated with the water element and this association would justify the Qing conquest as defeat of fire by water
3.
Cornell University
–
Cornell University is an American private Ivy League and land-grant doctoral university located in Ithaca, New York. These ideals, unconventional for the time, are captured in Cornells motto, the university also administers two satellite medical campuses, one in New York City and one in Education City, Qatar. Cornell is one of three private land grant universities in the nation and the one in New York. Of its seven colleges, three are state-supported statutory or contract colleges through the State University of New York system, including its agricultural. Of Cornells graduate schools, only the college is state-supported. As a land grant college, Cornell operates a cooperative extension program in every county of New York. The Cornell University Ithaca Campus comprises 745 acres, but is larger when the Cornell Botanic Gardens are considered. Since its founding, Cornell has been a co-educational, non-sectarian institution where admission has not been restricted by religion or race, the student body consists of more than 14,000 undergraduate and 7,000 graduate students from all 50 American states and more than 120 countries. Cornell University was founded on April 27,1865, the New York State Senate authorized the university as the land grant institution. Senator Ezra Cornell offered his farm in Ithaca, New York, as a site, fellow senator and experienced educator Andrew Dickson White agreed to be the first president. During the next three years, White oversaw the construction of the first two buildings and traveled to attract students and faculty, the university was inaugurated on October 7,1868, and 412 men were enrolled the next day. Cornell developed as an innovative institution, applying its research to its own campus as well as to outreach efforts. For example, in 1883 it was one of the first university campuses to use electricity from a dynamo to light the grounds. Cornell has had active alumni since its earliest classes and it was one of the first universities to include alumni-elected representatives on its Board of Trustees. Today the university has more than 4,000 courses, since 2000, Cornell has been expanding its international programs. In 2004, the university opened the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar and it has partnerships with institutions in India, Singapore, and the Peoples Republic of China. Former president Jeffrey S. Lehman described the university, with its international profile. On March 9,2004, Cornell and Stanford University laid the cornerstone for a new Bridging the Rift Center to be built, Cornells main campus is on East Hill in Ithaca, New York, overlooking the town and Cayuga Lake
4.
Columbia University
–
Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1754 as Kings College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain, after the American Revolutionary War, Kings College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the United States to grant the M. D. degree. The university also has global research outposts in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Asunción, Columbia administers annually the Pulitzer Prize. Additionally,100 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Columbia as students, researchers, faculty, Columbia is second only to Harvard University in the number of Nobel Prize-winning affiliates, with over 100 recipients of the award as of 2016. In 1746 an act was passed by the assembly of New York to raise funds for the foundation of a new college. Classes were initially held in July 1754 and were presided over by the colleges first president, Dr. Johnson was the only instructor of the colleges first class, which consisted of a mere eight students. Instruction was held in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan, in 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by Myles Cooper, a graduate of The Queens College, Oxford, and an ardent Tory. In the charged political climate of the American Revolution, his opponent in discussions at the college was an undergraduate of the class of 1777. The suspension continued through the occupation of New York City by British troops until their departure in 1783. The colleges library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a hospital first by American. Loyalists were forced to abandon their Kings College in New York, the Loyalists, led by Bishop Charles Inglis fled to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where they founded Kings Collegiate School. After the Revolution, the college turned to the State of New York in order to restore its vitality, the Legislature agreed to assist the college, and on May 1,1784, it passed an Act for granting certain privileges to the College heretofore called Kings College. The Regents finally became aware of the colleges defective constitution in February 1787 and appointed a revision committee, in April of that same year, a new charter was adopted for the college, still in use today, granting power to a private board of 24 Trustees. On May 21,1787, William Samuel Johnson, the son of Dr. Samuel Johnson, was unanimously elected President of Columbia College, prior to serving at the university, Johnson had participated in the First Continental Congress and been chosen as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. The colleges enrollment, structure, and academics stagnated for the majority of the 19th century, with many of the college presidents doing little to change the way that the college functioned. In 1857, the college moved from the Kings College campus at Park Place to a primarily Gothic Revival campus on 49th Street and Madison Avenue, during the last half of the 19th century, under the leadership of President F. A. P. Barnard, the institution assumed the shape of a modern university
5.
Philosophy of education
–
As an academic field, philosophy of education is the philosophical study of education and its problems. its central subject matter is education, and its methods are those of philosophy. The philosophy of education may be either the philosophy of the process of education or the philosophy of the discipline of education. Although there is overlap, philosophy of education should not be conflated with educational theory, Philosophy of education also should not be confused with philosophy education, the practice of teaching and learning the subject of philosophy. These theories are also called educational philosophies, for example, a teacher might be said to follow a perennialist educational philosophy or to follow a perennialist philosophy of education. Date, 424/423 BC – 348/347 BC Platos educational philosophy was grounded in his vision of the ideal Republic, Education would be holistic, including facts, skills, physical discipline, and music and art, which he considered the highest form of endeavor. Plato believed that talent was distributed non-genetically and thus must be found in children born in any social class and he built on this by insisting that those suitably gifted were to be trained by the state so that they might be qualified to assume the role of a ruling class. While elementary education made the soul responsive to the environment, higher education helped the soul to search for truth which illuminated it, both boys and girls receive the same kind of education. Elementary education consisted of music and gymnastics, designed to train and blend gentle and fierce qualities in the individual, at the age of 20, a selection was made. The best students would take a course in mathematics, geometry, astronomy. The first course in the scheme of education would last for ten years. It would be for those who had a flair for science, at the age of 30 there would be another selection, those who qualified would study dialectics and metaphysics, logic and philosophy for the next five years. After accepting junior positions in the army for 15 years, a man would have completed his theoretical and practical education by the age of 50, Date, 1724–1804 Immanuel Kant believed that education differs from training in that the former involves thinking whereas the latter does not. In addition to educating reason, of importance to him was the development of character. Kant was a proponent of education and of learning by doing. Date, 1770–1831 Date,384 BC –322 BC Only fragments of Aristotles treatise On Education are still in existence and we thus know of his philosophy of education primarily through brief passages in other works. Aristotle considered human nature, habit and reason to be important forces to be cultivated in education. Thus, for example, he considered repetition to be a key tool to develop good habits, the teacher was to lead the student systematically, this differs, for example, from Socrates emphasis on questioning his listeners to bring out their own ideas. Aristotle placed great emphasis on balancing the theoretical and practical aspects of subjects taught, subjects he explicitly mentions as being important included reading, writing and mathematics, music, physical education, literature and history, and a wide range of sciences
6.
Chinese philosophy
–
Early Shang Dynasty thought was based upon cycles. Thus, this notion, which remained relevant throughout Chinese history, in juxtaposition, it also marks a fundamental distinction from western philosophy, in which the dominant view of time is a linear progression. During the Shang, fate could be manipulated by great deities, ancestor worship was present and universally recognized. There was also human and animal sacrifice, when the Shang were overthrown by the Zhou, a new political, religious and philosophical concept was introduced called the Mandate of Heaven. This mandate was said to be taken when rulers became unworthy of their position, Confucianism developed during the Spring and Autumn period from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, who considered himself a retransmitter of Zhou values. His philosophy concerns the fields of ethics and politics, emphasizing personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, traditionalism, Confucianism was and continues to be a major influence in Chinese culture, the state of China and the surrounding areas of Southeast Asia. Before the Han dynasty the largest rivals to Confucianism were Chinese Legalism, Confucianism largely became the dominant philosophical school of China during the early Han Dynasty following the replacement of its contemporary, the more Taoistic Huang-Lao. The Six Dynasties era saw the rise of the Xuanxue philosophical school and the maturation of Chinese Buddhism, by the time of the Tang dynasty five-hundred years after Buddhisms arrival into China, it had transformed into a thoroughly Chinese religious philosophy dominated by the school of Zen Buddhism. Neo-Confucianism became highly popular during the Song dynasty and Ming Dynasty due in part to the eventual combination of Confucian. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Chinese philosophy integrated concepts from Western philosophy, the most notable examples are Sun Yat-Sens Three Principles of the People ideology and Mao Zedongs Maoism, a variant of Marxism–Leninism. In the modern Peoples Republic of China, the ideology is Deng Xiaopings market economy socialism. Although the Peoples Republic of China has been hostile to the philosophy of ancient China. In the post-Chinese economic reform era, modern Chinese philosophy has reappeared in forms such as the New Confucianism, as in Japan, philosophy in China has become a melting pot of ideas. It accepts new concepts, while attempting also to accord old beliefs their due, Chinese philosophy still carries profound influence amongst the people of East Asia, and even Southeast Asia. Around 500 BCE, after the Zhou state weakened and China moved into the Spring and Autumn period and this is known as the Hundred Schools of Thought. This period is considered the age of Chinese philosophy. Of the many schools founded at this time and during the subsequent Warring States period and it is a system of moral, social, political, and religious thought that has had tremendous influence on Chinese history, thought, and culture down to the 20th century. Some Westerners have considered it to have been the religion of imperial China because of its lasting influence on Asian culture
7.
May Fourth Movement
–
Many political and social leaders of the next decades emerged at this time. The term May Fourth Movement in a broader sense often refers to the period during 1915-1921 more often called the New Culture Movement. The atmosphere and political mood that emerged around 1919, in the words of Mitter, are at the centre of a set of ideas that has shaped Chinas momentous twentieth century, following the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, the Qing Dynasty disintegrated. This marked the end of thousands of years of imperial rule. However, the reality was that China was a fragmented nation dominated by warlords, the Chinese Beiyang government was occupied with suppressing internal affairs and did little to counter the influence exerted by foreign powers. Leaders of the New Culture Movement believed that traditional Confucian values were responsible for the weakness of the nation. Chinese nationalists called for a rejection of traditional values and the adoption of Western ideals of Mr. Science. These iconoclastic and anti-traditional views and programs have shaped Chinas politics, China had entered World War I on the side of the Allied Triple Entente in 1917 with the condition that all German spheres of influence, such as Shandong, would be returned to China. Although in that year 140,000 Chinese labourers were sent to France, the Western Allies dominated the meeting at Versailles, and paid little heed to Chinese demands. Britain and France were primarily interested in punishing Germany. S, american advocacy of self-determination at the League of Nations was attractive to Chinese intellectuals, but their failure to follow through was seen as a betrayal. To recommend a large-scale gathering in Beijing, to promote the creation of a Beijing student union. To hold a demonstration that afternoon in protest to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, on the afternoon of May 4 over 3,000 students of Peking University and other schools marched from many points to gather in front of Tiananmen. They shouted such slogans as Struggle for the sovereignty externally, get rid of the traitors at home, Do away with the Twenty-One Demands. They voiced their anger at the Allied betrayal of China, denounced the governments inability to protect Chinese interests. Demonstrators insisted on the resignation of three Chinese officials they accused of being collaborators with the Japanese, after burning the residence of one of these officials and beating his servants, student protesters were arrested, jailed, and severely beaten. The next day, students in Beijing as a whole went on strike and in the cities across China, students, patriotic merchants. The demonstrators skillfully appealed to the newspapers and sent representatives to carry the word across the country, from early June, workers and businessmen in Shanghai also went on strike as the center of the movement shifted from Beijing to Shanghai. Chancellors from thirteen universities arranged for the release of student prisoners, and Cai Yuanpei, newspapers, magazines, citizen societies, and chambers of commerce offered support for the students
8.
Peking University
–
Peking University, is a major Chinese research university located in Beijing and a member of the C9 League. It is the first modern national university established in China, founded as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 as a replacement of the ancient Taixue or Guozijian and it also served as the highest administration for education in China at the beginning of its founding. By 1920, it had become a center for progressive thought, Peking University is consistently ranked as the top higher learning institution in mainland China. In addition to academics, Peking University is especially renowned for its campus grounds, and the beauty of its traditional Chinese architecture. Throughout its history, the university has educated and hosted many prominent modern Chinese thinkers, including such as, Mao Zedong, Lu Xun, Gu Hongming, Mao Dun, Li Dazhao. Peking University was influential in the birth of Chinas New Culture Movement, May Fourth Movement, when it was established on July 3,1898, the school was known as the Imperial University of Peking. It was established to replace Taixue or Guozijian, or Imperial Academy, in 1912, following the Xinhai Revolution, the Imperial University was renamed National Peking University. Cai, inspired by the German model of freedom, recruited an intellectually diverse faculty that included Hu Shih, Chen Duxiu. In 1919, students of Peking University formed the bulk of the protesters of the May Fourth Movement, efforts by the Beiyang government to end the protests by sealing off the Peking University campus led to Cais resignation. In 1920, Peking University became the first Chinese university to accept female students, after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Peking University moved to Changsha and formed the Changsha Temporary University along with Tsinghua University and Nankai University. In 1938, the three schools moved again, this time to Kunming, and formed the National Southwestern Associated University, in 1946, after World War II, Peking University moved back to Beijing. At that time, the university comprised six schools, and an institute for humanities. The total student enrollment grew up to 3,000, in 1949, after the Peoples Republic of China was established, Peking University lost its national appellation to reflect the fact that all universities under the new socialist state would be public. In 1952, Mao Zedongs government re-grouped the countrys higher education institutions with individual institutions tending to specialize in a field of study. As a result, some arts and science faculties of Tsinghua University, at the same time, however, the university lost its Law, Medicine, Engineering and Agriculture schools. These schools and faculties were merged into other universities or to found new colleges. During the re-grouping, Yenching University was closed up, Peking University moved from downtown Beijing to the former Yenching campus. The first disturbances of the Cultural Revolution began at Peking University in 1966, in 2000, Beijing Medical University was merged back into Peking University and became the Peking University Health Science Campus
9.
Nobel Prize
–
The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards bestowed in a number of categories by Swedish and Norwegian institutions in recognition of academic, cultural, or scientific advances. The will of the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel established the prizes in 1895, the prizes in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded in 1901. Medals made before 1980 were struck in 23 carat gold, between 1901 and 2016, the Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded 579 times to 911 people and organisations. With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 23 organisations, the prize ceremonies take place annually in Stockholm, Sweden. Each recipient, or laureate, receives a medal, a diploma. The Nobel Prize is widely regarded as the most prestigious award available in the fields of literature, medicine, physics, chemistry, peace, and economics. The prize is not awarded posthumously, however, if a person is awarded a prize and dies before receiving it, though the average number of laureates per prize increased substantially during the 20th century, a prize may not be shared among more than three people. Alfred Nobel was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden and he was a chemist, engineer, and inventor. In 1894, Nobel purchased the Bofors iron and steel mill and this invention was a precursor to many smokeless military explosives, especially the British smokeless powder cordite. As a consequence of his patent claims, Nobel was eventually involved in a patent infringement lawsuit over cordite, Nobel amassed a fortune during his lifetime, with most of his wealth from his 355 inventions, of which dynamite is the most famous. In 1888, Nobel was astonished to read his own obituary, titled The merchant of death is dead, as it was Alfreds brother Ludvig who had died, the obituary was eight years premature. The article disconcerted Nobel and made him apprehensive about how he would be remembered and this inspired him to change his will. On 10 December 1896, Alfred Nobel died in his villa in San Remo, Italy, Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime. He composed the last over a year before he died, signing it at the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895, Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets,31 million SEK, to establish the five Nobel Prizes. Because of skepticism surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that it was approved by the Storting in Norway. The executors of Nobels will, Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, formed the Nobel Foundation to take care of Nobels fortune, Nobels instructions named a Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize, the members of whom were appointed shortly after the will was approved in April 1897. Soon thereafter, the other prize-awarding organisations were designated or established and these were Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on 11 June. The Nobel Foundation reached an agreement on guidelines for how the prizes should be awarded, and, in 1900, in 1905, the personal union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved
10.
Chiang Kai-shek
–
Chiang Kai-shek, also romanized as Jiang Jieshi and known as Jiang Zhongzheng, was a Chinese political and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975. Chiang was an member of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party. He became the Commandant of the Kuomintangs Whampoa Military Academy and took Suns place as leader of the KMT, having neutralized the partys left wing, Chiang then led Suns long-postponed Northern Expedition, conquering or reaching accommodations with Chinas many warlords. From 1928 to 1948, he served as chairman of the National Military Council of the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China, unable to maintain Suns good relations with the Communists, he purged them in a massacre at Shanghai and repression of uprisings at Guangzhou and elsewhere. After the defeat of the Japanese, the American-sponsored Marshall Mission, the Chinese Civil War resumed, with the Chinese Communist Party defeating the Nationalists and declaring the Peoples Republic of China in 1949. Chiangs government and army retreated to Taiwan, where Chiang imposed martial law, after evacuating to Taiwan, Chiangs government continued to declare its intention to retake mainland China. Chiang ruled Taiwan securely as President of the Republic of China, like many other Chinese historical figures, Chiang used several names throughout his life. That inscribed in the records of his family is Jiang Zhoutai. This so-called register name is the one under which his relatives knew him. In deference to tradition, family members did not use the name in conversation with people outside of the family. In fact, the concept of real or original name is not as clear-cut in China as it is in the Western world, in honor of tradition, Chinese families waited a number of years before officially naming their offspring. In the meantime, they used a name, given to the infant shortly after his birth. Thus, the name that Chiang received at birth was Jiang Ruiyuan. In 1903, the 16-year-old Chiang went to Ningbo to be a student and this was actually the formal name of a person, used by older people to address him, and the one he would use the most in the first decades of his life. The school name that Chiang chose for himself was Zhiqing, for the next fifteen years or so, Chiang was known as Jiang Zhiqing. This is the name under which Sun Yat-sen knew him when Chiang joined the republicans in Guangzhou in the 1910s. In 1912, when Jiang Zhiqing was in Japan, he started to use the name Chiang Kai-shek as a pen name for the articles that he published in a Chinese magazine he founded, Voice of the Army. Jieshi is the Pinyin romanization of this name, based on Mandarin, kai-shek/Jieshi soon became Chiangs courtesy name
11.
Anhui
–
Anhui is a landlocked province of the Peoples Republic of China located in the eastern region of the country. The name Anhui derives from the names of two cities, Anqing and Huizhou, the abbreviation for Anhui is Chinese, 皖, pinyin, wǎn after the historical State of Wan, Mount Wan, and the Wan river. The province of Anhui was formed in the 17th century, before then, there was no coherent concept of Anhui. In terms of culture, Northern Anhui was firmly a part of the North China Plain together with modern-day Henan province, northern Jiangsu, Central Anhui was densely populated and constituted mostly of fertile land from the Huai River watershed. In contrast, the culture of Southern Anhui, bordered mostly along the Yangtze, was closer to Jiangxi, the hills of southeastern Anhui formed a unique and distinct cultural sphere of its own. In the 2007 book China Road, author Rob Gifford stated that the Chinese refer to Anhui as a big agricultural province, according to Gifford, this is an euphemism for a very poor area and that people have referred to Anhui as the Appalachia of China. The north of the province is part of the North China Plain while the areas are part of the Huai River watershed. Both of these regions are flat and densely populated. The land becomes more uneven further south, with the Dabie Mountains occupying much of southwestern Anhui, the Yangtze River finds its way through south Anhui in between these two mountainous regions. The highest peak in Anhui is Lotus Peak, part of Huangshan in southeastern Anhui and it has an altitude of 1873 m. Major rivers include the Huai River in the north and the Yangtze in the south, the largest lake is Lake Chaohu situated in the center of the province, with an area of about 800 km2. The southeastern part of the province near the Yangtze River has many lakes as well, as with topography, the province differs in climate from north to south. The north is more temperate and has more clearcut seasons, january temperatures average at around -1 to 2 °C north of the Huai River, and 0 to 3 °C south of the Huai River, in July temperatures average 27 °C or above. Plum rains occur in June and July and may cause flooding, major cities, Anhui is divided into sixteen prefecture-level divisions, all prefecture-level cities, The sixteen prefecture-level divisions of Anhui are subdivided into 105 county-level divisions. Those are in turn divided into 1,845 township-level divisions, the Politics of Anhui Province is structured in a dual party-government system like all other governing institutions in mainland China. The Governor of Anhui is the official in the Peoples Government of Anhui. Agriculture in Anhui varies according to the zones that the province crosses. To the north of the Huai River, wheat and sweet potatoes are grown, while to the south of the Huai River it is rice, natural resources of Anhui include iron in Maanshan, coal in Huainan, and copper in Tongling
12.
Foot binding
–
Foot binding was the custom of applying painfully tight binding to the feet of young girls to modify the shape of the foot. Foot binding became popular as a means of displaying status and was adopted as a symbol of beauty in Chinese culture. Its prevalence and practice however varied in different parts of the country, Feet altered by binding were called lotus feet. The Manchu Kangxi Emperor tried to ban foot binding in 1664, foot-binding resulted in lifelong disabilities for most of its subjects, and a few elderly Chinese women still survive today with disabilities related to their bound feet. There are many suggestions for the origin of foot binding, another story tells of a favorite courtesan of Emperor Xiao Baojuan, Pan Yuer, who had delicate feet, dancing barefeet over a floor decorated with golden lotus flower design. The emperor expressed admiration and said that lotus springs from her every step, a reference to the Buddhist legend of Padmavati under whose feet lotus springs forth. This story may have given rise to the golden lotus or lotus feet used to describe bound feet. The general view is that the practice is likely to have originated from the time of Emperor Li Yu, yao Niangs dance was said to be so graceful that others sought to imitate her. The binding of feet was then replicated by other upper-class women, the practice of foot binding became popular among the elite during the Song dynasty, and the earliest known references to bound feet appeared in the late eleventh century. In the twelfth century, in the earliest extant discourse on the practice of binding, Zhang Bangji considered that a bound foot should be arch-shape. A thirteenth-century writer, Che Ruoshui, complained that little children not yet four or five years old, I do not know what use this is. Evidence from archaeology indicates that footbinding was practiced among the wives, by the end of the Song dynasty, men would drink from a special shoe whose heel contained a small cup. During the Yuan dynasty, some would also directly from the shoe itself. This practice was called toast to the lotus and lasted until the late Qing dynasty. The practice however become common among the gentry families, later spreading to the general population, as commoners. By the Ming period, the practice was no longer the preserve of the gentry, however, few Han Chinese complied with the edicts and Kangxi eventually abandoned the effort in 1668. By the 19th century, it was estimated that 40-50% of Chinese women had bound feet, and among upper class Han Chinese women, Bound feet became a mark of beauty and was also a prerequisite for finding a husband. Her younger sisters would grow up to be bond-servants or domestic slaves and be able to work in the fields, but the eldest daughter would assume to never have the need to work
Media from Wikimedia Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Data from Wikidata
.svg){kind=small}
.svg){kind=small}
China's Ambassadors to the U.S. 
