1.
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
2.
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
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.
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
5.
Jyutping
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Jyutping is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, an academic group, in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanisation Scheme, the LSHK promotes the use of this romanisation system. The name Jyutping is a contraction consisting of the first Chinese characters of the terms Jyut6jyu5, only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables. ^ ^ ^ Referring to the pronunciation of these words. There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese, however, as three of the nine are entering tones, which only appear in syllables ending with p, t, and k, they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping. Jyutping and the Yale Romanisation of Cantonese represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they differ in the following, The vowels eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping, the initial j represents /j/ in Jyutping whereas y is used instead in Yale. The initial z represents /ts/ in Jyutping whereas j is used instead in Yale, the initial c represents /tsʰ/ in Jyutping whereas ch is used instead in Yale. In Jyutping, if no consonant precedes the vowel yu, then the initial j is appended before the vowel, in Yale, the corresponding initial y is never appended before yu under any circumstances. Jyutping defines three finals not in Yale, eu /ɛːu/, em /ɛːm/, and ep /ɛːp/ and these three finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6, lem2, and gep6. To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in Jyutping whereas Yale traditionally uses tone marks together with the letter h. Jyutping and Cantonese Pinyin represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they have differences, The vowel oe represents both /ɵ/ and /œː/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping. The vowel y represents /y/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas both yu and i are used in Jyutping, the initial dz represents /ts/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas z is used instead in Jyutping. The initial ts represents /tsʰ/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas c is used instead in Jyutping. To represent tones, the numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in Cantonese Pinyin, however, only the numbers 1 to 6 are used in Jyutping
6.
Cantonese
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Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a variety of Chinese spoken in the city of Guangzhou in southeastern China. It is the prestige variety of Yue, one of the major subdivisions of Chinese. In mainland China, it is the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong and some neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. In Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese serves as one of their official languages and it is also spoken amongst overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and throughout the Western World. When Cantonese and the closely related Yuehai dialects are classified together, Cantonese is viewed as vital part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swathes of southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau. Although Cantonese shares some vocabulary with Mandarin, the two varieties are mutually unintelligible because of differences in pronunciation, grammar and lexicon, sentence structure, in particular the placement of verbs, sometimes differs between the two varieties. This results in the situation in which a Cantonese and a Mandarin text may look similar, in English, the term Cantonese is ambiguous. Cantonese proper is the variety native to the city of Canton and this narrow sense may be specified as Canton language or Guangzhou language in English. However, Cantonese may also refer to the branch of Cantonese that contains Cantonese proper as well as Taishanese and Gaoyang. In this article, Cantonese is used for Cantonese proper, historically, speakers called this variety Canton speech or Guangzhou speech, although this term is now seldom used outside mainland China. In Guangdong province, people call it provincial capital speech or plain speech. In Hong Kong and Macau, as well as among overseas Chinese communities, in mainland China, the term Guangdong speech is also increasingly being used among both native and non-native speakers. Due to its status as a prestige dialect among all the dialects of the Cantonese or Yue branch of Chinese varieties, the official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English, as defined in the Hong Kong Basic Law. The Chinese language has different varieties, of which Cantonese is one. Given the traditional predominance of Cantonese within Hong Kong, it is the de facto official spoken form of the Chinese language used in the Hong Kong Government and all courts and it is also used as the medium of instruction in schools, alongside English. A similar situation exists in neighboring Macau, where Chinese is an official language along with Portuguese. As in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominant spoken variety of Chinese used in life and is thus the official form of Chinese used in the government. The variant spoken in Hong Kong and Macau is known as Hong Kong Cantonese, Cantonese first developed around the port city of Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta region of southeastern China
7.
Kowloon
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Kowloon is a transliteration of 九龍. Kowloon is an area in Hong Kong comprising the Kowloon Peninsula. It had a population of 2,019,533 and a density of 43. The peninsulas area is approximately 47 km2, the part of Kowloon south of Boundary Street, together with Stonecutters Island, was ceded by Qing China to the United Kingdom under the Convention of Peking of 1860. For many years the area remained undeveloped, used by the British mainly for tiger-hunting expeditions. The part of Kowloon north of Boundary Street was leased by the British as part of the New Territories under the 1898 Second Convention of Peking for 99 years. Within New Kowloon is Kowloon City, which refers to an area of Hong Kong where the Kowloon Walled City used to be located, the Kowloon Walled City itself was demolished in 1993. The same area was called Guanfuchang during the Song dynasty, statutorily, Kowloon is used to refer to the area south of Boundary Street and the Stonecutters Island. New Kowloon has also remained part of the New Territories, in modern-day culture, New Kowloon is not regarded as part of the New Territories but as an integral part of the Kowloon urban area whether north or south of Boundary Street. As a result, compared to Hong Kong Island, Kowloon has a lower skyline. The area of reclaimed land known as West Kowloon was once home to a dockyard for the Royal Navy, a 13-foot high stone wall was built in 1847 around Kowloon. The 1911 census recorded a population of 7,306, with most being Hakka, the invasion of China by Japan in 1937 caused the population of Kowloon to explode. Between 1937 and 1939,750,000 refugees arrived in Kowloon and nearby areas, as of 2011,2,108,419 people lived in Kowloon. 94. 2% of Kowloons residents are of Cantonese ethnicity, the largest ethnic minority groups are Indonesians, Filipinos, Indians, Nepalese, and Whites. 86% of Kowloons residents use Cantonese as their language, while 2. 3% use English and 1. 2% use Mandarin. Kowloon West includes Yau Tsim Mong, Sham Shui Po and Kowloon City
8.
British Hong Kong
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British Hong Kong was the period during which Hong Kong was under British Crown rule from 1841 to 1997. It was established as a Crown colony and later designated a British Dependent Territory in 1981, Hong Kong Island was ceded to Great Britain by the Qing dynasty of China after the First Anglo-Chinese War. The Kowloon Peninsula was added to the colony after the Second Anglo-Chinese War, finally, in 1898, the New Territories were added under a 99-year lease. The transfer has been credited as marking the end of the British Empire, in 1836, the Manchu Qing government undertook a major policy review of the opium trade. Lin Zexu volunteered to take on the task of suppressing opium, in March 1839, he became Special Imperial Commissioner in Canton, where he ordered the foreign traders to surrender their opium stock. He confined the British to the Canton Factories and cut off their supplies, Chief Superintendent of Trade, Charles Elliot, complied with Lins demands to secure a safe exit for the British, with the costs involved to be resolved between the two governments. When Elliot promised that the British government would pay for their stock, the merchants surrendered their 20,283 chests of opium. In September 1839, the British Cabinet decided that the Chinese should be made to pay for the destruction of British property, an expeditionary force was placed under Elliot and his cousin, Rear Admiral George Elliot, as joint plenipotentiaries in 1840. Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston stressed to the Chinese Imperial Government that the British Government did not question Chinas right to prohibit opium, but it objected to the way this was handled. He viewed the sudden strict enforcement as laying a trap for the traders. In 1841, Elliot negotiated with Lins successor, Qishan, in the Convention of Chuenpi during the First Opium War, on 20 January, Elliot announced the conclusion of preliminary arrangements, which included the cession of Hong Kong Island and its harbour to the British Crown. On 26 January, the Union Jack was raised on Hong Kong and Commodore James Bremer, commander-in-chief of British forces in China, on 29 August 1842, the cession was formally ratified in the Treaty of Nanking, which ceded Hong Kong in perpetuity to Britain. The treaty failed to satisfy British expectations of an expansion of trade and profit. In October 1856, Chinese authorities in Canton detained the Arrow, the Consul in Canton, Harry Parkes, claimed the hauling down of the flag and arrest of the crew were an insult of very grave character. Parkes and Sir John Bowring, the 4th Governor of Hong Kong, in March 1857, Palmerston appointed Lord Elgin as Plenipotentiary with the aim of securing a new and satisfactory treaty. A French expeditionary force joined the British to avenge the execution of a French missionary in 1856, in 1860, the capture of the Taku Forts and occupation of Beijing led to the Treaty of Tientsin and Convention of Peking. In the Treaty of Tientsin, the Chinese accepted British demands to open ports, navigate the Yangtze River. During the conflict, the British occupied the Kowloon Peninsula, where the land was valuable training and resting ground
9.
Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong
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Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong is a five-star hotel located on Connaught Road in Central, Hong Kong, owned and managed by Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. The hotel opened its doors in 1963 as The Mandarin, Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong, originally called The Mandarin, was built on the former site of the colonial Queens Building on the waterfront in Central Hong Kong. From the onset, the concept was to create a hotel firmly rooted in Eastern culture, the original cost of construction totalled HKD42 million, while the interior design amounted to even 50% more at HKD66 million, sparing no luxury or detail. The Mandarin officially opened for business in October 1963, and at 26 storeys, in addition to its record-setting height, the hotel was the first in Hong Kong to have direct dial phones and the first in Asia to include a bath in every guestroom. The hotel quickly drew recognition for its service and elegance, in 2009, Condé Nast ranked the hotel as number 88. Famous singer, actor, and film producer Leslie Cheung committed suicide by jumping off the 24th floor in 2003 and he left behind a suicide note claiming he had suffered from depression. In 1974, the owners of The Mandarin established a management company. The Groups intention was to expand into Asia and operate hotels that would reflect the standard of service synonymous with their property in Hong Kong and that same year, the companys hotel interests grew further through the acquisition of a 49% interest in The Oriental, Bangkok. The Oriental, built in 1876, was already a well-known property, through the management of both The Mandarin in Hong Kong and The Oriental, Bangkok, the Group was in an unusual position of having two flagship hotels whose names were among the best in hospitality. In 1985, the Company rationalised its corporate structure by combining these two renowned properties under a name, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. The Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong has been noted for its interior decoration, the renowned lobby, Captains Bar, The Clipper Lounge, and Chinnery Bar remained recognisable after the renovation, but the remaining restaurants, bars, public spaces, and rooms were entirely new. The hotel contains 501 guestrooms,67 of which are suites, overlooking Victoria Harbour, Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong operates ten restaurants and bars, including the Michelin-starred Pierre, Chef Pierre Gagnaires first restaurant in Hong Kong. Additional facilities include the three-story Mandarin Spa, indoor swimming pool, fitness center, Mandarin Salon, and event space to accommodate functions of up to 600 people. The Mandarin Spa, opened in 2007, encompasses 2,100 m2 across three stories and incorporates an indoor swimming pool, fitness centre, holistic spa, Mandarin Salon, the spa draws on the established Asian healing philosophies of traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda. Additional features include an ice fountain, Chinese herb steam rooms, hydrotherapy, and the Kneipp pool
10.
Central, Hong Kong
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Central is the central business district of Hong Kong. It is located in Central and Western District, on the shore of Hong Kong Island, across Victoria Harbour from Tsim Sha Tsui. The area was the heart of Victoria City, although that name is used today. As the central district of Hong Kong, it is the area where many multinational financial services corporations have their headquarters. Consulates general and consulates of countries are also located in this area, as is Government Hill. The area of Chung Wan, named Central in English, was one of the districts in Victoria City. The English name Central became prevalent after the Island Line of the MTR metro system was built in the early 1980s, on some older maps, it and the area to its west are named Kwan Tai Lo below Victoria Peak. It formed a channel, Chung Mun, with Tsim Sha Tsui, the eastern part of Central District has been known as Admiralty since the completion of Admiralty Station in the early 1980s. Central is located on the shore of Hong Kong Island, across Victoria Harbour from Tsim Sha Tsui. It is bordered in the west by Sheung Wan, with the border being along Aberdeen Street and it is bordered in the east by Admiralty, an eastern extension of the central business district. As such, Admiralty is sometimes considered a part of Central, Central is bordered in the south by Mid-levels, an area halfway up Victoria Peak. The boundary between Central and Mid-levels is not clearly defined, for district council elections purposes, the area, together with Admiralty, correspond roughly to the Chung Wan constituency. The boundaries of such constituencies may be subject to modification, the British landed on Possession Point of Sheung Wan in 1841. They soon decided to build a city on the north coast of Hong Kong Island, and the present-day Central was chosen to house major military facilities and an administrative centre. The area soon attracted both Westerners and Chinese to trade and live in the area, and a Canton Bazaar was built between Cochrane Street and Graham Street in 1842, the area was soon zoned for Westerners only, and the Chinese residents were restricted to Sheung Wan. The area was dominated by the presence of Victoria City. The popularity of this area would also boost the population of Hong Kong from 5,000 in 1841 to 24,000 in 1848, Government House and other Hong Kong Government buildings were completed during this period on Government Hill. Various barracks, naval base and residence of Commander, Flagstaff House were built on the east end of the district, between 1860 and 1880 the construction of City Hall, Theatre Royal and other financial structures made Central the heart of Hong Kong
11.
Hong Kong
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Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China, is an autonomous territory on the Pearl River Delta of East Asia. Macau lies across the delta to the west, and the Chinese province of Guangdong borders the territory to the north. With a total area of 1,106 square kilometres. Hong Kong was later occupied by Japan during World War II until British control resumed in 1945, under the principle of one country, two systems, Hong Kong maintains a separate political and economic system from China. Except in military defence and foreign affairs, Hong Kong maintains its independent executive, legislative, in addition, Hong Kong develops relations directly with foreign states and international organisations in a broad range of appropriate fields. Hong Kong is one of the worlds most significant financial centres, with the highest Financial Development Index score and consistently ranks as the worlds most competitive and freest economic entity. As the worlds 8th largest trading entity, its legal tender, Hong Kongs tertiary sector dominated economy is characterised by simple taxation with a competitive level of corporate tax and supported by its independent judiciary system. However, while Hong Kong has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world and it has a very high Human Development Index ranking and the worlds longest life expectancy. Over 90% of the population use of well-developed public transportation. Seasonal air pollution with origins from neighbouring areas of Mainland China. Hong Kong was officially recorded in the 1842 Treaty of Nanking to encompass the entirety of the island, before 1842, the name referred to a small inlet—now Aberdeen Harbour, literally means Little Hong Kong)—between Aberdeen Island and the southern coast of Hong Kong Island. Aberdeen was a point of contact between British sailors and local fishermen. Detailed and accurate romanisation systems for Cantonese were available and in use at the time, fragrance may refer to the sweet taste of the harbours fresh water estuarine influx of the Pearl River or to the incense from factories lining the coast of northern Kowloon. The incense was stored near Aberdeen Harbour for export before Hong Kong developed Victoria Harbour, the name had often been written as the single word Hongkong until the government adopted the current form in 1926. Nevertheless, a number of century-old institutions still retain the form, such as the Hongkong Post, Hongkong Electric. As of 1997, its name is the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the Peoples Republic of China. This is the title as mentioned in the Hong Kong Basic Law. Hong Kong has carried many nicknames, the most famous among those is the Pearl of the Orient, which reflected the impressive nightscape of the citys light decorations on the skyscrapers along both sides of the Victoria Harbour
12.
University of Leeds
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The University of Leeds is a redbrick university located in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, established in 1831. In 1904, a charter, created in 1903, was granted to the University of Leeds by King Edward VII. The Leeds University Business School hold the Triple Crown accreditations from AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS, the university has 31,790 students, the seventh largest university in the UK. From 2006 to present, the university has consistently ranked within the top 5 in the United Kingdom for the number of applications received. Leeds had an income of £634.9 million in 2015/16. The university has financial endowments of £67.7 million, ranking outside the top ten British universities by financial endowment, for 2016-17, Leeds is ranked nationally between 13th and 16th. Internationally, the university is ranked as the 32nd best in Europe, Leeds was ranked top three in the UK and top 20 in the world for graduate employability, also ranked as the 5th most targeted British university by the UKs top graduate employers in 2016-17. Leeds was ranked 10th in the UK for research power in the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, the best result in the Yorkshire, the university was named the 2017 Sunday Times University of the Year, having been runner-up in 2016. Notable alumni include former Secretary of State Jack Straw, former co-chairman of the Conservative Party Sayeeda Warsi, American actor Chris Pine, Piers Sellers and five Nobel laureates. The universitys history is linked to the development of Leeds as a centre for the textile industry. The universitys roots can be traced back to the formation of schools of medicine in English cities to serve the general public, prior to 1900, only five universities had been established in England and one in Wales. These consisted of the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, University of London, Durham University, and the federal Victoria University, Owens College was the sole college of Victoria University from 1880 to 1884, in 1887 Yorkshire College was the third to join the university. In 1831, the Leeds School of Medicine was established with the aim of serving the needs of the five institutions which had been established in the city. In 1874, the Yorkshire College of Science was created to provide education for the children of middle-class industrialists and merchants, financial support from local industry was crucial in setting up the College and aiding the students. The university continues to recognise these elements of its history, for example, the religious qualification ceased in the 1850s but the classics-based education continued at Oxford and Cambridge. When classics, modern literature and history went on offer a few years later, in 1884, the Yorkshire College absorbed the Leeds School of Medicine and subsequently joined the federal Victoria University on 3 November 1887. Students in this period were awarded external degrees by the University of London, Leeds was given its first university in 1887 when the Yorkshire College joined the federal Victoria University on 3 November. The Victoria University had been established by charter in 1880
13.
Cantopop
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Cantopop or HK-pop is a genre of Cantonese music made primarily in Hong Kong, and also used to refer to the cultural context of its production and consumption. Originating in the 1970s, Cantopop reached its height of popularity in the 1980s and 1990s before its decline in the 2000s. The term Cantopop itself was coined in 1978 after Cantorock, a term first used in 1974, during its height, Cantopop had spread to China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Cantopop is influenced by international styles, including jazz, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, electronic music, Western pop music, Cantopop songs are almost invariably performed in Cantonese. Western-influenced music first came to China in the 1920s, specifically through Shanghai, Artists like Zhou Xuan acted in films and recorded popular songs and was possibly the first Chinese pop star. In 1949 when the Peoples Republic of China was established by the Communist Party, beginning in the 1950s, massive waves of immigrants fled Shanghai to destinations like North Point in Hong Kong. As a result, many first generation Cantopop artists and composers hail from Shanghai, by the 1960s, Cantonese music in Hong Kong was still limited largely to traditional Cantonese opera and comic renditions of western music. Tang Kee-chan, Cheng Kuan-min, and Tam Ping-man were among the earliest artists releasing Cantonese records, the generation at the time preferred British and American exports. Western culture was at the time equated with education and sophistication, conversely, those who preferred Cantonese music were considered old-fashioned or uneducated. Cheng Kum-cheung and Chan Chai-chung were two popular Cantonese singers who specifically targeted the younger generation, connie Chan Po-chu is generally considered to be Hong Kongs first teen idol, mostly due to her career longevity. Josephine Siao is also another artist of the era, local bands mimicked British and American bands. Two types of local Cantonese music appeared in the market nearly concurrently in 1973, the other was more western style music largely from Polydor Hong Kong. Notable singers from the era include Liza Wang and Paula Tsui, soap operas were needed to fill TV air time, and popular Cantonese songs became TV theme songs. Around 1971, Sandra Lang, a singer who had never sung Cantopop before, was invited to sing the first Cantonese TV theme song The Yuanfen of a Wedding that Cries. This song was a collaboration between songwriters Yip Siu-dak and the legendary Joseph Koo and it was ground-breaking and topped local charts. Other groups that profited from TV promotion included the Four Golden Flowers, Samuel Hui is regarded by some to be the earliest singing star of Cantopop. He was the singer of the band Lotus formed in the late 1960s. The song that made him famous was the song to Games Gamblers Play
14.
Mandopop
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Mandopop refers to Mandarin popular music. It is now used as a term to describe popular songs performed in Mandarin. Mandopop is categorized as a subgenre of commercial Chinese-language music within C-pop, Mandopop was the first variety of popular music in Chinese to establish itself as a viable industry. It originated in Shanghai, and later Hong Kong, Taipei, among the countries where Mandopop is most popular are mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore. S. to record local music in Asia. The recordings were then manufactured outside China and re-imported by the Gramophone Company’s sales agent in China, the Moudeli Company dominated the market before the 1910s until the Pathé Records took over the leading role. Pathé was founded in 1908 by a Frenchman named Labansat who had started a novelty entertainment business using phonograph in Shanghai around the beginning of the 20th century. It originally recorded mainly Peking opera, but later expanded to Mandarin popular music, later other foreign as well as Chinese-own recording companies were also established in China. Early in the 20th century, people in China generally spoke in their own regional dialect, although most people in Shanghai then spoke Shanghainese, the recordings of the pop music from Shanghai from the 1920s onwards were done in Standard Mandarin, which is based on the Beijing dialect. Those involved in this movement included such as Li Jinhui. Mandarin popular songs started in the 1920s were called shidaiqu. The Mandarin popular songs of the Shanghai era are considered by scholars to be the first kind of popular music developed in China. Li Jinhui is generally regarded as the Father of Chinese Popular Music who established the genre in the 1920s, buck Clayton, the American jazz musician, also worked alongside Li. Li established the Bright Moon Song and Dance Troupe, and amongst their singing stars were Wang Renmei, there was a close relationship between music and film industries and many of its singers also became actresses. Around 1927, Li composed the hit song The Drizzle recorded by his daughter Li Minghui, the song however was sung in a high-pitched childlike style, a style described uncharitably as sounding like strangling cat by the writer Lu Xun. This early style would soon be replaced by more sophisticated performances from better-trained singers, in 1931, the first sound film was made in China in a cooperation between the Mingxing Film Company and Pathé. Amongst the best-known of the singer-actress to emerge in the 1930s were Zhou Xuan, Gong Qiuxia, although later singing stars need not also have an acting career, the close relationship between the recording and film industries continued for many decades. Later Yao Lee, Bai Guang, Li Xianglan, Wu Yingyin also became popular, other notable singers of this period include Li Lihua and Chang Loo. In 1940 Yao Lee recorded Rose, Rose, I Love You which later became the first Chinese pop song to be covered by Western singers that was a hit
15.
Musical instrument
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A musical instrument is an instrument created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument, the history of musical instruments dates to the beginnings of human culture. Early musical instruments may have used for ritual, such as a trumpet to signal success on the hunt. Cultures eventually developed composition and performance of melodies for entertainment, Musical instruments evolved in step with changing applications. The date and origin of the first device considered an instrument is disputed. The oldest object that some refer to as a musical instrument. Some consensus dates early flutes to about 37,000 years ago, many early musical instruments were made from animal skins, bone, wood, and other non-durable materials. Musical instruments developed independently in many populated regions of the world, however, contact among civilizations caused rapid spread and adaptation of most instruments in places far from their origin. By the Middle Ages, instruments from Mesopotamia were in maritime Southeast Asia, development in the Americas occurred at a slower pace, but cultures of North, Central, and South America shared musical instruments. By 1400, musical instrument development slowed in areas and was dominated by the Occident. Musical instrument classification is a discipline in its own right, Instruments can be classified by their effective range, their material composition, their size, etc. However, the most common method, Hornbostel-Sachs, uses the means by which they produce sound. The academic study of instruments is called organology. Once humans moved from making sounds with their bodies—for example, by using objects to create music from sounds. Primitive instruments were designed to emulate natural sounds, and their purpose was ritual rather than entertainment. The concept of melody and the pursuit of musical composition were unknown to early players of musical instruments. A player sounding a flute to signal the start of a hunt does so without thought of the notion of making music. Musical instruments are constructed in an array of styles and shapes
16.
Polydor Records
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Polydor is a British record label and company, that operates as part of Universal Music Group. It has a relationship with Universals Interscope Geffen A&M label. In turn, Polydor distributes Interscope releases in the United Kingdom, Polydor Records Ltd. was established in London in 1954 as a British subsidiary of German company Deutsche Grammophon GmbH. The Polydor label was founded on 2 April 1913 by German Polyphon-Musikwerke AG in Leipzig, during World War I on 24 April 1917, Polyphon-Musikwerke AG acquired the German Deutsche Grammophon-Aktiengesellschaft record plant and company from the German government. The German state was taken over Grammophon and the British holdings as enemies property during World War I, Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Polyphon-Grammophon-Konzern group. It was used as a label since 1924. The British and German branches of the Gramophone Company were so departed during World War I, in turn, Deutsche Grammophon records exported from Germany were released on the Polyphon Musik and Polydor labels. The new foreign branches were founded for example into Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Polydor became a popular music label in 1946, while the new Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft label was to become a classical music label in 1949. The previously used label, Grammophon, was disbanded, DGG gave, with an agreement dated 5 July 1949, an exclusive license from 1 July 1951 to use the Nipper-dog with gramophone to the original owners company Electrola, the German branch of EMI. In 1970, Polydor acquired the Hong Kong-based Diamond Records, which had owned and founded by the local Portuguese merchant Ren da Silva in the late 1950s. In 1972, The Grammophon-Philips Group reorganized to create PolyGram, the Polydor label continued to run as a subsidiary label under the new company. The name PolyGram is a portmanteau of Polydor and PhonoGram, into the 1980s, Polydor continued to do respectable business, in spite of becoming increasingly overshadowed by its PolyGram sister label Mercury Records. Polydor took over management of British Deccas pop catalog, A&R manager Frank Neilson was able to score a major top ten hit in March 1981 for the label with Do The Hucklebuck by Coast to Coast as well as signing Ian Dury and Billy Fury to the company. In 1984, the name was parodied in the rockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap. By the early 1990s, Polydor had begun to underperform, in 1994, as Island Records recovered from its sales slump, PolyGram dissolved most of PLG into it. Meanwhile, Polydor Records and Atlas Records merged, briefly called Polydor/Atlas, in 1995, Polydor/Atlas became simply Polydor Records again. Over the next few years, Polydor tried to keep itself afloat with new artist signings, new releases, in 1998, PolyGram was purchased by Seagram and absorbed into its Universal Music Group. Today, in America, the Polydor Records name and logo is used on reissues of older material from its 1960s and 1970s heyday
17.
Capital Artists
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Capital Artists is a Hong Kong–based record label, owned by eSun Holdings, a subsidiary of Lai Sun Development. Founded in 1971, Capital Artists signed some of the biggest names in the Cantopop industry, including Roman Tam, Anita Mui, during its prime in the 1970s and 1980s, Capital had dozens of artists under contract and was one of the biggest labels in Hong Kong. In early 1996, Capital Artists was purchased by SCMP Group, in 2001, after four years of poor sales, Capital Artists ceased music production and dismissed most of its staff, staying in business solely to collect copyright revenue and issue compilations. In late 2008, it was purchased by eSun Holdings, the Capital Artists logo is a lower-case c merged into a lower-case, slightly larger, a. In 1972, Capital Artists began hosting concerts and placed music producers Chan Suk-fan and Chan Lau-chyun in charge of the events, in 1975, a records division was established. Throughout the 1970s, Capital Artists focused primarily on producing music for television dramas, in 1982, however, Capital Artists shifted their focus to the Hong Kong–based television network TVB, and began taking part in TVBs newly created New Talent Singing Awards, or NTSA. The winner of the contest was guaranteed a recording contract with the record label, Capital Artists has claimed many music superstars, and for a time, it was one of the top five record labels in Hong Kong, along with BMG, PolyGram, Warner Bros. Records, and EMI.1971 - Capital Artists is officially established, entertainers include Lydia Shum, Angie Chiu, Bill Chan, and Louise Lee, among dozens of others. 1972 - Capital Artists begins operations,1974 - Roman Tam joins, making many well-known songs over the next twelve years. 1982 - Capital Artists hosts the first New Talent Singing Awards in cooperation with TVB, Anita Mui wins the competition and signs a contract with Capital. With the talents of Roman Tam and the newly signed Leslie Cheung,1985 - Anita Mui releases her album Bad Girl Anita Mui. It surpasses 8-platinum status within the first week of release, and it is said to be the best-selling album of all time in Hong Kong music history, even to this day. 1986 - Leon Lai finishes second runner-up in the fifth NTSA, Leslie Cheung leaves Capital for Cinepoly Records. Cheung and Anita Mui had been the best sellers in Capital Artists arsenal, upon Cheungs departure, Capital Artists became heavily reliant on Anita Muis commercial power. Mui would go on to become Capital Artists best-selling artist of all time,1990 - Leon Lai, after four years without a single album, signs a contract with PolyGram, where he feels he will be more greatly appreciated. His current contract with Capital Artists is later annulled, in 1992, after just two years with PolyGram, Lai becomes one of Cantopops Four Heavenly Kings. 1991 - At the tenth NTSA, Anita Mui is both an adjudicator and the guest performer and she steps on stage to perform her anthem, Sunset Melody, but turns around and stops the musicians in the background abruptly during the music break. 1992 - Anita Mui goes into semi-retirement and she announces that she will give up commercial concert appearances and only appear for charity performances
18.
Universal Music Group
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Universal Music Group is an American-French global music corporation that is a subsidiary of the Paris-based French media conglomerate Vivendi. UMGs global corporate headquarters are in Santa Monica, California and it is considered one of the Big Three record labels, along with Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Universal Music was once the music attached to film studio Universal Pictures and its origins go back to the formation of the American branch of Decca Records in September 1934. The Decca Record Co. Ltd. of England spun American Decca off in 1939, MCA Inc. merged with American Decca in 1962. The present organization was formed when its parent company Seagram purchased PolyGram in May 1998, however, the name had first appeared in 1996 when MCA Music Entertainment Group was renamed Universal Music Group. The PolyGram acquisition included Deutsche Grammophon which traces its ancestry to Berliner Gramophone making Deutsche Grammophon UMGs oldest unit, UMGs Canadian unit traces its ancestry to a Berliner Gramophone breakaway firm the Compo Company. With the 2004 acquisition of Universal Studios by General Electric and merging with GEs NBC and this is the second time a music company has done so, the first being the separation of Time Warner and Warner Music Group. On June 25,2007, Vivendi completed its €1.63 billion purchase of BMG Music Publishing, after receiving European Union regulatory approval, doug Morris stepped down from his position as CEO on January 1,2011. Former chairman/CEO of Universal Music International Lucian Grainge was promoted to CEO of the company, Grainge later replaced him as chairman on March 9,2011. Morris became the chairman of Sony Music Entertainment on July 1,2011. With Grainges appointment as CEO at UMG, Max Hole was promoted to COO of UMGI, starting in 2011 UMGs Interscope Geffen A&M Records will be signing contestants from American Idol/Idol series. On January 2011, UMG announced it was donating 200,000 master recordings from the 1920s to 1940s to the Library of Congress for preservation, in March 2011, Barry Weiss became chairman & CEO of The Island Def Jam Music Group & Universal Republic Records. Both companies are restructuring under Weiss, in December 2011, David Foster was named Chairman of Verve Music Group. Among the other companies that had competed for the music business was Warner Music Group which was reported to have made a $2 billion bid. However, IMPALA has said it would fight the merger, coincidentally, UMG sister company StudioCanal has owned the EMI Films library for several years. On September 21,2012, the sale of EMI to UMG was approved in Europe, UMG divested Mute Records, Parlophone, Roxy Recordings, MPS Records, Cooperative Music, Now Thats What I Call Music. Jazzland, Universal Greece, Sanctuary Records, Chrysalis Records, EMI Classics, Virgin Classics, the Beatles recorded music library was allowed to remain with UMG despite being considered part of Parlophone and is now managed by UMGs reorganized Capitol Music Group worldwide. Robbie Williams, who had recorded for Chrysalis, had his transferred to Universals Island Records
19.
Teresa Mo
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Teresa Mo Sun-kwan, with ancestry in Dongguan, Guangdong, is a Hong Kong actress. She started her career in the 1970s, and joined TVB in 1981 and she became famous for being cast in The Justice of Life, which was based on Stephen Chows works. In 1991 she made frequent appearances in feature films, in 1978, Mo was proposed to by then-boyfriend and fellow ATV colleague, Leslie Cheung. She married director Tony Au and they have two daughters, tenderhearted Teresa, ♥ Teresa Mo at the Internet Movie Database HK cinemagic entry
20.
Meizhou
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Meizhou is a prefecture-level city in eastern Guangdong province, Peoples Republic of China. It has an area of 15,864.51 km2, and it comprises Meijiang District, Xingning City and six counties. Its built-up or metro area made up of 2 urban districts was home to 935,516 inhabitants at the 2010 census, the name Meizhou comes from the Mei River and the Chinese name for the plum blossom. Meizhou was established as the prefecture of Jingzhou during the Southern Han and it became Meizhou at the time of Northern Song dynasty and Jiaying Prefecture during the Qing dynasty. After several subsequent shifts of jurisdiction, it became Meizhou City in 1988, Meizhou is now a noted historical and cultural city. Meizhou is located in the northeast of Guangdong Province, bordering Fujian Province in the northeast, the complex geological structure was formed mainly from granite, spouting rocks, metamorphic rock, shale, sandstone, red rock and limestone. Its administrative area ranges in latitude from 23°23 to 24°56 N and in longitude from 115°18 to 116°56 E, Meizhou has a humid subtropical climate, with short, mild, overcast winters and long, very hot, humid summers. The monthly daily average temperature in January is 12.4 °C, from April to June, rainfall is the heaviest and most frequent. Though striking typhoons do not affect the area as much as the coast, the municipal government, Intermediate Court, CPC office and Public Security Bureau are located in the Jiangnan Subdistrict of the Meijiang District, on the right bank of Mei River. Meizhou is rich in mineral and tourism resources and it has 48 kinds of minerals including coal, iron, limestone, rare clay and porcelain clay amongst others. Of these reserves manganese is ranked first in Guangdong Province, Meizhou has plenty of water resources, hot springs and certified mineral waters. There are tourism resources such as historic sites constructed during the Tang Dynasty, former residences of notable figures, natural scenery of all kinds. Meizhou is a hub for the three provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, and Jiangxi and the bridge connecting the coastal and the inland areas. State Highways 205 and 206 run across the city, guangzhou-Meizhou-Shantou Railway and Meizhou-Kanshi Railway pass through the city while expressways, state, provincial county and village highways extend to all parts. The city is served by the regional Meixian Airport, with regular air routes to Guangzhou, by water, the Mei River and Han River reach Chaozhou and Shantou. Meizhou is considered the center for standard Hakka dialect, along with the neighboring Mei County, Hakkas are a unique ethnic group of Han Chinese originally from around the Yellow River area, who later migrated south to avoid the chaos of war centuries ago. Due to hostility towards the new immigrants, many were forced into the regions of Guangdong Province. This migratory tradition has continued with the redistribution of Hakka people to the most remote parts of the world, many people in Meizhou emigrated during the last century to earn money for their families, with some returning to build in their hometowns
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Guangdong
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Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the Peoples Republic of China. The provincial capital Guangzhou and economic hub Shenzhen are among the most populous, the population increase since the census has been modest, the province at 2014 end had 107,240,000 people. Since 1989, Guangdong has topped the total GDP rankings among all divisions, with Jiangsu and Shandong second. According to state statistics, Guangdongs GDP in 2014 reached RMB6,779 billion, or US$1.104 trillion, since 2011, Guangdong has the highest GDP among all provinces of Mainland China. The province contributes approximately 12% of the PRCs national economic output, Guangdong also hosts the largest import and export fair in China called the Canton Fair in Guangdongs capital city Guangzhou. Guǎng means expanse or vast, and has associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD226. Guangdong and neighbouring Guangxi literally mean expanse east and expanse west, together, Guangdong and Guangxi are called Loeng gwong. During the Song dynasty, the Two Guangs were formally separated as Guǎngnán Dōnglù and Guǎngnán Xīlù, one should note that Canton, though etymologically derived from Cantão, refers only to the provincial capital instead of the whole province, as documented by authoritative English dictionaries. The local people of the city of Guangzhou and their language are commonly referred to as Cantonese in English. Because of the prestige of Canton and its accent, Cantonese sensu lato can also be used for the phylogenetically related residents, Chinese administration and reliable historical records in the region began with the Qin dynasty. After establishing the first unified Chinese empire, the Qin expanded southwards and set up Nanhai Commandery at Panyu, the region was independent as Nanyue between the fall of Qin and the reign of Emperor Wu of Han. Under the Wu Kingdom of the Three Kingdoms period, Guangdong was made its own province, for example, internal strife in northern China following the rebellion of An Lushan resulted in a 75% increase in the population of Guangzhou prefecture between 740s–750s and 800s–810s. As more migrants arrived, the population was gradually assimilated to Han Chinese culture or displaced. Multiple women originating from the Persian Gulf lived in Guangzhous foreign quarter, together with Guangxi, Guangdong was made part of Lingnan Circuit, or Mountain-South Circuit, in 627 during the Tang dynasty. The Guangdong part of Lingnan Circuit was renamed Guangnan East Circuit guǎng nán dōng lù in 971 during the Song dynasty, Guangnan East is the source of Guangdong. As Mongols from the north engaged in their conquest of China in the 13th century, the Battle of Yamen 1279 in Guangdong marked the end of the Southern Song Dynasty. During the Mongol Yuan dynasty, large parts of current Guangdong belonged to Jiangxi and its present name, Guangdong Province was given in early Ming dynasty. Since the 16th century, Guangdong has had extensive links with the rest of the world
22.
Days of Being Wild
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Days of Being Wild is a 1990 Hong Kong drama film directed by Wong Kar-wai. The film stars some of the actors and actresses in Hong Kong, including Leslie Cheung, Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung, Carina Lau, Jacky Cheung. Days of Being Wild also marks the first collaboration between Wong and cinematographer Christopher Doyle, with whom he has made six more films. The movie forms the first part of a trilogy, together with In the Mood for Love and 2046. The movie is set in Hong Kong and the Philippines in 1960–61, yuddy or York in English, is a playboy in Hong Kong and is well known for stealing girls hearts and breaking them. His first lover in the film is Li-zhen, who suffers emotional and mental depression as a result of Yuddys wayward attitude, Li-zhen eventually seeks much-needed solace from a sympathetic policeman named Tide. Their near-romance is often hinted at but never materializes, Yorks next romance is with a vivacious cabaret dancer whose stage name is Mimi. Mimi is also loved by Yorks best friend, Zeb, unsurprisingly, York dumps her too and she begins a period of self-destruction. York initiates romantic relationships but refuses to commit to the relationship and is unwilling to make compromises, almost entirely ignored on its original release, the film has gathered strong critical interest over time, and has a Metacritic score of 96%. Critics praise the film for its beauty and eroticism, though some do not discern a narrative arc that brings the pieces together, 梅豔芳 – 是這樣的 – the Cantonese cover of the theme song and is featured at the end of the film during the credits. Days of Being Wild grossed HK $9,751,942 in its Hong Kong run, with the starry cast, this figure was considered a disappointment. Still, the film was enough to warrant a parody
23.
He's a Woman, She's a Man
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Hes a Woman, Shes a Man is a 1994 Hong Kong romantic comedy film co-written and directed by Peter Chan and starring Leslie Cheung, Anita Yuen, Carina Lau, Eric Tsang and Jordan Chan. Its many awards garnered include Best Actress at the 14th Hong Kong Film Awards for Yuen, the film was followed by a sequel, Whos the Woman, Whos the Man. The theme song is Chase was recorded in Cheungs 1995 album, Wing is a sassy girl who deeply idolizes Rose, a pop singer, and Roses boyfriend, top record producer and songwriter Sam. Rose has been groomed by Sam, achieving stardom and international acclaim, with her success, Sam decides to try his hand at bringing up a male singer. He decides to announce a country-wide, males-only talent search, much to his former protegées chagrin, Wing, desperate to meet her idols, seizes this opportunity and enters the contest disguised as a male. Her childhood friend trains her to perfect this whimsical idea, as fate would have it, Wing succeeds in the audition thanks to the poor quality of those auditioning and in part to Roses taunts. Rose challenges Sam to see to the idea of him bringing up a talentless Wing, Wing is later invited to stay at Sam and Roses home for her/his musical education. Wing tries unsuccessfully to reconcile the two lovers difference, trouble and comedy ensue as she finds herself falling for Sam and vice versa, despite him thinking she is a he
24.
The Bride with White Hair
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The Bride with White Hair is a 1993 Hong Kong film directed by Ronny Yu, starring Brigitte Lin and Leslie Cheung. The films main character, Lian Nichang, is based on the protagonist of Liang Yushengs novel Baifa Monü Zhuan. As such, the film departs significantly from the original source, a sequel, The Bride with White Hair 2, directed by David Wu, was released later in the same year. Zhuo Yihang was raised by Taoist Ziyang of the Wudang Sect and he is placed in command of a coalition army formed by the eight major orthodox martial arts sects, which aim to prevent an evil cult from infiltrating China. During a battle against the cult, Zhuo Yihang meets a woman called Lian Nichang. She is an orphan and was raised by wolves as an infant before being adopted by Ji Wushuang, after consummating their romance, Lian Nichang decides to leave the cult and follow Zhuo Yihang in pursuit of an ordinary life away from the jianghu. Lian Nichang succeeds in leaving the cult after suffering great pains, meanwhile, Zhuo Yihang returns to Wudang and is horrified to see that his fellows have been murdered. The coalition believes that Lian Nichang is responsible and attack her when she arrives to meet Zhuo Yihang, Zhuo Yihang is forced to turn against Lian Nichang. Devastated by her lovers rejection, Lian morphs into a vicious white-haired killer, suddenly, Ji Wushuang appears and reveals that he/she is actually the one who killed the Wudang members. Zhuo Yihang and Lian Nichang combine efforts to defeat and kill Ji Wushuang, however, even after the victory, Lian Nichang vows never to forgive Zhuo Yihang for betraying her and walks away while Zhuo looks on helplessly. Believing that it can cure the harm he has inflicted on Lian Nichang, he awaits for the return of his loved one and hopes that she will show up
25.
Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards Presentation
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The Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards Presentation is one of the main C-pop music award in Hong Kong based on the Jade Solid Gold TVB television show. The award began with the 1984 ceremonial season after the 1983 music season, historically the ceremony is held in January following the end of the previous music season at the Hong Kong Coliseum located in Hung Hom. The show is televised on TVB station annually, and has remained to be one of the topics for entertainment news in the region. The other notable award is the RTHK Top 10 Gold Songs Awards, the top 10 songs of the year is the key award given out, hence the name of the award. Each year there are a number of awards such as most popular male artist, most popular female artist. Occasionally new awards are added or changed up and it does not pertain to a particular song. Note, In 1993, TVB created a new award called Mainlands Most Popular Hong Kong Singer Great Award（國內最受歡迎香港歌星大獎）. Which is essentially the first incarnation of Asia Pacific Most Popular Hong Kong Singer Great Award （亞太區最受歡迎香港歌星大獎）, the scope of the great award was increased from Mainland China to the Asia Pacific region in 1994. The great award change name is Asia Pacific Most Popular Singer Great Award（亞太區最受歡迎歌星大獎）in 2012 begin to now, in the Asia Pacific Most Popular Artist Great Awards, Andy Lau and Faye Wong had won more awards in the category with 10 and 7 awards, respectively. Andy Lau had the longest consecutive wins by a male artist from 2000 to 2006, the Most Popular artist Great awards is one of the main awards given out in the ceremony. It doesn′t pertain to a particular song, within the Most Popular Artist Great Awards category, Andy Lau had the most wins by a male artist, with six times, including three consecutive years in 1990 to 1992. However, Leo Ku tied for having the longest consecutive records, with five wins, for the female artist, Joey Yung had the most wins with twelveth categories, including longest six consecutive records from 2003 to 2007,2010 to 2016. Annual 2014, Joey Yung tenth times achieved Most Popular Female Artist Great Awards, annual 2015, Hins Cheung become to Hong Kong Macau Music Emperor；Joey Yung become to National Music Empress. In addition to the top 10 tracks awarded each year, the following Gold Song Gold Awards is given to the best song of the year, note, In 2010, 男人信什麼 broke the record as being the first duet song to win this title. Further, JW is the first artist to win award in their debut year as artist
26.
Farewell My Concubine (film)
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Farewell My Concubine is a 1993 Chinese drama film directed by Chen Kaige. It is one of the works of the Fifth Generation movement that brought Chinese film directors to world attention. In this case, the affected are two stars in a Peking opera troupe and the woman who comes between them. The film is an adaptation of the novel by Lilian Lee, Hong Kong actor Leslie Cheung was used in the film to attract audiences because melodramas are not a popular genre. Due to Gong Lis international stardom, she was cast as one of the characters in the film. Farewell My Concubine remains to date the only Chinese-language film to win the Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festival. Chen Kaige was first given a copy of Lilian Lees novel in 1988, after meeting with Lee, they recruited Chinese writer Lu Wei for the screenplay, and in 1991 the first draft of the screenplay came about. As the film opens, a street crowd watches a troupe of boys perform Peking opera, supervised by their aging director, Master Guan. When Laizi attempts to run away, Shitou placates the crowd by breaking a brick on his head, the crowd cheers, but Shitou is later punished for the stunt. An onlooking mother brings her son to the troupe to be trained, using a cleaver to amputate her childs objectionable superfluous finger, Shitou welcomes the newcomer as Douzi, and the two boys become friends. Laizi and Douzi run away, but witness a performance by a master that inspires them to return to the troupe. They find Shitou being beaten for allowing their escape, and Douzi accepts his punishment as Master Guan beats him mercilessly, Shitou tries to intervene, when an assistant informs them that Laizi has hanged himself. Douzi attaches himself to Shitou and is trained to play dan roles, Shitou learns the jing, a painted-face male lead. Douzi practises the monologue Dreaming of the World Outside the Nunnery but mistakes the line I am by nature a girl, not a boy and he repeats this mistake, doing so in front of an agent who might fund the troupe. Shitou viciously jams Master Guans brass tobacco pipe in Douzis mouth as punishment, Douzi looks dazed, but whispers, I am by nature a girl. The troupe cheer, having secured the agent, the eunuch Zhang appreciates their performance and summons Shitou and Douzi for an audience. Shitou admires a beautiful sword in Zhangs collection, stating if he were emperor. Douzi responds that one day he hopes to give Shitou a sword like that, Douzi is to meet Zhang alone, and catches him in a lascivious embrace with a young girl
27.
Chinese name
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Chinese personal names are names used by those from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora overseas. Prior to the 20th century, educated Chinese also utilized a courtesy name or style name called zi by which they were known among those outside of their family and closest friends. From at least the time of the Shang dynasty, the Han Chinese observed a number of naming taboos regulating who may or may not use a given name. In general, using the given name connoted the speakers authority, peers and younger relatives were barred from speaking it. Owing to this, many historical Chinese figures – particularly emperors – used a half-dozen or more different names in different contexts and those possessing names identical to the emperors were frequently forced to change them. Although some terms in the ancient Chinese naming system, such as xìng and míng, are used today, they were used in different. Commoners possessed only a name, and the modern concept of a surname or family name did not yet exist at any level of society.3 billion citizens. In fact, just the top three – Wang, Li, and Zhang – cover more than 20% of the population. This homogeneity results from the majority of Han family names having only one character. Chinese surnames arose from two separate traditions, the xìng and the shì. The original xìng were clans of royalty at the Shang court, the shì did not originate from families, but denoted fiefs, states, and titles granted or recognized by the Shang court. Apart from the Jiang and Yao families, the original xìng have nearly disappeared, xìng is now used to describe the shì surnames which replaced them, while shì is used to refer to maiden names. The enormous modern clans sometimes share ancestral halls with one another, nonetheless, however tenuous these bonds sometimes are, it remains a minor taboo to marry someone with the same family name. In modern mainland China, it is the norm that a woman keeps her name unchanged. A child usually inherits his/her fathers surname, though the law explicitly states that a child may use either parents or the grandparents. It is also possible, though far less common, for a child to both parents surnames. In the older generations, it was common for a married woman to prepend her husbands surname to her own. This practice is now almost extinct in mainland China, though there are a few such as the name change of Gu Kailai, but survives in some Hong Kong, Macau
28.
Chinese surname
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Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam and among overseas Chinese communities. In ancient times two types of surnames existed, namely xing or lineage names, and shi or clan names, Chinese family names are patrilineal, passed from father to children. Women do not normally change their surnames upon marriage, except in places with more Western influences such as Hong Kong, traditionally Chinese surnames have been exogamous. The colloquial expressions laobaixing and bǎixìng are used in Chinese to mean ordinary folks, prior to the Warring States period, only the ruling families and the aristocratic elite had surnames. Historically there was also a difference between clan names or xing and lineages names or shi, Xing were surnames held by the noble clans. They generally are composed of a nü radical which has taken by some as evidence they originated from matriarchal societies based on maternal lineages. Another hypothesis has been proposed by sinologist Léon Vandermeersch upon observation of the evolution of characters in oracular scripture from the Shang dynasty through the Zhou, the female radical seems to appear at the Zhou period next to Shang sinograms indicating an ethnic group or a tribe. This combination seems to designate specifically a female and could mean lady of such or such clan, prior to the Qin Dynasty China was largely a fengjian society. In this way, a nobleman would hold a shi and a xing, after the states of China were unified by Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC, surnames gradually spread to the lower classes and the difference between xing and shi blurred. Many shi surnames survive to the present day, according to Kiang Kang-Hu, there are 18 sources from which Chinese surnames may be derived, while others suggested at least 24. The following are some of the sources, Xing, These were usually reserved for the central lineage of the royal family. Of these xings, only Jiang and Yao have survived in their form to modern days as frequently occurring surnames. Royal decree by the Emperor, such as Kuang, state name, Many nobles and commoners took the name of their state, either to show their continuing allegiance or as a matter of national and ethnic identity. These are some of the most common Chinese surnames, name of a fief or place of origin, Fiefdoms were often granted to collateral branches of the aristocracy and it was natural as part of the process of sub-surnaming for their names to be used. An example is Di, Marquis of Ouyangting, whose descendants took the surname Ouyang, there are some two hundred examples of this identified, often of two-character surnames, but few have survived to the present. Names of an ancestor, Like the previous example, this was also a common origin with close to 500 or 600 examples,200 of which are two-character surnames, often an ancestors courtesy name would be used. For example, Yuan Taotu took the character of his grandfathers courtesy name Boyuan as his surname. Sometimes titles granted to ancestors could also be taken as surnames, seniority within the family, In ancient usage, the characters of meng, zhong, shu and ji were used to denote the first, second, third and fourth eldest sons in a family
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Zhang (surname)
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Zhang is the pinyin romanization of the very common Chinese surname written 张 in simplified characters and 張 traditionally. It is spoken in the first tone, Zhāng and it is a surname that exists in many languages and cultures, corresponding to the surname Archer in English for example. 張 was the Chữ Nôm form of the Vietnamese surname Trương, the Hanja of the Korean surname romanized Jang and Chang. It remains the Kanji for the Japanese surname romanized Chō, in Vietnamese, the surname written 章 in Chữ Nôm is clearly distinguished and written as Trang or Chương. As mentioned above, 张 is the surname in mainland China. On Taiwan, 張 is the surname, making up 5. 26% of the population of the Republic of China. 章 was unlisted among the top 100 in either location, among the Chinese diaspora, the name remains common but takes on various romanizations. 張 combines the Chinese characters 弓 and 長 and it originally meant to open up or to spread as an arching bow, but as a common noun in modern use it is a measure word for flat objects such as paper and cloth, like the English sheet of. 章 combines the characters 音 and 十, the traditional origin of the surname 張 is rooted in Chinese legend. The fifth son of the Yellow Emperor, Qing Yangshi, had a son Hui who was inspired by the Heavenly Bow constellation to invent the bow and arrow. Hui was then promoted to First Bow and bestowed the surname 張 and its Middle Chinese pronunciation has been reconstructed as Trjang. The surname 章 originated from the legendary Yan Emperor, whose surname was Jiang. On the establishment of the state of Qi, Jiang Ziya apportioned the land among his many descendants, some of the people of this state took 章 as their surname, particularly after it was annexed by Qi. The Middle Chinese pronunciation of the name was Tsyang, the beginnings of what we now know to be the Zhang surname, tjose whose original surnames at birth are Zhang are also included on this list. Historical figures Zhang Yi, strategist in the Warring States period, Zhang Bao son of Zhang Fei and general of Shu Han Zhang Hong, Official of Sun Quan in the Late Han Dynasty. Zhang Yi, general of Shu Han in the Three Kingdoms period, Empress Zhang, Empress of Shu Han in the Three Kingdoms period. Zhang He, general of Cao Wei in the Three Kingdoms period, Zhang Liao, general of Cao Wei in the Three Kingdoms period. Zhang Zhao, Minister of Eastern Wu in the Three Kingdoms period, Zhang Cheng, general and Politician of Eastern Wu in the Three Kingdoms period
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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
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Gay icon
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A gay icon is a public figure who is embraced by many within lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities. Some of the qualities of a gay icon often include glamour, flamboyance, strength through adversity. Such icons can be of any orientation or gender, if LGBT. Although most gay icons have given their support to LGBT social movements, some have expressed opposition, historically, icons were typically elevated to such status because their sexual orientation remains a topic of debate among historians. Modern gay icons are predominantly female entertainers who commonly garner a following within LGBT communities over the course of their careers. The majority of gay icons fall into one of two categories, they are tragic, sometimes martyred figures, or prominent pop culture idols. Journalist Richard A. Kaye wrote, Contemporary gay men have seen in Sebastian at once a stunning advertisement for homosexual desire, and a prototypical portrait of a tortured closet case. Due to Saint Sebastians status as a gay icon, Tennessee Williams chose to use the name for the martyred character Sebastian in his play, Suddenly. The name was used by Oscar Wilde—as Sebastian Melmoth—when in exile after his release from prison. Wilde, an Irish writer and poet, was about as out of the closet as was possible for the late 19th century, marie Antoinette was an early lesbian icon. Rumors about her relationships with women circulated in pornographic detail by anti-royalist pamphlets before the French Revolution, by the end of the 19th century, she was a cult icon of sapphism. Her execution, seen as tragic martyrdom, may have added to her appeal, sick to death of the subterfuge and pretenses. She had crossover appeal as a gay icon, as well, at least for French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist Jean Genet and he included a reenactment of her execution in his 1947 play The Maids. Modern gay icons in entertainment include both film stars and musicians, most of whom have strong, distinctive personalities, and many of whom died young or under tragic circumstances. Lesbian icons, sometimes called dykons are most often women who are, or are rumored to be. However, a few male entertainers have also had iconic status for lesbian people, james Dean was an early lesbian icon who, along with Marlon Brando, influenced the butch look and self-image in the 1950s and after. One critic has argued for Johnny Cash as a lesbian icon, attributing his appeal to lesbian identification with troubled. Science fiction author Forrest J Ackerman was dubbed an honorary lesbian for his help during the days of lesbian rights organisation Daughters of Bilitis
