1.
Guoyue
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Guoyue, in its broadest sense, is any music composed for Chinese musical instruments. It is also referred to variously as minyue, huayue and zhongyue, in its modernized form, it is often Chinese traditional music written or adapted for some form of grand presentation through a large Chinese orchestra. The term guoyue appeared in ancient texts and had various different meanings before the 20th century. It was used as early as the Sui-Tang period to refer to music or yayue. In the Music Record section of History of Liao, it was used to distinguish the music of the Khitan rulers from that of the Han Chinese. During the Qing Dynasty it was used to refer to the kind of ceremonial court repertoire that was seen as a representation of China. In the early 20th century, guoyue became a term used loosely to include all music written for Chinese instruments in response to a particular nationalistic consciousness. In Taiwan it continues to be known as guoyue, but in other Chinese communities, in the early 20th century, the term guoyue was widely used to distinguish between imported Western music and traditional Chinese music. It therefore included all Han Chinese music but excluded anything written for Western instruments, in its broadest term it includes all Chinese instrumental music, opera, regional folk genres, and solo pieces. Not everyone however agrees on its definition, and what constitutes guoyue changes with time. Originally it only referred to the music of Han Chinese, later it included the music of various ethnic minorities in China. Some argued that it should refer to music of Confucian rituals. In the new Republic of China in Taiwan, Guoyue emphasized the traditional music of mainland China over the Taiwanese local traditions, the guoyue that was envisioned in the early 20th century however was not entirely traditional. To many, part of the idea was to reshape Chinese folk, some also made a distinction between the regional music as performed by untrained folk musicians, i. e. the raw material from which guoyue is drawn, and the more polished national music. In this view guoyue is therefore a polished, modernized form of traditional Chinese music, some forms of traditional music were also excluded at various times. In mainland China after 1949, folk music was promoted but classical Chinese music was condemned as decadent and reactionary. During the Cultural Revolution classical Chinese music virtually disappeared, and some only survived by being reworked in a light style, in the early part of the 20th century after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, Chinese intellectuals were interested in modernizing and revitalizing traditional Chinese music. As part of the New Culture Movement of the period, the music genre emerged to promote greater patriotism In the 1920s
2.
Wuyishan, Fujian
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Wuyishan City is a county-level city in the municipal region of Nanping, in the northwest of Fujian province, Peoples Republic of China. It corresponds to the former Chongan County, since 1999 the park zone has been recognised by UNESCO as part of the worlds natural and cultural heritage. South of the zone, just short of the Citys border with Jianyang District, is an archaeological excavation of the vanished Yue nation. Not far from Wuyishan, the Jiyufang Laolong kiln, located in a village near the town of Shuiji, has been able to restart production of Jian ware using original clay. The city executive, legislature and judiciary are in Chongan Street Office, together with the CPC, the Hengfeng–Nanping Railway and Hefei–Fuzhou High-Speed Railway pass through Wuyishan. Langu Smoked Goose Paddy Carp Ching Ming Fruit Gui Jie Honolulu, Hawaii, U. S. A.12 Jul.2005 Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia 30 Jun.2009 Wuyi New Area
3.
Fuzhou
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Fuzhou, formerly romanized as Foochow, is the capital and one of the largest cities in Fujian province, China. Along with the counties of Ningde, those of Fuzhou are considered to constitute the Mindong linguistic. Fuzhous core counties lie on the bank of the estuary of Fujians largest river. All along its border lies Ningde, and Ningdes Gutian County lies upriver. Fuzhous counties south of the Min border on Putian, Quanzhou, Fuzhou is listed as No.20 in China Integrated City Index 2016s total ranking, a study conducted by National Development and Reform Commission. Fuzhou in Chinese means 有福之州” （yǒufúzhīzhōu）, the mountains name was then combined with -zhou, meaning settlement or prefecture, in a manner similar to many other Chinese cities. During the Warring States period, area of Fuzhou was sometimes referred to as Ye, the citys name was changed numerous times between the 3rd and 9th centuries before finally settling on Fuzhou in 948. In Chinese, the city is referred to by the poetic nickname Rongcheng, literally. In older English publications, the name is romanized as Foochow, Foo-Chow, Fuchow, Fūtsu, Fuh-Chow, Hock Chew. The remains of two Neolithic cultures—the Huqiutou Culture, from around 5000 BC, and the Tanshi Mountain Culture, in 306 BC, the Yue Kingdom fell to the state of Chu. Their major centre was not at Fuzhous modern location, but further up the Min watershed near Wuyishan City, the First Emperor of Qin unified ancient China in 221 BC and desired to bring the southern and southeast regions under Chinese rule. The Qin dynasty organized its territory into Commanderies —roughly equivalent to a province or prefecture—and the Fujian area was organized as Minzhong Commandery, the area seems to have continued mostly independent of Chinese control for the next century. The Han dynasty followed the short-lived Qin, and Emperor Gaozu of Han declared both Minyue and neighboring Nanyue to be autonomous vassal kingdoms, in 202 BC, Emperor Gaozu enfeoffed a leader named Wuzhu as King of Minyue, and a walled city called Ye was built. The founding of Ye in 202 BC has become the founding date of the city of Fuzhou. In 110 BC, the armies of Emperor Wu of Han defeated the Minyue kingdoms armies during the Han–Minyue War and annexed its territory and people into China. Many Minyue citizens were relocated into the Jiangnan area. The area was eventually re-organized as a county in 85 BC, during the Three Kingdoms Period, southeast China was nominally under the control of Eastern Wu, and the Fuzhou area had a shipyard for the coastal and Yangtze River fleets. In 282, during the Jin dynasty, two lakes known simply as the East Lake and West Lake were constructed in Ye
4.
Yue (state)
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Its original capital was a site near Mount Kuaiji, after its conquest of Wu, the Kings of Yue moved their court north to the city of Wu. According to Sima Qian, Yues rulers claimed to be descended from the Xia emperor Yu, the name Yue was applied indiscriminately to many southern Chinese peoples throughout classical Chinese texts. A specific kingdom under their name in modern Zhejiang is not mentioned until it began a series of wars against its northern neighbor Wu in the late 6th century BC, with help from Wus enemy Chu, Yue was able to be victorious after several decades of conflict. King Goujian destroyed and annexed Wu in 473 BC, competing against the fewer, more powerful Warring States, Yue did not fare as well. During the reign of Wujiang, six generations after Goujian, Yue was destroyed and annexed by Chu in 334 BC, during its existence, Yue was famous for the quality of its metalworking, particularly its swords. Examples include the extremely well-preserved Swords of Goujian and Zhougou, the Yue state appears to have been a largely indigenous political development in the lower Yangtze. Austronesian speakers also still lived in the region down to its conquest and their ancestral name is rendered variously as either Si or Yu. After the fall of Yue, the family moved south to what is now northern Fujian. This successor state lasted until around 150 BC, when it miscalculated an alliance with the Han dynasty, mingdi, Wujiangs second son, was appointed minister of Wucheng by the king of Chu. He was titled Marquis of Ouyang Ting, from a pavilion on the side of Ouyu Mountain. Yuenü, swordswoman & author of the exposition on swordplay Xi Shi. Some Kam-Tai Words in Place Names of the Ancient Wu and Yue States, eric Henry, The Submerged History of Yuè
5.
Warring States period
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The Warring States Period derives its name from the Record of the Warring States, a work compiled early in the Han dynasty. The political geography of the era was dominated by the Seven Warring States, namely, Qin, The State of Qin was in the far west, with its core in the Wei River Valley and Guanzhong. This geographical position offered protection from the states of the Central Plains, the Three Jins, Northeast of Qin, on the Shanxi plateau, were the three successor states of Jin. These were, Han, south, along the Yellow River, Zhao, the northernmost of the three. Qi, located in the east of China, centred on the Shandong Peninsula, described as east of Mount Tai, Chu, located in the south of China, with its core territory around the valleys of the Han River and, later, the Yangtze River. Yan, located in the northeast, centred on modern-day Beijing, late in the period Yan pushed northeast and began to occupy the Liaodong Peninsula Besides these seven major states, some minor states also survived into the period. Yue, On the southeast coast near Shanghai was the State of Yue, Sichuan, In the far southwest were the States of Ba and Shu. These were non-Zhou states that were conquered by Qin late in the period, in the Central Plains comprising much of modern-day Henan Province, many smaller city states survived as satellites of the larger states, though they were eventually to be absorbed as well. Zhongshan, Between the states of Zhao and Yan was the state of Zhongshan, the Spring and Autumn period was initiated by the eastward flight of the Zhou court. There is no one single incident or starting point for the Warring States era, some proposed starting points are as follows,481 BC, Proposed by Song-era historian Lü Zuqian, since it is the end of the Spring and Autumn Annals. 476–475 BC, The author, Sima Qian, of Records of the Grand Historian who chose the year of King Yuan of Zhou. 403 BC, The year when Han, Zhao and Wei were officially recognised as states by the Zhou court, author Sima Guang of Zizhi Tongjian tells us that the symbol of eroded Zhou authority should be taken as the start of the Warring States era. The Spring and Autumn period led to a few states gaining power at the expense of many others, during the Warring States period, many rulers claimed the Mandate of Heaven to justify their conquest of other states and spread their influence. Other major states also existed, such as Wu and Yue in the southeast, the last decades of the Spring and Autumn era were marked by increased stability, as the result of peace negotiations between Jin and Chu which established their respective spheres of influence. This situation ended with the partition of Jin, whereby the state was divided between the houses of Han, Zhao and Wei, and thus enabled the creation of the seven major warring states. This allowed other clans to gain fiefs and military authority, and decades of struggle led to the establishment of four major families. The Battle of Jinyang saw the allied Han, Zhao and Wei destroy the Zhi family, with this, they became the de facto rulers of most of Jins territory, though this situation would not be officially recognised until half a century later. The Jin division created a vacuum that enabled during the first 50 years expansion of Chu and Yue northward
6.
Han dynasty
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The Han dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period. Spanning over four centuries, the Han period is considered an age in Chinese history. To this day, Chinas majority ethnic group refers to itself as the Han people and it was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han, and briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang. This interregnum separates the Han dynasty into two periods, the Western Han or Former Han and the Eastern Han or Later Han, the emperor was at the pinnacle of Han society. He presided over the Han government but shared power with both the nobility and appointed ministers who came largely from the gentry class. The Han Empire was divided into areas controlled by the central government using an innovation inherited from the Qin known as commanderies. These kingdoms gradually lost all vestiges of their independence, particularly following the Rebellion of the Seven States, from the reign of Emperor Wu onward, the Chinese court officially sponsored Confucianism in education and court politics, synthesized with the cosmology of later scholars such as Dong Zhongshu. This policy endured until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 AD, the Han dynasty was an age of economic prosperity and saw a significant growth of the money economy first established during the Zhou dynasty. The coinage issued by the government mint in 119 BC remained the standard coinage of China until the Tang dynasty. The period saw a number of limited institutional innovations, the Xiongnu, a nomadic steppe confederation, defeated the Han in 200 BC and forced the Han to submit as a de facto inferior partner, but continued their raids on the Han borders. Emperor Wu of Han launched several campaigns against them. The ultimate Han victory in these wars eventually forced the Xiongnu to accept vassal status as Han tributaries, the territories north of Hans borders were quickly overrun by the nomadic Xianbei confederation. Imperial authority was seriously challenged by large Daoist religious societies which instigated the Yellow Turban Rebellion. When Cao Pi, King of Wei, usurped the throne from Emperor Xian, following Liu Bangs victory in the Chu–Han Contention, the resulting Han dynasty was named after the Hanzhong fief. Chinas first imperial dynasty was the Qin dynasty, the Qin unified the Chinese Warring States by conquest, but their empire became unstable after the death of the first emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. Within four years, the authority had collapsed in the face of rebellion. Although Xiang Yu proved to be a commander, Liu Bang defeated him at Battle of Gaixia. Liu Bang assumed the title emperor at the urging of his followers and is known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu, Changan was chosen as the new capital of the reunified empire under Han
7.
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
8.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time
9.
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
10.
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
