1.
Song dynasty
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The Song dynasty was an era of Chinese history that began in 960 and continued until 1279. It succeeded the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, coincided with the Liao and Western Xia dynasties and it was the first government in world history to issue banknotes or true paper money nationally and the first Chinese government to establish a permanent standing navy. This dynasty also saw the first known use of gunpowder, as well as the first discernment of true north using a compass, the Song dynasty is divided into two distinct periods, Northern and Southern. During the Northern Song, the Song capital was in the city of Bianjing. The Southern Song refers to the period after the Song lost control of its half to the Jurchen Jin dynasty in the Jin–Song Wars. During this time, the Song court retreated south of the Yangtze, the Southern Song dynasty considerably bolstered its naval strength to defend its waters and land borders and to conduct maritime missions abroad. To repel the Jin, and later the Mongols, the Song developed revolutionary new military technology augmented by the use of gunpowder, in 1234, the Jin dynasty was conquered by the Mongols, who took control of northern China, maintaining uneasy relations with the Southern Song. Möngke Khan, the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire and his younger brother Kublai Khan was proclaimed the new Great Khan, though his claim was only partially recognized by the Mongols in the west. In 1271, Kublai Khan was proclaimed the Emperor of China, after two decades of sporadic warfare, Kublai Khans armies conquered the Song dynasty in 1279. The Mongol invasion led to a reunification under the Yuan dynasty, the population of China doubled in size during the 10th and 11th centuries. The Northern Song census recorded a population of roughly 50 million, much like the Han and this data is found in the Standard Histories. However, it is estimated that the Northern Song had a population of some 100 million people and this dramatic increase of population fomented an economic revolution in pre-modern China. The expansion of the population, growth of cities, and the emergence of a national economy led to the withdrawal of the central government from direct involvement in economic affairs. The lower gentry assumed a role in grassroots administration and local affairs. Appointed officials in county and provincial centers relied upon the gentry for their services, sponsorship. Social life during the Song was vibrant, citizens gathered to view and trade precious artworks, the populace intermingled at public festivals and private clubs, and cities had lively entertainment quarters. The spread of literature and knowledge was enhanced by the expansion of woodblock printing. Technology, science, philosophy, mathematics, and engineering flourished over the course of the Song, although the institution of the civil service examinations had existed since the Sui dynasty, it became much more prominent in the Song period
2.
Calligraphy
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Calligraphy is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a broad tip instrument, brush, a contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as, the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious, and skillful manner. Modern calligraphy ranges from functional inscriptions and designs to fine-art pieces where the letters may or may not be readable, classical calligraphy differs from typography and non-classical hand-lettering, though a calligrapher may practice both. It is also used for props and moving images for film and television, testimonials, birth and death certificates, maps, the principal tools for a calligrapher are the pen and the brush. Calligraphy pens write with nibs that may be flat, round, for some decorative purposes, multi-nibbed pens—steel brushes—can be used. However, works have also created with felt-tip and ballpoint pens. There are some styles of calligraphy, like Gothic script, which require a stub nib pen, Writing ink is usually water-based and is much less viscous than the oil-based inks used in printing. Normally, light boxes and templates are used to achieve straight lines without pencil markings detracting from the work, ruled paper, either for a light box or direct use, is most often ruled every quarter or half inch, although inch spaces are occasionally used. This is the case with litterea unciales, and college-ruled paper often acts as a guideline well, common calligraphy pens and brushes are, Quill Dip pen Ink brush Qalam Fountain pen Western calligraphy is recognizable by the use of the Latin script. The Latin alphabet appeared about 600 BC, in Rome, and by the first century developed into Roman imperial capitals carved on stones, Rustic capitals painted on walls, in the second and third centuries the uncial lettering style developed. As writing withdrew to monasteries, uncial script was more suitable for copying the Bible. It was the monasteries which preserved calligraphic traditions during the fourth and fifth centuries, at the height of the Empire, its power reached as far as Great Britain, when the empire fell, its literary influence remained. The Semi-uncial generated the Irish Semi-uncial, the small Anglo-Saxon, each region developed its own standards following the main monastery of the region, which are mostly cursive and hardly readable. Christian churches promoted the development of writing through the copying of the Bible, particularly the New Testament. Two distinct styles of writing known as uncial and half-uncial developed from a variety of Roman bookhands, the 7th-9th centuries in northern Europe were the heyday of Celtic illuminated manuscripts, such as the Book of Durrow, Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells. Charlemagnes devotion to improved scholarship resulted in the recruiting of a crowd of scribes, according to Alcuin, Alcuin developed the style known as the Caroline or Carolingian minuscule. The first manuscript in hand was the Godescalc Evangelistary — a Gospel book written by the scribe Godescalc. Carolingian remains the one hand from which modern booktype descends
3.
Epigraphy
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Specifically excluded from epigraphy are the historical significance of an epigraph as a document and the artistic value of a literary composition. A person using the methods of epigraphy is called an epigrapher or epigraphist, for example, the Behistun inscription is an official document of the Achaemenid Empire engraved on native rock at a location in Iran. Epigraphists are responsible for reconstructing, translating, and dating the trilingual inscription and it is the work of historians, however, to determine and interpret the events recorded by the inscription as document. Often, epigraphy and history are competences practiced by the same person, an epigraph is any sort of text, from a single grapheme to a lengthy document. Epigraphy overlaps other competences such as numismatics or palaeography, when compared to books, most inscriptions are short. Typically the material is durable, but the durability might be an accident of circumstance, epigraphy is a primary tool of archaeology when dealing with literate cultures. The US Library of Congress classifies epigraphy as one of the sciences of history. Epigraphy also helps identify a forgery, epigraphic evidence formed part of the discussion concerning the James Ossuary, the study of ancient handwriting, usually in ink, is a separate field, palaeography. The character of the writing, the subject of epigraphy, is a quite separate from the nature of the text. Texts inscribed in stone are usually for public view and so they are different from the written texts of each culture. Not all inscribed texts are public, however, in Mycenaean Greece the deciphered texts of Linear B were revealed to be used for economic. Informal inscribed texts are graffiti in its original sense, the science of epigraphy has been developing steadily since the 16th century. Principles of epigraphy vary culture by culture, and the infant science in European hands concentrated on Latin inscriptions at first, individual contributions have been made by epigraphers such as Georg Fabricius, August Wilhelm Zumpt, Theodor Mommsen, Emil Hübner, Franz Cumont, Louis Robert. The Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, begun by Mommsen and other scholars, has published in Berlin since 1863. It is the largest and most extensive collection of Latin inscriptions, New fascicles are still produced as the recovery of inscriptions continues. The Corpus is arranged geographically, all inscriptions from Rome are contained in volume 6 and this volume has the greatest number of inscriptions, volume 6, part 8, fascicle 3 was just recently published. Specialists depend on such on-going series of volumes in which newly discovered inscriptions are published, often in Latin, Greek epigraphy has unfolded in the hands of a different team, with different corpora. The first is Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum of which four volumes came out, again at Berlin and this marked a first attempt at a comprehensive publication of Greek inscriptions copied from all over the Greek-speaking world
4.
Imperial examination
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The Chinese imperial examinations were a civil service examination system in Imperial China to select candidates for the state bureaucracy. The examination helped to shape Chinas intellectual, cultural, political, shopping, arts and crafts, the increased reliance on the exam system was in part responsible for Tang dynasty shifting from a military aristocracy to a gentry class of scholar-bureaucrats. Starting with the Song dynasty, the system was regularized and developed into a roughly three-tiered ladder from local to provincial to court exams, the content was narrowed and fixed on texts of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. Critics charged that the system stifled creativity and created officials who dared not defy authority, wealthy families, especially merchants, could opt into the system by educating their sons or purchasing degrees. In the 19th century, critics blamed the system, and in the process its examinations, for Chinas lack of technical knowledge. The influence of the Chinese examination system spread to neighboring Asian countries, such as Vietnam, Korea, Japan, following the initial success in that company, the British government adopted a similar testing system for screening civil servants in 1855. Other European nations, such as France and Germany, followed suit, modeled after these previous adaptations, the U. S established its own testing program for certain government jobs after 1883. However, the structure of the system was extensively expanded during the reign of Wu Zetian. Thus the system played a key role in the selection of the scholar-officials, during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the system contributed to the narrowness of intellectual life and the autocratic power of the emperor. The system continued with some modifications until its 1905 abolition under the Qing dynasty, other brief interruptions to the system occurred, such as at the beginning of the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century. The modern examination system for selecting civil servants also indirectly evolved from the imperial one and this changed during the Sui, when recruitment into the imperial civil service bureaucracy became to be considered an imperial prerogative, rather than a duty to be performed by the lower levels. By the Tang dynasty, most of the recruitment into central government bureaucrat offices was being performed by the bureaucracy itself, the regular higher level degree examination cycle was nominally decreed in 1067 to be 3 years. The jinshi tests were not an event and should not be considered so. Oral examination on policy issues were sometimes conducted personally by the emperor himself, beginning in the Three Kingdoms period, imperial officials were responsible for assessing the quality of the talents recommended by the local elites. This system continued until Emperor Yang of Sui established a new category of recommended candidates for the mandarinate in AD605, for the first time, an examination system was explicitly instituted for a category of local talents. However, the Sui dynasty was short-lived, and the system did not reach its mature development until afterwards, a pivotal point in the development of imperial examinations arose with the rise of Wu Zetian. Up until that point, the rulers of the Tang dynasty were all members of the Li family. Reform of the examinations to include a new class of elite bureaucrats derived from humbler origins became a keystone of Wus gamble to retain power
5.
Su Shi
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Su Shi, also known as Su Tungpo, was a Chinese writer, poet, painter, calligrapher, pharmacologist, gastronome, and a statesman of the Song dynasty. A major personality of the Song era, Su was an important figure in Song Dynasty politics, aligning himself with Sima Guang and others, in terms of the arts, Su Shi has some claim to being the pre-eminent personality of the eleventh century. Dongpo pork, a prominent dish in Hangzhou cuisine, is named in his honor and he was named Shi by his father Su Xun after a decorative arm rest used in the front part of Chinese carriages. The name was chosen to remind the boy to attend to his public appearance, similarly, his brother Su Zhe was named after another carriage-related concept, zhe meaning wheel track and implying the boy should try to leave his mark in life. Su Shis courtesy name was Zizhan and his pseudonym was Dongpo Jushi, from which he is often also referred to as Su Dongpo Su Tong po was born in Meishan, near Mount Omei today Sichuan province. His brother Su Zhe and his father Su Xun were both famous literati, Sus early education was conducted under a Taoist priest at a local village school. Later his educated mother took over and his accomplishments at such a young age attracted the attention of Emperor Renzong, and also that of Ouyang Xiu, who became Sus patron thereafter. Ouyang had already known as an admirer of Su Xun, sanctioning his literary style at court. When the 1057 jinshi examinations were given, Ouyang Xiu required—without prior notice—that candidates were to write in the ancient prose style when answering questions on the Confucian classics and he had served as a magistrate in Mi Prefecture, which is located in modern-day Zhucheng County of Shandong province. Su Shi was often at odds with a faction headed by Wang Anshi. Su Shi once wrote a poem criticizing Wang Anshis reforms, especially the government monopoly imposed on the salt industry, the dominance of the reformist faction at court allowed the New Policy Group greater ability to have Su Shi exiled for political crimes. The claim was that Su was criticizing the emperor, when in fact Su Shis poetry was aimed at criticizing Wangs reforms. It should be said that Wang Anshi played no part in action against Su, for he had retired from public life in 1076. Su Shis first remote trip of exile was to Huangzhou, Hubei and this post carried a nominal title, but no stipend, leaving Su in poverty. During this period, he began Buddhist meditation, with help from a friend, Su built a small residence on a parcel of land in 1081. Su Shi lived at a farm called Dongpo, from which he took his literary pseudonym, while banished to Hubei province, he grew fond of the area he lived in, many of the poems considered his best were written in this period. His most famous piece of calligraphy, Han Shi Tie, was written there. In 1086, Su and all other banished statesmen were recalled to the due to the ascension of a new government
6.
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
7.
Tang dynasty
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The Tang dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. It is generally regarded as a point in Chinese civilization. Its territory, acquired through the campaigns of its early rulers, rivaled that of the Han dynasty. The dynasty was founded by the Lǐ family, who seized power during the decline, the dynasty was briefly interrupted when Empress Wu Zetian seized the throne, proclaiming the Second Zhou dynasty and becoming the only Chinese empress regnant. In two censuses of the 7th and 8th centuries, the Tang records estimated the population by number of registered households at about 50 million people. Various kingdoms and states paid tribute to the Tang court, while the Tang also conquered or subdued several regions which it controlled through a protectorate system. Besides political hegemony, the Tang also exerted a powerful influence over neighboring states such as those in Korea, Japan. Like the previous Sui dynasty, the Tang dynasty maintained a service system by recruiting scholar-officials through standardized examinations and recommendations to office. This civil order was undermined by the rise of military governors known as jiedushi during the 9th century. Chinese culture flourished and further matured during the Tang era, it is considered the greatest age for Chinese poetry. Two of Chinas most famous poets, Li Bai and Du Fu, belonged to this age, as did many famous painters such as Han Gan, Zhang Xuan, there was a rich variety of historical literature compiled by scholars, as well as encyclopedias and geographical works. The adoption of the title Tängri Qaghan by the Tang Emperor Taizong in addition to his title as emperor was eastern Asias first simultaneous kingship, there were many notable innovations during the Tang, including the development of woodblock printing. Buddhism became an influence in Chinese culture, with native Chinese sects gaining prominence. However, Buddhism would later be persecuted by the state, subsequently declining in influence, although the dynasty and central government were in decline by the 9th century, art and culture continued to flourish. This family was known as the Longxi Li lineage, which includes the Tang poet Li Bai, the Tang Emperors also had Xianbei maternal ancestry, from Emperor Gaozu of Tangs Xianbei mother Duchess Dugu. He had prestige and military experience, and was a first cousin of Emperor Yang of Sui, Li Yuan rose in rebellion in 617, along with his son and his equally militant daughter Princess Pingyang, who raised and commanded her own troops. In winter 617, Li Yuan occupied Changan, relegated Emperor Yang to the position of Taishang Huang or retired emperor, and acted as regent to the puppet child-emperor, Emperor Gong of Sui. On the news of Emperor Yangs murder by General Yuwen Huaji on June 18,618, Li Yuan declared himself the emperor of a new dynasty, the Tang
8.
Middle Chinese
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The fanqie method used to indicate pronunciation in these dictionaries, though an improvement on earlier methods, proved awkward in practice. The mid 12th-century Yunjing and other rime tables incorporate a more sophisticated, the rime tables attest to a number of sound changes that had occurred over the centuries following the publication of the Qieyun. Linguists sometimes refer to the system of the Qieyun as Early Middle Chinese, the dictionaries and tables describe pronunciations in relative terms, but do not give their actual sounds. The Swedish linguist Bernard Karlgren believed that the recorded a speech standard of the capital Changan of the Sui and Tang dynasties. This composite system contains important information for the reconstruction of the system of Old Chinese phonology. The Middle Chinese system is used as a framework for the study. Branches of the Chinese family such as Mandarin, Yue and Wu can be treated as divergent developments from the Qieyun system. The reconstruction of Middle Chinese phonology is largely dependent upon detailed descriptions in a few original sources, the most important of these is the Qieyun rime dictionary and its revisions. The Qieyun is often used together with interpretations in Song dynasty rime tables such as the Yunjing, Qiyinlue, Chinese scholars of the Northern and Southern dynasties period were concerned with the correct recitation of the classics. Various schools produced dictionaries to codify reading pronunciations and the associated rhyme conventions of regulated verse, the Qieyun was an attempt to merge the distinctions in six earlier dictionaries, which were eclipsed by its success and are no longer extant. It was accepted as the standard reading pronunciation during the Tang dynasty, the Qieyun is thus the oldest surviving rime dictionary and the main source for the pronunciation of characters in Early Middle Chinese. The rime dictionaries organize Chinese characters by their pronunciation, according to a hierarchy of tone, rhyme, the fanqie system uses multiple equivalent characters to represent each particular initial, and likewise for finals. The categories of initials and finals actually represented were first identified by the Cantonese scholar Chen Li in an analysis published in his Qièyùn kǎo. The Qieyun classified homonyms under 193 rhyme classes, each of which is placed one of the four tones. A single rhyme class may contain multiple finals, generally differing only in the medial or in so-called chongniu doublets, the Yunjing is the oldest of the so-called rime tables, which provide a more detailed phonological analysis of the system contained in the Qieyun. However, the analysis shows some influence from LMC, which needs to be taken into account when interpreting difficult aspects of the system. The Yunjing is organized into 43 tables, each covering several Qieyun rhyme classes, and classified as, One of 16 broad rhyme classes, each described as either inner or outer. The meaning of this is debated but it has suggested that it refers to the height of the main vowel, with outer finals having an open vowel
9.
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
