1.
Seokgatap
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Seokgatap is a stone pagoda in South Korea designated as the 21st National Treasure on December 12,1962. Its full name is Sakyamuni Yeoraesangjuseolbeop Tap, and is referred to as the Shadowless Pagoda or the Bulguksa Samcheung Seoktap. The pagoda stands 8.2 meters high, directly across from Dabotap within the Bulguksa Temple complex in Gyeongju and it probably dates to around 751, when Bulguksa was completed. The Seokgatap pagoda is in distinct contrast with its more elaborate brother the Dabotap, the pagoda is of a very simple and basic design and the three stories have a pleasing 4,3,2 ratio which gives the pagoda a sense of balance, stability, and symmetry. The pagodas three stories rest on a two tiered base, the simplicity of the pagoda is reinforced by the fact that there are no carvings or reliefs on the faces of the pagoda. Although, the pagoda is surrounded by eight lotus flower stones, the top of the pagoda, which is rather elaborate, was added in 1973 to match a pagoda that was built one hundred years after Seokgatap. Asadal was a stonemason of Baekje who was brought to Silla to build Dabotap and Seokgatap. After several years with no news of her husband, Asadals young wife went to Seorabeol to find him, however, she was prevented from entering Bulguksa Temple due to the rule that women were not allowed inside until the pagodas were finished. Feeling sorry for the woman wandering the temple surroundings, one monk told Asadals wife that she would be able to see the shadow in the pond once it was completed. However, there was no shadow visible on the ponds surface, upon hearing rumors that Asadal intended to marry a Silla princess, his wife threw herself into the pond and drowned. By the time Asadal reached the pond after completing the pagoda, in tears, Asadal engraved an image of his wife onto a rock before returning home to Baekje. Afterward, Seokgatap was named the Shadowless Pagoda because its shadow was not visible on the pond, in 1966, the monks of the temple were awakened by sounds of exploding dynamite. They discovered that thieves had attempted to blast the pagoda and steal what was hidden inside, a sarira is a reliquary that contains the remains of an esteemed monk or sometimes royalty. After the failed theft by robbers, workers refurbishing and repairing the pagoda found the treasures hidden inside, notably, the Dabotap pagoda was dismantled by the Japanese for repairs during the 1920s but no record mentions any treasure recovered. Treasures included an image of a Buddhist spirit, a bronze mirror, a miniature wooden pagoda, silk, perfume, gogok. A bundle of papers were found in the foundation of the pagoda, the sarira box is shaped like a house, and has an engraved roof. Each of the walls of the case have a vine pattern that runs up to the roof. Lotus motifs are used throughout as well and the top of the roof has a leaf-shaped ornamentation, the oldest extant woodblock print is a copy of the Mugujeonggwang Great Dharani Sutra
2.
Gautama Buddha
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Gautama Buddha, also known as Siddhārtha Gautama, Shakyamuni Buddha, or simply the Buddha, after the title of Buddha, was an ascetic and sage, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. He is believed to have lived and taught mostly in the part of ancient India sometime between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE. Gautama taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and the severe asceticism found in the śramaṇa movement common in his region and he later taught throughout other regions of eastern India such as Magadha and Kosala. Gautama is the figure in Buddhism. He is recognized by Buddhists as a teacher who attained full Buddhahood. Accounts of his life, discourses, and monastic rules are believed by Buddhists to have been summarized after his death, various collections of teachings attributed to him were passed down by oral tradition and first committed to writing about 400 years later. Scholars are hesitant to make unqualified claims about the facts of the Buddhas life. Apart from the Vedic Brahmins, the Buddhas lifetime coincided with the flourishing of influential schools of thought like Ājīvika, Cārvāka, Jainism. Brahmajala Sutta records sixty-two such schools of thought, thus, Buddha was just one of the many śramaṇa philosophers of that time. The times of Gautamas birth and death are uncertain, most historians in the early 20th century dated his lifetime as circa 563 BCE to 483 BCE. These alternative chronologies, however, have not yet accepted by all historians. It was either a republic, or an oligarchy, and his father was an elected chieftain. He obtained his enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, gave his first sermon in Sarnath, no written records about Gautama were found from his lifetime or some centuries thereafter. One Edict of Asoka, who reigned from circa 269 BCE to 232 BCE, another one of his edicts mentions the titles of several Dhamma texts, establishing the existence of a written Buddhist tradition at least by the time of the Maurya era. These texts may be the precursor of the Pāli Canon and they are written in the Gāndhārī language using the Kharosthi script on twenty-seven birch bark manuscripts and date from the first century BCE to the third century CE. The sources for the life of Siddhārtha Gautama are a variety of different and these include the Buddhacarita, Lalitavistara Sūtra, Mahāvastu, and the Nidānakathā. Of these, the Buddhacarita is the earliest full biography, a poem written by the poet Aśvaghoṣa in the first century CE. The Lalitavistara Sūtra is the next oldest biography, a Mahāyāna/Sarvāstivāda biography dating to the 3rd century CE, the Mahāvastu from the Mahāsāṃghika Lokottaravāda tradition is another major biography, composed incrementally until perhaps the 4th century CE
3.
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
4.
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
5.
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
6.
Shanxi
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Shanxi is a province of China, located in the North China region. Its one-character abbreviation is 晋, after the state of Jin that existed here during the Spring, the name Shanxi means West of the Mountains, a reference to the provinces location west of the Taihang Mountains. Shanxi borders Hebei to the east, Henan to the south, Shaanxi to the west, the capital of the province is Taiyuan. In the Spring and Autumn period, the state of Jin was located in what is now Shanxi and it underwent a three-way split into the states of Han, Zhao and Wei in 403 BC, the traditional date taken as the start of the Warring States period. By 221 BC, all of states had fallen to the state of Qin. The Han Dynasty ruled Shanxi as the province of Bingzhou, during the invasion of northern nomads in the Sixteen Kingdoms period, several regimes including the Later Zhao, Former Yan, Former Qin, and Later Yan continuously controlled Shanxi. They were followed by Northern Wei, a Xianbei kingdom, which had one of its earlier capitals at present-day Datong in northern Shanxi, the Tang Dynasty originated in Taiyuan. During the Tang Dynasty and after, present day Shanxi was called Hédōng, empress Wu Zetian, Chinas only female ruler, was born in Shanxi. Shanxi was initially home to the jiedushi of Hedong, Li Cunxu, shi Jingtang, founder of the Later Jin, the third of the Five Dynasties, ceded a piece of northern China to the Khitans in return for military assistance. This territory, called The Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, included a part of northern Shanxi, the ceded territory became a major problem for Chinas defense against the Khitans for the next 100 years, because it lay south of the Great Wall. He founded his dynasty by launching a coup against the Turkic Later Han Emperor. In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, the sixteen ceded prefectures continued to be an area of contention between Song China and the Liao Dynasty. Later the Southern Song Dynasty abandoned all of North China, including Shanxi, the Mongol Yuan Dynasty divided China into provinces but did not establish Shanxi as a province. Shanxi only gained its present name and approximate borders during the Ming Dynasty which were of the same landarea, with the collapse of the Qing dynasty, Shanxi became part of the newly established Republic of China. During most of the Republic of Chinas period of rule over mainland China, Yan Xishan devoted himself to modernizing Shanxi and developing its resources during his reign over the province. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japan occupied much of the province after winning the Battle of Taiyuan, Shanxi was also a major battlefield between the Japanese and the Chinese communist guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army during the war. The soldiers of Shanxi province under Yan Xishan viciously fought against the invading Japanese, right after the defeat of Japan, much of the Shanxi countryside became important bases for the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the ensuing Chinese Civil War. Shanxi was eventually conquered by the communists, resulting in the warlord Yan Xishans retreat to Taiwan Island, for centuries, Shanxi served as the center of trade and banking, the Shanxi merchants were once synonymous with wealth
7.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
8.
Chinese pagoda
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For the landmark in Birmingham, see Chinese Pagoda. Chinese pagodas are a part of Chinese architecture. Earliest base-structure type for Chinese pagodas were square-base and circular-base, by the 5th-10th centuries the Chinese began to build octagonal-base pagoda towers. Although it no longer stands, the tallest pre-modern pagoda in Chinese history was the 100-metre-tall wooden pagoda of Changan, iconography of Han is noticeable in architecture of the Chinese Pagoda. The image of the Shakyamuni Buddha in the abhaya mudra is also noticeable in some Chinese pagodas, Buddhist iconography is also inside of the symbolism in the pagoda. It was believed by some that they would influence the success of students taking the examinations for a civil service degree. From the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Southern and Northern Dynasties pagodas were built of wood. Wooden pagodas are resistant to earthquakes, however many have burnt down, examples of wooden pagodas, White Horse Pagoda at White Horse Temple, Luoyang. Futuci Pagoda in Xuzhou, built in the Three Kingdoms period, many of the pagodas in Stories About Buddhist Temples in Luoyang, a Northern Wei text, were wooden. The literature of subsequent eras also provides evidence of the domination of wooden construction in this period. The famous Tang Dynasty poet, Du Mu, once wrote,480 Buddhist temples of the Southern Dynasties, uncountable towers and pagodas stand in the misty rain. The oldest extant fully wooden pagoda standing in China today is the Pagoda of Fugong Temple in Ying County, Shanxi Province, during the Northern Wei and Sui dynasties experiments began with the construction of brick and stone pagodas. Even at the end of the Sui, however, wood was still the most common material, only the Songyue Pagoda has survived, a circular-based pagoda built out of stone in 523 AD. The earliest extant brick pagoda is the 40-metre-tall Songyue Pagoda in Dengfeng Country and this curved, circle-based pagoda was built in 523 during the Northern Wei Dynasty, and has survived for 15 centuries. Much like the later pagodas found during the following Tang Dynasty and its walls are 2.5 m thick, with a ground floor diameter of 10.6 m. Another early brick pagoda is the Sui Dynasty Guoqing Pagoda built in 597, the earliest large-scale stone pagoda is a Four Gates Pagoda at Licheng, Shandong, built in 611 during the Sui Dynasty. Like the Songyue Pagoda, it features a spire at its top. One of the earliest brick and stone pagodas was a construction built in the Jin Dynasty
9.
Khitan people
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They spoke the Khitan language, which is related to the Mongolic languages. As the Liao dynasty, they dominated a vast area north of and including parts of China, There is no consensus on the etymology of the name of Khitan. Feng Jiasheng argues that it comes from the Yuwen chieftains names, zhao Zhenji thinks that the term originated from Xianbei and means a place where Xianbei had resided. Japanese people scholar Otagi Matsuo considers Khitans original name is Xidan, various forms of the word Khitan survive in the many languages as the name of China. The use of the name Khitai to mean China or Chinese in such Turkic languages as Uyghur is considered pejorative by the Han Chinese and they have different stories about their origin. According to Khitan records, their ancestor was Qishou Khagan. Qishou Khagan was a man riding a white horse who floated down the Laoha River and met Kedun. At the intersection of the two rivers, at the foot of the holy Muye Mountain, they met and mated, giving birth to eight sons, a temple with portraits of Khitan ancestors was built on Mount Muye their holiest mountain. The Qidan Guozhi records a Khitan legend in its preface, There was a chief called Naihe and this chief was nothing but a skull hidden under a rug in a round felt tent, so that he was invisible. Only when something serious had happened in his state, a horse and a gray ox were sacrificed to him, then he took on a human figure. After the affairs had been settled, he returned to the tent and he disappeared, for his countrymen peeped at him. Then there was another chief called Waihe who was living in a round felt tent. He wore a head and was clad in pigskin. When there was an action he came out, then he retired, later it happened that his wife stole his pigskin, he abandoned her and nobody knew where he went. Then there was one called Zhouli Hunhe. Each day he ate nineteen and had one left. These three chiefs were known for their abilities in running their state. In 630, Tang Taizong received the capitulation in southern Manchuria, from the 5th to the 8th centuries, they were dominated by the steppe power to their West and the Chinese to their south
