China stone
China stone is a medium grained, feldspar-rich kaolinised granite characterized by the absence of iron-bearing minerals. It is used for making porcelain, hence the name, coatings for paper, its discovery in the mid-18th century was a crucial event in the development of the English porcelain industry. The Quaker William Cookworthy was the first to realize its significance, around 1745, though his attempts at commercial exploitation, culminating in the founding of Plymouth porcelain in 1768, did not achieve long-term success. A letter of a Dr Richard Pococke from 1750 reports being shown near Lizard Point, Cornwall, a deposit "mostly valued for making porcelane... and they get five pounds a ton for the manufacture of porcelane now carrying on at Bristol". However, this Lizard material was soapstone, useful in reducing the tendency of soft-paste porcelain to shatter with rapid changes in temperature. Existing English pottery companies from Staffordshire, swiftly moved to exploit the deposits. For the first time English companies, led by Plymouth, were able make "true" hard-paste porcelain, rather than soft-paste porcelain, although the industry had been experimenting with bone ash, china stone soon became used in the successful English bone china instead.
Its mineral content includes quartz and mica. It is found in one area of Cornwall in the United Kingdom, near St Austell, is the UK’s only indigenous source of feldspathic material commercially extracted. Production in the four years up to 2003 averaged 2,800 tonnes per year. Other names include Cornwall stone, it is sometimes confused with petuntse or "porcelain stone", although somewhat similar, is a different rock. For most of the 20th century production was dominated by English China Clays Ltd/Plc, once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, but in 1999 acquired by the French company now called Imerys; the St Austell and Clay Country Eco-town is a plan to build a new town on a cluster of sites owned by Imerys near St Austell. The plan was given outline government approval in July 2009; the plan would need to gain full planning permission. Geology of Cornwall Honey, W. B. Old English Porcelain: A Handbook for Collectors, 1977, 3rd edn. revised by Franklin A. Barrett and Faber, ISBN 0571049028 Elkington, John, "Reclaiming the Cornish Moonscape", New Scientist, 5 Jan 1978, page 14 Spero, Battie, David, ed.
Sotheby's Concise Encyclopedia of 1990, Conran Octopus. ISBN 1850292515
Jiangxi
Jiangxi is a province in the People's Republic of China, located in the southeast of the country. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze river in the north into hillier areas in the south and east, it shares a border with Anhui to the north, Zhejiang to the northeast, Fujian to the east, Guangdong to the south, Hunan to the west, Hubei to the northwest; the name "Jiangxi" derives from the circuit administrated under the Tang dynasty in 733, Jiangnanxidao. The abbreviation for Jiangxi is "赣", for the Gan River which runs across from the south to the north and flows into the Yangtze River. Jiangxi is alternately called Ganpo Dadi which means the "Great Land of Gan and Po". Jiangxi is centered on the Gan River valley, which provided the main north-south transport route of south China; the corridor along the Gan River is one of the few traveled routes through the otherwise mountainous and rugged terrain of the south-eastern mountains. This open corridor was the primary route for trade and communication between the North China Plain and the Yangtze River valley in the north and the territory of modern Guangdong province in the south.
As a result, Jiangxi has been strategically important throughout much of China's history. Jiangxi was outside the sphere of influence of early Chinese civilization during the Shang dynasty, it is that peoples collectively known as the Baiyue inhabited the region. During the Spring and Autumn period, the northern part of modern Jiangxi formed the western frontier of the state of Wu. After Wu was conquered by the state of Yue in 473 BC, the state of Chu took over northern Jiangxi and there may have been some Yue influence in the south. Chu subjugated Yue in 333 BC. In 223 BC, when Qin conquered Chu, a majority of the Jiangxi area was recorded to be put under Jiujiang Commandary situated in Shouchun; however the commandary ended shortly when Qin falls. Yuzhang Commandery was established in Jiangxi at the beginning of the Han dynasty before the death of Xiang Yu in 202 BC, it's the first commandery set up by Chinese dynasty in Jiangxi, it was named after the original name of Gan River. "Gan" has become the abbreviation of the province.
In 201, eight counties were added to the original seven of Qin, three more were established in years. Throughout most of the Han dynasty the commandery's eighteen counties covered most of the modern province of Jiangxi; the county seats of Nanchang, Yudu, Luling among others were located at the sites of modern major cities. Other counties, have been moved or abolished in centuries. Under the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, Yuzhang Commandery was assigned to Yangzhou Province, as part of a trend to establish provinces all across China. In 291 AD, during the Western Jin dynasty, Jiangxi became. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Jiangxi was under the control of the southern dynasties, the number of zhou grew. During the Sui dynasty, there were seven commanderies and twenty-four counties in Jiangxi. During the Tang dynasty, another commandery and fourteen counties were added. Commanderies were abolished, becoming zhou. Circuits were established during the Tang dynasty as a new top-level administrative division.
At first Jiangxi was part of the Jiangnan Circuit. In 733, this circuit was divided into eastern halves. Jiangxi was found in the western half, called Jiangnanxi Circuit; this is the source of the modern name "Jiangxi". The Tang dynasty collapsed in 907, heralding the division of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Jiangxi first belonged to Wu to Southern Tang. Both states were based in modern-day Nanjing, further down the Yangtze River. During the Song dynasty, Jiangnanxi Circuit was reestablished with nine prefectures and four army districts. During the Yuan dynasty, the circuit was divided into thirteen different circuits, Jiangxi Province was established for the first time; this province included the majority of modern Guangdong. Jiangxi acquired its modern borders during the Ming dynasty. There has been little change to the borders of Jiangxi since. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, Jiangxi became one of the earliest bases for the Communists and many peasants were recruited to join the growing people's revolution.
The Nanchang Uprising took place in Jiangxi on August 1927, during the Chinese Civil War. The Communist leadership hid in the mountains of southern and western Jiangxi, hiding from the Kuomintang's attempts to eradicate them. In 1931, the Chinese Soviet Republic's government was established in Ruijin, sometimes called the "Former Red Capital", or just the "Red Capital". In 1935, after complete encirclement by the Nationalist forces, the Communists broke through and began the Long March to Yan'an. Mountains surround Jiangxi on three sides, with the Mufu Mountains, Jiuling Mountains, Luoxiao Mountains on the west; the southern half of the province is hilly with valleys interspersed. The highest point
Chinese ceramics
Chinese ceramics show a continuous development since pre-dynastic times and are one of the most significant forms of Chinese art and ceramics globally. The first pottery was made during the Palaeolithic era. Chinese ceramics range from construction materials such as bricks and tiles, to hand-built pottery vessels fired in bonfires or kilns, to the sophisticated Chinese porcelain wares made for the imperial court and for export. Porcelain was a Chinese invention and is so identified with China that it is still called "china" in everyday English usage. Most Chinese ceramics of the finest quality, were made on an industrial scale, thus few names of individual potters were recorded. Many of the most important kiln workshops were owned by or reserved for the Emperor, large quantities of Chinese export porcelain were exported as diplomatic gifts or for trade from an early date to East Asia and the Islamic world, from around the 16th century to Europe. Chinese ceramics have had an enormous influence on other ceramic traditions in these areas.
Over their long history, Chinese ceramics can be classified between those made for the imperial court, either to use or distribute, those made for a discriminating Chinese market, those for popular Chinese markets or for export. Some types of wares were made only or for special uses such as burial in tombs, or for use on altars; the earliest Chinese pottery was earthenware, which continued in production for utilitarian uses throughout Chinese history, but was less used for fine wares. Stoneware, fired at higher temperatures, impervious to water, was developed early and continued to be used for fine pottery in many areas at most periods. Porcelain, on a Western definition, is "a collective term comprising all ceramic ware, white and translucent, no matter what ingredients are used to make it or to what use it is put"; the Chinese tradition recognizes two primary categories of ceramics, high-fired and low-fired, so doing without stoneware, which in Chinese tradition is grouped with porcelain.
Terms such as "porcellaneous" or "near-porcelain" may be used for stonewares with porcelain-like characteristics. The Erya defined porcelain as "fine, compact pottery". Chinese pottery can be classified as being either northern or southern. China comprises two separate and geologically different land masses, brought together by continental drift and forming a junction that lies between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers, sometimes known as the Nanshan-Qinling divide; the contrasting geology of the north and south led to differences in the raw materials available for making ceramics. Ware-types can be from widespread kiln-sites in either north or south China, but the two can nearly always be distinguished, influences across this divide may affect shape and decoration, but will be based on different clay bodies, with fundamental effects; the kiln types were different, in the north the fuel was coal, as opposed to wood in the south, which affects the wares. Southern materials have high silica, low alumina and high potassium oxide, the reverse of northern materials in each case.
The northern materials are very suitable for stoneware, while in the south there are areas suitable for porcelain. Chinese porcelain is made by a combination of the following materials: Kaolin – essential ingredient composed of the clay mineral kaolinite. Porcelain stone – decomposed micaceous or feldspar rocks also known as petunse. Feldspar Quartz In the context of Chinese ceramics, the term porcelain lacks a universally accepted definition; this in turn has led to confusion about. Claims have been made for the late Eastern Han dynasty, the Three Kingdoms period, the Six Dynasties period, the Tang dynasty. Kiln technology has always been a key factor in the development of Chinese pottery; the Chinese developed effective kilns capable of firing at around 1,000 °C before 2000 BC. These were updraft kilns built below ground. Two main types of kiln remained in use until modern times; these are the dragon kiln of hilly southern China fuelled by wood and thin and running up a slope, the horseshoe-shaped mantou kiln of the north Chinese plains and more compact.
Both could reliably produce the temperatures of up to 1300 °C or more needed for porcelain. In the late Ming, the egg-shaped kiln or zhenyao was developed at Jingdezhen, but used there; this was something of a compromise between the other types, offered locations in the firing chamber with a range of firing conditions. Important specific types of pottery, many coming from more than one period, are dealt with individually in sections lower down. Pottery dating from 20,000 years ago was found at the Xianrendong Cave site in Jiangxi province, making it among the earliest pottery yet found. Another reported -- 18,000 years ago in the Yuchanyan Cave in southern China. By the Middle and Late Neolithic most of the larger archaeological cultures in China were farmers producing a variety of attractive and large vessels boldly painted, or decorated by cutting or impressing. Decoration is abstract or of stylized animals – fish are a speciality at the river settlement of Banpo; the distinctive Majiayao pottery, with orange bodies and black paint, is characterised by fine past
Mica
The mica group of sheet silicate minerals includes several related materials having nearly perfect basal cleavage. All are monoclinic, with a tendency towards pseudohexagonal crystals, are similar in chemical composition; the nearly perfect cleavage, the most prominent characteristic of mica, is explained by the hexagonal sheet-like arrangement of its atoms. The word mica is derived from the Latin word mica, meaning a crumb, influenced by micare, to glitter. Chemically, micas can be given the general formula X2Y4–6Z8O204,in which X is K, Na, or Ca or less Ba, Rb, or Cs. Structurally, micas can be classed as trioctahedral. If the X ion is K or Na, the mica is a common mica, whereas if the X ion is Ca, the mica is classed as a brittle mica. Muscovite Common micas: Biotite Lepidolite Phlogopite ZinnwalditeBrittle micas: Clintonite Very fine-grained micas, which show more variation in ion and water content, are informally termed "clay micas", they include: Hydro-muscovite with H3O+ along with K in the X site.
Mica is distributed and occurs in igneous and sedimentary regimes. Large crystals of mica used for various applications are mined from granitic pegmatites; until the 19th century, large crystals of mica were quite rare and expensive as a result of the limited supply in Europe. However, their price dropped when large reserves were found and mined in Africa and South America during the early 19th century; the largest documented single crystal of mica was found in Lacey Mine, Canada. Similar-sized crystals were found in Karelia, Russia; the British Geological Survey reported that as of 2005, Koderma district in Jharkhand state in India had the largest deposits of mica in the world. China was the top producer of mica with a third of the global share followed by the US, South Korea and Canada. Large deposits of sheet mica were mined in New England from the 19th century to the 1970s. Large mines existed in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine. Scrap and flake mica is produced all over the world. In 2010, the major producers were Russia, United States, South Korea and Canada.
The total global production was 350,000 t. Most sheet mica was produced in Russia. Flake mica comes from several sources: the metamorphic rock called schist as a byproduct of processing feldspar and kaolin resources, from placer deposits, from pegmatites. Sheet mica is less abundant than flake and scrap mica, is recovered from mining scrap and flake mica; the most important sources of sheet mica are pegmatite deposits. Sheet mica prices vary with grade and can range from less than $1 per kilogram for low-quality mica to more than $2,000 per kilogram for the highest quality; the mica group represents 37 phyllosilicate minerals that have a platy texture. The commercially important micas are muscovite and phlogopite, which are used in a variety of applications. Mica’s value is based on several of its unique physical properties; the crystalline structure of mica forms layers that can be split or delaminated into thin sheets causing foliation in rocks. These sheets are chemically inert, elastic, hydrophilic, lightweight, reflective, refractive and range in opacity from transparent to opaque.
Mica is stable when exposed to electricity, light and extreme temperatures. It has superior electrical properties as an insulator and as a dielectric, can support an electrostatic field while dissipating minimal energy in the form of heat. Muscovite, the principal mica used by the electrical industry, is used in capacitors that are ideal for high frequency and radio frequency. Phlogopite mica remains stable at higher temperatures and is used in applications in which a combination of high-heat stability and electrical properties is required. Muscovite and phlogopite are used in ground forms; the leading use of dry-ground mica in the US is in the joint compound for filling and finishing seams and blemishes in gypsum wallboard. The mica acts as a filler and extender, provides a smooth consistency, improves the workability of the compound, provides resistance to cracking. In 2008, joint compound accounted for 54% of dry-ground mica consumption. In the paint industry, ground mica is used as a pigment extender that facilitates suspension, reduces chalking, prevents shrinking and shearing of the paint film, increases the resistance of the paint film to water penetration and weathering and brightens the tone of colored pigments.
Mica promotes paint adhesion in aqueous and oleoresinous formulations. Consumption of dry-ground mica in paint, the second-ranked use, accounted for 22% of the dry-ground mica used in 2008. Ground mica is used in the well-drilling industry as an additive to drilling fluids; the coarsely ground mica flakes help prevent the loss of circulation by sealing po
Ceramic
A ceramic is a solid material comprising an inorganic compound of metal, non-metal or metalloid atoms held in ionic and covalent bonds. Common examples are earthenware and brick; the crystallinity of ceramic materials ranges from oriented to semi-crystalline and completely amorphous. Most fired ceramics are either vitrified or semi-vitrified as is the case with earthenware and porcelain. Varying crystallinity and electron composition in the ionic and covalent bonds cause most ceramic materials to be good thermal and electrical insulators. With such a large range of possible options for the composition/structure of a ceramic, the breadth of the subject is vast, identifiable attributes are difficult to specify for the group as a whole. General properties such as high melting temperature, high hardness, poor conductivity, high moduli of elasticity, chemical resistance and low ductility are the norm, with known exceptions to each of these rules. Many composites, such as fiberglass and carbon fiber, while containing ceramic materials, are not considered to be part of the ceramic family.
The earliest ceramics made by humans were pottery objects or figurines made from clay, either by itself or mixed with other materials like silica and sintered in fire. Ceramics were glazed and fired to create smooth, colored surfaces, decreasing porosity through the use of glassy, amorphous ceramic coatings on top of the crystalline ceramic substrates. Ceramics now include domestic and building products, as well as a wide range of ceramic art. In the 20th century, new ceramic materials were developed for use in advanced ceramic engineering, such as in semiconductors; the word "ceramic" comes from the Greek word κεραμικός, "of pottery" or "for pottery", from κέραμος, "potter's clay, pottery". The earliest known mention of the root "ceram-" is the Mycenaean Greek ke-ra-me-we, "workers of ceramics", written in Linear B syllabic script; the word "ceramic" may be used as an adjective to describe a material, product or process, or it may be used as a noun, either singular, or, more as the plural noun "ceramics".
A ceramic material is an inorganic, non-metallic crystalline oxide, nitride or carbide material. Some elements, such as carbon or silicon, may be considered ceramics. Ceramic materials are brittle, strong in compression, weak in shearing and tension, they withstand chemical erosion that occurs in other materials subjected to acidic or caustic environments. Ceramics can withstand high temperatures, ranging from 1,000 °C to 1,600 °C. Glass is not considered a ceramic because of its amorphous character. However, glassmaking involves several steps of the ceramic process, its mechanical properties are similar to ceramic materials. Traditional ceramic raw materials include clay minerals such as kaolinite, whereas more recent materials include aluminium oxide, more known as alumina; the modern ceramic materials, which are classified as advanced ceramics, include silicon carbide and tungsten carbide. Both are valued for their abrasion resistance and hence find use in applications such as the wear plates of crushing equipment in mining operations.
Advanced ceramics are used in the medicine, electronics industries and body armor. Crystalline ceramic materials are not amenable to a great range of processing. Methods for dealing with them tend to fall into one of two categories – either make the ceramic in the desired shape, by reaction in situ, or by "forming" powders into the desired shape, sintering to form a solid body. Ceramic forming techniques include shaping by hand, slip casting, tape casting, injection molding, dry pressing, other variations. Noncrystalline ceramics, being glass, tend to be formed from melts; the glass is shaped when either molten, by casting, or when in a state of toffee-like viscosity, by methods such as blowing into a mold. If heat treatments cause this glass to become crystalline, the resulting material is known as a glass-ceramic used as cook-tops and as a glass composite material for nuclear waste disposal; the physical properties of any ceramic substance are a direct result of its crystalline structure and chemical composition.
Solid-state chemistry reveals the fundamental connection between microstructure and properties such as localized density variations, grain size distribution, type of porosity and second-phase content, which can all be correlated with ceramic properties such as mechanical strength σ by the Hall-Petch equation, toughness, dielectric constant, the optical properties exhibited by transparent materials. Ceramography is the art and science of preparation and evaluation of ceramic microstructures. Evaluation and characterization of ceramic microstructures is implemented on similar spatial scales to that used in the emerging field of nanotechnology: from tens of angstroms to tens of micrometers; this is somewhere between the minimum wavelength of visible light and the resolution limit of the naked eye. The microstructure includes most grains, secondary phases, grain boundaries, micro-
Igneous rock
Igneous rock, or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rock is formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava; the magma can be crust. The melting is caused by one or more of three processes: an increase in temperature, a decrease in pressure, or a change in composition. Solidification into rock occurs either below the surface as intrusive rocks or on the surface as extrusive rocks. Igneous rock may form with crystallization to form granular, crystalline rocks, or without crystallization to form natural glasses. Igneous rocks occur in a wide range of geological settings: shields, orogens, large igneous provinces, extended crust and oceanic crust. Igneous and metamorphic rocks make up 90–95% of the top 16 km of the Earth's crust by volume. Igneous rocks form about 15% of the Earth's current land surface. Most of the Earth's oceanic crust is made of igneous rock. Igneous rocks are geologically important because: their minerals and global chemistry give information about the composition of the mantle, from which some igneous rocks are extracted, the temperature and pressure conditions that allowed this extraction, and/or of other pre-existing rock that melted.
In terms of modes of occurrence, igneous rocks can be either extrusive. Intrusive igneous rocks make up the majority of igneous rocks and are formed from magma that cools and solidifies within the crust of a planet, surrounded by pre-existing rock; the mineral grains in such rocks can be identified with the naked eye. Intrusive rocks can be classified according to the shape and size of the intrusive body and its relation to the other formations into which it intrudes. Typical intrusive formations are batholiths, laccoliths and dikes; when the magma solidifies within the earth's crust, it cools forming coarse textured rocks, such as granite, gabbro, or diorite. The central cores of major mountain ranges consist of intrusive igneous rocks granite; when exposed by erosion, these cores may occupy huge areas of the Earth's surface. Intrusive igneous rocks that form at depth within the crust are termed plutonic rocks and are coarse-grained. Intrusive igneous rocks that form near the surface are termed subvolcanic or hypabyssal rocks and they are medium-grained.
Hypabyssal rocks are less common than plutonic or volcanic rocks and form dikes, laccoliths, lopoliths, or phacoliths. Extrusive igneous rocks known as volcanic rocks, are formed at the crust's surface as a result of the partial melting of rocks within the mantle and crust. Extrusive solidify quicker than intrusive igneous rocks, they are formed by the cooling of molten magma on the earth's surface. The magma, brought to the surface through fissures or volcanic eruptions, solidifies at a faster rate. Hence such rocks are smooth and fine-grained. Basalt is lava plateaus; some kinds of basalt solidify to form long polygonal columns. The Giant's Causeway in Antrim, Northern Ireland is an example; the molten rock, with or without suspended crystals and gas bubbles, is called magma. It rises; when magma reaches the surface from beneath water or air, it is called lava. Eruptions of volcanoes into air are termed subaerial, whereas those occurring underneath the ocean are termed submarine. Black smokers and mid-ocean ridge basalt are examples of submarine volcanic activity.
The volume of extrusive rock erupted annually by volcanoes varies with plate tectonic setting. Extrusive rock is produced in the following proportions: divergent boundary: 73% convergent boundary: 15% hotspot: 12%. Magma that erupts from a volcano behaves according to its viscosity, determined by temperature, crystal content and the amount of silica. High-temperature magma, most of, basaltic in composition, behaves in a manner similar to thick oil and, as it cools, treacle. Long, thin basalt flows with pahoehoe surfaces are common. Intermediate composition magma, such as andesite, tends to form cinder cones of intermingled ash and lava, may have a viscosity similar to thick, cold molasses or rubber when erupted. Felsic magma, such as rhyolite, is erupted at low temperature and is up to 10,000 times as viscous as basalt. Volcanoes with rhyolitic magma erupt explosively, rhyolitic lava flows are of limited extent and have steep margins, because the magma is so viscous. Felsic and intermediate magmas that erupt do so violently, with explosions driven by the release of dissolved gases—typically water vapour, but carbon dioxide.
Explosively erupted pyroclastic material is called tephra and includes tuff and ignimbrite. Fine volcanic ash is erupted and forms ash tuff deposits, which ca
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin abbreviated to pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China and to some extent in Taiwan. It is used to teach Standard Mandarin Chinese, 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, in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters; the pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang, based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese. It was published by revised several times; the International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as an international standard in 1982, was followed by the United Nations in 1986. The system was adopted as the official standard in Taiwan in 2009, where it is used for international events rather than for educational or computer-input purposes, but "some cities and organizations, notably in the south of Taiwan, did not accept this", so it remains one of several rival romanization systems in use.
The word Hànyǔ means'the spoken language of the Han people', while Pīnyīn means'spelled sounds'. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing; this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, issued his Xi Ru Ermu Zi at Hangzhou. Neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, 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, Fang Yizhi; 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 stunning effect of the kana syllabaries and Western learning there; 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 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, further improved by Herbert Giles in the Chinese–English Dictionary of 1892, it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. In the early 1930s, Communist Party of China leaders trained in Moscow introduced a phonetic alphabet using Roman letters, developed in the Soviet Oriental Institute of Leningrad and was intended to improve literacy in the Russian Far East; this Sin Wenz or "New Writing" was much more linguistically sophisticated than earlier alphabets, but with the major exception that it did not indicate tones of Chinese. In 1940, several thousand 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 Society's new journal.
Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Fo. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, some contemporary Chinese literature, a spectrum of textbooks. In 1940, the movement reached an apex when Mao's Border Region Government declared that the Sin Wenz had the same legal status as traditional characters in government and public documents. Many educators and political leaders looked forward to the day when they would be universally accepted and replace Chinese characters. Opposition arose, because the system was less well adapted to writing regional languages, therefore would require learning Mandarin. Sin Wenz fell into relative disuse during the following years. In 1943, the U. S. military engaged Yale University to develop a romanization of Mandarin Chinese for its pilots flying over China. The resulting system is close to pinyin, but does not use English letters in unfamiliar ways. Medial semivowels are written with y and w, apical vowels with r or z.
Accent marks are used to indicate tone. Pinyin was created by Chinese linguists, including Zhou Youguang, as part of a Chinese government project in the 1950s. Zhou is called "the father of pinyin," Zhou worked as a banker in New York when he decided to return to China to help rebuild the country after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, he became an economics professor in Shanghai, in 1955, when China's Ministry of Education created a Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language, Premier Zhou Enlai assigned Zhou Youguang the task of developing a new romanization system, despite the fact that he was not a professional linguist. Hanyu Pinyin was based on several existing systems: Gwoyeu Romatzyh of 1928, Latinxua Sin Wenz of 1931, the diacritic markings from zhuyin. "I'm not the father of pinyin," Zhou said years later. It's a lo
