1.
World Heritage Site
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A World Heritage Site is a landmark which has been officially recognized by the United Nations, specifically by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Sites are selected on the basis of having cultural, historical, scientific or some form of significance. UNESCO regards these sites as being important to the interests of humanity. The programme catalogues, names, and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common culture, under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund. The program was founded with the Convention Concerning the Protection of the Worlds Cultural and Natural Heritage, since then,192 state parties have ratified the convention, making it one of the most adhered to international instruments. As of July 2016,1052 sites are listed,814 cultural,203 natural, in 1959, the governments of Egypt and Sudan requested UNESCO to assist their countries to protect and rescue the endangered monuments and sites. In 1960, the Director-General of UNESCO launched an appeal to the Member States for an International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, the campaign, which ended in 1980, was considered a success. The project cost $80 million, about $40 million of which was collected from 50 countries, the projects success led to other safeguarding campaigns, saving Venice and its lagoon in Italy, the ruins of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, and the Borobodur Temple Compounds in Indonesia. UNESCO then initiated, with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, the United States initiated the idea of cultural conservation with nature conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed similar proposals in 1968, the Convention came into force on 17 December 1975. As of June 2016, it has been ratified by 192 states, including 188 UN member states plus the Cook Islands, the Holy See, Niue, a country must first list its significant cultural and natural sites, the result is called the Tentative List. A country may not nominate sites that have not been first included on the Tentative List, next, it can place sites selected from that list into a Nomination File. The Nomination File is evaluated by the International Council on Monuments and Sites and these bodies then make their recommendations to the World Heritage Committee. There are ten selection criteria – a site must meet at least one of them to be included on the list, up to 2004, there were six criteria for cultural heritage and four criteria for natural heritage. In 2005, this was modified so there is now only one set of ten criteria. Nominated sites must be of outstanding value and meet at least one of the ten criteria. Thus, the Geneva Convention treaty promulgates, Article 53, PROTECTION OF CULTURAL OBJECTS AND OF PLACES OF WORSHIP. There are 1,052 World Heritage Sites located in 165 States Party, of these,814 are cultural,203 are natural and 35 are mixed properties
2.
Lintong District
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Lintong District is one of nine districts of Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province, China. The Terracotta Army and the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor was discovered in March 1974 near this district and it was renamed to its present name in 2001. The name of the district comes from two rivers, lin river is on the east side and Tong river is on the west side of the district. Official website of Lintong District Government
3.
Shaanxi
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Shaanxi, formerly romanized as Shensi, is a province of the Peoples Republic of China. Officially part of the Northwest China region, it lies in central China, bordering the provinces of Shanxi, Henan, Hubei, Chongqing, Sichuan, Gansu, Ningxia and it covers an area of over 205,000 km2 with about 37 million people. Xian—which includes the sites of the former Chinese capitals Fenghao and Changan—is the provincial capital, Xianyang, which served as the Qin capital, is located nearby. The other prefecture-level cities into which the province is divided are Ankang, Baoji, Hanzhong, Shangluo, Tongchuan, Weinan, Yanan and Yulin. Shaanxi comprises the Wei Valley and much of the surrounding fertile Loess Plateau, stretching from the Qin Mountains and Shannan in the south to the Ordos Desert in the north. Along with areas of adjacent Shanxi and Henan, it formed the cradle of Chinese civilization, with its Guanzhong region sheltering the capitals of the Zhou, Qin, Han, Jin, Sui, and Tang dynasties. It does not include the territory of the Yellow Rivers Ordos Loop, with the Great Wall of China separating it from the grasslands. The name Shaanxi is a romanization of the Mandarin pronunciation of the Chinese name 陕西. Because the Mandarin pronunciation of Shaanxi and its eastern neighbor Shanxi differ only in tone, the Peoples Republic of China therefore adopted the special official spelling Shaanxi for occasions when such marks are omitted. The first syllable is derived from Gwoyeu Romatzyh romanization, which reflects the tones of the vowels in their spelling. The second syllable—which would be shi in Gwoyeu Romatzyh—is instead given its usual pinyin spelling xi, when tone marks are noted, it is spelled Shǎnxī rather than Shǎanxī or Shaǎnxī. Shaanxi is considered one of the cradles of Chinese civilization, thirteen feudal dynasties established their capitals in the province during a span of more than 1,100 years, from the Zhou Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty. Under the Han Dynasty, the Northern Silk Road was expanded to advance exploration and this Northern Silk Road is the northernmost of the Silk Roads and is about 2,600 kilometres in length. It connected the ancient Chinese capital of Xian to the west over the Wushao Ling Pass to Wuwei, under the Ming dynasty, Shaanxi was incorporated into Gansu but was again separated in the Qing dynasty. One of the most devastating earthquakes in history occurred near Hua Shan, in part of Shaanxi Province on January 23,1556. The end of the short-lived Jiangxi Soviet signalled the beginning of the Long March by Mao Zedong, the Lantian Man site, with hominin fossils of one million years ago, was found in Lantian County in northwestern Shaanxi province, near the city of Xian. Scientists classify Lantian Man as a subspecies of Homo erectus, the fossils are displayed at the Shaanxi History Museum, Xian, China. In between the Loess Plateau and the Qinling lies the Wei River Valley, or Guanzhong, a cradle of early Chinese civilization, going clockwise, Shaanxi borders Shanxi, Henan, Hubei, Chongqing, Sichuan, Gansu, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
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
6.
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
7.
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
8.
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
9.
Cantonese
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Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a variety of Chinese spoken in the city of Guangzhou in southeastern China. It is the prestige variety of Yue, one of the major subdivisions of Chinese. In mainland China, it is the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong and some neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. In Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese serves as one of their official languages and it is also spoken amongst overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and throughout the Western World. When Cantonese and the closely related Yuehai dialects are classified together, Cantonese is viewed as vital part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swathes of southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau. Although Cantonese shares some vocabulary with Mandarin, the two varieties are mutually unintelligible because of differences in pronunciation, grammar and lexicon, sentence structure, in particular the placement of verbs, sometimes differs between the two varieties. This results in the situation in which a Cantonese and a Mandarin text may look similar, in English, the term Cantonese is ambiguous. Cantonese proper is the variety native to the city of Canton and this narrow sense may be specified as Canton language or Guangzhou language in English. However, Cantonese may also refer to the branch of Cantonese that contains Cantonese proper as well as Taishanese and Gaoyang. In this article, Cantonese is used for Cantonese proper, historically, speakers called this variety Canton speech or Guangzhou speech, although this term is now seldom used outside mainland China. In Guangdong province, people call it provincial capital speech or plain speech. In Hong Kong and Macau, as well as among overseas Chinese communities, in mainland China, the term Guangdong speech is also increasingly being used among both native and non-native speakers. Due to its status as a prestige dialect among all the dialects of the Cantonese or Yue branch of Chinese varieties, the official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English, as defined in the Hong Kong Basic Law. The Chinese language has different varieties, of which Cantonese is one. Given the traditional predominance of Cantonese within Hong Kong, it is the de facto official spoken form of the Chinese language used in the Hong Kong Government and all courts and it is also used as the medium of instruction in schools, alongside English. A similar situation exists in neighboring Macau, where Chinese is an official language along with Portuguese. As in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominant spoken variety of Chinese used in life and is thus the official form of Chinese used in the government. The variant spoken in Hong Kong and Macau is known as Hong Kong Cantonese, Cantonese first developed around the port city of Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta region of southeastern China
10.
Jyutping
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Jyutping is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, an academic group, in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanisation Scheme, the LSHK promotes the use of this romanisation system. The name Jyutping is a contraction consisting of the first Chinese characters of the terms Jyut6jyu5, only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables. ^ ^ ^ Referring to the pronunciation of these words. There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese, however, as three of the nine are entering tones, which only appear in syllables ending with p, t, and k, they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping. Jyutping and the Yale Romanisation of Cantonese represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they differ in the following, The vowels eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping, the initial j represents /j/ in Jyutping whereas y is used instead in Yale. The initial z represents /ts/ in Jyutping whereas j is used instead in Yale, the initial c represents /tsʰ/ in Jyutping whereas ch is used instead in Yale. In Jyutping, if no consonant precedes the vowel yu, then the initial j is appended before the vowel, in Yale, the corresponding initial y is never appended before yu under any circumstances. Jyutping defines three finals not in Yale, eu /ɛːu/, em /ɛːm/, and ep /ɛːp/ and these three finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6, lem2, and gep6. To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in Jyutping whereas Yale traditionally uses tone marks together with the letter h. Jyutping and Cantonese Pinyin represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they have differences, The vowel oe represents both /ɵ/ and /œː/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping. The vowel y represents /y/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas both yu and i are used in Jyutping, the initial dz represents /ts/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas z is used instead in Jyutping. The initial ts represents /tsʰ/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas c is used instead in Jyutping. To represent tones, the numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in Cantonese Pinyin, however, only the numbers 1 to 6 are used in Jyutping
11.
Southern Min
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Southern Min, or Minnan, is a branch of Min Chinese spoken in certain parts of China including southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and southern Zhejiang, and in Taiwan. The Min Nan dialects are spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia. In common parlance, Southern Min usually refers to Hokkien, including Amoy and Taiwanese Hokkien, the Southern Min dialect group also includes Teochew, though Teochew has limited mutual intelligibility with Hokkien. Hainanese is not mutually intellgible with other Southern Min and is considered a separate branch of Min. Southern Min is not mutually intelligible with Eastern Min, Pu-Xian Min, any other Min branch, Hakka, Cantonese, Shanghainese or Mandarin. Southern Min dialects are spoken in the part of Fujian. The variant spoken in Leizhou, Guangdong as well as Hainan is Hainanese and is not mutually intelligible with other Southern Min or Teochew, Hainanese is classified in some schemes as part of Southern Min and in other schemes as separate. Puxian Min was originally based on the Quanzhou dialect, but over time became heavily influenced by Eastern Min, eventually losing intellegility with Minnan. A forms of Southern Min spoken in Taiwan, collectively known as Taiwanese, Southern Min is a first language for most of the Hoklo people, the main ethnicity of Taiwan. The correspondence between language and ethnicity is not absolute, as some Hoklo have very limited proficiency in Southern Min while some non-Hoklo speak Southern Min fluently, there are many Southern Min speakers also among Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Many ethnic Chinese immigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian and brought the language to what is now Burma, Indonesia and present-day Malaysia and Singapore. In general, Southern Min from southern Fujian is known as Hokkien, Hokkienese, many Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese also originated in the Chaoshan region of Guangdong and speak Teochew language, the variant of Southern Min from that region. Southern Min-speakers form the majority of Chinese in Singapore, with the largest group being Hokkien, despite the similarities the two groups are rarely seen as part of the same Minnan Chinese subgroups. The variants of Southern Min spoken in Zhejiang province are most akin to that spoken in Quanzhou, the variants spoken in Taiwan are similar to the three Fujian variants and are collectively known as Taiwanese. Those Southern Min variants that are known as Hokkien in Southeast Asia also originate from these variants. The variants of Southern Min in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong province are known as Teochew or Chaozhou. Teochew is of importance in the Southeast Asian Chinese diaspora, particularly in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sumatra. The Philippines variant is mostly from the Quanzhou area as most of their forefathers are from the aforementioned area, the Southern Min language variant spoken around Shanwei and Haifeng differs markedly from Teochew and may represent a later migration from Zhangzhou
12.
Taiwanese Romanization System
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The Taiwanese Romanization System is a transcription system for Taiwanese Hokkien. It is derived from Pe̍h-ōe-jī and since 2006 has been promoted by Taiwans Ministry of Education. It is nearly identical to Taiwanese Language Phonetic Alphabet Romanization for Hakka apart from using ts tsh j instead of c ch j for the fricatives /ts tsʰ dz/, Taiwanese Romanization System uses 16 basic Latin letters,7 digraphs and a trigraph. In addition, it uses 6 diacritics to represent tones, nn is only used after a vowel to express nasalization, so it has no capital letter. Palatalization occurs when J, S, Ts, Tsh followed by i, so Ji, Si, Tsi, of the 10 unused basic Latin letters, R is sometimes used to express dialectal vowels, while the others are only used in loanwords. O pronounced ㄜ in general dialect in Kaohsiung and Tainan, ㄛ in Taipei, -nn forms the nasal vowels There is also syllabic m and ng. ing pronounced, ik pronounced. A hyphen links elements of a compound word, a double hyphen indicates that the following syllable has a neutral tone and therefore that the preceding syllable does not undergo tone sandhi. 臺灣閩南語羅馬拼音及其發音學習網, Taiwanese Romanization System learning site by Ministry of Education, Taiwan
13.
Terracotta
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Terracotta, terra cotta or terra-cotta, a type of earthenware, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic, where the fired body is porous. The term is used to refer to the natural, brownish orange color, of most terracotta. This article covers the senses of terracotta as a medium in sculpture, as in the Terracotta Army and Greek terracotta figurines, asian and European sculpture in porcelain is not covered. Glazed architectural terracotta and its version as exterior surfaces for buildings were used in Asia for some centuries before becoming popular in the West in the 19th century. In archaeology and art history, terracotta is used to describe objects such as figurines not made on a potters wheel. An appropriate refined clay is formed to the desired shape, after drying it is placed in a kiln or atop combustible material in a pit, and then fired. The typical firing temperature is around 1,000 °C, though it may be as low as 600 °C in historic and archaeological examples. In some contexts, such as Roman figurines, white-colored terracotta is known as pipeclay, as such clays were later preferred for tobacco pipes, fired terracotta is not watertight, but surface-burnishing the body before firing can decrease its porousness and a layer of glaze can make it watertight. It is suitable for use below ground to carry pressurized water, for garden pots or building decoration in many environments, most other uses, such as for tableware, sanitary piping, or building decoration in freezing environments, require the material to be glazed. Terracotta, if uncracked, will ring if lightly struck, painted terracotta is typically first covered with a thin coat of gesso, then painted. It has been widely used but the paint is only suitable for indoor positions and is much less durable than fired colors in or under a ceramic glaze. Terracotta sculpture was rarely left in its raw fired state in the West until the 18th century. Terracotta/earthenware was the known type of ceramic produced by Western and pre-Columbian people until the 14th century. Terracotta has been used throughout history for sculpture and pottery as well as for bricks, in ancient times, the first clay sculptures were dried in the sun after being formed. They were later placed in the ashes of open hearths to harden, however, only after firing to high temperature would it be classed as a ceramic material. Terracotta female figurines were uncovered by archaeologists in excavations of Mohenjo-daro, along with phallus-shaped stones, these suggest some sort of fertility cult and a belief in a mother goddess. The Burney Relief is a terracotta plaque from Ancient Mesopotamia of about 1950 BC. In Mesoamerica, the majority of Olmec figurines were in terracotta
14.
Qin Shi Huang
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Qin Shi Huang was the founder of the Qin dynasty and was the first emperor of a unified China. He was born Ying Zheng or Zhao Zheng, a prince of the state of Qin. He became the King Zheng of Qin when he was thirteen, then Chinas first emperor when he was 38 after the Qin had conquered all of the other Warring States and unified all of China in 221 BC. Rather than maintain the title of king borne by the previous Shang and Zhou rulers and his self-invented title emperor, as indicated by his use of the word First, would continue to be borne by Chinese rulers for the next two millennia. Qin Shi Huang also worked with his minister Li Si to enact major economic and he is traditionally said to have banned and burned many books and executed scholars, though a closer examination renders the account doubtful. In ancient China however the naming convention differed, and Zhao may be used as the surname, the rulers of Qin had styled themselves kings from the time of King Huiwen in 325 BC. Upon his ascension, Zheng became known as the King of Qin or King Zheng of Qin and this title made him the nominal equal of the rulers of Shang and of Zhou, the last of whose kings had been deposed by King Zhaoxiang of Qin in 256 BC. Following the surrender of Qi in 221 BC, King Zheng had reunited all of the lands of the former Kingdom of Zhou, rather than maintain his rank as king, however, he created a new title of huángdì for himself. This new title combined two titles—huáng of the mythical Three Sovereigns and the dì of the legendary Five Emperors of Chinese prehistory. King Zheng chose the new name of First Emperor on the understanding that his successors would be successively titled the Second Emperor, Third Emperor. The new title carried religious overtones, for that reason, Sinologists—starting with Peter Boodberg or Edward Schafer—sometimes translate it as thearch and the First Emperor as the First Thearch. The First Emperor intended that his realm would remain intact through the ages but, following its overthrow and replacement by Han after his death, following his elevation as emperor, both Zhengs personal name 政 and possibly its homophone 正 became taboo. The First Emperor also arrogated the first-person Chinese pronoun 朕 for his exclusive use, others were to address him as Your Majesty in person and Your Highness in writing. According to the Records of the Grand Historian, written by Sima Qian during the Han dynasty, the first emperor was the eldest son of the Qin prince Yiren, who later became King Zhuangxiang of Qin. Prince Yiren at that time was residing at the court of Zhao, Prince Yiren had fallen in love at first sight with a concubine of Lü Buwei, a rich merchant from the State of Wey. Lü consented for her to be Yirens wife, who became known as Lady Zhao after the state of Zhao. Lü Buweis machinations later helped Yiren become King Zhuangxiang of Qin in 250 BC, however, the Records of the Grand Historian also claimed that the first emperor was not the actual son of Prince Yiren but that of Lü Buwei. According to translations of the Annals of Lü Buwei, Zhao Ji gave birth to the emperor in the city of Handan in 259 BC
15.
Emperor of China
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The emperor was also referred to as the Son of Heaven, a title that predates the Qin unification and recognized as the ruler of all under heaven. In practice not every Emperor held supreme power in China, although this was usually the case, Emperors from the same family are classified in historical periods known as dynasties. During the Yuan and Qing dynasties China was ruled by ethnic Mongols, the orthodox historical view sees these as non-native dynasties that became sinicized, though some recent scholars argue that the interaction between politics and ethnicity was far more complex. Nevertheless, in both cases these rulers claimed the Mandate of Heaven to assume the role of traditional Confucian emperors in order to rule over China proper and he called himself Shi Huangdi, the First Emperor. In the 3rd century BC, the two titles had not previously been used together, on that account, some modern scholars translate the title as thearch. On occasion, the father of the emperor was still alive. Such an emperor was titled the Tai Shang Huang, the Grand Imperial Sire, the practice was initiated by the First Emperor, who gave the title as a posthumous name to his own father. Liu Bang, who established the Han dynasty, was the first to become emperor while his father yet lived and it was said he granted the title during his fathers life because he would not be bowed to by his own father, a commoner. Owing to political fragmentation, over the centuries, it has not been uncommon to have numerous claimants to the title of Emperor of All China, the Chinese political concept of the Mandate of Heaven essentially legitimized those claimants who emerged victorious. Thus, Kublai Khan was simultaneously Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor of China, on one count, from the Qin dynasty to the Qing dynasty, there were 557 emperors including the rulers of minor states. The Emperors words were considered sacred edicts and his written proclamations directives from above, in theory, the Emperors orders were to be obeyed immediately. He was elevated above all commoners, nobility and members of the Imperial family, addresses to the Emperor were always to be formal and self-deprecatory, even by the closest of family members. In practice, however, the power of the emperor varied between different emperors and different dynasties and these emperors ruled as absolute monarchs throughout their reign, maintaining a centralized grip on the country. During the Song dynasty, the power was significantly overshadowed by the power of the chancellor. The emperors position, unless deposed in a rebellion, was always hereditary, as a result, many emperors ascended the throne while still children. During these minorities, the Empress Dowager would possess significant power, where Empresses Dowager were too weak to assume power, court officials often seized control. Court eunuchs had a significant role in the structure, as emperors often relied on a few of them as confidants. In a few places, eunuchs wielded vast power, one of the most powerful eunuchs in Chinese history was Wei Zhongxian during the Ming dynasty, occasionally, other nobles seized power as regents
16.
Funerary art
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Funerary art is any work of art forming, or placed in, a repository for the remains of the dead. The term also encompasses cenotaphs, tomb-like monuments which do not contain human remains, and communal memorials to the dead, funerary art may serve many cultural functions. The deposit of objects with an apparent aesthetic intention is found in almost all cultures—Hindu culture, an important factor in the development of traditions of funerary art is the division between what was intended to be visible to visitors or the public after completion of the funeral ceremonies. A similar division can be seen in grand East Asian tombs, in other cultures, nearly all the art connected with the burial, except for limited grave goods, was intended for later viewing by the public or at least those admitted by the custodians. In these cultures, traditions such as the sarcophagus and tomb monument of the Greek and Roman empires. The mausoleum intended for visiting was the grandest type of tomb in the classical world, Tomb is a general term for any repository for human remains, while grave goods are other objects which have been placed within the tomb. Such objects may include the personal possessions of the deceased, objects created for the burial. Knowledge of many cultures is drawn largely from these sources. A tumulus, mound, kurgan, or long barrow covered important burials in many cultures, a mausoleum is a building erected mainly as a tomb, taking its name from the Mausoleum of Mausolus at Halicarnassus. Stele is a term for erect stones that are often what are now called gravestones, ship burials are mostly found in coastal Europe, while chariot burials are found widely across Eurasia. Catacombs, of which the most famous examples are those in Rome, a large group of burials with traces remaining above ground can be called a necropolis, if there are no such visible structures, it is a grave field. A cenotaph is a memorial without a burial, particularly influential in this regard was John Weevers Ancient Funerall Monuments, the first full-length book to be dedicated to the subject of tomb memorials and epitaphs. Others, however, have found this distinction rather pedantic, related genres of commemorative art for the dead take many forms, such as the moai figures of Easter Island, apparently a type of sculpted ancestor portrait, though hardly individualized. These are common in cultures as diverse as Ancient Rome and China, many cultures have psychopomp figures, such as the Greek Hermes and Etruscan Charun, who help conduct the spirits of the dead into the afterlife. Most of humanitys oldest known archaeological constructions are tombs, mostly megalithic, the earliest instances date to within a few centuries of each other, yet show a wide diversity of form and purpose. Tombs in the Iberian peninsula have been dated through thermoluminescence to c.4510 BCE, and some burials at the Carnac stones in Brittany also date back to the fifth millennium BCE. The commemorative value of burial sites are indicated by the fact that, at some stage, they became elevated. This effect was achieved by encapsulating a single corpse in a basic pit, surrounded by an elaborate ditch
17.
Xi'an
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Xian, formerly romanized as Sian, and also known as Changan before the Ming dynasty, is the capital of Shaanxi Province, Peoples Republic of China. It is a city located in the center of the Guanzhong Plain in Northwest China. Xian is the point of the Silk Road and home to the Terracotta Army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Xian currently holds sub-provincial status, administering 9 districts and 4 counties, as of 2015 Xian has a population of 8,705,600 and the Xian-Xianyang metropolitan area has a population of 13,569,700. It is the most populous city in Northwest China, as well as one of the three most populous cities in Western China. According to a July 2012 report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, it was named as one of the 13 emerging megacities, or megalopolises. The report pinpoints and highlights the demographic and income trends that are shaping these cities development, the two Chinese characters 西安 in the name Xian mean Western Peace. It was renamed Changan during the Han dynasty, although it was referred to as Xijing during the Eastern Han dynasty after the capital was relocated to Luoyang in the east. It changed to Daxing in 581 AD during the Sui dynasty, during the Yuan dynasty, the city was first given the name Fengyuan, followed by Anxi then Jingzhao. It finally became Xian in 1369 at the time of the Ming dynasty and this name remained until 1928, then in 1930 it was renamed Xijing, or western capital. The citys name once again reverted to its Ming-era designation of Xian in 1943, Xian currently does not have a widely accepted one-character abbreviation as many other Chinese cities do, possibly due to fact that it was historically called Jing or Du, both meaning the capital. Several suggested abbreviations include Feng, Hao, or Tang, Xian has rich and culturally significant history. The Lantian Man was discovered in 1963 in Lantian County,50 km southeast of Xian, the site is now home to the Xian Banpo Museum, built in 1957 to preserve the archaeological collection. Xian became a cultural and political centre of China in the 11th century BC with the founding of the Zhou dynasty, the capital of Zhou was established in the twin settlements of Fengjing and Haojing, together known as Fenghao, located southwest of contemporary Xian. The settlement was known as Zhōngzhōu to indicate its role as the capital of the vassal states. In 770 BC, the capital was moved to Luoyang due to political unrest, following the Warring States period, China was unified under the Qin dynasty for the first time, with the capital located at Xianyang, just northwest of modern Xian. The first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang ordered the construction of the Terracotta Army and his mausoleum just to the east of Xian almost immediately after his ascension to the throne. In 202 BC, the founding emperor Liu Bang of the Han dynasty established his capital in Changan County, his first palace and this is traditionally regarded as the founding date of Changan, or Xian
18.
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
19.
Chariots in ancient China
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The ancient Chinese chariot was used as an attack and pursuit vehicle on the open fields and plains of Ancient China from around 1200 BCE. Chariots also allowed military commanders a mobile platform from which to control troops while providing archers and soldiers armed with dagger-axes increased mobility and they reached a peak of importance during the Spring and Autumn period, but were largely superseded by cavalry in the Han Dynasty. Traditional sources attribute the invention of the chariot to the Xia dynasty minister Xi Zhong, however archeological evidence shows that small scale use of the chariot began around 1200 BCE in the late Shang dynasty. Contemporary oracle bone inscriptions of the character 車 depict a chariot-like two wheeled vehicle with a pole for the attachment of horses. General Wei Qings army, setting off from Dingxiang, encountered the Xiongnu Chanyus army of 80,000 cavalry, Wei Qing ordered his troops to arrange heavy-armoured chariots in a ring formation, creating mobile fortresses. At the front end of the pole there was a horizontal draw-bar about one metere long with wooden yokes attached, to which the horses would be harnessed. Wooden wheels with a diameter of between approximately 1.2 -1.4 m were mounted on a three meter long axle and secured at each end with a bronze hubcap. Wheels of the Shang period usually had 18 spokes, but those of the Zhou period numbered from 18 to 26, chariot wheels of the Spring and Autumn period had between 25 and 28 spokes. The carriage body was one metre long and 0.8 metres wide with wooden walls. With the arrival of the Spring and Autumn period improvements had made to the chariot’s design. The angle of the curved draw pole had increased raising the end of the pole and this reduced the amount of effort required by the horse pulling the chariot and increased its speed. The width of the body had also increased to around 1.5 m allowing soldiers greater freedom of movement. Key components such as the pole, hubcap and yoke were reinforced with decorated copper castings and these chariots were variously referred to as “gold chariots”, “attack chariots” or “weapons chariots”. Examples of the engineering involved included the use of sophisticated spoked wheels. Thus the so-called war chariot was only for war, for hunting. Usually a chariot carried three armored warriors with different tasks, one, known as the charioteer was responsible for driving, a second, the róngyòu, whose role was short range defence, made up the third member of the crew. Weapons carried on the chariot consisted of close-combat and long range weapons, the most important close-combat weapon aboard the chariot was the dagger-axe or gē, a weapon with a roughly three meter shaft. At the end of the device there was a sharp dagger on one side
20.
Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor
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The Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor is located in Lintong District, Xian, Shaanxi province of China. This mausoleum was constructed over 38 years, from 246 to 208 BC, the layout of the mausoleum is modeled on the Qin capital Xianyang, divided into inner and outer cities. The circumference of the city is 2.5 km. The tomb is located in the southwest of the inner city, the main tomb chamber housing the coffin and burial artifacts is the core of the architectural complex of the mausoleum. The tomb itself has not yet been excavated, archaeological explorations currently concentrate on various sites of the extensive necropolis surrounding the tomb, including the Terracotta Army to the east of the tomb mound. The Terracotta Army served as a garrison to the mausoleum and has yet to be completely excavated, when the First Emperor first came to the throne, the digging and preparation work began at Mount Li. Later, when he had unified his empire,700,000 men were sent there from all over his empire and they dug through three layers of groundwater, and poured in bronze for the outer coffin. Palaces and scenic towers for a hundred officials were constructed, craftsmen were ordered to make crossbows and arrows primed to shoot at anyone who enters the tomb. Mercury was used to simulate the hundred rivers, the Yangtze and Yellow River, and the great sea, above were representation of the heavenly constellations, below, the features of the land. Candles were made from fat of man-fish, which is calculated to burn and not extinguish for a long time. The Second Emperor said, It would be inappropriate for the concubines of the emperor who have no sons to be out free, ordered that they should accompany the dead. After the burial, it was suggested that it would be a serious breach if the craftsmen who constructed the mechanical devices, trees and vegetations were then planted on the tomb mound such that it resembles a hill. Some scholars believe that the claim of having dug through three layers of groundwater to be figurative and it is also uncertain what the man-fish in the text refers to, interpretation of the term varies from whale to walrus and other aquatic animals such as giant salamander. Before the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor was completed, a peasant rebellion broke out during the late Qin dynasty, zhang Han redeployed all the 700,000 people building the mausoleum to suppress the rebellion, so the construction of the mausoleum ceased. After Xiang Yu entered Xianyang, he is said to have looted the tomb, afterwards, it is said that a shepherd unintentionally burnt down the underground palace of the mausoleum. The story goes that he went into a cave of the mausoleum, dug by Xiang Yu, to look for his sheep with a torch in his hand, and a fire was started, burning away all the remaining tomb structures. No solid evidence of this has found, and some scholars think that the mausoleum did not suffer any large-scale destruction. In 1987, the mausoleum, including the Terracotta Warriors, were listed as World Heritage Sites, at a depth of around two meters, they found hardened dirt, then red earthenware, fragments of terracotta, bronze arrowheads and terracotta bricks
21.
Court (royal)
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The court of a monarch, or at some periods an important nobleman, is a term for the extended household and all those who regularly attended on the ruler or central figure. It can also refer to the residence of the monarch where the court resides or a series of complexes. In the largest courts, the households, many thousands of individuals comprised the court. Foreign princes and foreign nobility in exile may also seek refuge at a court and this is shown above Near Eastern and Eastern courts often included the harem and concubines as well as eunuchs who fulfilled a variety of functions. At times the harem was walled off and separate from the rest of the residence of the monarch, in Asia concubines were often a more visible part of the court. Lower ranking servants and bodyguards were not properly called courtiers though may be included as part of the court or royal household in the broadest definition, entertainers and others may have been counted as part of the court. A royal household is the highest ranking example of this, a group of individuals dependent on the patronage of a great man, classically in ancient Rome, forms part of the system of clientage that is discussed under vassal. Individual rulers differed greatly in tastes and interests, as well as in political skills, accordingly, some founded elaborate courts based on new palaces, only to have their successors retreat to remote castles or to practical administrative centers. Personal retreats might arise far away from official court centres, etiquette and hierarchy flourish in highly structured court settings, and may leave conservative traces over generations. Most courts featured a strict order of precedence often involving royal and noble ranks, orders of chivalry, some courts even featured court uniforms. One of the markers of a court is ceremony. Most monarchal courts included ceremonies concerning the investiture or coronation of the monarch, some courts had ceremonies around the waking and the sleeping of the monarch called a levée. Orders of chivalry as honorific orders became an important part of court culture starting in the 15th century and they were the right of the monarch to create and grant as the fount of honour. Two of the earliest titles referring to the concept of a courtier were likely the ša rēsi, the imperial court of the Byzantine Empire at Constantinople would eventually contain at least a thousand courtiers. The courts systems became prevalent in other such as those in the Balkan states, the Ottoman Empire. Byzantinism is a term that was coined for this spread of the Byzantine system in the 19th century, however, by the Sui Dynasty the functions of the royal household and the imperial government were clearly divided. During the Heian period, Japanese Emperors and their families developed an exquisitely refined court that played an important role in their culture. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, a court culture can be recognized in the entourage of the Ostrogoth Theodoric the Great
22.
Acrobatics
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Acrobatics is the performance of extraordinary feats of balance, agility, and motor coordination. It can be found in many of the arts, sports events. Although acrobatics is most commonly associated with human performance, it may also apply to other types of performance. Acrobatic traditions are found in cultures, and there is evidence that the earliest such traditions occurred thousands of years ago. For example, Minoan art from c.2000 BC contains depictions of acrobatic feats on the backs of bulls, ancient Greeks and Romans practiced acrobatics, and the noble court displays of the European Middle Ages would often include acrobatic performances that included juggling. In China, acrobatics have been a part of the culture since the Western Han Dynasty, acrobatics were part of village harvest festivals. Acrobatics continues to be an important part of modern Chinese variety art, though the term initially applied to tightrope walking, in the 19th century, a form of performance art including circus acts began to use the term as well. In the late 19th century, tumbling and other acrobatic and gymnastic activities became competitive sport in Europe, acrobatics has often served as a subject for fine art. An aerialist is an acrobat who performs in the air, on a suspended apparatus such as a trapeze, rope, cloud swing, aerial cradle, aerial pole, aerial silk, acrobatic gymnastics Contortion List of acrobatic activities
23.
Sima Qian
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Sima Qian, formerly romanized Ssu-ma Chien, was a Chinese historian of the Han dynasty. Sima Qian was born at Xiayang in Zuopingyi around 145 BC, Simas precise year of birth is still debated, but it is generally agreed that he lived most of his life during the reign of the Emperor Wu whose long reign lasted from 141-87 BC. His father, Sima Tan, around 136 BC received an appointment to the relatively low-ranking position of grand historian. The grand historians primary duty was to formulate the yearly calendar, identifying which days were ritually auspicious or inauspicious, and present it to the emperor prior to New Years Day. Besides these duties, the historian was also to travel with the emperor for important rituals. By his account, by the age of ten Sima was able to read the old writings and was considered to be a promising scholar, Sima grew up in a Confucian environment, and Sima always regarded his historical work as an act of Confucian filial piety to his father. In 126 BC, around the age of twenty, Sima Qian began a tour around China as it existed in the Han dynasty. He then went to seek the place of the legendary Xia dynasty rulers Yu on Mount Kuaiji. He then went north to Huaiyin to see the grave of Han dynasty general Han Xin, then continued north to Qufu, the hometown of Confucius, where he studied ritual and other traditional subjects. After his travels, Sima was chosen to be a Palace Attendant in the government, Sima married young and had one daughter. In 110 BC, at the age of thirty-five, Sima Qian was sent westward on an expedition against some barbarian tribes. That year, his father ill and could not attend the Imperial Feng Sacrifice. Suspecting his time was running out, he summoned his son home to complete the historical work he had begun. Sima Tan wanted to follow the Annals of Spring and Autumn - the first chronicle in the history of Chinese literature, fueled by his fathers inspiration, Sima Qian started to compile Shiji, which became known in English as the Records of the Grand Historian, in 109 BC. Three years after the death of his father, Sima Qian assumed his fathers position as Court Astrologer. In 105 BC, Sima was among the chosen to reform the calendar. As a senior official, Sima was also in the position to offer counsel to the emperor on general affairs of state. In 99 BC, Sima Qian became embroiled in the Li Ling affair, Emperor Wu attributed the defeat to Li Ling, with all government officials subsequently condemning him for it
24.
Shiji
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The work covers the world as it was then known to the Chinese and a 2500-year period from the age of the legendary Yellow Emperor to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in the authors own time. The Records has been called a text in Chinese civilization. After Confucius and the First Emperor of Qin, Sima Qian was one of the creators of Imperial China, not least because by providing definitive biographies, the Records set the model for the 24 subsequent dynastic histories of China. The work that became Records of the Grand Historian was begun by Sima Tan, after his death in 110 BC, it was continued and completed by his son and successor Sima Qian, who is generally credited as the works author. Sima Qian is known to have completed the Records before his death in c.86 BC, with one copy residing in the capital of Changan. Details regarding the Records early reception and circulation are not well known, beginning in the Northern and Southern dynasties and the Tang dynasty, a number of scholars wrote and edited commentaries to the Records. Most 1st millennium editions of the Records include the commentaries of Pei Yin, Sima Zhen, the primary modern edition of the Records is the Zhonghua Book Company edition of 1959, and is based on an edition prepared by the Chinese historian Gu Jiegang in the early 1930s. There are two known surviving fragments of Records manuscripts from before the Tang dynasty, both of which are preserved in the Ishiyama-dera temple in Ōtsu, Japan, a number of woodblock printed editions of the Records survive, the earliest of which date to the Song dynasty. In all, the Records is about 526,000 Chinese characters long, making it four times longer than Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War, Sima Qian conceived and composed his work in self-contained units, with a good deal of repetition between them. His manuscript was written on bamboo slips with about 24 to 36 characters each, even after the manuscript was allowed to circulate or be copied, the work would have circulated as bundles of bamboo slips or small groups. Endymion Wilkinson calculates that there were probably between 466 and 700 bundles, whose total weight would have been 88–132 pounds, which would have been difficult to access, later copies on silk would have been much lighter, but also expensive and rare. Until the work was transferred to many centuries later, circulation would have been difficult and piecemeal. Sima Qian organized the chapters of Records of the Grand Historian into five categories, the first five cover either periods, such as the Five Emperors, or individual dynasties, such as the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties. The last seven cover individual rulers, starting with the First Emperor of Qin, Tables Chapters 13 to 22 are the Tables, which are one genealogical table and nine other chronological tables. Each table except the last one begins with an introduction to the period it covers, Hereditary Houses The Hereditary Houses is the second largest of the five Records sections, and comprises chapters 31 to 60. Within this section, the chapters are very different in nature than the later chapters. Many of the chapters are chronicle-like accounts of the leading states of the Zhou dynasty, such as the states of Qin and Lu. The later chapters, which cover the Han dynasty, contain biographies, Ranked Biographies The Ranked Biographies is the largest of the five Records sections, covering chapters 61 to 130, and accounts for 42% of the entire work
25.
Commentary on the Water Classic
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The book is divided into sections by river, each described with its source, course, and major tributaries, including cultural and historical notes. The work is much expanded from its text, the older Water Classic. The original text described 137 different rivers in China and was credited to Sang Qin during the Han dynasty. Qing-dynasty scholars gave it a date because of the names of the counties and commanderies. Its authorship was attributed to Jin Dynasty scholar Guo Pu. Li Daoyuans 40-volume,300, 000-character version includes 1252 rivers, although very thorough for its time, it did repeat the earlier mistake of the Tribute of Yu in viewing the Min as the headwaters of the Yangtze. It was not until the Ming dynasty that Xu Xiake correctly listed the Jinsha as the principal source, science and Civilization in China, Volume 3. Inscribed Landscapes, Travel Writing from Imperial China, university of California Press, Berkeley, Calif. 1994 Cihai, Shanghai cishu chubanshe, Shanghai 2002, ISBN 7-5326-0839-5 Chinese Literature, Shuijingzhu 水經注 Commentary to the River Classic at China Knowledge Unter dem Himmel
26.
Xiang Yu
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Xiang Ji, courtesy name Yu, better known as Xiang Yu, was a prominent warlord in the late Qin dynasty. A noble of Xiaxiang, Xiang Yu was granted the title of Duke of Lu by King Huai II of the insurgent Chu state in 208 BC. The following year, he led the forces to victory at the Battle of Julu against the Qin armies led by Zhang Han. He engaged Liu Bang, the emperor of the Han dynasty, in a long struggle for power, known as the Chu–Han Contention. He committed suicide at the bank of the Wu River, Xiang Yus family name was Xiang while his given name was Ji and his courtesy name was Yu. He is best known as Xiang Yu and this title is sometimes simplified to Ba Wang, without the link to Western Chu. Since Xiang Yus death, the term Ba Wang has come to be used specifically to refer to him, Xiang Yus subjects sometimes address him as Xiang Wang, which literally means King Xiang. There are two accounts of Xiang Yus family background, the first claimed that Xiang Yu was from the house of Mi, the royal family of the Chu state in the Zhou dynasty. His ancestors were granted the land of Xiang by the king of Chu and had since adopted Xiang as their family name. The other account claimed that Xiang Yu was a descendant of a clan from the Lu state. Xiang Yus grandfather Xiang Yan was a well known general who led the Chu army in resisting the Qin invaders led by Wang Jian, Xiang Yu was born in 232 BC in the late Warring States period when the Qin state started unifying the other six major states. According to the descendants of the Xiang family in Suqian, Xiang Yus father was Xiang Chao, Xiang Yu was raised by his elder uncle Xiang Liang because his father died early. In 221 BC, when Xiang Yu was about 11 years old, Xiang Yu had a double pupil in one of his eyes just like the mythical Emperor Shun and Duke Wen of Jin. He was thus seen as a person because his unique double pupil was a mark of a king or sage in Chinese tradition. Xiang Yu was slightly taller than eight chi and possessed physical strength as he could lift a ding. In his younger days, Xiang Yu was instructed in scholarly arts and swordsmanship but he did not manage to master what he was taught, Xiang Yu said, Books are only useful in helping me remember my name. Mastering swordsmanship allows me to only one opponent, so its not worth learning. I want to learn how to defeat thousands of enemies, when Xiang Yu grew older, Xiang Liang killed someone so they fled to Wu to evade the authorities
27.
Mount Li
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Mount Li is a mountain located in the northwest of Xian in Shanxi Province, China. The mountain is part of the Qinling mountain range and rises to a height of 1302 metres above sea level and it is one of the eight scenic spots of the Guanzhong Plain and popularly said to shine like a beacon in the evening sunlight. Another legend cites the mountain as the place from where the goddess Nüwa, creator of mankind, in 771 BCE, King You of Zhou was slain at its foothills alongside his loyal vassal Huan of Zheng. This marked the collapse of the mighty Western Zhou dynasty and began a long age of endless conflict that devastated the Central Plains. At the foot of the mountain is the necropolis of the first Emperor Qin Shi Huang, comprising his mausoleum, huaqing Pool, a Tang Dynasty hot spring complex, stands at the foot of Mount Li. In 1936, Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Shaanxi Province and his ostensible mission was to eradicate the local Communists and warlords but instead he was kidnapped whilst hiding in a crevice on Li Mountain in what became known as the Xian Incident. After the incident, the KMT government built the simple Minzu Fuxing Pavilion at the foot of the crevice in commemoration, the building was reconstructed using steel and concrete in 1946 with the relevant funds subscribed by students of the Whampoa Military Academy in Guangdong. It was renamed the Zhengqi Pavilion with inscriptions in the building eulogizing Chiang authored by senior KMT officers, after the 1949 Communist victory, the pavilion was for a time called the Seizing Chiang Pavilion, finally adopting its current name of Bingjian Pavilion in 1986. Both terms refer to the Xian Incident, today, Li Mountain National Forest Park is a national level protected site and an AAAA rated tourist attraction classified as a cultural, and historic monument. This article is based on a translation of 骊山 in Chinese Wikipedia, Information copied from English Wikipedia about the death of Youwang, in Battle of Mount Li
28.
Necropolis
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A necropolis is a large, designed cemetery with elaborate tomb monuments. The name stems from the Ancient Greek νεκρόπολις nekropolis, literally meaning city of the dead, the term usually implies a separate burial site at a distance from a city, as opposed to tombs within cities, which were common in various places and periods of history. They are different from fields, which did not have remains above the ground. While the word is most commonly used for ancient sites, the name was revived in the early 19th century and applied to planned city cemeteries, such as the Glasgow Necropolis. Aside from the pyramids which were reserved for the burial of Pharaohs the Egyptian necropoleis included mastabas, naqsh-e Rustam is an ancient necropolis located about 12 km northwest of Persepolis, in Fars Province, Iran. The oldest relief at Naqsh-i Rustam dates to c.1000 BC, though it is severely damaged, it depicts a faint image of a man with unusual head-gear and is thought to be Elamite in origin. The depiction is part of an image, most of which was removed at the command of Bahram II. Four tombs belonging to Achaemenid kings are carved out of the face at a considerable height above the ground. The tombs are known locally as the Persian crosses, after the shape of the facades of the tombs, later, Sassanian kings added a series of rock reliefs below the tombs. In the Mycenean Greek period pre-dating ancient Greece burials could be performed inside the city, in Mycenae for example the royal tombs were located in a precinct within the city walls. This changed during the ancient Greek period when necropoleis usually lined the roads outside a city, there existed some degree of variation within the ancient Greek world however. Sparta was notable for continuing the practice of burial within the city, the Etruscans took the concept of a city of the dead quite literally. The typical tomb at the Banditaccia necropolis at Cerveteri consists of a tumulus which covers one or more rock-cut subterranean tombs and these tombs had multiple chambers and were elaborately decorated like contemporary houses. The arrangement of the tumuli in a grid of streets gave it a similar to the cities of the living. The art historian Nigel Spivey considers the name cemetery inadequate and argues that only the term necropolis can do justice to these burial sites. Etruscan necropoleis were located on hills or slopes of hills. In ancient Rome families originally buried deceased relatives in their own homes because of the Roman practice of ancestor worship, the enactment of the Twelve Tables in 449 BC forbade this, which made the Romans adopt the practice of burial in necropoleis. List of necropoleis Funerary art Catacombs
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Chinese pyramids
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About 38 of them are located around 25 kilometres -35 kilometres north-west of Xian, on the Qin Chuan Plains in Shaanxi Province. The most famous is the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, although known in the West for at least a century, their existence has been made controversial by sensationalist publicity and the problems of Chinese archaeology in early 20th century. The earliest tombs in China are found just north of Beijing in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and they belong to the Neolithic Hongshan culture. The site of Niuheliang in Liaoning contains a pyramidal structure, in 1667 the Jesuit Father Athanasius Kircher wrote about Chinese pyramids in his book China monumentis Illustrata. The existence of pyramids in China remained little known in the Western world until the 1910s and they were documented in large numbers around Xian, first in 1912 by the Western traders Fred Meyer Schroder and Oscar Mamen, and also in 1913 by the expedition of Victor Segalen. He wrote about the First Emperors tomb, and about the other tombs in the region in his Mission Archeologique en Chine. The introduction of pyramids in China to popular attention came soon after World War II, many early stories were focused on the existence of a Great White Pyramid. This is the tomb of Emperor Wu of Han located in Xingping, U. S. Army Air Corps pilot James Gaussman is said to have seen a white jewel-topped pyramid during a flight between India and China during World War II. Colonel Maurice Sheahan, Far Eastern director of the Trans World Airline, a photo of Sheahans pyramid appeared in The New York Sunday News on March 30,1947. This photograph later became attributed to James Gaussman, chris Maier showed that the pyramid in the photo is the Maoling Mausoleum of Emperor Wu just outside Xian. Pseudohistorians, through promoting their theories, have increased awareness of these pyramids. Hartwig Hausdorf speculated it was built by aliens, and Philip Coppens repeated this theory, despite claims to the contrary, the existence of these pyramid-shaped tomb mounds was known by scientists in the West before the publicity caused by the story in 1947. The location, reported 40 miles southwest of Sian, is in an area of archaeological importance. Some of the pyramids of Xian are currently tourist attractions, such as for example the Han Yang Ling Mausoleum of the Western Han Dynasty, the original height was 76 metres, the present height is 47 metres, and the dimensions are 357 by 354 metres. It was built during the short-lived imperial Qin Dynasty, Tomb of Emperor Qin Ershi in Xian. Maoling Mausoleum group, Tomb of Emperor Wu of Han 34. 338085°N108. 569684°E /34.338085,108.569684, the size is 222 metres x 217 metres. Some are among the biggest Chinese mausoleums, such as Qianling, joint tomb of Emperor Gaozong of Tang and it is a natural hill shaped by man. Tomb of Emperor Xiaojing of Tang 34. 63276°N112. 81109°E /34.63276,112 and it belongs to the Capital Cities and Tombs of the Ancient Koguryo Kingdom on the World heritage list
30.
Rammed earth
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It is an ancient method that has been revived recently as a sustainable building material used in a technique of natural building. Rammed earth is simple to manufacture, non-combustible, thermally massive, strong, edifices formed of rammed earth are on every continent except Antarctica, in a range of environments including temperate, wet, semiarid desert, montane, and tropical regions. The availability of soil and a building design appropriate for local climatic conditions are the factors that favour its use. Historically, additives such as lime or animal blood were used to stabilize it, while modern construction adds lime, cement, to add variety, some modern builders also add coloured oxides or other materials, e. g. bottles, tires, or pieces of timber. The form must be durable and well braced, and the two opposing faces must be clamped together to prevent bulging or deformation caused by the large compressing forces. Damp material is poured into the formwork to a depth of 10 to 25 cm, the material is compressed iteratively, in batches or courses, so as to gradually erect the wall up to the top of the formwork. Tamping was historically manual with a ramming pole, and was very laborious. After a wall is complete, it is strong to immediately remove the formwork. This is necessary if a surface texture is to be applied, e. g. by wire brushing, carving, or mould impression, Construction is optimally done in warm weather so that the walls can dry and harden. The compression strength of the earth increases as it cures, some time is necessary for it to dry. Exposed walls must be sealed to prevent water damage, in modern variations of the technique, rammed-earth walls are constructed on top of conventional footings or a reinforced concrete slab base. Where blocks made of rammed earth are used, they are stacked like regular blocks and are bonded together with a thin mud slurry instead of cement. Special machines, usually powered by engines and often portable, are used to compress the material into blocks. Presently more than 30% of the population uses earth as a building material. Rammed earth has been used globally in a range of climatic conditions. Rammed-earth housing may resolve homelessness caused by otherwise expensive construction techniques, the compressive strength of rammed earth is a maximum of 4.3 MPa. This is less than that of concrete but more than sufficiently strong for domestic edifices, indeed, properly constructed rammed earth endures for thousands of years, as many ancient structures that are still standing around the world demonstrate. See 1960 Agadir earthquake for an example of the destruction which may be inflicted on such structures by an earthquake
31.
Infantry
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Infantry is the general branch of an army that engages in military combat on foot. As the troops who engage with the enemy in close-ranged combat, infantry units bear the largest brunt of warfare, Infantry can enter and maneuver in terrain that is inaccessible to military vehicles and employ crew-served infantry weapons that provide greater and more sustained firepower. In English, the 16th-century term Infantry describes soldiers who walk to the battlefield, and there engage, fight, the term arose in Sixteenth-Century Spain, which boasted one of the first professional standing armies seen in Europe since the days of Rome. It was common to appoint royal princes to military commands, and the men under them became known as Infanteria. in the Canadian Army, the role of the infantry is to close with, and destroy the enemy. In the U. S. Army, the closes with the enemy, by means of fire and maneuver, in order to destroy or capture him, or to repel his assault by fire, close combat. In the U. S. Marine Corps, the role of the infantry is to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy fire and maneuver. Beginning with the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century, artillery has become a dominant force on the battlefield. Since World War I, combat aircraft and armoured vehicles have become dominant. In 20th and 21st century warfare, infantry functions most effectively as part of a combined arms team including artillery, armour, Infantry relies on organized formations to be employed in battle. These have evolved over time, but remain a key element to effective infantry development and deployment, until the end of the 19th century, infantry units were for the most part employed in close formations up until contact with the enemy. This allowed commanders to control of the unit, especially while maneuvering. The development of guns and other weapons with increased firepower forced infantry units to disperse in order to make them less vulnerable to such weapons. This decentralization of command was made possible by improved communications equipment, among the various subtypes of infantry is Medium infantry. This refers to infantry which are heavily armed and armored than heavy infantry. In the early period, medium infantry were largely eliminated due to discontinued use of body armour up until the 20th century. In the United States Army, Stryker Infantry is considered Medium Infantry, since they are heavier than light infantry, Infantry doctrine is the concise expression of how infantry forces contribute to campaigns, major operations, battles, and engagements. It is a guide to action, not a set of hard, doctrine provides a very common frame of reference across the military forces, allowing the infantry to function cooperatively in what are now called combined arms operations. Doctrine helps standardise operations, facilitating readiness by establishing common ways of accomplishing infantry tasks, doctrine links theory, history, experimentation, and practice
32.
Cavalry
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Cavalry or horsemen were soldiers or warriors who fought mounted on horseback. Cavalry were historically the most mobile of the combat arms, an individual soldier in the cavalry is known by a number of designations such as cavalryman, horseman, dragoon or trooper. The designation of cavalry was not usually given to any military forces that used animals, such as camels. Cavalry had the advantage of improved mobility, and a man fighting from horseback also had the advantages of greater height, speed, another element of horse mounted warfare is the psychological impact a mounted soldier can inflict on an opponent. In Europe cavalry became increasingly armoured, and eventually became known for the mounted knights, in the period between the World Wars, many cavalry units were converted into motorized infantry and mechanized infantry units, or reformed as tank troops. Most cavalry units that are horse-mounted in modern armies serve in purely ceremonial roles, modern usage of the term generally refers to specialist units equipped with tanks or aircraft. The shock role, traditionally filled by heavy cavalry, is filled by units with the armored designation. Before the Iron Age, the role of cavalry on the battlefield was largely performed by light chariots, the chariot originated with the Sintashta-Petrovka culture in Central Asia and spread by nomadic or semi-nomadic Indo-Iranians. The power of mobility given by mounted units was recognized early on, Cavalry techniques were an innovation of equestrian nomads of the Central Asian and Iranian steppe and pastoralist tribes such as the Persian Parthians and Sarmatians. The photograph above left shows Assyrian cavalry from reliefs of 865–860 BC, at this time, the men had no spurs, saddles, saddle cloths, or stirrups. Fighting from the back of a horse was more difficult than mere riding. The cavalry acted in pairs, the reins of the archer were controlled by his neighbours hand. Even at this time, cavalry used swords, shields. The sculpture implies two types of cavalry, but this might be a simplification by the artist, Later images of Assyrian cavalry show saddle cloths as primitive saddles, allowing each archer to control his own horse. As early as 490 BC a breed of horses was bred in the Nisaean plain in Media to carry men with increasing amounts of armour. However, chariots remained in use for purposes such as carrying the victorious general in a Roman triumph. The southern Britons met Julius Caesar with chariots in 55 and 54 BC, the last mention of chariot use in battle was by the Caledonians at the Mons Graupius, in 84 AD. During the classical Greek period cavalry were usually limited to citizens who could afford expensive war-horses
33.
Hellenistic period
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It is often considered a period of transition, sometimes even of decadence or degeneration, compared to the enlightenment of the Greek Classical era. The Hellenistic period saw the rise of New Comedy, Alexandrian poetry, the Septuagint, Greek science was advanced by the works of the mathematician Euclid and the polymath Archimedes. The religious sphere expanded to include new gods such as the Greco-Egyptian Serapis, eastern deities such as Attis and Cybele, the Hellenistic period was characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization which established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa. This resulted in the export of Greek culture and language to new realms. Equally, however, these new kingdoms were influenced by the cultures, adopting local practices where beneficial, necessary. Hellenistic culture thus represents a fusion of the Ancient Greek world with that of the Near East, Middle East and this mixture gave rise to a common Attic-based Greek dialect, known as Koine Greek, which became the lingua franca through the Hellenistic world. Scholars and historians are divided as to what event signals the end of the Hellenistic era, Hellenistic is distinguished from Hellenic in that the first encompasses the entire sphere of direct ancient Greek influence, while the latter refers to Greece itself. The word originated from the German term hellenistisch, from Ancient Greek Ἑλληνιστής, from Ἑλλάς, Hellenistic is a modern word and a 19th-century concept, the idea of a Hellenistic period did not exist in Ancient Greece. Although words related in form or meaning, e. g, the major issue with the term Hellenistic lies in its convenience, as the spread of Greek culture was not the generalized phenomenon that the term implies. Some areas of the world were more affected by Greek influences than others. The Greek population and the population did not always mix, the Greeks moved and brought their own culture. While a few fragments exist, there is no surviving historical work which dates to the hundred years following Alexanders death. The works of the major Hellenistic historians Hieronymus of Cardia, Duris of Samos, the earliest and most credible surviving source for the Hellenistic period is Polybius of Megalopolis, a statesman of the Achaean League until 168 BC when he was forced to go to Rome as a hostage. His Histories eventually grew to a length of forty books, covering the years 220 to 167 BC, another important source, Plutarchs Parallel Lives though more preoccupied with issues of personal character and morality, outlines the history of important Hellenistic figures. Appian of Alexandria wrote a history of the Roman empire that includes information of some Hellenistic kingdoms, other sources include Justins epitome of Pompeius Trogus Historiae Philipicae and a summary of Arrians Events after Alexander, by Photios I of Constantinople. Lesser supplementary sources include Curtius Rufus, Pausanias, Pliny, in the field of philosophy, Diogenes Laertius Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is the main source. Ancient Greece had traditionally been a collection of fiercely independent city-states. After the Peloponnesian War, Greece had fallen under a Spartan hegemony, in which Sparta was pre-eminent but not all-powerful
34.
Lute (material)
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Lute was a substance used to seal and affix apparatus employed in chemistry and alchemy, and to protect component vessels against heat damage by fire, it was also used to line furnaces. Lutation was thus the act of cementing vessels with lute, in pottery, luting is a technique for joining pieces of unfired leather-hard clay together, using a wet clay slip or slurry as adhesive. The complete object is then fired, large objects are often built up in this way, for example the figures of the Terracotta Army in ancient China. The edges being joined might be scored or cross-hatched to promote adhesion, one mixture for this purpose included fat earth, Windsor loam, sand, iron filings or powdered glass, and cows hair. Another use for lute was to act as a safety valve, preventing the buildup of pressure from shattering a vessel. This process could also be performed manually by the operator removing and reaffixing the lute as required, Lute was also used to effect repairs to cracked glass vessels. In The Alchemist’s Experiment Takes Fire,1687, one alembic is exploding, where the vapour was more aqueous, and less penetrating, strips of paper affixed with sizing would suffice or bladder long steeped in water. Another related use for lute was for lining furnaces, and was described as far back as the 16th century by Georg Agricola in his De re metallica, fat Lute was made of clay mixed with oil and beaten until it had the consistency of putty. It could be stored in an earthenware vessel, which retained moisture. Lime could be made into an effective lute by mixing it with egg white or glue, linen rags mixed with paste, or strips of Bladder soaked in warm water, then coated with paste or egg white, also served as a lute. Fire Lute was used to protect vessels from heat damage and it consisted of clay mixed with sand and either horse-hair or straw or tow. It had to be allowed to dry thoroughly before use to be effective, Fusible lute was used to coat earthenware vessels to ensure impermeability. A mixture of Borax and slaked lime, mixed with water into a fine paste, parkers Cement, Plaster of Paris and Fusible fluxes could all be used as lutes, rendering heat protection and air-tightness. Stourbridge clay mixed with water could withstand the highest heat of any lute, hard cement was also commonly used to join glass vessels and fix cracks, it was composed of resin, beeswax and either brick dust or bole earth, or red ochre or venetian red. Soft cement, made of wax, turpentine and venetian red, was also used for repair. 7, Of the composition and application of lutes, samuel Frederick Gray & Arthur Livermore Porter. The chemistry of the arts etc. p.217 ff
35.
Molding (process)
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Molding or moulding is the process of manufacturing by shaping liquid or pliable raw material using a rigid frame called a mold or matrix. This itself may have made using a pattern or model of the final object. A mold or mould is a block that is filled with a liquid or pliable material such as plastic, glass, metal. The liquid hardens or sets inside the mold, adopting its shape, a mold is the counterpart to a cast. The very common bi-valve molding process uses two molds, one for half of the object. Piece-molding uses a number of different molds, each creating a section of a complicated object and this is generally only used for larger and more valuable objects. The manufacturer who makes the molds is called the moldmaker, a release agent is typically used to make removal of the hardened/set substance from the mold easier. Typical uses for molded plastics include molded furniture, molded household goods, molded cases, and structural materials
36.
Assembly line
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Assembly lines are common methods of assembling complex items such as automobiles and other transportation equipment, household appliances and electronic goods. Assembly lines are designed for the organization of workers, tools or machines. The motion of workers is minimized to the extent possible, all parts or assemblies are handled either by conveyors or motorized vehicles such as fork lifts, or gravity, with no manual trucking. Heavy lifting is done by such as overhead cranes or fork lifts. Each worker typically performs one simple operation, use sliding assembling lines by which the parts to be assembled are delivered at convenient distances. Consider the assembly of a car, assume that certain steps in the line are to install the engine, install the hood. In traditional production, only one car would be assembled at a time, if engine installation takes 20 minutes, hood installation takes five minutes, and wheels installation takes 10 minutes, then a car can be produced every 35 minutes. In an assembly line, car assembly is split between several stations, all working simultaneously, when one station is finished with a car, it passes it on to the next. By having three stations, a total of three different cars can be operated on at the time, each one at a different stage of its assembly. After finishing its work on the first car, the installation crew can begin working on the second car. While the engine installation crew works on the car, the first car can be moved to the hood station and fitted with a hood, then to the wheels station. After the engine has been installed on the car, the second car moves to the hood assembly. At the same time, the car moves to the engine assembly. When the third car’s engine has been mounted, it then can be moved to the station, meanwhile. Before the Industrial Revolution, most manufactured products were made individually by hand, a single craftsman or team of craftsmen would create each part of a product. They would use their skills and tools such as files and knives to create the individual parts and they would then assemble them into the final product, making cut-and-try changes in the parts until they fit and could work together. Adam Smith discussed the division of labour in the manufacture of pins at length in his book The Wealth of Nations, the Venetian Arsenal, dating to about 1104, operated similar to a production line. Ships moved down a canal and were fitted by the various shops they passed, although the Venice Arsenal lasted until the early Industrial Revolution, production line methods did not become common even then
37.
Jian
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The jian is a double-edged straight sword used during the last 2,500 years in China. The first Chinese sources that mention the date to the 7th century BCE during the Spring and Autumn period. Historical one-handed versions have blades varying from 45 to 80 centimeters in length, the weight of an average sword of 70-centimetre blade-length would be in a range of approximately 700 to 900 grams. There are also larger two-handed versions used for training by many styles of Chinese martial arts, professional jian practitioners are referred to as jianke. In Chinese folklore, it is known as The Gentleman of Weapons and is considered one of the four weapons, along with the Gun, Qiang. A guard or hilt protects the hand from an opposing blade, the shape of the guard can be described as short wings pointing either forward or backward. A minority of jian featured the disc-shaped guards associated with dao, a handle behind the guard can accommodate the grip of both hands or one hand plus two or three fingers of the other hand. Two-handed jiàn of up to 1.6 meters in length, known as shuangshou jian, the longer two-handed handle could be used as a lever to lock the opponents arm if necessary. Grips are usually of fluted wood or covered in rayskin, with a minority being wrapped with cord, the pommel was historically peened onto the tang of the blade, thereby holding together as one solid unit the blade, guard, handle, and pommel. Most jian of the last century or so are assembled with a threaded tang onto which the pommel or pommel-nut is screwed, sometimes a tassel is attached to the hilt. During the Ming Dynasty these were passed through an openwork pommel. Historically these were used as lanyards, allowing the wielder to retain the sword in combat. There are some forms which utilize the tassel as an integral part of their swordsmanship style, while other schools dispense with sword tassels entirely. The tassels use now is primarily decorative, the blade itself is customarily divided into three sections for leverage in different offensive and defensive techniques. The tip of the blade is the jiànfeng, meant for stabbing, slashing, the jiànfeng typically curves smoothly to a point, though in the Ming period sharply angled points were common. Some antiques have rounded points, though these are likely the result of wear, the middle section is the zhongren or middle edge, and is used for a variety of offensive and defensive actions, cleaving cuts, draw cuts, and deflections. These sections are not necessarily of the length, with the jiànfeng being only three or four inches long. Jian blades generally feature subtle profile taper, but often have considerable distal taper, jiàn may also feature differential sharpening, where the blade is made progressively sharper towards the tip, usually corresponding to the three sections of the blade
38.
National Geographic Society
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The National Geographic Society, headquartered in Washington, D. C. United States, is one of the largest nonprofit scientific and educational institutions in the world and its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical conservation, and the study of world culture and history. In partnership with 21st Century Fox, the Society operates the magazine, TV channels, a website that features extra content and worldwide events, the National Geographic Society was founded in 1888 to increase and diffuse geographic knowledge. The Society believes in the power of science, exploration and storytelling to change the world, National Geographic is governed by a board of trustees, whose 21 members include distinguished educators, business executives, former government officials and conservationists. The organization sponsors and funds research and exploration. National Geographic maintains a museum for the public in its Washington and its Education Foundation gives grants to education organizations and individuals to improve geography education. Its Committee for Research and Exploration has awarded more than 11,000 grants for scientific research, National Geographic has retail stores in Washington, D. C. The locations outside of the United States are operated by Worldwide Retail Store S. L and it also publishes other magazines, books, school products, maps, and Web and film products in numerous languages and countries. National Geographics various media properties reach more than 280 million people monthly, the National Geographic Society began as a club for an elite group of academics and wealthy patrons interested in travel. After preparing a constitution and a plan of organization, the National Geographic Society was incorporated two weeks later on January 27, Gardiner Greene Hubbard became its first president and his son-in-law, Alexander Graham Bell, succeeded him in 1897. Bell and Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor devised the successful marketing notion of Society membership, the current National Geographic Society president and CEO is Gary E. Knell. The chairman of the board of trustees is John Fahey, the editor-in-chief of National Geographic magazine is Susan Goldberg. Gilbert Melville Grosvenor, a chairman of the Society board of trustees received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005 for his leadership in geography education. In 2004, the National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, D. C. was one of the first buildings to receive a Green certification from Global Green USA. The National Geographic received the prestigious Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities in October 2006 in Oviedo, in 2013 the society was investigated for possible violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act relating to their close association with an Egyptian government official responsible for antiquities. This new, for-profit corporation, will own National Geographic and other magazines, as reported by The Guardian, a spokesman for National Geographic in a November 2,2015 e-mail statement, briefly discussed the rationale for the staff reductions as part of the. Process of reorganizing in order to move forward following the closing the National Geographic Partners deal. Additional specifics were provided to Photo District News by M. J. Jacobsen, National Geographic’s SVP of communications, similar to the contents of a formal announcement by the two companies
39.
Chromium(IV) oxide
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Chromium dioxide or chromium oxide is an inorganic compound with the formula CrO2. It is a synthetic magnetic solid. It once was used in magnetic tape emulsion. With the increasing popularity of CDs and DVDs, the use of chromium oxide has declined, however, it is still used in data tape applications for enterprise-class storage systems. It is still considered by many oxide and tape manufacturers to have one of the best magnetic recording particulates ever invented. CrO2 was first prepared by Friedrich Wöhler by decomposition of chromyl chloride, acicular chromium dioxide was first synthesized in 1956 by Norman L. Cox, a chemist at E. I. DuPont, by decomposing chromium trioxide in the presence of water at a temperature of 800 K, when commercialized in the late 1960s as a recording medium, DuPont assigned it the tradename of Magtrieve. As such each Cr center has octahedral geometry and each oxide is trigonal planar. Chrome tapes did, however, require a new generation of audiocassette recorders equipped with a bias current capability than that used by iron oxide to properly magnetize the tape particles. These bias and EQ settings were later carried over to chrome-equivalent cobalt-modified tapes introduced in the mid 1970s by TDK, Maxell, the resulting product was potentially a competitor to metallic iron pigments but apparently achieved little market penetration. Until manufacturers developed new ways to mill the oxide, the crystals could easily be broken in the process. Output from a tape could drop about 1 dB or so in a years time, the chrome coating was harder than competitive coatings, and that led to accusations of excessive head wear. DuPont licensed the product to Sony in Japan and BASF in Germany in the early 1970s for regional production and distribution, Japanese competitors developed cobalt-adsorbed and cobalt ferrite chrome equivalent Type II audio cassettes and various videotape formats as substitutes. Added to that was the problem that the production of CrO2 yielded toxic by-products of which Japanese manufacturers had great difficulty properly disposing. BASF eventually became the largest producer of both the chromium dioxide pigment and chrome tapes, basing its VHS & S-VHS video tape, audio cassettes, dupont discontinued its production of chromium dioxide particles in the 1990s. Jaleel, V. Abdul, Kannan T. S. Hydrothermal synthesis of chromium dioxide powders, a survey of recent advances in magnetic recording materials. The Technical Argument for Chromium Dioxide, the BASF Inventors Notebook Number 6, http, //www. ant-audio. co. uk/Tape_Recording/Library/Chrome. pdf
40.
Chariot
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A chariot is a type of carriage driven by a charioteer using primarily horses to provide rapid motive power. Chariots were used by armies as transport or mobile platforms, for hunting or for racing. The word chariot comes from the Latin carrus, itself a loanword from Gaulish, a chariot of war or one used in military parades was called a car. In ancient Rome and some other ancient Mediterranean civilizations, a required two horses, a triga three, and a quadriga four. The critical invention that allowed the construction of light, horse-drawn chariots was the spoked wheel, the earliest spoke-wheeled chariots date to ca.2000 BCE. The use of chariots peaked around 1300 BCE, Chariots had lost their military importance by the 1st century CE, but chariot races continued to be popular in Constantinople until the 6th century. The domestication of the horse was an important step toward civilization, an increasing amount of evidence supports the hypothesis that horses were domesticated in the Eurasian Steppes approximately 4000-3500 BCE. The invention of the used in transportation most likely took place in Europe. Evidence of wheeled vehicles appears from the mid 4th millennium BCE near-simultaneously in the Northern Caucasus, the earliest vehicles may have been ox carts. Starokorsunskaya kurgan in the Kuban region of Russia contains a grave of the Maikop Culture. The two solid wooden wheels from this kurgan have been dated to the half of the fourth millennium. Soon thereafter the number of burials in this Northern Caucasus region multiplied. As David Anthony writes in his book The Horse, the Wheel and Language, in Eastern Europe and it is a clay pot excavated in a Funnelbeaker settlement in Swietokrzyskie Voivodeship in Poland. The oldest securely dated real wheel-axle combination in Eastern Europe is the Ljubljana Marshes Wheel, horses were introduced to Transcaucasia at the time of the Kura-Araxes culture, beginning about 3300 BCE. Prior to that, horse bones were not found, during the Kura-Araxes period, horses seem to become rather widespread, with signs of domestication. It is widely believed that wheeled transport was invented in Mesopotamia, nevertheless, recent archaeological evidence seems to indicate otherwise, pointing to Neolithic Europe. At the same time, in Mesopotamia, some intriguing early pictograms of a sled that rests on wooden rollers or wheels have been found and they date from about the same time as the early wheel discoveries in Europe and may indicate knowledge of the wheel. The earliest depiction of vehicles in the context of warfare is on the Standard of Ur in southern Mesopotamia, the hybrids were used by the Eblaite, early Sumerian, Akkadian and Ur III armies
41.
Dagger-axe
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The dagger-axe or ge is a type of pole weapon that was in use from the Shang dynasty until the Han dynasty in China. It consists of a blade, mounted by its tang to a perpendicular wooden shaft. The earliest dagger-axe blades were made of stone, jade versions were also made for ceremonial use. There is a variant type with a divided two-part head, consisting of the straight blade. The dagger-axe was the first weapon in Chinese history that was not also a tool for hunting or agriculture. Lacking a point for thrusting, the dagger-axe was used in the open there was enough room to swing its long shaft. Its appearance on the Chinese battlefield predated the use of chariots, during the Zhou dynasty, the ji or Chinese halberd gradually became more common on the battlefield. The ji was developed from the dagger-axe by adding a head to the top of the shaft. Later versions of the ji, starting in the Spring and Autumn period, combined the dagger-axe blade, by the Han dynasty, the more versatile ji had completely replaced the dagger-axe as a standard infantry weapon. The ji itself was replaced by the spear as the primary polearm of the Chinese military. Many excavated dagger-axes are ceremonial jade weapons found in the tombs of aristocrats and these examples are often found within the coffins themselves, possibly meant to serve as emblems of authority and power, or in some other ritualistic capacity. Sometimes they are found in a pit dug beneath a coffin, with a victim who was sacrificed to guard the tomb, normally only the head of a dagger-axe is found, with the haft absent due to either decomposition or mechanical removal. Some dagger-axe artifacts are small and curved, and could have intended for use as pendants. Ji Bec de corbin Bill Lorge, Peter A
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Ji (polearm)
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The ji was a Chinese polearm used in one form or another for over 3000 years, from at least as early as the Shang dynasty until the end of the Qing dynasty. They are still used for training purposes in many Chinese martial arts, the ji was initially a hybrid between a spear and a dagger-axe. It was a common infantry weapon in Ancient China, and was also used by cavalry. In the Song dynasty, several weapons were referred to as ji, one variety was called the qinglong ji, and had a spear tip with a crescent blade on one side. Another type was the fangtian ji, which had a tip with crescent blades on both sides. They had multiple means of attack, the blade or blades. The way the side blades were fixed to the shaft differs, the Ji is popularized through a semi-fictionalized historical character known as Lü Bu. His weapon of choice was the Fang Tian Hua Ji
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Halberd
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A halberd is a two-handed pole weapon that came to prominent use during the 14th and 15th centuries. The word halberd may come from the German words Halm, in modern-day German, the weapon is called a Hellebarde. In HEMA, professional halberd practitioners are referred to as halberdiers, the halberd consists of an axe blade topped with a spike mounted on a long shaft. It always has a hook or thorn on the side of the axe blade for grappling mounted combatants. It is very similar to forms of the voulge in design. The halberd was usually 1.5 to 1.8 metres long, the halberd was inexpensive to produce and very versatile in battle. A Swiss peasant used a halberd to kill Charles the Bold, researchers suspect that a halberd or a bill sliced through the back of King Richard IIIs skull at the Battle of Bosworth. The halberd was the weapon of the early Swiss armies in the 14th. The German Landsknechte, who imitated Swiss warfare methods, also used the pike, the halberd all but disappeared as a rank-and-file weapon in these formations by the middle of the sixteenth century. The halberd has been used as a court bodyguard weapon for centuries, and is still the ceremonial weapon of the Swiss Guard in the Vatican, the halberd was one of the polearms sometimes carried by lower-ranking officers in European infantry units in the 16th through 18th centuries. In the British army, sergeants continued to carry halberds until 1793, the 18th century halberd had, however, become simply a symbol of rank with no sharpened edge and insufficient strength to use as a weapon. It did, however, ensure that infantrymen drawn up in ranks stood correctly aligned with each other, bardiche, a type of two-handed battle axe known in the 16th and 17th centuries in Eastern Europe Bill, similar to a halberd but with a hooked blade form. 74–94, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, brandtherm, Dirk & OFlaherty, Ronan, Prodigal sons, two halberds in the Hunt Museum, Limerick, from Cuenca, Spain and Beyrǔt, Syria, pp. 56–60, JRSAI Vol.131. R. E. Oakeshott, European weapons and armour, From the Renaissance to the industrial revolution, 44–48
