1.
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
2.
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
3.
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
4.
Yinxu
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Yinxu is the site of one of the ancient and major historical capitals of China. It is the source of the discovery of oracle bones and oracle bone script. Yinxu was discovered, or rediscovered, in 1899, it is one of Chinas oldest and largest archeological sites, Yinxu is located in northernmost Henan province near the modern city of Anyang, and near the Hebei and Shanxi province borders. Public access to the site is permitted, in the Book of Documents, the Pan Geng chapter, describes King Pan Geng moving the capital of the Shang dynasty. According to the Historical Records of Sima Qian, Pan Geng moved his capital from the north of the Yellow River to Bo 亳, according to the Bamboo Annals, he moved the capital from Yān, to a site called Běimĕng and Yīn. The name Yin is an ancient term referring to vibrant music-making, from that point on the dynasty would also be known as the Yin dynasty. According to the accounts, later rulers became pleasure-seekers who took no interest in state affairs. King Zhòu, the last of the Shang dynasty kings, is remembered for his ruthlessness. His increasingly autocratic laws alienated the nobility until King Wu of the Zhou dynasty was able to gain the support to rise up, the Zhou dynasty established their capital at Fenghao near modern-day Xian and Yin was abandoned to fall into ruin. Thereafter the once-great city of Yin was relegated to legend along with its founding dynasty until the years of the Qing dynasty. Yinxu is famous for its bones, which were first discovered in 1899 by Wang Yirong. Director Wang was suffering from malaria at the time and was prescribed Longgu 龍骨 at a traditional Chinese pharmacy and he noticed strange carvings on these bones and concluded that these could be samples of China’s earliest writing. He sent his assistant in search of the source of these bones, in 1917, Wang Guowei deciphered the oracle bone inscriptions of the names of the Shang kings and constructed a complete Shang genealogy. This closely matched that in the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian confirming the authenticity of the legendary Shang dynasty. However, the oracle bone inscriptions record the name of the state as Dàyìshāng or Shāngyì, the first excavations at Yinxu were led by the archeologist Li Ji of the Institute of History and Philosophy from 1928-37. They uncovered the remains of a palace, several royal tombs. One of the largest and oldest sites of Chinese archaeology, excavations here have laid the foundation for work across the country, four periods are recognized at the site. From these remains archaeologists have been able to confirm that this was the spiritual and cultural center of the Shang dynasty, the best preserved of the Shang dynasty royal tombs unearthed at Yinxu is the Tomb of Fu Hao
5.
Shang dynasty
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The Shang dynasty or Yin dynasty, according to traditional historiography, ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from such as the Book of Documents, Bamboo Annals. The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project dated them from c.1600 to 1046 BC, the Shang dynasty is the earliest dynasty of traditional Chinese history supported by archaeological evidence. Tens of thousands of bronze, jade, stone, bone, the Anyang site has yielded the earliest known body of Chinese writing, mostly divinations inscribed on oracle bones – turtle shells, ox scapulae, or other bones. More than 20,000 were discovered in the scientific excavations during the 1920s and 1930s. The inscriptions provide critical insight into many topics from the politics, economy, many events concerning the Shang dynasty are mentioned in various Chinese classics, including the Book of Documents, the Mencius and the Zuo Zhuan. Working from all the documents, the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian assembled a sequential account of the Shang dynasty as part of his Records of the Grand Historian. His history describes some events in detail, while in other cases only the name of a king is given, a closely related, but slightly different, account is given by the Bamboo Annals. The Annals were interred in 296 BC, but the text has a complex history, the name Yīn is used by Sima Qian for the dynasty, and in the current text version of the Bamboo Annals for both the dynasty and its final capital. It has been a name for the Shang throughout history. Since the Records of Emperors and Kings by Huangfu Mi, it has often used specifically to describe the later half of the Shang dynasty. In Japan and Korea, the Shang are still referred to almost exclusively as the Yin dynasty, however it seems to have been a Zhou name for the earlier dynasty. The word does not appear in the bones, which refer to the state as Shāng. It also does not appear in securely-dated Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, xie is said to have helped Yu the Great to control the Great Flood and for his service to have been granted a place called Shang as a fief. Sima Qian relates that the dynasty itself was founded 13 generations later, when Xies descendant Tang overthrew the impious and cruel final Xia ruler in the Battle of Mingtiao. The Records recount events from the reigns of Tang, Tai Jia, Tai Wu, Pan Geng, Wu Ding, Wu Yi and the final king Di Xin. According to the Records, the Shang moved their capital five times, Di Xin, the last Shang king, is said to have committed suicide after his army was defeated by Wu of Zhou. Legends say that his army and his equipped slaves betrayed him by joining the Zhou rebels in the decisive Battle of Muye, according to the Yi Zhou Shu and Mencius the battle was very bloody
6.
Anyang
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Anyang is a prefecture-level city in Henan province, China. The northernmost city in Henan, Anyang borders Puyang to the east, Hebi and Xinxiang to the south, and the provinces of Shanxi and Hebei to its west and north respectively. It has a population of 5,172,834 as of the 2010 census,2,025,811 of whom live in the metropolitan area made of 4 urban districts. Xiaonanhai, on the far edge of the city, was home to prehistoric cavemen during the Stone Age. Over 7,000 artifacts have been unearthed here, representing what has been dubbed the Xiaonanhai culture, around 2000 BC, the legendary sage-kings Zhuanxu and Emperor Ku are said to have established their capitals in the area around Anyang from where they ruled their kingdoms. Their mausoleums are today situated in Sanyang village south of Neihuang County, at the beginning of the 14th century BC, King Pangeng of the Shang Dynasty established his capital 2 km north of the modern city on the banks of the Huan River. The city, known as Yin, was the first stable capital in Chinese history, Anyangs Tangyin County was the seat of Yue Village, birthplace of the famous Song Dynasty general, Yue Fei. This was also the home of Zhou Tong, Yues military arts tutor. Following the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912, Anyang was given its present name after a renaming process. In August 1949, Anyang prefecture was detached from Henan and – along with Puyang and Xinxiang – consigned to the short lived experimental province of Pingyuan by the ruling Communist government, all three were eventually returned to Henans territory in November 1953, with the dissolution of Pingyuan. Anyang has an administrative area of 7,413 square kilometres. The city actually lies on the border between steppe and the North China Plain, and as such, it has a four-season, monsoon-influenced climate, winters are cold and very dry, with a January 24-hour average of −0.9 °C. Summers are hot and humid, with July averaging 27.0 °C, a majority of the annual precipitation of 557 millimetres falls in July and August alone, and the annual mean temperature is 14.11 °C. With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 43% in July to 58% in May, extreme temperatures have ranged from −21.7 °C to 43.2 °C. The prefecture-level city of Anyang administers 4 districts,1 county-level city and 4 counties, sixteen foreign-funded enterprises have been established. A multichannel, all-round foreign relations and trade network has set up to lay a foundation for developing Anyangs economy. Anyang city is an ancient city with a history of over 3,000 years and is one of the Eight Ancient Capitals of China and it is one of the key birthplaces of Chinese ancient culture. The city has three museums, the Anyang Museum, the National Museum of Chinese Writing, and the Yinxu Museum on the ruins
7.
Henan
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Henan is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is 豫, named after Yuzhou, a Han Dynasty state that parts of Henan. Although the name of the province south of the river, approximately a quarter of the province lies north of the Yellow River. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou which literally means central plain land or midland, although the name is also applied to the entirety of China proper. Henan is the birthplace of Chinese civilization with over 3,000 years of recorded history, and remained Chinas cultural, economical, numerous heritages have been left behind including the ruins of Shang Dynasty capital city Yin and the Shaolin Temple. Four of the Eight Great Ancient Capitals of China, Luoyang, Anyang, Kaifeng, with an area of 167,000 km2, Henan covers a large part of the fertile and densely populated North China Plain. Its neighbouring provinces are Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, Anhui, Henan is Chinas third most populous province with a population of over 94 million. If it were a country by itself, Henan would be the 12th most populous country in the world, behind Mexico, Henan is the 5th largest provincial economy of China and the largest among inland provinces. However, per capita GDP is low compared to eastern and central provinces. The economy continues to depend on its dwindling aluminum and coal reserves, as well as agriculture, heavy industry, tourism, high-tech industry and service sector is underdeveloped and is concentrated around Zhengzhou and Luoyang. Widely regarded as the Cradle of Chinese civilization along with Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, Henan is known for its historical prosperity, the economic prosperity resulted from its extensive fertile plains and its location at the heart of the country. However, its location also means that it has suffered from nearly all of the major wars in China. In addition, the floods of the Yellow River have caused significant damage from time to time. Kaifeng, in particular, has been buried by the Yellow Rivers silt seven times due to flooding, archaeological sites reveal that prehistoric cultures such as the Yangshao Culture and Longshan Culture were active in what is now northern Henan since the Neolithic Era. The more recent Erlitou culture has been identified with the Xia Dynasty. Virtually the entire kingdom existed within what is now north and central Henan, the Xia Dynasty collapsed around the 16th century BC following the invasion of Shang, a neighboring vassal state centered around todays Shangqiu in eastern Henan. The Shang Dynasty was the first literate dynasty of China and its many capitals are located at the modern cities of Shangqiu, Yanshi, and Zhengzhou. Their last and most important capital, Yin, located in modern Anyang, is where the first Chinese writing was created, in the 11th century BC, the Zhou Dynasty of Shaanxi arrived from the west and overthrew the Shang Dynasty
8.
Fu Hao
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Her tomb was unearthed at Yinxu, by archaeologist Zheng Zhenxiang intact with treasures such as bronzes and jades. Inside the pit was evidence of a wooden chamber 5 meters long,3.5 m wide and 1.3 m high containing a wooden coffin that has since completely disintegrated. What is known is that King Wu Ding would cultivate the allegiance of neighbouring tribes by marrying one woman from each of them, Fu Hao entered the royal household through such a marriage and took advantage of the semi-matriarchal slave society to rise through the ranks. Fu Hao is known to modern scholars mainly from inscriptions on Shang dynasty oracle bone artifacts unearthed at Yinxu, in these inscriptions she is shown to have led numerous military campaigns. The Tu-Fang had fought against the Shang for generations until they were defeated by Fu Hao in a single decisive battle. Further campaigns against the neighbouring Yi, Qiang and Ba followed, with up to 13,000 soldiers and important generals Zhi and Hou Gao serving under her, she was the most powerful Shang general of her time. This highly unusual status is confirmed by the weapons, including great battle-axes. This was very unusual for a woman of that time, the sacrificial bronze vessels and tortoise shells inscribed prepared by Fu Hao discovered in her tomb further evidence her status as high priestess and oracle caster. She also controlled her own fiefdom on the borders of the empire and she died before King Wu Ding, and he constructed a tomb for her on the edge of the royal cemetery at his capital Yin. The King later made many sacrifices here in hope for her assistance in defeating the attacking Gong. The tomb was unearthed by archaeologists in 1976 and is now open to the public, tomb of Fu Hao Loewe, Michael, Shaughnessy, Edward L. The Cambridge History of Ancient China, From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC
9.
Oracle bone
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Oracle bones are pieces of ox scapula or turtle plastron, which were used for pyromancy – a form of divination – in ancient China, mainly during the late Shang dynasty. Scapulimancy is the term if ox scapulae were used for the divination. Diviners would submit questions to deities regarding future weather, crop planting, the fortunes of members of the family, military endeavors. These questions were carved onto the bone or shell in oracle bone script using a sharp tool, intense heat was then applied with a metal rod until the bone or shell cracked due to thermal expansion. The diviner would then interpret the pattern of cracks and write the prognostication upon the piece as well, by the Zhou dynasty, cinnabar ink and brush had become the preferred writing method, resulting in fewer carved inscriptions and often blank oracle bones being unearthed. The oracle bones bear the earliest known significant corpus of ancient Chinese writing, when they were discovered and deciphered in the early twentieth century, these records confirmed the existence of the Shang, which some scholars had until then doubted. The turtle shell fragments were prescribed for malaria, while the animal bones were used in powdered form to treat knife wounds. A legendary tale relates that Wang was sick with malaria, and his scholar friend Liu E was visiting him and they discovered, before it was ground into powder, that it bore strange glyphs, which they, having studied the ancient bronze inscriptions, recognized as ancient writing. As Xǔ Yǎhuì states, No one can know how many oracle bones, prior to 1899, were ground up by traditional Chinese pharmacies and disappeared into peoples stomachs. It is not known how Wang and Liu actually came across these dragon bones, although scholars tried to find their source, antique dealers falsely claimed that the bones came from Tangyin in Henan. In 1908, scholar Luo Zhenyu discovered the source of the bones near Anyang, decades of uncontrolled digs followed to fuel the antiques trade, and many of these pieces eventually entered collections in Europe, the US, Canada and Japan. The first Western collector was the American missionary Frank H. Chalfant, Chalfant also first coined the term oracle bone in his 1906 book Early Chinese Writing, which was then borrowed into Chinese as jiǎgǔ 甲骨 in the 1930s. The Canadian Presbyterian minister James Mellon Menzies bought the largest amount, the Chinese still acknowledge the pioneering contribution of Menzies as the foremost western scholar of Yin-Shang culture and oracle bone inscriptions. His former residence in Anyang was declared a Protected Treasure in 2004, the inscriptions on the oracle bones, once deciphered, turned out to be the records of the divinations performed for or by the royal household. These, together with royal-sized tombs, proved beyond a doubt for the first time the existence of the Shang dynasty, which had recently been doubted, today, Xiǎotún at Anyang is thus also known as the Ruins of Yin, or Yinxu. The Jiǎgǔwén héjí edited by Hu Houxuan, with its supplement edited by Peng Bangjiong, is the most comprehensive catalogue of oracle bone framents, the 20 volumes contain reproductions of over 55,000 fragments. A separate work contains transcriptions of the inscriptions into standard characters, the vast majority of the inscribed oracle bones were found at the Yinxu site in modern Anyang, and date to the reigns of the last nine kings of the Shang dynasty. The extant inscriptions are not evenly distributed across these periods, with 55% coming from period I and 31% from periods III, a few oracle bones date to the beginning of the subsequent Zhou dynasty
