Rites of Zhou
The Rites of Zhou known as "Officers of Zhou" is a work on bureaucracy and organizational theory. It was renamed by Liu Xin to differentiate it from a chapter in the Book of History by the same name. To replace a lost work, it was included along with the Book of Rites and the Etiquette and Ceremonial – becoming one of three ancient ritual texts listed among the classics of Confucianism. In comparison with other works of its type, the Rite's ruler, though a sage, does not create the state, but organizes a bureaucracy, it could not have been composed during the Western Zhou, was based on Warring States period societies. Michael Puett and Mark Edward Lewis compares its system of duties and ranks to the "Legalism" of Shang Yang; the book appeared in the middle of the 2nd century BC, when it was found and included in the collection of Old Texts in the library of Prince Liu De, a younger brother of the Han emperor Wu. Its first editor was Liu Xin. Tradition since at least the Song dynasty continued this attribution, with the claim that Liu Xin's edition was the final one.
In the 12th century, it was given special recognition by being placed among the Five Classics as a substitute for the long-lost sixth work, the Classic of Music. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, following Kang Youwei, the book was seen as a forgery by Liu Xin. A few holdouts continue to insist on a Western Zhou date while the majority follow Qian Mu and Gu Jiegang in assigning the work to about the 3rd century BC. Yu Yingshi argues for a date in the late Warring States period based on a comparison of titles in the text with extant bronze inscriptions and calendrical knowledge implicit in the work In this view, the word "Zhou" in the title refers not to the Western Zhou but to the royal State of Zhou of the Warring States; the book is divided into six chapters: Offices of the Heaven on general governance. The work consists of schematic lists of Zhou dynasty bureaucrats, stating what the function of each office is and, eligible to hold it. Sometimes though the mechanical listing is broken off by pieces of philosophical exposition on how a given office contributes to social harmony and enforces the universal order.
The division of chapters follows the six departments of the Zhou dynasty government. The bureaucrats within a department come in five ranks: minister, senior clerk, middle clerk and junior clerk. There is only one minister per department -the department head-, but the other four ranks all have multiple holders spread across various specific professions. In addition to the Etiquette and Ceremonial, the Rites of Zhou contain one of the earliest references to the Three Obediences and Four Virtues, a set of principles directed at women that formed a core part of female education during the Zhou. A part of the Winter Offices, the Record of Trades, contains important information on technology, city planning, other topics. A passage records, he makes a square nine li on one side. Within the capital are nine north-south and nine east-west streets; the north-south streets are nine carriage tracks in width". Jin, Chunfeng. New examinations on the composition of the Zhouguan and on the culture and age reflected in the classic.
Taipei: Dongda Tushu Co. ISBN 957-19-1519-X. Lu, Youren. "Summary on Zhouli". Journal of Henan Normal University. Boltz, William G.'Chou li' in: Early Chinese Texts. A Biliographical Guide, pp. 24–32, Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China, 1993, ISBN 1-55729-043-1. Kelleher, M. Theresa. "San-ts'ung ssu-te". In Taylor, Rodney L.. F; the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Confucianism. 2 N-Z. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group. P. 496. Karlgren, Bernhard,'The Early History of the Chou li and Tso chuan Texts' in: Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquites, 3, pp. 1–59 Nylan, The Five'Confucian' Classics, New Haven, 2001, ISBN 0-300-08185-5, Chapter 4, The Three Rites Canon pp. 168–202. Rites of Zhou Rites of Zhou
Speculation
Speculation is the purchase of an asset with the hope that it will become more valuable in the near future. In finance, speculation is the practice of engaging in risky financial transactions in an attempt to profit from short term fluctuations in the market value of a tradable financial instrument—rather than attempting to profit from the underlying financial attributes embodied in the instrument such as capital gains, dividends, or interest. Many speculators pay little attention to the fundamental value of a security and instead focus purely on price movements. Speculation can in principle involve any tradable financial instrument. Speculators are common in the markets for stocks, commodity futures, fine art, real estate, derivatives. Speculators play one of four primary roles in financial markets, along with hedgers, who engage in transactions to offset some other pre-existing risk, arbitrageurs who seek to profit from situations where fungible instruments trade at different prices in different market segments, investors who seek profit through long-term ownership of an instrument's underlying attributes.
With the appearance of the stock ticker machine in 1867, which removed the need for traders to be physically present on the floor of a stock exchange, stock speculation underwent a dramatic expansion through the end of the 1920s. The number of shareholders increased from 4.4 million in 1900 to 26 million in 1932. The view of what distinguishes investment from speculation and speculation from excessive speculation varies among pundits and academics; some sources note that speculation is a higher risk form of investment. Others define speculation more narrowly; the U. S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission defines a speculator as "a trader who does not hedge, but who trades with the objective of achieving profits through the successful anticipation of price movements." The agency emphasizes that speculators serve important market functions, but defines excessive speculation as harmful to the proper functioning of futures markets. According to Benjamin Graham in The Intelligent Investor, the prototypical defensive investor is "...one interested chiefly in safety plus freedom from bother."
He admits, that "...some speculation is necessary and unavoidable, for in many common-stock situations, there are substantial possibilities of both profit and loss, the risks therein must be assumed by someone." Thus, many long-term investors those who buy and hold for decades, may be classified as speculators, excepting only the rare few who are motivated by income or safety of principal and not selling at a profit. Speculation is condemned on ethical-moral grounds as creating money from money and thereby promoting the vices of avarice and gambling. There is opinion that it serves no purposes from a human and economic perspective Nicholas Kaldor has long recognized the price-stabilizing role of speculators, who tend to out "price-fluctuations due to changes in the conditions of demand or supply," by possessing "better than average foresight." This view was echoed by the speculator Victor Niederhoffer, in "The Speculator as Hero", who describes the benefits of speculation: Let's consider some of the principles that explain the causes of shortages and surpluses and the role of speculators.
When a harvest is too small to satisfy consumption at its normal rate, speculators come in, hoping to profit from the scarcity by buying. Their purchases raise the price, thereby checking consumption so that the smaller supply will last longer. Producers encouraged by the high price further lessen the shortage by growing or importing to reduce the shortage. On the other side, when the price is higher than the speculators think the facts warrant, they sell; this reduces prices, helping to reduce the surplus. Another service provided by speculators to a market is that by risking their own capital in the hope of profit, they add liquidity to the market and make it easier or possible for others to offset risk, including those who may be classified as hedgers and arbitrageurs. If any market, such as pork bellies, had no speculators, only producers and consumers would participate. With fewer players in the market, there would be a larger spread between the current bid and ask price of pork bellies.
Any new entrant in the market who wanted to trade pork bellies would be forced to accept this illiquid market and might trade at market prices with large bid-ask spreads or face difficulty finding a co-party to buy or sell to. By contrast, a commodity speculator may profit the difference in the spread and, in competition with other speculators, reduce the spread; some schools of thought argue that speculators increase the liquidity in a market, therefore promote an efficient market. This efficiency is difficult to achieve without speculators. Speculators take information and speculate on how it affects prices and consumers, who may want to hedge their risks, needing counterparties if they could find each other without markets it would happen as it would be cheaper. A beneficial by-product of speculation for the economy is price discovery. On the other hand, as more speculators participate in a market, underlying real demand and supply can diminish compared to trading volume, prices may become distorted.
Speculators perform a risk bearing role. For example, a farmer might be considering planting corn on some unused farmland. However, he might not want to do so because he is concerned that the price might fall too far by harvest time. By selling his cro
Agriculture
Agriculture is the science and art of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in cities; the history of agriculture began thousands of years ago. After gathering wild grains beginning at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers began to plant them around 11,500 years ago. Pigs and cattle were domesticated over 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. Industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture in the twentieth century came to dominate agricultural output, though about 2 billion people still depended on subsistence agriculture into the twenty-first. Modern agronomy, plant breeding, agrochemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers, technological developments have increased yields, while causing widespread ecological and environmental damage. Selective breeding and modern practices in animal husbandry have increased the output of meat, but have raised concerns about animal welfare and environmental damage.
Environmental issues include contributions to global warming, depletion of aquifers, antibiotic resistance, growth hormones in industrial meat production. Genetically modified organisms are used, although some are banned in certain countries; the major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers and raw materials. Food classes include cereals, fruits, meat, milk and eggs. Over one-third of the world's workers are employed in agriculture, second only to the service sector, although the number of agricultural workers in developed countries has decreased over the centuries; the word agriculture is a late Middle English adaptation of Latin agricultūra, from ager, "field", which in its turn came from Greek αγρός, cultūra, "cultivation" or "growing". While agriculture refers to human activities, certain species of ant and ambrosia beetle cultivate crops. Agriculture is defined with varying scopes, in its broadest sense using natural resources to "produce commodities which maintain life, including food, forest products, horticultural crops, their related services".
Thus defined, it includes arable farming, animal husbandry and forestry, but horticulture and forestry are in practice excluded. The development of agriculture enabled the human population to grow many times larger than could be sustained by hunting and gathering. Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, included a diverse range of taxa, in at least 11 separate centres of origin. Wild grains were eaten from at least 105,000 years ago. From around 11,500 years ago, the eight Neolithic founder crops and einkorn wheat, hulled barley, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax were cultivated in the Levant. Rice was domesticated in China between 11,500 and 6,200 BC with the earliest known cultivation from 5,700 BC, followed by mung and azuki beans. Sheep were domesticated in Mesopotamia between 11,000 years ago. Cattle were domesticated from the wild aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey and Pakistan some 10,500 years ago. Pig production emerged in Eurasia, including Europe, East Asia and Southwest Asia, where wild boar were first domesticated about 10,500 years ago.
In the Andes of South America, the potato was domesticated between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, along with beans, llamas and guinea pigs. Sugarcane and some root vegetables were domesticated in New Guinea around 9,000 years ago. Sorghum was domesticated in the Sahel region of Africa by 7,000 years ago. Cotton was domesticated in Peru by 5,600 years ago, was independently domesticated in Eurasia. In Mesoamerica, wild teosinte was bred into maize by 6,000 years ago. Scholars have offered multiple hypotheses to explain the historical origins of agriculture. Studies of the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies indicate an initial period of intensification and increasing sedentism. Wild stands, harvested started to be planted, came to be domesticated. In Eurasia, the Sumerians started to live in villages from about 8,000 BC, relying on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and a canal system for irrigation. Ploughs appear in pictographs around 3,000 BC. Farmers grew wheat, vegetables such as lentils and onions, fruits including dates and figs.
Ancient Egyptian agriculture relied on its seasonal flooding. Farming started in the predynastic period at the end of the Paleolithic, after 10,000 BC. Staple food crops were grains such as wheat and barley, alongside industrial crops such as flax and papyrus. In India, wheat and jujube were domesticated by 9,000 BC, soon followed by sheep and goats. Cattle and goats were domesticated in Mehrgarh culture by 8,000–6,000 BC. Cotton was cultivated by the 5th-4th millennium BC. Archeological evidence indicates an animal-drawn plough from 2,500 BC in the Indus Valley Civilisation. In China, from the 5th century BC there was a nationwide granary system and widespread silk farming. Water-powered grain mills were in use followed by irrigation. By the late 2nd century, heavy ploughs had been developed with iron mouldboards; these spread westwards across Eurasia. Asian rice was domesticated 8,200–13,500 years ago – depending on the molecular clock estimate, used – on the Pearl River in southern China with a single genetic origin from the wild rice Oryza rufipogon
Yale romanization of Cantonese
The Yale romanization of Cantonese was developed by Gerard P. Kok for his and Parker Po-fei Huang's textbook Speak Cantonese circulated in looseleaf form in 1952 but published in 1958. Unlike the Yale romanization of Mandarin, it is still used in books and dictionaries for foreign learners of Cantonese, it shares some similarities with Hanyu Pinyin in that unvoiced, unaspirated consonants are represented by letters traditionally used in English and most other European languages to represent voiced sounds. For example, is represented as b in Yale, whereas its aspirated counterpart, is represented as p. Students attending The Chinese University of Hong Kong's New-Asia Yale-in-China Chinese Language Center are taught using Yale romanization. Only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables. Modern Cantonese has up to seven phonemic tones. Cantonese Yale represents these tones using a combination of diacritics and the letter h. Traditional Chinese linguistics treats the tones in syllables ending with a stop consonant as separate "entering tones".
Cantonese Yale follows modern linguistic conventions in treating these the same as the high-flat, mid-flat and low-flat tones, respectively. Sample transcription of one of the 300 Tang Poems by Meng Haoran: Cantonese phonology Jyutping Guangdong Romanization Cantonese Pinyin Sidney Lau romanisation S. L. Wong Barnett–Chao Romanisation Yale romanization of Mandarin Yale romanization of Korean Gwaan, Choi-wa 關彩華. English-Cantonese Dictionary - 英粤字典: Cantonese in Yale Romanization. Chinese University Press. ISBN 962-201-970-6. Matthews, Stephen & Yip, Virginia. Cantonese. A Comprehensive Grammar. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-08945-X. Ng Lam, Sim-yuk & Chik, Hon-man. Chinese-English Dictionary 漢英小字典: Cantonese in Yale Romanization, Mandarin in Pinyin. Chinese University Press. ISBN 962-201-922-6. Comparison chart of Romanization for Cantonese with Yale, S. Lau, Toho and LSHK MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary Online Chinese Character to Yale Romanization of Cantonese lookup Conversion tool
Nanjing
Nanjing romanized as Nanking and Nankin, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China and the second largest city in the East China region, with an administrative area of 6,600 km2 and a total population of 8,270,500 as of 2016. The inner area of Nanjing enclosed by the city wall is Nanjing City, with an area of 55 km2, while the Nanjing Metropolitan Region includes surrounding cities and areas, covering over 60,000 km2, with a population of over 30 million. Situated in the Yangtze River Delta region, Nanjing has a prominent place in Chinese history and culture, having served as the capital of various Chinese dynasties and republican governments dating from the 3rd century to 1949, has thus long been a major center of culture, research, economy, transport networks and tourism, being the home to one of the world's largest inland ports; the city is one of the fifteen sub-provincial cities in the People's Republic of China's administrative structure, enjoying jurisdictional and economic autonomy only less than that of a province.
Nanjing has been ranked seventh in the evaluation of "Cities with Strongest Comprehensive Strength" issued by the National Statistics Bureau, second in the evaluation of cities with most sustainable development potential in the Yangtze River Delta. It has been awarded the title of 2008 Habitat Scroll of Honor of China, Special UN Habitat Scroll of Honor Award and National Civilized City. Nanjing boasts many high-quality universities and research institutes, with the number of universities listed in 100 National Key Universities ranking third, including Nanjing University which has a long history and is among the world top 10 universities ranked by Nature Index; the ratio of college students to total population ranks No.1 among large cities nationwide. Nanjing is one of the top three Chinese scientific research centers, according to the Nature Index strong in the chemical sciences. Nanjing, one of the nation's most important cities for over a thousand years, is recognized as one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China.
It has been one of the world's largest cities, enjoying peace and prosperity despite wars and disasters. Nanjing served as the capital of Eastern Wu, one of the three major states in the Three Kingdoms period; the city served as the seat of the rebel Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Japanese puppet regime of Wang Jingwei during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It suffered severe atrocities including the Nanjing Massacre. Nanjing has served as the capital city of Jiangsu province since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, it boasts many important heritage sites, including the Presidential Palace and Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. Nanjing is famous for human historical landscapes and waters such as Fuzimiao, Ming Palace, Chaotian Palace, Porcelain Tower, Drum Tower, Stone City, City Wall, Qinhuai River, Xuanwu Lake and Purple Mountain. Key cultural facilities include Nanjing Museum and Nanjing Art Museum; the city has a number of other names, some historical names are now used as names of districts of the city.
When it was the capital of a state, for instance during the ROC, Jing was adopted as the abbreviation of Nanjing. The city first became a Chinese national capital as early as the Jin dynasty; the name Nanjing, which means "Southern Capital", was designated for the city during the Ming dynasty, about six hundred years later. Nanjing is known as Jinling or Ginling and the old name has been used since the Warring States period in the Zhou dynasty. Archaeological discovery shows. Zun, a kind of wine vessel, was found to exist in Beiyinyangying culture of Nanjing in about 5000 years ago. In the late period of Shang dynasty, Taibo of Zhou came to Jiangnan and established Wu state, the first stop is in Nanjing area according to some historians based on discoveries in Taowu and Hushu culture. According to a legend quoted by an artist in Ming dynasty, Chen Yi, King of the State of Wu, founded a fort named Yecheng in today's Nanjing area in 495 BC. In 473 BC, the State of Yue conquered Wu and constructed the fort of Yuecheng on the outskirts of the present-day Zhonghua Gate.
In 333 BC, after eliminating the State of Yue, the State of Chu built Jinling Yi in the western part of present-day Nanjing. It was renamed Moling during reign of Qin Shi Huang. Since the city experienced destruction and renewal many times; the area was successively part of Kuaiji and Danyang prefectures in Qin and Han dynasty, part of Yangzhou region, established as the nation's 13 supervisory and administrative regions in the 5th year of Yuanfeng in Han dynasty. Nanjing was the capital city of Danyang Prefecture, had been the capital city of Yangzhou for about 400 years from late Han to early Tang. Nanjing first became a state capital in AD 229, when the state of Eastern
Chinese surname
Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, Philippines and among overseas Chinese communities. In ancient times two types of surnames existed, namely xing or clan names, shi or lineage names. Chinese family names are patrilineal. Women do not change their surnames upon marriage, except in places with more Western influences such as Hong Kong. Traditionally Chinese surnames have been exogamous; the colloquial expressions laobaixing and bǎixìng are used in Chinese to mean "ordinary folks", "the people", or "commoners". Prior to the Warring States period, only the ruling families and the aristocratic elite had surnames. There was a difference between clan names or xing and lineage names or shi. Xing were surnames held by the noble clans, they are composed of a nü radical, taken by some as evidence they originated from matriarchal societies based on maternal lineages. Another hypothesis has been proposed by sinologist Léon Vandermeersch upon observation of the evolution of characters in oracular scripture from the Shang dynasty through the Zhou.
The "female" radical seems to appear at the Zhou period next to Shang sinograms indicating an ethnic group or a tribe. This combination seems to designate a female and could mean "lady of such or such clan"; the structure of the xing sinogram could reflect the fact that in the royal court of Zhou, at least in the beginning, only females were called by their birth clan name, while the men were designated by their title or fief. Prior to the Qin dynasty China was a fengjian society; as fiefdoms were divided and subdivided among descendants, so additional sub-surnames known as shi were created to distinguish between noble lineages according to seniority, though in theory they shared the same ancestor. In this way, a nobleman would hold a xing; the difference between xing and shi was blurring for women since the Spring and Autumn period. After the states of China were unified by Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC, surnames spread to the lower classes. Many shi surnames survive to the present day. According to Kiang Kang-Hu, there are 18 sources from which Chinese surnames may be derived, while others suggested at least 24.
These may be names associated with a ruling dynasty such as the various titles and names of rulers and dynasty, or they may be place names of various territories, towns and specific locations, the title of official posts or occupations, or names of objects, or they may be derived from the names of family members or clans, in a few cases, names of contempt given by a ruler. The following are some of the common sources: Xing: These were reserved for the central lineage of the royal family, with collateral lineages taking their own shi; the traditional description was what were known as the "Eight Great Xings of High Antiquity", namely Jiāng, Jī, Yáo, Yíng, Sì, Yún, Guī and Rèn, though some sources quote Jí as the last one instead of Rèn. Of these xings, only Jiang and Yao have survived in their original form to modern days as occurring surnames. Royal decree by the Emperor, such as Kuang. State name: Many nobles and commoners took the name of their state, either to show their continuing allegiance or as a matter of national and ethnic identity.
These are some of the most common Chinese surnames. Name of a fief or place of origin: Fiefdoms were granted to collateral branches of the aristocracy and it was natural as part of the process of sub-surnaming for their names to be used. An example is Marquis of Ouyangting, whose descendants took the surname Ouyang. There are some two hundred examples of this identified of two-character surnames, but few have survived to the present. Names of an ancestor: Like the previous example, this was a common origin with close to 500 or 600 examples, 200 of which are two-character surnames. An ancestor's courtesy name would be used. For example, Yuan Taotu took the second character of his grandfather's courtesy name Boyuan as his surname. Sometimes titles granted to ancestors could be taken as surnames. Seniority within the family: In ancient usage, the characters of meng, shu and ji were used to denote the first, second and fourth eldest sons in a family; these were sometimes adopted as surnames. Of these, Meng is the best known.
Occupation From official positions, such as Shǐ, Jí, Líng, Cāng, Kù, Jiàn, Shàngguān, Tàishǐ, Zhōngháng, Yuèzhèng, in the case of Shang's "Five Officials", namely Sīmǎ, Sītú, Sīkōng, Sīshì and Sīkòu.
.svg){kind=small}
