Your Guide to all things Chinese

Time 2020-07-14 11:03:48

Web Name: Your Guide to all things Chinese

WebSite: http://www.chinasage.info

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Chinasage : All about ChinaChina sage's information will be of use to anyone wanting to learn more about the world's upcoming nation. We cover all aspects of China in hundreds of detailed pages which include all sorts of cultural traditions, descriptions of every Chinese province and all the dynasties. We hope you find this the natural place to start your study of China. We continue to improve and extend our coverage of topics.If you think you know about China, check out your knowledge with our Quiz section, all the answers to the questions are somewhere on the web site. Our source section has full reviews and descriptions of hundreds books about China that have been used as the reference material for these pages.China sage is in active development check back to see new and expanded information.Upcoming festivals21st Jul Half Year Festival 22nd Jul Great heat (Lichun calendar) 26th Jul Clothes Drying Day See festivals Time in China Beijing weatherclear sky 37 C/ 99 FJul 14th 2020 at 5:59am UTCData provided by OpenWeatherMap.orgChina's weather Fish for good fortuneCultureFish ( y ) have been a frequently used symbol for good fortune for centuries. This is because y means 'surplus; abundance' and so a picture of a fish is a wish for prosperity. They are often eaten at Chinese New Year partly as a symbol for a wish for abundance in the coming year. Readmore Ming TombsWe have added what we believe is the most comprehensive guide to the tombs of the Ming Emperors near Beijing. We found other web sites (including Wikipedia) were short on detail or only considered one part of the huge complex.Most visitors only get to see the Dingling tomb and its museums and miss out on the Sacred Way and other tombs which is a great shame. We've also added a little about the 'curse of the Emperors', it is certainly true that the people who took part in the 1956-8 excavation did suffer soon afterwards.Read more...China's Silk RoadChinaThe silk road from China leading to India and also through Central Asia to the Middle East was the longest trade route by land. It allowed early contact between the Roman Empire and China when silk was in great demand in Rome. The trade brought great prosperity to the cities of Central Asia such as Samarkand and Bactra. Readmore Chinese SilkCultureAlong with porcelain and tea, silk is one of China's important innovations. The secret of this great invention was closely guarded for centuries. Fabulous fine cloth was an important export as far back as the early Roman Empire and it was in Rome where a law was passed to ban the wearing of silk. Readmore Chinese porcelainCultureTogether with tea and silk, porcelain from China is its most famous export. Prized the world over, high quality porcelain commands high prices at auction. Like silk the secret of its manufacture was a closely guarded secret for centuries. Readmore How well do you know China?In 1762 the population of China had reached how many?The huge population of 200 million was the major factor in the decline of the Qing dynasty. There was insufficient food and infrastructure to support such large numbers of people.Go to our quizzes page for a great range of quizzes about everything ChineseThu 18th JunEclipse over ChinaJune 21st will be marked by an annular eclipse with 40% of the sun obscured over much of China. It will be annular rather than total eclipse because the moon is slightly further away from the Earth than average and does not quite cover the whole solar disc. It will reach 90% coverage in southern China - from Tibet through to Fujian.It happens to coincide with the Summer Solstice when the days in the northern hemisphere are at their longest. The Summer solstice is xi zh in Chinese meaning Summer limit .The Chinese for a solar eclipse is r sh meaning literally Sun eat following the ancient tradition that the moon or a celestial dragon (or dog) eats up the sun. The first record of an eclipse in China dates back to at least 1217BCE. China has kept an unbroken set of astronomical observations longer than any other civilizations. The prediction of eclipses became a very important study as the ominous diminution of the sun s power could be seen as Heaven s displeasure at the Emperor s rule. People came out of their houses and stopped work while temples banged gongs and rang bells to scare away the dragon eating the sun.Read full story Read all our news stories...Chinese paper-cutsCultureChinese people have been making decorative objects out of paper for a very long time. Paper-cuts are often seen at traditional festivals and often have a hidden symbolic meaning. Modern artists are now taking the art-form in exciting new directions. Readmore Tradtional performanceCultureChina has a great range of traditional performing arts: theater, opera, dance, shadow and glove puppetry and story-telling. Many of these have roots back in ancient times - over a thousand years. Mass media has reduced popularity of most forms but devoted practitioners are helping to keep the art-forms alive. Readmore Book: Symbols of ChinaA lavishly illustrated book covering all aspects of China not just 'symbols': traditions, scenic sights, festivals, arts, legends and famous figures. The text descriptions are a little short but it does give a very good general overall coverage and the photographs and illustrations are very good.Amazon details... Birth starsThere was a traditional Chinese belief that everyone had an associated birth star. Almanacs would list which particular star is associated with a particular birthday. Everyone would learn to locate and venerate their star in the heavens. Readmore Tue 7th JulSingapore and legendary foundersWe've added a few more topics to the web site. The first is the success story that is the city state of Singapore, run primarily by people of Chinese descent. We've also added more about the early legendary gods and emperors that are much mentioned in myths and legends. Finally, again in the area of ancient China history we've added information about the small states that existed before the first Qin Emperor unified China.HSBC Rain Vortex inside the "Jewel" area at Singapore Changi Airport (SIN). SkyTrain connecting Terminal 2 and 3 is visible in the photo. Image by Matteo Morando available under a Creative Commons License Readmore How well do you know China?An explosion on 12th September 2015 killed 173 people, in which city did it happen?The large explosion at a storage depot at Binhai, Tianjin led to 173 deaths and 797 non-fatal injuries.Go to our quizzes page for a great range of quizzes about everything ChineseFancy a challenge?ChinasageWe have over a dozen quizzes covering all aspects of China: history, traditions, geography and pictures at a wide range of difficulty levels. We give a full explanation in the answers which are somewhere on this web site. See how well you know China and learn something along the way. Readmore Ming TombsWe have added what we believe is the most comprehensive guide to the tombs of the Ming Emperors near Beijing. We found other web sites (including Wikipedia) were short on detail or only considered one part of the huge complex.Most visitors only get to see the Dingling tomb and its museums and miss out on the Sacred Way and other tombs which is a great shame. We've also added a little about the 'curse of the Emperors', it is certainly true that the people who took part in the 1956-8 excavation did suffer soon afterwards.Read more...About ChinasageWe're building an exciting new information source all about China. We found other sites were poorly structured, too detailed (such as Wikipedia) or just too old-fashioned. What we thought was needed was a carefully constructed set of pages with strict editorial control so that links and pages are consistent, up-to-date and easy to navigate without clutter.The name Chinasage came about because this can be read as either china sage ( zh ng gu y ng m ng) or china's age ( zh ng gu sh d i) , which promotes our new knowledge resource at a time when China has come of age in the World.China Sage NewsWe keep track of news reports from China but steer clear of the headlines that are well reported elsewhere. Here are the latest news stories, for more visit our news page.Thu 9th JulAncient encyclopedia volume bought for $9millionThe sale of just a couple of volumed from the great Ming dynasty encyclopedia has cost a thousand times more than the expected sale price at more than $9million. In 1403 Emperor Yongle ordered a great encyclopedia to be written the Y ng l d di n. This was to be an encyclopedia of all known scholarship on all subjects arranged into categories ordered according to its special system of rhyme of category names. It took 2,180 scholars six years to produce an amazing work totaling 11,095 volumes - the Wikipedia of its day. Its content was considered so vital and significant that no foreigner was allowed to view it. Some say that a copy was buried with Emperor Yongle and may still lie there intact. Two copies of the great Yongle Dadian were made of the original at Wenyuan Ge in the Forbidden City. The copying started in 1562 and took five years to complete. Yang Hui (1238-1298) 's work preserved in Yongle Encyclopedia. It shows what is now called a Pascal Triangle discovered by Chinese mathematicans 500 years before Pascal. Image by Yang Hui available under a Creative Commons License Readmore Fri 26th JunSummer resort at Chengde The Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty were not content with just the Summer Palace and Forbidden City in the capital Beijing they also built an even larger extensive pleasure park at Chengde 150 miles further north-east. Here they could escape the summer heat and practice horsemanship out in the hills and mountains. The resort is dotted with impressive replicas of buildings elsewhere in China including the Potala Palace, Lhasa. It was here that the Emperor would hold audience and where on 4th September 1793 Englishman the Earl MacCartney representing the English East India Company had a famous meeting with Emperor Qianlong. Chengde, Hebei has many palaces built as replicas of buildings in China. This palace is a recreation of the Potala Palace Tibet Copyright Dreamstime see image licenseReadmore Thu 18th JunEclipse over ChinaJune 21st will be marked by an annular eclipse with 40% of the sun obscured over much of China. It will be annular rather than total eclipse because the moon is slightly further away from the Earth than average and does not quite cover the whole solar disc. It will reach 90% coverage in southern China - from Tibet through to Fujian.It happens to coincide with the Summer Solstice when the days in the northern hemisphere are at their longest. The Summer solstice is xi zh in Chinese meaning Summer limit .The Chinese for a solar eclipse is r sh meaning literally Sun eat following the ancient tradition that the moon or a celestial dragon (or dog) eats up the sun. The first record of an eclipse in China dates back to at least 1217BCE. China has kept an unbroken set of astronomical observations longer than any other civilizations. The prediction of eclipses became a very important study as the ominous diminution of the sun s power could be seen as Heaven s displeasure at the Emperor s rule. People came out of their houses and stopped work while temples banged gongs and rang bells to scare away the dragon eating the sun.Readmore Fri 12th JunAncient bird sculpture thrills archeologistsA new discovery of a small carving (only 0.76 inches [19.2 mms] long and 0.49 inches [12.5 mms] high) has excited an international team of archeologists at a site near Xuchang, Henan province. Professor Li Zhanyang of Shandong University is the lead writer of the report of what was found at the paleolithic site at Lingjing. It is far earlier than any previous bird sculpture to be found in China at 13,500 years old and is carved by hand from a single mammalian bone. The bird is carved so it has a base so it could stand up and be admired.Readmore Chinasage Site updatesWe continue to improve the web site as you can see on these descriptions of updates and upgrades, for older entries please visit our site news page.Tue 7th JulSingapore and legendary foundersWe've added a few more topics to the web site. The first is the success story that is the city state of Singapore, run primarily by people of Chinese descent. We've also added more about the early legendary gods and emperors that are much mentioned in myths and legends. Finally, again in the area of ancient China history we've added information about the small states that existed before the first Qin Emperor unified China.HSBC Rain Vortex inside the "Jewel" area at Singapore Changi Airport (SIN). SkyTrain connecting Terminal 2 and 3 is visible in the photo. Image by Matteo Morando available under a Creative Commons License Readmore Thu 25th JunSite improvementsRunning a web site like this is a continuous process. Just when you think you've got the content looking good either the technology or the search algorithms change. We try to design the pages to work well with smartphones but these continue to develop with new features. In this latest set of changes we've made better use of the new HTML5 tags such as 'aside', 'section', 'figcaption' and 'footer'. This helps browsers and Google work out what bits of a web page are important and which are peripheral. When you make the changes you can never be sure whether it has improved matters and the web pages will then appear higher on Google searches as a result - you have to wait at least two months for everything to be re-indexed and re-analyzed. We've also split the Chinese calendar away from the Festivals page as we think people are either interested in one or the other and not both. if you have any views on layout or content we are always delighted to hear from you - just use the envelope icon at the top of any page.Readmore Zhenyuan village in Guizhou is home to many Miao minority peopleConventionsWe use a consistent style for links within Chinasage. An internal link taking you to another page within our site is shown like this while a link to a page on any other web site is shown like this .We use Chinese characters wherever appropriate. Most browsers should display both the characters and the pinyin correctly. We highlight any use of the older Wade Giles system. Except where stated all characters are the modern simplified form used in the People's Republic rather than the traditional ones (pre-1970s). To help you learn Chinese characters many of the very common characters are highlighted thus: hovering the mouse over the character pops up a box showing further information about the character.Dates are given using the BCE/CE (Before Common Era and in Common Era) year convention rather than BC/AD. If a date is not followed by BCE or CE it should be taken as CE.AuthorshipAll the text on the Chinasage web site is our own, we do not copy and paste from other web sites. We research each topic from a number of separate sources. The only exception to this are quotations and image credits. All text is our copyright and can not be used/copied without our permission. We are independent of any other company or government, the opinions expressed are our own. We do not receive funding from any external agency or organization.Teacup Media (China History Podcast)We are delighted to be able to promote links to Laszlo Montgomery's excellent Teacup Media series created over the last ten years. Laszlo Montgomery has in depth knowledge of building commercial contacts with China over 30 years. The set of 250 podcasts totals 130 hours of audio commentary which covers every conceivable topic in Chinese history. Highly recommended.AcknowledgmentsWe are extremely grateful to the many people who have put their photographs online for anyone to adapt and use. Without them our site would be very drab. If we are not using the image license correctly please let us know. Some pages use Javascript to create special effects such as our airport table and calendar. We are grateful to the original authors for providing their code to be used and adapted by anyone else. The online Chinese dictionary uses the definition from the CC-CEDICT project for which we are grateful for a generous free license. Sound files kindly provided by shtooka.net under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License.Feel free to contact Chinasage to point out any errors, omissions or suggestions on how to improve this web site.

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