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Chikan, Kaiping
Chikan () is a town in Kaiping (), Jiangmen, Guangdong Province, China. It is officially designated as a ''National Historic and Cultural Town of China'' (). Historically it was a regional maritime hub, center for emigration, emigrant market town, and the administrative centre of Kaiping. History Chikan town was founded in the year 1649 and was originally part of Xinhui County. Due to it being surrounded by the Tan River on all sides, it thrived in waterway transport. According to the 1991 town chronicle, a pier was present by the year 1676. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Chikan became the major regional maritime transportation hub in Kaiping county and, through its numerous ferries via the Tan river () to Jiangmen, in the Pearl River Delta. This came to an end upon the silting of the Tan River in the 20th century. As a riverport, Chikan became a center for emigration from the Tan river catchment area in the late 19th century, pushed by increasing population p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qilou
Tong lau or ke lau are tenement buildings built in late 19th century to the 1960s in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southern China, and Southeast Asia. Designed for both residential and commercial uses, they are similar in style and function to the shophouses with five-foot way ( nan, têng-á-kha) of Southeast Asia. Over the years, tong lau construction has seen influences of Edwardian style architecture and later the Bauhaus movement. Etymology ''Tong lau'' (Cantonese) or ''tang lou'' (Mandarin) means "Chinese building" – ''Tong'' or ''Tang'' () refers to the Tang dynasty and is used as a term to mean Chinese, and ''lau'' () is a building with more than one floor. It is a general term for a type of building found in Hong Kong that also developed in Macau and Canton (Guangzhou) from traditional Southern Chinese townhouses. Architecture The early buildings were generally long and narrow with width of between 12 and 15 feet determined by the length of the wooden beams. In Hong Kong's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Republic Of China (1912–49)
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. The territories controlled by the ROC consist of 168 islands, with a combined area of . The main island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', has an area of , with mountain ranges dominating the eastern two-thirds and plains in the western third, where its highly urbanised population is concentrated. The capital, Taipei, forms along with New Taipei City and Keelung the largest metropolitan area of Taiwan. Other major cities include Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung. With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the most densely populated countries in the world. Taiwan has been settled for at least 25,000 years. Ancestors of Taiwanese indigenous peoples settled the island around 6, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
People's Republic Of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and borders fourteen countries by land, the most of any country in the world, tied with Russia. Covering an area of approximately , it is the world's third largest country by total land area. The country consists of 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities, and two Special Administrative Regions (Hong Kong and Macau). The national capital is Beijing, and the most populous city and financial center is Shanghai. Modern Chinese trace their origins to a cradle of civilization in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. The semi-legendary Xia dynasty in the 21st century BCE and the well-attested Shang and Zhou dynasties developed a bureaucratic political system to serve hereditary monarchies, or dyna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Overseas Chinese
Overseas Chinese () refers to people of Chinese birth or ethnicity who reside outside Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese. Terminology () or ''Hoan-kheh'' () in Hokkien, refers to people of Chinese citizenship residing outside of either the PRC or ROC (Taiwan). The government of China realized that the overseas Chinese could be an asset, a source of foreign investment and a bridge to overseas knowledge; thus, it began to recognize the use of the term Huaqiao. Ching-Sue Kuik renders in English as "the Chinese sojourner" and writes that the term is "used to disseminate, reinforce, and perpetuate a monolithic and essentialist Chinese identity" by both the PRC and the ROC. The modern informal internet term () refers to returned overseas Chinese and ''guīqiáo qiáojuàn'' () to their returning relatives. () refers to people of Chinese origin residing outside of China, regardless of citizenship. Another ofte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silver Coin
Silver coins are considered the oldest mass-produced form of coinage. Silver has been used as a coinage metal since the times of the Greeks; their silver drachmas were popular trade coins. The ancient Persians used silver coins between 612–330 BC. Before 1797, British pennies were made of silver. As with all collectible coins, many factors determine the value of a silver coin, such as its rarity, demand, condition and the number originally minted. Ancient silver coins coveted by collectors include the Denarius and Miliarense, while more recent collectible silver coins include the Morgan Dollar and the Spanish Milled Dollar. Other than collector's silver coins, silver bullion coins are popular among people who desire a "hedge" against currency inflation or store of value. Silver has an international currency symbol of XAG under ISO 4217. Origins and early development of silver coins The earliest coins in the world were minted in the kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor around 600 B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UNESCO World Heritage Site
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, scientific or other form of significance. The sites are judged to contain " cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity". To be selected, a World Heritage Site must be a somehow unique landmark which is geographically and historically identifiable and has special cultural or physical significance. For example, World Heritage Sites might be ancient ruins or historical structures, buildings, cities, deserts, forests, islands, lakes, monuments, mountains, or wilderness areas. A World Heritage Site may signify a remarkable accomplishment of humanity, and serve as evidence of our intellectual history on the planet, or it might be a place of great natural beauty. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ming Dynasty
The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han Chinese, Han people, the majority ethnic group in China. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who established the short-lived Shun dynasty), numerous rump state, rump regimes ruled by remnants of the House of Zhu, Ming imperial family—collectively called the Southern Ming—survived until 1662. The Ming dynasty's founder, the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368–1398), attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty: the empire's standing army exceeded one million troops and the naval history of China, navy's dockyards in Nanjin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jiaqing
The Jiaqing Emperor (13 November 1760 – 2 September 1820), also known by his temple name Emperor Renzong of Qing, born Yongyan, was the sixth emperor of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and the fifth Qing emperor to rule over China proper, from 1796 to 1820. He was the 15th son of the Qianlong Emperor. During his reign, he prosecuted Heshen, the corrupt Manchu favorite of his father, and attempted to restore order within the Qing Empire while curbing the smuggling of opium into China. Early years Yongyan was born in the Old Summer Palace, 8 km (5 mi) northwest of the walls of Beijing. His personal name, "Yongyan" (永琰), was later changed to "Yongyan" (顒琰) when he became the emperor. The Chinese character for ''yong'' in his name was changed from the more common 永 to the less common 顒. This novelty was introduced by the Qianlong Emperor, who believed that it was not proper to have a commonly used Chinese character in an emperor's personal name due to the lon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Theater of the Second World War. The beginning of the war is conventionally dated to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on 7 July 1937, when a dispute between Japanese and Chinese troops in Peking escalated into a full-scale invasion. Some Chinese historians believe that the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 18 September 1931 marks the start of the war. This full-scale war between the Chinese and the Empire of Japan is often regarded as the beginning of World War II in Asia. China fought Japan with aid from Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, United Kingdom and the United States. After the Japanese attacks on Malaya and Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war merged with other conflicts which are generally categorized under those conflicts of World War II a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diaolou
Diaolou () are fortified multi-storey watchtowers in rural villages, generally made of reinforced concrete. These towers are located mainly in the Kaiping () county of Jiangmen prefecture in Guangdong province, China. In 2007, UNESCO designated the ''Kaiping Diaolou and Villages'' () a World Heritage Site, which covers four separate Kaiping village areas: Sanmenli (), Zilicun (), Jinjiangli (), and Majianglong village cluster (). These areas demonstrate a unique fusion of 19th and 20th-century Chinese and Western architectural styles. History Diaolou structures were built from the time of the Ming Dynasty to the early 20th century, reaching a peak during the Warlord Era in the 1920s and 1930s, with the financial aid of overseas Chinese, when there were more than three thousand of these structures. Today, approximately 1,800 diaolou remain standing, and mostly abandoned, in the village countryside of Kaiping, and approximately 500 in neighboring Taishan. They can also occasionall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diaolou
Diaolou () are fortified multi-storey watchtowers in rural villages, generally made of reinforced concrete. These towers are located mainly in the Kaiping () county of Jiangmen prefecture in Guangdong province, China. In 2007, UNESCO designated the ''Kaiping Diaolou and Villages'' () a World Heritage Site, which covers four separate Kaiping village areas: Sanmenli (), Zilicun (), Jinjiangli (), and Majianglong village cluster (). These areas demonstrate a unique fusion of 19th and 20th-century Chinese and Western architectural styles. History Diaolou structures were built from the time of the Ming Dynasty to the early 20th century, reaching a peak during the Warlord Era in the 1920s and 1930s, with the financial aid of overseas Chinese, when there were more than three thousand of these structures. Today, approximately 1,800 diaolou remain standing, and mostly abandoned, in the village countryside of Kaiping, and approximately 500 in neighboring Taishan. They can also occasionall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drunken Master II
''Drunken Master II'' () is a 1994 Hong Kong action-comedy kung fu film directed by Lau Kar-leung and starring Jackie Chan as Chinese martial arts master and a Cantonese folk hero, Wong Fei-hung. It was Chan's first traditional style martial arts film since ''Fearless Hyena Part II'' (1983). The film was released in North America as ''The Legend of Drunken Master'' in 2000. The film is a sequel to Chan's 1978 film ''Drunken Master'', directed by Yuen Woo-ping. Another film, ''Drunken Master III'' (1994, directed by Lau Kar-Leung) features little in common with either this or its predecessor, and is not considered a sequel. In 2005, ''Drunken Master II'' was named one of the top 100 best films of all time by ''Time'' magazine. In 2015, the British Film Institute (BFI) selected ''Drunken Master II'' as one of the ten best action movies of all time. Plot The movie is set in early 20th century China. Wong Fei-hung, along with his father Wong Kei-ying and servant Tso, is on the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
