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Yellow Crane Tower
Yellow Crane Tower () is a traditional Chinese tower located in Wuhan. The current structure was built in 1981, but the tower has existed in various forms from as early as AD 223. The current Yellow Crane Tower is high and covers an area of . It is situated on Snake Hill (), one kilometer away from the original site, on the banks of the Yangtze River in Wuchang District. History The Yuanhe Maps and Records of Prefectures and Counties, written almost 600 years after the construction of the tower, notes that after Sun Quan, founder of the kingdom of Eastern Wu, built the fort of Xiakou in 223, a tower was constructed at/on the Yellow Crane Jetty, west of Xiakou, and hence its name. The tower has been destroyed twelve times, both by warfare and by fire, in the Ming and Qing dynasties and was repaired on ten separate occasions. The last tower at the original site was built in 1868 and destroyed in 1884. In 1907, a new tower was built near the site of the Yellow Crane Tower. Zh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antithetical Couplet
In Chinese poetry, a couplet () is a pair of lines of poetry which adhere to certain rules (see below). Outside of poems, they are usually seen on the sides of doors leading to people's homes or as hanging scrolls in an interior. Although often called antithetical couplet, they can better be described as a written form of counterpoint. The two lines have a one-to-one correspondence in their metre (poetry), metrical length, and each pair of Chinese character, characters must have certain corresponding properties. A couplet is ideally profound yet concise, using one character per word in the style of Classical Chinese. A special, widely seen type of couplet is the spring couplet (), used as a Chinese New Year, New Year's decoration that expresses happiness and hopeful thoughts for the coming year. Requirements A couplet must adhere to the following rules: #Both lines must have the same number of Chinese characters. #The lexical category of each character must be the same as its cor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Four Great Towers Of China
The Four Great Towers of China() are four historically renowned towers in China. The list usually includes the following: * Yellow Crane Tower (黄鹤楼), Wuhan, Hubei province - () * Pavilion of Prince Teng (滕王阁), Nanchang, Jiangxi Province - () * Yueyang Tower (岳阳楼), Yueyang, Hunan Province - () * Penglai Pagoda (蓬莱阁), Yantai, Shandong Province - ) The first three towers are not disputable. However, Penglai Pagoda is often excluded in favour of Stork Tower (鹳雀楼), situated in Shanxi. This is in order to have a list where all four towers are linked to famous pieces of literature, as follows: * Yellow Crane Tower: ''Yellow Crane Tower'' by Cui Hao * Pavilion of Prince Teng: '' Tengwang Ge Xu'' (Preface to a Poem on the Pavilion of Prince Teng), by Wang Bo * Yueyang Tower: ''Memorial to Yueyang Tower'', by Fan Zhongyan * Stork Tower: ''Ascending Guanque Tower'', by Wang Zhihuan Also, Yuewang Tower (Tower of Prince Yue, 越王楼), situated in Mianyang, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yangzhou
Yangzhou, postal romanization Yangchow, is a prefecture-level city in central Jiangsu Province (Suzhong), East China. Sitting on the north bank of the Yangtze, it borders the provincial capital Nanjing to the southwest, Huai'an to the north, Yancheng to the northeast, Taizhou to the east, and Zhenjiang across the river to the south. Its population was 4,414,681 at the 2010 census and its urban area is home to 2,146,980 inhabitants, including three urban districts, currently in the agglomeration. Historically, Yangzhou was one of the wealthiest cities in China, known at various periods for its great merchant families, poets, artists, and scholars. Its name (lit. "Rising Prefecture") refers to its former position as the capital of the ancient Yangzhou prefecture in imperial China. Yangzhou was one of the first cities to benefit from one of the earliest World Bank loans in China, used to construct Yangzhou thermal power station in 1994. Administration Currently, the prefecture ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meng Haoran
Meng Haoran (; 689/691–740) was a major Tang dynasty poet, and a somewhat older contemporary of Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu. Despite his brief pursuit of an official career, Meng Haoran mainly lived in and wrote about the area in which he was born and raised, in what is now Hubei province, China. Meng Haoran was a major influence on other contemporary and subsequent poets of the High Tang era because of his focus on nature as a main topic for poetry. Meng Haoran was also prominently featured in the Qing dynasty (and subsequently frequently republished) poetry anthology ''Three Hundred Tang Poems'', having the fifth largest number of his poems included, for a total of fifteen, exceeded only by Du Fu, Li Bai, Wang Wei, and Li Shangyin. These poems of Meng Haoran were available in the English translations by Witter Bynner and Kiang Kanghu, by 1920, with the publication of ''The Jade Mountain''. The ''Three Hundred Tang Poems'' also has two poems by Li Bai addressed to Meng Haor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Li Bai
Li Bai (, 701–762), also pronounced as Li Bo, courtesy name Taibai (), was a Chinese poet, acclaimed from his own time to the present as a brilliant and romantic figure who took traditional poetic forms to new heights. He and his friend Du Fu (712–770) were two of the most prominent figures in the flourishing of Chinese poetry in the Tang dynasty, which is often called the " Golden Age of Chinese Poetry". The expression "Three Wonders" denotes Li Bai's poetry, Pei Min's swordplay, and Zhang Xu's calligraphy. Around 1000 poems attributed to Li are extant. His poems have been collected into the most important Tang dynasty poetry, ''Heyaue yingling ji'', compiled in 753 by Yin Fan. Thirty-four of Li Bai’s poems are included in the anthology ''Three Hundred Tang Poems'', which was first published in the 18th century. Around the same time, translations of his poems began to appear in Europe. The poems were models for celebrating the pleasures of friendship, the depth of nature ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hanyang District
Hanyang District () forms part of the urban core of and is one of 13 urban districts of the prefecture-level city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province, China. Currently, it is a district and stands between the Han River (right/southern bank) and the Yangtze River (left/northwestern bank), where the former drains into the latter. It is connected by bridges with its former sister cities, Hankou and Wuchang. Presently, on the left bank of the Yangtze, it borders the districts of Qiaokou to the north across the Han River, Jianghan to the northeast, Caidian to the southwest, and Dongxihu to the northwest; on the opposite bank it borders Wuchang and Hongshan. Guiyuan Temple is located in Hanyang. The name "Hanyang" means "the Yang side of Han River", referring to the town's historic location on the north ("yang") bank of the Han River mouth. However, the lower Han River changed course to the north side of the town during Ming dynasty's Chenghua-era. The town, now on the south ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cui Hao (poet)
Cui Hao (, 704?–754Wan: 1, his birth year of 704 is in doubt since he would have been somewhat young when he passed the imperial exam.) was a Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty in China and considered a main early exponent of the regulated verse form of Classical Chinese poetry (also known as ''jintishi''). Biography Cui Hao was born in Biànzhōu (汴州, present day Kaifeng, Henan) and passed the imperial examinations in 723. He is known to have traveled extensively as an official, particularly between the years 723–744. He was known for three poetry topic - women, frontier outposts, and natural scenery. His life was initially conventional; along with Wang Wei, he was one of the perfectors of the ''jintishi'' form. Later, however, he acquired a reputation for disreputable personal behaviour and passed through several marriages. His later verse is similarly unconstrained. Poems Fifteen poems exist on the topic of women and fifteen poems exist on the latter two topics.Wan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lü Dongbin
Lü Dongbin (796 CE – 1016 CE) is a legendary Chinese scholar and poet said to have lived during the Tang Dynasty. Whether he actually lived the two hundred and twenty years cannot be determined. Elevated to the status of an immortal in the Chinese cultural sphere by Daoists, he is one of the most widely known of the group of deities known as the Eight Immortals. Lü is also a historical figure and mentioned in the official history book ''History of Song''. He is widely considered to be one of the earliest masters of neidan, or internal alchemy. He is also depicted in art dressed as a scholar carrying a sword to dispel evil spirits. Character Lü Dongbin is usually portrayed as a scholarly, clever man with a genuine desire to help people obtain wisdom/enlightenment and to learn the Tao. However, he is often portrayed as having some character "flaws," not an uncommon theme for the colorful Taoist immortals, all of whom in general have various eccentricities: *He is portrayed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taoism
Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of Philosophy, philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of China, Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the ''Tao'' (, 'Thoroughfare'); the ''Tao'' is generally defined as the source of everything and the ultimate principle underlying reality. The ''Tao Te Ching'', a book containing teachings attributed to Laozi (), together with the later Zhuangzi (book), writings of Zhuangzi, are both widely considered the keystone works of Taoism. Taoism teaches about the various disciplines for achieving perfection through self-cultivation. This can be done through the use of Taoist techniques and by becoming one with the unplanned rhythms of the all, called "the way" or "Tao". Taoist ethics vary depending on the particular school, but in general tend to emphasize ''wu wei'' (action without intention), naturalness, simplicity, spontaneity and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fei Yi
Fei Yi (died 16 February 253), courtesy name Wenwei, was a regent and military general of the state of Shu during the Three Kingdoms period of China. Born in the late Eastern Han dynasty, Fei Yi started his career as an attendant to Liu Shan, the eldest son and heir apparent of Liu Bei, a warlord who became the founding emperor of Shu. After Liu Shan became emperor in 223, Fei Yi gradually rose to prominence under the regency of Zhuge Liang, the Imperial Chancellor of Shu. During this time, he concurrently served as a military adviser under Zhuge Liang and as Shu's ambassador to its ally state Wu. He also played a significant role in the conflict between the Shu general Wei Yan and Zhuge Liang's chief clerk Yang Yi. After Zhuge Liang's death in 234, Fei Yi served as a deputy to the new regent Jiang Wan and progressively assumed greater responsibilities as Jiang Wan gradually relinquished his powers due to poor health. In 244, Fei Yi led Shu forces to victory at the Battle of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
