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Fangxiangshi
The ''fangxiangshi'' (Chinese: wikt:方相氏, 方相氏) was a Chinese ritual exorcist, the meaning of whose name is obscure but has been translated as "one who sees in all (four) directions", "he who scrutinizes for evil in many directions", and "one who orients unwanted spirits in the direction to which they belong". Ancient Chinese texts record that he wore a bearskin with four golden eyes, and carried a lance and shield to expel malevolent spirits. His primary duties were orchestrating the seasonal Nuo rituals, Nuo ritual to chase out disease-causing demonic possession, demons from houses and buildings, and leading a funeral procession to exorcize corpse-eating ''wangliang'' spirits away from a burial chamber. From the Han dynasty through the Tang dynasty (3rd century BCE to 10th century CE), ''fangxiangshi'' were official Wu (shaman), ''wu''-shaman specialists in the imperially sanctioned Chinese state religion; after the Tang, they were adapted into popular folk religion an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuo Rituals
Nuo folk religion, or extendedly Chinese popular exorcistic religion, is a variant of Chinese folk religion with its own system of temples, rituals, orders of priests and gods, which is interethnic and practiced across central and southern China but is also intimately connected to the Tujia people. It arose as an exorcism, exorcistic religious movement, which is the original meaning of ''nuó'' (). It has strong influences from Taoism. One of the most distinguishing characters of Nuo folk religion is its iconographic style, which represents the gods as wooden masks or heads. This is related to its own mythology, which traces the origin of Nuo to the first two humans, who were unjustly killed by beheading and are since then worshipped as responsive divine ancestors. Nuo rituals began as efficacious methods to worship them, Lord Nuo and Lady Nuo. Since the 1980s Nuo folk religion has undergone a revitalisation in China, and today is a folk religion endorsed by the central government. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Surname
Chinese surnames are used by Han Chinese and Sinicized ethnic groups in China, Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, and among overseas Chinese communities around the world such as Singapore and Malaysia. Written Chinese names begin with surnames, unlike the Western tradition in which surnames are written last. Around 2,000 Han Chinese surnames are currently in use, but the great proportion of Han Chinese people use only a relatively small number of these surnames; 19 surnames are used by around half of the Han Chinese people, while 100 surnames are used by around 87% of the population. A report in 2019 gives the most common Chinese surnames as Wang and Li, each shared by over 100 million people in China. The remaining top ten most common Chinese surnames are Zhang, Liu, Chen, Yang, Huang, Zhao, Wu and Zhou. Two distinct types of Chinese surnames existed in ancient China, namely ''xing'' () ancestral clan names and ''shi'' () branch lineage names. Later, the two terms began to be used i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Classics
Chinese classic texts or canonical texts () or simply dianji (典籍) refers to the Chinese texts which originated before the imperial unification by the Qin dynasty in 221 BC, particularly the "Four Books and Five Classics" of the Neo-Confucian tradition, themselves a customary abridgment of the "Thirteen Classics". All of these pre-Qin texts were written in classical Chinese. All three canons are collectively known as the classics ( t , s , ''jīng'', lit. "warp"). The term Chinese classic texts may be broadly used in reference to texts which were written in vernacular Chinese or it may be narrowly used in reference to texts which were written in the classical Chinese which was current until the fall of the last imperial dynasty, the Qing, in 1912. These texts can include ''shi'' (, historical works), ''zi'' (, philosophical works belonging to schools of thought other than the Confucian but also including works on agriculture, medicine, mathematics, astronomy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Physiognomy
Physiognomy (from the Greek , , meaning "nature", and , meaning "judge" or "interpreter") is the practice of assessing a person's character or personality from their outer appearance—especially the face. The term can also refer to the general appearance of a person, object, or terrain without reference to its implied characteristics—as in the physiognomy of an individual plant (see plant life-form) or of a plant community (see vegetation). Physiognomy as a practice meets the contemporary definition of pseudoscience and it is so regarded among academic circles because of its unsupported claims; popular belief in the practice of physiognomy is nonetheless still widespread. The practice was well-accepted by ancient Greek philosophers, but fell into disrepute in the Middle Ages while practised by vagabonds and mountebanks. It revived and was popularised by Johann Kaspar Lavater, before falling from favor in the late 19th century. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fangshi
''Fangshi'' () were Chinese technical specialists who flourished from the third century BCE to the fifth century CE. English translations of ''fangshi'' include alchemist, astrologer, diviner, exorcist, geomancer, doctor, magician, monk, mystic, necromancer, occultist, omenologist, physician, physiognomist, technician, technologist, thaumaturge, and wizard. Word The Chinese word ''fangshi'' combines ''fang'' "direction; side; locality; place; region; formula; (medical) prescription; recipe; method; way" and ''shi'' "scholar; intelligentsia; gentleman; officer; yeoman; soldier; person trained in a certain field". Many English-language texts transliterate this word as ''fangshi'' (older texts use ''fangshih''), but some literally translate it. *"gentlemen possessing magical recipes" *"recipe gentlemen" *"masters of recipes" *"'direction-scholar', that is, one versed in interpreting omens from their orientation" [from ''fengjiao'' "wind angle" divination below] *"Esote ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Édouard Biot
Édouard Constant Biot (; July 2, 1803 – March 12, 1850) was a French engineer and Sinologist. As an engineer, he participated in the construction of the second line of French railway between Lyon and St Etienne, and as a Sinologist, published a large body of work, the result of a "knowledge rarely combined." Life Son of the mathematician and physicist Jean-Baptiste Biot, he studied classics and mathematics as a free student at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. Admitted in 1822 to the École Polytechnique, he chose not to enter and pursue his studies alone. In 1825 and 1826, he accompanied his father as an assistant on scientific expeditions to Italy, Illyria and Spain. Back in France, with desire to ensure his independence, he began a career in the emerging railway industry. In 1827, after a preparatory trip to England, he joined forces with Marc Seguin in the construction of the Lyon–Saint-Etienne railway, whose concession is granted to "MM. Seguin brothers, Édo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transliterate
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or Latin → . For instance, for the Modern Greek term "", which is usually translated as "Hellenic Republic", the usual transliteration to Latin script is , and the name for Russia in Cyrillic script, "", is usually transliterated as . Transliteration is not primarily concerned with representing the sounds of the original but rather with representing the characters, ideally accurately and unambiguously. Thus, in the Greek above example, is transliterated though it is pronounced , is transliterated though pronounced , and is transliterated , though it is pronounced (exactly like ) and is not long. Transcription, conversely, seeks to capture sound rather than spelling; "" corresponds to in the International Phonetic Alphabet. While ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spectrum
A spectrum (plural ''spectra'' or ''spectrums'') is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary, without gaps, across a continuum. The word was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of colors in visible light after passing through a prism. As scientific understanding of light advanced, it came to apply to the entire electromagnetic spectrum. It thereby became a mapping of a range of magnitudes (wavelengths) to a range of qualities, which are the perceived "colors of the rainbow" and other properties which correspond to wavelengths that lie outside of the visible light spectrum. Spectrum has since been applied by analogy to topics outside optics. Thus, one might talk about the " spectrum of political opinion", or the "spectrum of activity" of a drug, or the "autism spectrum". In these uses, values within a spectrum may not be associated with precisely quantifiable numbers or definitions. Such uses imply a broad range of condition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Etymon
Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words and, by extension, the origin and evolution of their semantic meaning across time. It is a subfield of historical linguistics, and draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, semiotics, and phonetics. For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts, and texts about the language, to gather knowledge about how words were used during earlier periods, how they developed in meaning and form, or when and how they entered the language. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about forms that are too old for any direct information to be available. By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method, linguists can make inferences about their sha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chen Mengjia
Chen Mengjia (; 20 April 1911, in Nanjing – 3 September 1966, in Beijing) was a Chinese scholar, poet, paleographer and archaeologist. He was considered the foremost authority on oracle bones and was Professor of Chinese at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He was married to the poet and translator Zhao Luorui (aka Lucy Chao, 1912–1998). Chen died in 1966, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution after being labeled a "capitalist intellectual" and Rightist and being persecuted by officials.Peter Hessler, Oracle Bones, Harper Collins, New York, 2006. . Life Chen was born and raised in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. His father was a Presbyterian minister. In his youth Chen had been a poet, under the pen name Wanderer, his first poem was published when he was 18. He was a member of the Crescent Moon Society in Shanghai, a group of romantic poets during the early 20th century. In 1932 he joined the resistance against Japanese aggression in Shanghai during the January 28 Incident. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Binomial Pair
In linguistics and stylistics, an irreversible binomial, frozen binomial, binomial freeze, binomial expression, binomial pair, or nonreversible word pair is a pair or group of words used together in fixed order as an idiomatic expression or collocation. The words have some semantic relationship and are usually connected by the words ''and'' or ''or''. They also belong to the same part of speech: nouns (''milk and honey''), adjectives (''short and sweet''), or verbs (''do or die''). The order of word elements cannot be reversed. The term "irreversible binomial" was introduced by Yakov Malkiel in 1954, though various aspects of the phenomenon had been discussed since at least 1903 under different names: a "terminological imbroglio". Ernest Gowers used the name Siamese twins (i.e., conjoined twins) in the 1965 edition of Fowler's ''Modern English Usage''. The 2015 edition reverts to the scholarly name, "irreversible binomials", as "Siamese twins" had become offensive. Many irrev ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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