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Written Cantonese
Written Cantonese is the most complete written form of Chinese after that for Mandarin Chinese and Classical Chinese. Written Chinese was originally developed for Classical Chinese, and was the main literary language of China until the 19th century. Written vernacular Chinese first appeared in the 17th century, and a written form of Mandarin became standard throughout China in the early 20th century. While the Mandarin form can in principle be read and spoken word for word in other Chinese varieties, its intelligibility to non-Mandarin speakers is poor to incomprehensible because of differences in idioms, grammar and usage. Modern Cantonese speakers have therefore developed new characters for words that do not exist and have retained others that have been lost in standard Chinese. With the advent of the computer and standardization of character sets specifically for Cantonese, many printed materials in predominantly Cantonese-speaking areas of the world are written to cater t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logographic
In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, as are many hieroglyphic and cuneiform characters. The use of logograms in writing is called ''logography'', and a writing system that is based on logograms is called a ''logography'' or ''logographic system''. All known logographies have some phonetic component, generally based on the rebus principle. Alphabets and syllabaries are distinct from logographies in that they use individual written characters to represent sounds directly. Such characters are called ''phonograms'' in linguistics. Unlike logograms, phonograms do not have any inherent meaning. Writing language in this way is called ''phonemic writing'' or ''orthographic writing''. Etymology Doulgas Harper's Online Etymology Dictionary states that the term 'logogram' was derived f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Vernacular Chinese
Written vernacular Chinese, also known as Baihua () or Huawen (), is the forms of written Chinese based on the varieties of Chinese spoken throughout China, in contrast to Classical Chinese, the written standard used during imperial China up to the early twentieth century. A written vernacular based on Mandarin Chinese was used in novels in the Ming and Qing dynasties (14th–20th centuries), and later refined by intellectuals associated with the May Fourth Movement. Since the early 1920s, this modern vernacular form has been the standard style of writing for speakers of all varieties of Chinese throughout mainland China, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore as the written form of Modern Standard Chinese. This is commonly called Standard Written Chinese or Modern Written Chinese to avoid ambiguity with spoken vernaculars, with the written vernaculars of earlier eras, and with other written vernaculars such as written Cantonese or written Hokkien. History During the Zhou dynasty (1046 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hu Shih
Hu Shih (; 17 December 1891 – 24 February 1962), also known as Hu Suh in early references, was a Chinese diplomat, essayist, literary scholar, philosopher, and politician. Hu is widely recognized today as a key contributor to Chinese liberalism and language reform in his advocacy for the use of written vernacular Chinese. He was influential in the May Fourth Movement, one of the leaders of China's New Culture Movement, was a president of Peking University, and in 1939 was nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature. He had a wide range of interests such as literature, philosophy, history, textual criticism, and pedagogy. He was also an influential redology scholar and held the famous Jiaxu manuscript () for many years until his death. Biography Early life Hu was born on December 17, 1891, in Shanghai to Hu Chuan () and his third wife Feng Shundi (). Hu Chuan was a tea merchant who became a public servant, serving in Manchuria, Hainan, and Taiwan. After Hu Shih's birth, Hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juren
''Juren'' (; 'recommended man') was a rank achieved by people who passed the ''xiangshi'' () exam in the imperial examination system of imperial China. The ''xiangshi'' is also known, in English, as the provincial examination. It was a rank higher than the ''shengyuan'' rank, but a rank lower than the ''jinshi'' rank, which was the highest degree. To achieve the ''juren'' rank, candidates, who already held the ''shengyuan'' rank, had to pass the provincial examination. The provincial qualifying examination occurred once every three years in the provincial capital. A second, less widespread pathway to gaining the ''juren'' rank was through office purchase. Those with the ''juren'' rank gained gentry status and experienced social, political and economic privileges accordingly. Apart from being a rank in the civil examination system, the ''juren'' title was also awarded in the military examination system in imperial China. History The term ''juren'' was first used in the Han ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Literary Chinese
Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning "literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning "literary language writing"), is the language of the classic literature from the end of the Spring and Autumn period through to the either the start of the Qin dynasty or the end of the Han dynasty, a written form of Old Chinese (上古漢語, ''Shànɡɡǔ Hànyǔ''). Classical Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese that evolved from the classical language, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese. Literary Chinese was used for almost all formal writing in China until the early 20th century, and also, during various periods, in Japan, Ryukyu, Korea and Vietnam. Among Chinese speakers, Literary Chinese has been largely replaced by written vernacular Chinese, a style of writing that is similar to modern spoken Mandarin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suzhou
Suzhou (; ; Suzhounese: ''sou¹ tseu¹'' , Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Soochow, is a major city in southern Jiangsu province, East China. Suzhou is the largest city in Jiangsu, and a major economic center and focal point of trade and commerce. Administratively, Suzhou is a prefecture-level city with a population of 6,715,559 in the city proper, and a total resident population of 12,748,262 as of the 2020 census in its administrative area. The city jurisdiction area's north waterfront is on a lower reach of the Yangtze whereas it has its more focal south-western waterfront on Lake Tai – crossed by several waterways, its district belongs to the Yangtze River Delta region. Suzhou is now part of the Greater Shanghai metro area, incorporating most of Changzhou, Wuxi and Suzhou urban districts plus Kunshan and Taicang, with a population of more than 38,000,000 residents as of 2020. Its urban population grew at an unprecedented rate of 6.5% between 2000 and 2014, which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caizi Jiaren
Caizi jiaren ( and "scholar and beauty") is a genre of Chinese fiction typically involving a romance between a young scholar and a beautiful girl. They were highly popular during the late Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty.Starr, p40 History Three Tang dynasty works particularly influential in the development of the ''caizi-jiaren'' model" were ''Yingying's Biography'', '' The Tale of Li Wa'', and '' Huo Xiaoyu zhuan'' (T: 霍小玉傳, "The story of Huo Xiaoyu"). Song Geng writes that '' Iu-Kiao-Li'' (''Yu Jiao Li'') was "one of the best-known ''caizi-jiaren'' novels". Chloë F. Starr adds that among the best known were ''Iu-Kiao-Li'', '' Ping Shan Leng Yan'', and ''Haoqiu zhuan''. Elements of this theme are also common in Chinese opera, such as ''Romance of the Western Chamber'', which uses the term ''caizi jiaren'' in its text, and ''The Peony Pavilion''. In both of these operas lovers elope, have secret trysts, or were perfect matches in spite of parental disapproval. But the ... [...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] |
Faazin Gei
''Faazin Gei'' (), or ''The Flowery Paper'' is a Chinese ''mukjyusyu'' style ballad written in the late Ming era. It is the earliest known work containing elements of written Cantonese. This book was also of particular interest to early European Sinology. Along with ''Iu-Kiao-Li'', it is regarded one of most influential Chinese books for 19th century European literature, European writers. Name There is no conventional English translation for the title of the book. Variants mentioned in various works include: * ''The Flower's Leaf'' * ''The Flowery Scroll'' * ''The Flowered Letter-Paper'' * ''The Floral Writing Paper'' * ''The Flowery Notepaper'' * ''The Flowery Billet'' * ''The Flowered Stationery'' * ''Story of the flower-letter '' * ''The Flowery Letterhead'' * ''Romance of the Fancy Notepaper'' * ''Record of the wiktionary:billet-doux, billet-doux'' The subtitle "The Eighth Outstanding Work" () implies that this book is a part of a certain canon with ten or eleven books in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naamyam
Cantonese ''naamyam'' (; Jyutping: naam4 jam1; pinyin: nányīn) is a unique local narrative singing tradition in Cantonese dialect/language, different from the ''nanyin'' (or ''nanguan'') tradition originating from southern Fujian. A singer would be engaged for a single performance or for regular performances over an extended period of time. Famous naamyam singers included Chung Tak (1860–1929), Dou Wun (; 1910–1979), Yuen Siu-fai and Au Kwan-cheung. History Common venues for performance included public places such as restaurants, teahouses, brothels, and opium dens, semi-public clubs and gathering places that catered to a particular trade or craft, such as butchers or rice merchants, and private households. ''Naamyam'' has rarely been performed in its traditional context since the middle of the twentieth century. The rapidly changing society, with the exploding growth of modern entertainment means, spelled the death of traditional performing genre such as naamyam. However, s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wooden Fish
A wooden fish, also known as a Chinese temple block, wooden bell, or ''muyu'', is a type of woodblock that originated from East Asia that is used by monks and lay people in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism. They are used by Buddhist ceremonies in China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam and other Asian countries. They may be referred to as a Chinese block, Korean block or, rarely, as a skull. Wooden fish often used in rituals usually involving the recitation of sutras, mantras, or other Buddhist texts. In Chan Buddhism, the wooden fish serve to maintain rhythm during chanting. In Pure Land Buddhism, they are used when chanting the name of Amitabha. Wooden fish come in many sizes and shapes, ranging from , for laity use or sole daily practice, or to for usage in temples. Wooden fish are often (in Chinese temples) placed on the left of the altar, alongside a bell bowl, its metal percussion counterpart. Wooden fish often rest on a small embroidered cushion to prevent unpleasant knocki ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
