Bách Việt
The Baiyue, Hundred Yue, or simply Yue, were various ethnic groups who inhabited the regions of southern China and northern Vietnam during the 1st millennium BC and 1st millennium AD. They were known for their short hair, body tattoos, fine swords, and naval prowess. During the Warring States period, the word "Yue" referred to the state of Yue in Zhejiang. The later kingdoms of Minyue in Fujian and Nanyue in Guangdong were both considered Yue states. During the Zhou and Han dynasties, the Yue lived in a vast territory from Jiangsu to Yunnan, while Barlow (1997:2) indicates that the Luoyue occupied the southwest Guangxi and northern Vietnam. The ''Book of Han'' describes the various Yue tribes and peoples can be found from the regions of Kuaiji to Jiaozhi. The Yue tribes were gradually assimilated into Chinese culture as the Han empire expanded into what is now southern China and northern Vietnam. Many modern southern Chinese languages bear traces of substrate languages ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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State Of Yue
Yue (), also known as Yuyue ( or ), was a state in ancient China which existed during the first millennium BC the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods of China's Zhou dynasty in the modern provinces of Zhejiang, Shanghai and Jiangsu. Its original capital was Kuaiji (modern Shaoxing); after its conquest of Wu, Yue relocated its court north to the city of Wu (modern-day Suzhou). Yue was conquered by Chu in 333 BC. History A specific kingdom, which had been known as the "Yue Guo" () in modern Zhejiang, was not mentioned until it began a series of wars against its northern neighbor Wu during the late 6th century BC. According to the ''Records of the Grand Historian'' and ''Discourses of the States'', the Yue are descended from Wuyu, the son of Shao Kang, the sixth king of the Xia dynasty. With help from Wu's enemy Chu, Yue won after several decades of conflict. The famous Yue King Goujian destroyed and annexed Wu in 473 BC. Yue then inherited Wu's good relations ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kuaiji Commandery
Kuaiji Commandery ( Chinese: t , s , p ''Kuàijī Jùn''), formerly romanized as K'uai-chi Commandery, was a former commandery of China in the area of Hangzhou Bay. When first established, its capital was at Wu (present-day Suzhou), which became known as "Kuaiji" from this role. The initial territory ran from the south bank of the Yangtze through most of modern Zhejiang to an indeterminate border among the free people of Minyue. Wu and Wuxing commanderies were later formed between the Yangtze and the north shore of Hangzhou Bay; the administration of the remainder of Kuaiji Commandery was then removed to the site of the former Yue capital in modern Shaoxing's Yuecheng District, which also became known as Kuaiji from this role. By the Tang, Hangzhou was also separated and Kuaiji ran from a little north of the Zhe River in the west to Ningbo in the east.Liu Taotao & al. ''Unity and Diversity: Local Cultures and Identities in China'', pp. 16&n ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Guifang
Guifang () was an ancient ethnonym for a northern people that fought against the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BCE). Chinese historical tradition used various names in different periods for northern tribes such as the Guifang, Rong, Di,Old Text Bamboo Annals"Wu Yi"quote: "三十五年,周王季伐西落鬼戎,俘二十翟王。" Xunyu, Xianyun, or Xiongnu peoples. This Chinese exonym combines ''gui'' (鬼 "ghost, spirit, devil") and ''fang'' ( 方 "side, border, country, region"), a suffix referring to "non-Shang or enemy countries that existed in and beyond the borders of the Shang polity." Overview Chinese annals contain a number of references to the ''Guifang''. The earliest sources mentioning the Guifang are the Oracle Bones.Yu Taishan. (2000). "A Hypothesis about the Source of the Sai Tribes" in ''Sino-Platonic Papers'' 106. Ed. Victor Mair. p. 106-109Anderson, Matthew Mccutchen. (2015). "Change and Standardization in Anyang: Writing and Culture in Bronze Age China". ''Publi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Shang Dynasty
The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty that ruled in the Yellow River valley during the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Western Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from texts such as the '' Book of Documents'', '' Bamboo Annals'' and '' Shiji''. Modern scholarship dates the dynasty between the 16th and 11th centuries BC, with more agreement surrounding the end date than beginning date. The Shang dynasty is the earliest dynasty within traditional Chinese history that is firmly supported by archaeological evidence. The archaeological site of Yinxu, near modern-day Anyang, corresponds to the final Shang capital of Yin. Excavations at Yinxu have revealed eleven major royal tombs, the foundations of former palace buildings, and the remains of both animals and humans that were sacrificed in official state rituals. Tens of thousands of bronze, jade, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Oracle Bone
Oracle bones are pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron which were used in pyromancya form of divinationduring the Late Shang period () in ancient China. '' Scapulimancy'' is the specific term if ox scapulae were used for the divination, ''plastromancy'' if turtle plastrons were used. A recent count estimated that there were about 13,000 bones with a total of a little over 130,000 inscriptions in collections in China and some fourteen other countries. Diviners would submit questions to deities regarding weather, crop planting, the fortunes of members of the royal family, military endeavors, and similar topics. These questions were carved onto the bone or shell in oracle bone script using a sharp tool. Intense heat was then applied with a metal rod until the bone or shell cracked due to thermal expansion. The diviner would then interpret the pattern of cracks and write the prognostication upon the piece as well. Pyromancy with bones continued in China into the Zhou dynasty, bu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Grammata Serica Recensa
The ''Grammata Serica Recensa'' is a dictionary of Middle Chinese and Old Chinese published by the Swedish sinologist Bernard Karlgren in 1957. History Karlgren made fundamental contributions to the study of the phonology of Middle and Old Chinese, which he called Ancient and Archaic Chinese respectively. In the course of his study of the sound system of Old Chinese, Karlgren focused on clues provided by phono-semantic compound characters. His "homorganic principle", asserting that the initials of characters sharing a phonetic component had a common point of articulation, has been central to subsequent studies of Old Chinese. In 1923, Karlgren published his ''Analytic dictionary'' of Middle Chinese, which grouped characters by phonetic series and drew inferences about Old Chinese sounds. His ''Grammata Serica'' (1940) was an expanded dictionary that included Karlgren's Old Chinese reconstructions. An extensive revision incorporating the results of Karlgren's studies of pre-Ha ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Old Chinese
Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, in the Late Shang period. Chinese bronze inscriptions, Bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty. The latter part of the Zhou period saw a flowering of literature, including Four Books and Five Classics, classical works such as the ''Analects'', the ''Mencius (book), Mencius'', and the ''Zuo Zhuan''. These works served as models for Literary Chinese (or Classical Chinese), which remained the written standard until the early twentieth century, thus preserving the vocabulary and grammar of late Old Chinese. Old Chinese was written with several early forms of Chinese characters, including Oracle bone script, oracle bone, Chinese bronze inscriptions, bronze, and seal scripts. Throughout t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Early Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The Swedish linguist Bernhard Karlgren believed that the dictionary recorded a speech standard of the capital Chang'an of the Sui and Tang dynasties. However, based on the preface of the ''Qieyun'', most scholars now believe that it records a compromise between northern and southern reading and poetic traditions from the late Northern and Southern dynasties period. This composite system contains important information for the reconstruction of the preceding system of Old Chinese phonology (early 1st millennium BC). The '' fanqie'' method used to indicate pronunciation in these dictionaries, though an improvement on earlier methods, proved awkward in practice. The mid-12th-century ''Yunjing'' and other rime tables incorporate a more sophisticat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Yue Chinese
Yue () is a branch of the Sinitic languages primarily spoken in Northern and southern China, Southern China, particularly in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi (collectively known as Liangguang). The term Cantonese is often used to refer to the whole branch, but linguists prefer to reserve the name Cantonese for the variety used in Guangzhou (Canton), Wuzhou (Ngchow), Hong Kong and Macau, which is the Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige dialect of the group. Taishanese, from the coastal area of Jiangmen (Kongmoon) located southwest of Guangzhou, was the language of most of the 19th-century emigrants from Guangdong to Southeast Asia and North America. Most later migrants have been speakers of Cantonese. Yue languages are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible with each other or with other varieties of Chinese, Chinese languages outside the branch. They are among the most Linguistic conservatism, conservative varieties with regard to the final consonants and to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Yue Opera
Yue opera (), also known as Shaoxing opera, is a popular Chinese opera genre, with only Peking opera considered to be more popular nationwide. Originating in Shengzhou, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province in 1906, Yue opera features actresses in male roles as well as femininity in terms of singing, performing, and staging. Despite its rural origin, it has found a second home in Shanghai, China's most affluent city, where it managed to out-compete both Peking opera and the native Shanghai opera. As Yue opera is performed in a variant of Wu Chinese, Wu, it is most popular in Wu-speaking areas including southern Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai. In addition, the opera also has a sizeable following in Hong Kong due to Shanghainese migration to the city. Like its performers, Yue opera fans are mainly women, resulting in a disproportionate number of love stories in its repertoire and very little acrobatic fighting. History Pre-history Prior to 1906, the antecedent to Yue opera was story-si ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Stratum (linguistics)
In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for 'layer') or strate is a historical layer of language that influences or is influenced by another language through contact. The notion of "strata" was first developed by the Italian linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, and became known in the English-speaking world through the work of two different authors in 1932. Both concepts apply to a situation where an intrusive language establishes itself in the territory of another, typically as the result of migration. Whether the superstratum case (the local language persists and the intrusive language disappears) or the substratum one (the local language disappears and the intrusive language persists) applies will normally only be evident after several generations, during which the intrusive language exists within a diaspora culture. In order for the intrusive language to persist, the ''substratum'' case, the immigrant population will either need to take the position of a political elite or immigrate ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sinitic Languages
The Sinitic languages (), often synonymous with the Chinese languages, are a language group, group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a primary split between the Sinitic languages and the rest of the family (the Tibeto-Burman languages). This view is rejected by some researchers but has found phylogenetic support among others. The Macro-Bai languages, whose classification is difficult, may be an offshoot of Old Chinese and thus Sinitic; otherwise, Sinitic is defined only by the many varieties of Chinese unified by a shared historical background, and usage of the term "Sinitic" may reflect the linguistic view that Chinese language, Chinese constitutes a family of distinct languages, rather than variants of a single language. Population Over 91% of the Chinese population speaks a Sinitic language, of whom about three-quarters speak a Mandarin variety. Estimates of the number ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |