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First Emperor
Qin Shi Huang (, ; February 25912 July 210 BC), born Ying Zheng () or Zhao Zheng (), was the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of China. He is widely regarded as the first ever supreme leader of a unitary dynasty in Chinese history. Rather than maintain the title of "king" ( ) or "overlord" () borne by the previous rulers of Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, he invented the title of "emperor" ( ), which would see continuous use by Chinese sovereigns and monarchs for the next two millennia. Ying Zheng was born during the late Warring States period in Handan, the capital of Zhao, to Prince Yiren and Lady Zhao. Prince Yiren was serving as an expendable diplomatic hostage in Zhao at the time, but the wealthy merchant Lü Buwei saw potential in him and lobbied for his adoption by Crown Prince Anguo's childless principal consort Lady Huayang, thus making him the favoured heir presumptive. Crown Prince Anguo died three days after coronation, and Prince Yir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit library, it receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the United Kingdom. The library operates as a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The British Library is a major research library, with items in many languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings. The Library's collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and items dating as far back as 2000 BC. The library maintains a programme for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yíng (Chinese Surname)
Yíng () is an ancient Chinese surname. It was the noble house name of the Qin state during the Eastern Zhou dynasty, and the royal name of the subsequent Qin dynasty. Qin Shi Huang, Yíng Zheng was the first emperor of China, emperor of the unified Chinese empire. Ying was one of the "Eight Great Surnames of Chinese Antiquity, Eight Great ''Xing''s of High Antiquity" (), along with Jī (), Yao (surname), Yáo (), Si (surname 姒), Sì (), Yún (), Gui (ancestral surname), Gui () and Rèn (), though some sources quote Ji (surname 姞), Jí () as the last one instead of Rèn. Of these ''xing''s, only Jiang and Yao have survived in their original form to modern days as frequently occurring surnames, while Ji can still be seen occasionally. In the present day, the Ying surname is shared by less than 1000 people in mainland China, and is overall the 1520th-most common surname. In 2019, it was found that only exactly two people in Taiwan still had this surname. There are however 14 c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xia Dynasty
The Xia dynasty (; ) is the first dynasty in traditional Chinese historiography. According to tradition, it was established by the legendary figure Yu the Great, after Emperor Shun, Shun, the last of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, Five Emperors, gave the throne to him. In traditional historiography, the Xia was succeeded by the Shang dynasty. There are no contemporaneous records of the Xia, and they are not mentioned in the oldest Chinese texts, the earliest oracle bone inscriptions dating from the Late Shang period (13th century BC). The earliest mentions occur in the oldest chapters of the ''Book of Documents'', which report speeches from the early Western Zhou period and are accepted by most scholars as dating from that time. The speeches justify the Zhou conquest of the Shang as the passing of the Mandate of Heaven and liken it to the succession of the Xia by the Shang. That political philosophy was promoted by the Confucian school in the Eastern Zhou period. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suzerain
A suzerain (, from Old French "above" + "supreme, chief") is a person, state (polity)">state or polity who has supremacy and dominant influence over the foreign policy and economic relations of another subordinate party or polity, but allows internal autonomy to that subordinate. Where the subordinate polity is called a vassal, vassal state or tributary state, the dominant party is called the suzerain. The rights and obligations of a vassal are called ''vassalage'', and the rights and obligations of a suzerain are called suzerainty. Suzerainty differs from sovereignty in that the dominant power does not exercise centralized governance over the vassals, allowing tributary states to be technically self-ruling but enjoy only limited independence. Although the situation has existed in a number of historical empires, it is considered difficult to reconcile with 20th- or 21st-century concepts of international law, in which sovereignty is a binary concept, which either exists or does ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese King
The Chinese sovereign was the ruler of a particular monarchical regime in the historical periods of ancient China and imperial China. Sovereigns ruling the same regime, and descended from the same paternal line, constituted a dynasty. Several titles and naming schemes have been used throughout Chinese history. Sovereign titles Emperor The characters ''Huang'' (皇 huáng "august (ruler)") and ''Di'' (帝 dì "divine ruler") had been used separately and never consecutively (see Three August Ones and Five Emperors). The character was reserved for mythological rulers until the first emperor of Qin (Qin Shi Huang), who created a new title ''Huangdi'' (皇帝 in pinyin: huáng dì) for himself in 221 BCE, which is commonly translated as ''Emperor'' in English. This title continued in use until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912. From the Han dynasty, the title ''Huangdi'' could also be abbreviated to ''huang'' or ''di''. The former nobility titles ''Qing'' (卿), ''Dai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese History
The history of China spans several millennia across a wide geographical area. Each region now considered part of the Chinese world has experienced periods of unity, fracture, prosperity, and strife. Chinese civilization first emerged in the Yellow River valley, which along with the Yangtze basin constitutes the geographic core of the Chinese cultural sphere. China maintains a rich diversity of ethnic and linguistic people groups. The traditional lens for viewing Chinese history is the dynastic cycle: imperial dynasties rise and fall, and are ascribed certain achievements. This lens also tends to assume Chinese civilization can be traced as an unbroken thread many thousands of years into the past, making it one of the cradles of civilization. At various times, states representative of a dominant Chinese culture have directly controlled areas stretching as far west as the Tian Shan, the Tarim Basin, and the Himalayas, as far north as the Sayan Mountains, and as far south ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dynasties Of China
For most of its history, China was organized into various dynastic states under the rule of hereditary monarchs. Beginning with the establishment of dynastic rule by Yu the Great , and ending with the abdication of the Xuantong Emperor in AD 1912, Chinese historiography came to organize itself around the succession of monarchical dynasties. Besides those established by the dominant Han ethnic group or its spiritual Huaxia predecessors, dynasties throughout Chinese history were also founded by non-Han peoples. Dividing Chinese history into dynastic epochs is a convenient and conventional method of periodization. Accordingly, a dynasty may be used to delimit the era during which a family reigned, as well as to describe events, trends, personalities, artistic compositions, and artifacts of that period. For example, porcelain made during the Ming dynasty may be referred to as "Ming porcelain". The longest-reigning orthodox dynasty of China was the Zhou dynasty, ruling for a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unitary State
A unitary state is a (Sovereign state, sovereign) State (polity), state governed as a single entity in which the central government is the supreme authority. The central government may create or abolish administrative divisions (sub-national or sub-state units). Such units exercise only the powers that the central government chooses to delegate. Although Power (social and political), political power may be delegated through devolution to regional or local governments by statute, the central government may alter the statute, to override the decisions of Devolution, devolved governments or expand their powers. The modern unitary state concept originated in France; in the aftermath of the Hundred Years' War, national feelings that emerged from the war unified France. The war accelerated the process of transforming France from a feudal monarchy to a unitary state. The French people, French then later spread unitary states by conquests, throughout Europe during and after the Napoleoni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supreme Leader
A supreme leader or supreme ruler typically refers to powerful figures with an unchallenged authority, such as autocrats, dictators to spiritual and revolutionary leaders. Historic examples are Adolf Hitler () of Nazi Germany, Francisco Franco () of Francoist Spain, Benito Mussolini () of Fascist Italy and Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union. List of titles Listed by date of establishment. Interwar period * Alexander Kolchak, White leader in the Russian Civil War as " Supreme Ruler of Russia". * Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943 and of Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945, was known as ''Duce'' ("leader"). * Antanas Smetona, the authoritarian president of Lithuania (1926–1940), adopted the title of ''Tautos Vadas'' ("Leader of the Nation"). * Hirohito, emperor of Imperial Japan under the Meiji Constitution from 1926 to 1947, sometimes known as ("August Gate"). * Chiang Kai-shek, ''de facto'' leader of the Kuomintang Republic of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emperor Of China
Throughout Chinese history, "Emperor" () was the superlative title held by the monarchs of imperial China's various dynasties. In traditional Chinese political theory, the emperor was the " Son of Heaven", an autocrat with the divine mandate to rule all under Heaven. Emperors were worshiped posthumously under an imperial cult. The lineage of emperors descended from a paternal family line constituted a dynasty, and succession in most cases theoretically followed agnatic primogeniture. The emperor of China was an absolute monarch. During the Han dynasty, Confucianism gained sanction as the official political theory. The absolute authority of the emperor came with a variety of governing duties and moral obligations; failure to uphold these was thought to remove the dynasty's Mandate of Heaven and to justify its overthrow. In practice, emperors sometimes avoided the strict rules of succession and dynasties' purported "failures" were detailed in official histories written by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
House Of Ying
A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems.Schoenauer, Norbert (2000). ''6,000 Years of Housing'' (rev. ed.) (New York: W.W. Norton & Company). Houses use a range of different roofing systems to keep precipitation such as rain from getting into the dwelling space. Houses generally have doors or locks to secure the dwelling space and protect its inhabitants and contents from burglars or other trespassers. Most conventional modern houses in Western cultures will contain one or more bedrooms and bathrooms, a kitchen or cooking area, and a living room. A house may have a separate dining room, or the eating area may be integrated into the kitchen or another room. Some large houses in North America have a recreation room. In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, dome ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mausoleum Of The First Qin Emperor
The Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang () is a tomb complex constructed for Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of the Chinese Qin dynasty. It is located in modern-day Lintong District in Xi'an, Shaanxi. It was constructed over 38 years from 246 to 208 BC, and is situated underneath a tomb mound shaped like a truncated pyramid. The layout of the mausoleum is modeled on the layout of Xianyang, the capital of the Qin dynasty, which was divided into inner and outer cities. The circumference of the inner city is and the outer is . The tomb is located in the southwest of the inner city and faces east. The main tomb chamber housing the coffin and burial artifacts is the core of the architectural complex of the mausoleum. The tomb itself has not yet been excavated. Archaeological explorations currently concentrate on various sites of the extensive necropolis surrounding the tomb, including the Terracotta Army to the east of the tomb mound. The Terracotta Army served as a garrison to the mau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
