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Kui (Chinese Mythology)
''Kui'' ( zh, c=夔, p='' kuí'', w=''k'uei'') is a polysemous figure in ancient Chinese mythology. Classic texts use this name for the legendary musician Kui who invented music and dancing; for the one-legged mountain demon or rain-god Kui variously said to resemble a Chinese dragon, a drum, or a monkey with a human face; and for the Kuiniu wild yak or buffalo. Word While originally named a mythic being, Modern Standard Chinese uses it in several other expressions. The reduplication means "awe-struck; fearful; grave" (see the ''Shujing'' below). The compounds (with "dragon") and (with "pattern; design") name common motifs on Zhou dynasty Chinese bronzes. The ''chengyu'' idiom means "one able person is enough for the job". Kui is also a proper name. It is an uncommon one of the Hundred Family Surnames. was a Warring States period state, located in present-day Zigui County (Hubei), that Chu annexed in 634 BCE. , located in present-day Fengjie County of Chongqing (Sichu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polysemous
Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, morpheme, word, or phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from '' monosemy'', where a word has a single meaning. Polysemy is distinct from homonymy—or homophony—which is an accidental similarity between two or more words (such as ''bear'' the animal, and the verb ''bear''); whereas homonymy is a mere linguistic coincidence, polysemy is not. In discerning whether a given set of meanings represent polysemy or homonymy, it is often necessary to look at the history of the word to see whether the two meanings are historically related. Dictionary writers often list polysemes (words or phrases with different, but related, senses) in the same entry (that is, under the same headword) and enter homonyms as separate headwords (usually with a numbering convention such as ''¹bear'' and ''²bear''). Polysemes A polyseme is a word or phrase with diffe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chu (state)
Chu (, Old Chinese: ''*s-r̥aʔ'') was an Ancient Chinese states, ancient Chinese state during the Zhou dynasty. Their first ruler was King Wu of Chu in the early 8th century BC. Chu was located in the south of the Zhou heartland and lasted during the Spring and Autumn period. At the end of the Warring States period it was annexed by the Qin (state), Qin in 223 BC during the Qin's wars of unification. Also known as Jing () and Jingchu (), Chu included most of the present-day provinces of Hubei and Hunan, along with parts of Chongqing, Guizhou, Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai. For more than 400 years, the Chu capital Danyang (Chu), Danyang was located at the junction of the Dan River (China), Dan and Xi Rivers near present-day Xichuan County, Henan, but later moved to Ying (Chu), Ying. The house of Chu originally bore the Chinese surname#Xing, ancestral temple surname Nai ( OC: /*rneːlʔ/) which was later written as Mi (surname), Mi ( OC: /*meʔ/). Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbert Giles
Herbert Allen Giles (; 8 December 184513 February 1935) was a British diplomat and sinologist who was the professor of Chinese at the University of Cambridge for 35 years. Giles was educated at Charterhouse School before becoming a British diplomat in China. He modified a Mandarin Chinese romanization system established by Thomas Wade, resulting in the widely known Wade–Giles Chinese romanization system. Among his many works were translations of the ''Analects of Confucius'', the '' Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)'', the '' Chuang Tzu'', and, in 1892, the widely published '' A Chinese–English Dictionary''. Biography Herbert Allen Giles was the fourth son of John Allen Giles (1808–1884), an Anglican clergyman. After studying at Charterhouse, Herbert became a British diplomat to Qing China, serving from 1867 to 1892. He also spent several years (1885–1888) at Fort Santo Domingo in Tamsui, northern Taiwan. Giles' great-grandson, Giles Pickford, stated in an address at the openi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Henry Mathews
Robert Henry Mathews (1877–1970) was an Australian missionary and Sinologist, best known for his 1931 '' A Chinese-English Dictionary: Compiled for the China Inland Mission by R. H. Mathews'', which was subsequently revised by Harvard University Press in 1943. He served with the China Inland Mission from 1906, before retiring to Australia in 1945. Early life Robert Henry Mathews was born in Flemington, now a suburb of Melbourne, Australia on 13 July 1877, to London-born William Mathews and Australian Mary Mathews, née Whitlaw. Mathews studied lithography at the Working Men's College of Melbourne, during which time he became interested in Christian missionary work. As an fervent Congregationalist, he was drawn to evangelism, especially the China Inland Mission (CIM). Although Mathews set up his own printing business after graduating, he abandoned it to join the CIM in 1906, receiving eighteen months' training in Adelaide where he ministered to the city's outcast poor. Missi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walrus
The walrus (''Odobenus rosmarus'') is a large pinniped marine mammal with discontinuous distribution about the North Pole in the Arctic Ocean and subarctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. It is the only extant species in the family Odobenidae and genus ''Odobenus''. This species is subdivided into two subspecies: the Atlantic walrus (''O. r. rosmarus''), which lives in the Atlantic Ocean, and the Pacific walrus (''O. r. divergens''), which lives in the Pacific Ocean. Adult walrus are characterised by prominent tusks and whiskers, and considerable bulk: adult males in the Pacific can weigh more than and, among pinnipeds, are exceeded in size only by the two species of elephant seals. Walrus live mostly in shallow waters above the continental shelves, spending significant amounts of their lives on the sea ice looking for benthic bivalve molluscs. Walruses are relatively long-lived, social animals, and are considered to be a " keystone species" in the Arctic marine regio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unihan Database
Han unification is an effort by the authors of Unicode and the Universal Character Set to map multiple character sets of the Han characters of the so-called CJK languages into a single set of unified characters. Han characters are a feature shared in common by written Chinese (hanzi), Japanese (kanji), Korean (hanja) and Vietnamese (chữ Hán). Modern Chinese, Japanese and Korean typefaces typically use regional or historical variants of a given Han character. In the formulation of Unicode, an attempt was made to unify these variants by considering them as allographsdifferent glyphs representing the same "grapheme" or orthographic unit hence, "Han unification", with the resulting character repertoire sometimes contracted to Unihan. Nevertheless, many characters have regional variants assigned to different code points, such as Traditional (U+500B) versus Simplified (U+4E2A). Rationale and controversy The Unicode Standard details the principles of Han unification. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ghost Word
In folklore, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or non-human animal that is believed by some people to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes to realistic, lifelike forms. The deliberate attempt to contact the spirit of a deceased person is known as necromancy, or in spiritism as a '' séance''. Other terms associated with it are apparition, haunt, haint, phantom, poltergeist, shade, specter, spirit, spook, wraith, demon, and ghoul. The belief in the existence of an afterlife, as well as manifestations of the spirits of the dead, is widespread, dating back to animism or ancestor worship in pre-literate cultures. Certain religious practices—funeral rites, exorcisms, and some practices of spiritualism and ritual magic—are specifically designed to rest the spirits of the dead. Ghosts are generally described as solitary, human-like esse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biological Classification
In biology, taxonomy () is the scientific study of naming, defining ( circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon), and these groups are given a taxonomic rank; groups of a given rank can be aggregated to form a more inclusive group of higher rank, thus creating a taxonomic hierarchy. The principal ranks in modern use are domain, kingdom, phylum (''division'' is sometimes used in botany in place of ''phylum''), class, order, family, genus, and species. The Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus is regarded as the founder of the current system of taxonomy, having developed a ranked system known as Linnaean taxonomy for categorizing organisms. With advances in the theory, data and analytical technology of biological systematics, the Linnaean system has transformed into a system of modern biological classification intended to reflect the evolutionary relationships among organisms, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bencao Gangmu
The ''Bencao gangmu'', known in English as the ''Compendium of Materia Medica'' or ''Great Pharmacopoeia'', is an encyclopedic gathering of medicine, natural history, and Chinese herbology compiled and edited by Li Shizhen and published in the late 16th century, during the Ming dynasty. Its first draft was completed in 1578 and printed in Nanjing in 1596. The ''Compendium'' lists the ''materia medica'' of traditional Chinese medicine known at the time, including plants, animals, and minerals that were believed to have medicinal properties. Li compiled his entries not only from hundreds of earlier works in the ''bencao'' medical tradition, but from literary and historical texts. He reasoned that a poem might have better value than a medical work and that a tale of the strange could illustrate a drug's effects. The Ming dynasty emperors did not pay too much attention to his work, and it was ignored. Li's work contained errors and mistakes due to his limited scientific knowledge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zhou (country Subdivision)
''Zhou'' () were historical administrative and political divisions of China. Formally established during the Han dynasty, ''zhou'' existed continuously for over 2000 years . ''Zhou'' were also once used in Korea (, ''ju''), Vietnam () and . Overview ''Zhou'' is typically rendered by several terms in the English language: * The large ''zhou'' before the Tang dynasty and in countries other than China are called "provinces" * The smaller ''zhou'' during and after the Tang dynasty are called "prefectures" * The ''zhou'' of the Qing dynasty are also called either "independent" or "dependent departments", depending on their level. The Tang dynasty also established '' fǔ'' (, "prefectures"), ''zhou'' of special importance such as capitals and other major cities. By the Ming and Qing, became predominant divisions within Chinese provinces. In Ming and Qing, the word ''fǔ'' () was typically attached to the name of each prefecture's capital city, thus both Chinese and Western ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tang Dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Historians generally regard the Tang as a high point in Chinese civilisation, and a Golden age (metaphor), golden age of cosmopolitan culture. Tang territory, acquired through the military campaigns of its early rulers, rivalled that of the Han dynasty. The House of Li, Li family founded the dynasty after taking advantage of a period of Sui decline and precipitating their final collapse, in turn inaugurating a period of progress and stability in the first half of the dynasty's rule. The dynasty was formally interrupted during 690–705 when Empress Wu Zetian seized the throne, proclaiming the Wu Zhou dynasty and becoming the only legitimate Chinese empress regnant. The An Lushan rebellion (755 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sichuan
Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Chengdu, and its population stands at 83 million. Sichuan neighbors Qinghai and Gansu to the north, Shaanxi and Chongqing to the east, Guizhou and Yunnan to the south, and Tibet to the west. During antiquity, Sichuan was home to the kingdoms of Ba and Shu until their incorporation by the Qin. During the Three Kingdoms era (220–280), Liu Bei's state of Shu was based in Sichuan. The area was devastated in the 17th century by Zhang Xianzhong's rebellion and the area's subsequent Manchu conquest, but recovered to become one of China's most productive areas by the 19th century. During World War II, Chongqing served as the temporary capital of the Republic of China, and was heavily bombed. It was one of the last mainland areas captured ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
