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Frog (fastening)
(), also called () or () in China, are referred as knots, Chinese frog closures and decorative toggles in English language, is a type of ornamental braiding closure made out of cord, consisting of a button (oftentimes a Chinese button knot for a traditional oriental style) and a loop; it is used to fasten garments without creating an overlap. Its purpose is to act as a fastener as well as providing a decorative closure for the garment. It is especially used on the cheongsam, where the represents the cultural essence of the dress. This form of decorative fastener originated from China and was later introduced to other countries outside of China where they are now called frog closures, frogs, and frogging in English-speaking countries. It was first adopted in the military uniform of Western countries, where they gained popularity, before eventually making its way into civilian clothes of both genders, such as overcoats, spencers, and pelisses. Frog fasteners are usual to garm ...
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Song Dynasty
The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the rest of the Ten Kingdoms, ending the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The Song often came into conflict with the contemporaneous Liao, Western Xia and Jin dynasties in northern China. After retreating to southern China, the Song was eventually conquered by the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The dynasty is divided into two periods: Northern Song and Southern Song. During the Northern Song (; 960–1127), the capital was in the northern city of Bianjing (now Kaifeng) and the dynasty controlled most of what is now Eastern China. The Southern Song (; 1127–1279) refers to the period after the Song lost control of its northern half to the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in the Jin–Song Wars. At that time, the Song court retreated south of the ...
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Spencer (clothing)
The spencer, dating from the 1790s, was originally a woolen outer tail-coat with the tails omitted. It was worn as a short waist-length, double-breasted, man's jacket. It was originally named after George Spencer, 2nd Earl Spencer (1758–1834), who is reported to have had a tail-coat adapted after its tails were burned by coals from a fire. It was adopted as mess dress by British military officers, leading to the name mess jacket. It was also soon adopted as a popular women's fashion on both sides of the Atlantic during the 1790–1820 Regency style period The spencer was worn as a cardigan, or as a short, fitted jacket cut to just above waist level, or, in Empire style, to the bust line, and tailored on identical lines to the dress.Regency Fashion ...
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Longevity
The word " longevity" is sometimes used as a synonym for "life expectancy" in demography. However, the term ''longevity'' is sometimes meant to refer only to especially long-lived members of a population, whereas ''life expectancy'' is always defined statistically as the average number of years remaining at a given age. For example, a population's life expectancy at birth is the same as the average age at death for all people born in the same year (in the case of cohorts). Longevity is best thought of as a term for general audiences meaning 'typical length of life' and specific statistical definitions should be clarified when necessary. Reflections on longevity have usually gone beyond acknowledging the brevity of human life and have included thinking about methods to extend life. Longevity has been a topic not only for the scientific community but also for writers of travel, science fiction, and utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that ...
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Prosperity
Prosperity is the flourishing, thriving, good fortune and successful social status. Prosperity often produces profuse wealth including other factors which can be profusely wealthy in all degrees, such as happiness and health. Competing notions of prosperity Economic notions of prosperity often compete or interact negatively with health, happiness, or spiritual notions of prosperity. For example, longer hours of work might result in an increase in certain measures of economic prosperity, but at the expense of driving people away from their preferences for shorter work hours. In Buddhism, prosperity is viewed with an emphasis on collectivism and spirituality. This perspective can be at odds with capitalistic notions of prosperity, due to the latter's association with greed. Data from social surveys show that an increase in income does not result in a lasting increase in happiness; one proposed explanation to this is due to hedonic adaptation and social comparison, and a failure t ...
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Fu (character)
The character ''Fú'' (, Unicode U+798F) meaning "fortune" or "good luck" is represented both as a Chinese ideograph and, at times, pictorially, in one of its homophonous forms. It is often found on a figurine of the male god of the same name, one of the trio of "star gods" ''Fú, Lù, Shòu''. Mounted ''Fú'' are a widespread Chinese tradition associated with Chinese New Year and can be seen on the entrances of many Chinese homes worldwide. The characters are generally printed on a square piece of paper or stitched in fabric. The practice is universal among Chinese people regardless of socioeconomic status, and dates to at least the Song Dynasty (AD 960 – 1279). When displayed as a Chinese ideograph, ''Fú'' is often displayed upside-down on diagonal red squares. The reasoning is based on a wordplay: in nearly all varieties of Chinese, the words for "upside-down" (, Pinyin: dào) and "to arrive" (, Pinyin: dào) are homophonous. Therefore, the phrase an "upside-down ''Fú ...
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Homonym
In linguistics, homonyms are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation), or homophones (equivocal words, that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. Using this definition, the words ''row'' (propel with oars), ''row'' (a linear arrangement) and ''row'' (an argument) are homonyms because they are homographs (though only the first two are homophones): so are the words ''see'' (vision) and ''sea'' (body of water), because they are homophones (though not homographs). A more restrictive and technical definition requires that homonyms be simultaneously homographs ''and'' homophoneshomonym
''Random House Unabridged Dictionary'' at dictionary.com
– that is to say they have identical spelling ''and'' pronunciation, but with different meanings. Examples are the pair ''stalk'' ...
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Shou (character)
''Shòu'' () is the Chinese word/character for "longevity". Use Three of the most important goals in life in Chinese traditional thought are the propitious blessings of happiness (''fú'' ), professional success or prosperity (''lù'' ), and longevity (''shòu'' ). These are visually represented by the three "star gods" of the same names ( ''Fú, Lù, Shòu''), commonly depicted as three male figurines (each wearing a distinctive garment and holding an object that enables them to be differentiated), or the Chinese ideographs/characters themselves, or various homophones or objects with relevant attributes. '' Shòu'' is instantly recognizable. "He holds in his hand a large peach, and attached to his long staff are a gourd and a scroll. The stag and the bat both indicate ''fu'' happiness. The peach, gourd, and scroll are symbols of longevity." His most striking characteristic is, however, his large and high forehead, which earned him the title "Longevity Star Old-pate". The C ...
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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 ...
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Yuan Dynasty
The Yuan dynasty (), officially the Great Yuan (; xng, , , literally "Great Yuan State"), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai, the fifth khagan-emperor of the Mongol Empire from the Borjigin clan, and lasted from 1271 to 1368. In orthodox Chinese historiography, the Yuan dynasty followed the Song dynasty and preceded the Ming dynasty. Although Genghis Khan had been enthroned with the Han-style title of Emperor in 1206 and the Mongol Empire had ruled territories including modern-day northern China for decades, it was not until 1271 that Kublai Khan officially proclaimed the dynasty in the traditional Han style, and the conquest was not complete until 1279 when the Southern Song dynasty was defeated in the Battle of Yamen. His realm was, by this point, isolated from the other Mongol-led khanates and controlled most of modern-day China and its surrounding areas, including ...
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Braid
A braid (also referred to as a plait) is a complex structure or pattern formed by interlacing two or more strands of flexible material such as textile yarns, wire, or hair. The simplest and most common version is a flat, solid, three-stranded structure. More complex patterns can be constructed from an arbitrary number of strands to create a wider range of structures (such as a fishtail braid, a five-stranded braid, rope braid, a French braid and a waterfall braid). The structure is usually long and narrow with each component strand functionally equivalent in zigzagging forward through the overlapping mass of the others. It can be compared with the process of weaving, which usually involves two separate perpendicular groups of strands ( warp and weft). Historically, the materials used have depended on the indigenous plants and animals available in the local area. During the Industrial Revolution, mechanized braiding equipment was invented to increase production. The braiding t ...
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Chinese Clothing
Chinese clothing includes both the traditional hanfu and modern variations of indigenous Chinese dress as recorded by the artifacts and some traditional arts of Chinese culture. Chinese clothing has been shaped through its dynastic traditions, as well as through foreign influences. Chinese clothing showcases the traditional fashion sensibilities of Chinese culture traditions and forms one of the major cultural facets of Chinese civilization. Imperial China Traditional Han clothing has a recorded history of more than three millennia until the end of the Ming Dynasty. Most Chinese men wore Chinese black cotton shoes, but wealthy higher-class people would wear tough black leather shoes for formal occasions. Very rich and wealthy men would wear very bright, beautiful silk shoes, sometimes with leather on the inside. Women would wear silk shoes, with certain wealthy women practicing foot binding wearing coated Lotus shoes as a status symbol until in the early 20th century. Civil an ...
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Lào Zi
(), also called (), is an ancient appellation for knots in China. In ancient Chinese literature, the actually refers to what is now known as () in Chinese and Chinese knotting in English. The term "Chinese knotting" only became known in recent years when it was summarized by Lydia Chen in the 1980s. It was a tradition to use the and/or as a form of () in where it was tied to the waist by using silk or cotton ribbon. Etymology The meaning of the two terms and are quite similar. The Chinese character for 《》in traditional Chinese and《》in simplified Chinese, is a specific term which refers to knotting, enmeshing, and wrapping. The Chinese character for 《》refers to the lace or flat ribbon woven from silk thread which can used to decorate clothing. Usage According to ''Dream of the Red Chamber'', making means making knots that can be used on waist as knotting belt; the could also be as decorative knots with tassel hanging for small object or furnishin ...
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