One of the cradles of civilization, China has been inhabited since the Paleolithic era, with the earliest dynasties emerging in the Yellow River basin before the late second millennium BCE. The eighth to third centuries BCE saw a breakdown in the authority of the Zhou dynasty, accompanied by the emergence of administrative and military techniques, literature, philosophy, and historiography. In 221 BCE, China was unified under an emperor for the first time. Appointed non-hereditary officials began ruling counties instead of the aristocracy, ushering in more than two millennia of imperial dynasties including the Qin, Han, Tang, Yuan, Ming, and Qing. With the invention of gunpowder and paper, the establishment of the Silk Road, and the building of the Great Wall, Chinese culture—including languages, traditions, architecture, philosophy and technology—flourished and has heavily influenced East Asia and beyond.
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Gwoyeu Romatzyh, abbreviated GR, is a system for writing Standard Chinese in the Latin alphabet. It was conceived by Yuen Ren Chao, who led a group of linguists to develop the system from 1925 to 1926. From 1942 to 2000, a small number of reference works published in Hong Kong and overseas made use of the system, and Chao would use it throughout his later linguistics work, including in his most influential publications. However, Gwoyeu Romatzyh never achieved widespread use among the Chinese public. In places where it had been used, it was eventually replaced—largely by Hanyu Pinyin (or simply 'pinyin'), which became the international standard romanization during the second half of the 20th century. Pinyin itself made use of principles originally introduced by Gwoyeu Romatzyh, whose influence is often reflected in the design of later systems.
GR indicates the four tones of Standard Chinese by varying the spelling of syllables, rather than by using either diacritics as in pinyin, or numerals as in the earlier Wade–Giles system. The distinct spellings for each tone also vary by syllable according to particular rules. Tonal spelling was originally proposed by Lin Yutang, one of the members of the development team. Chao said that this could possibly aid students of Chinese learning to articulate tones. However, later study comparing the tonal accuracy of students reading aloud from either Gwoyeu Romatzyh or pinyin has not substantiated Chao's hypothesis. (Full article...)
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The Shunzhi Emperor (Fulin; 15 March 1638 – 5 February 1661) was the second emperor of the Qing dynasty of China, and the first Qing emperor to rule over China proper, reigning from 1644 to 1661. A committee of Manchu princes chose him to succeed his father, Hong Taiji (1592–1643), in September 1643, when he was five years old. The princes also appointed two co-regents: Dorgon (1612–1650), the 14th son of the Qing dynasty's founder Nurhaci (1559–1626), and Jirgalang (1599–1655), one of Nurhaci's nephews, both of whom were members of the Qing imperial clan.
From 1643 to 1650, political power lay mostly in the hands of Dorgon. Under his leadership, the Qing Empire conquered most of the territory of the fallen Ming dynasty (1368–1644), chased Ming loyalist regimes deep into the southwestern provinces, and established the basis of Qing rule over China proper despite highly unpopular policies such as the "hair cutting command" of 1645, which forced Qing subjects to shave their forehead and braid their remaining hair into a queue resembling that of the Manchus. After Dorgon's death on the last day of 1650, the young Shunzhi Emperor started to rule personally. He tried, with mixed success, to fight corruption and to reduce the political influence of the Manchu nobility. In the 1650s, he faced a resurgence of Ming loyalist resistance, but by 1661 his armies had defeated the Qing Empire's last enemies, seafarer Koxinga (1624–1662) and the Prince of Gui (1623–1662) of the Southern Ming dynasty, both of whom would succumb the following year. The Shunzhi Emperor died at the age of 22 of smallpox, a highly contagious disease that was endemic in China, but against which the Manchus had no immunity. He was succeeded by his third son Xuanye, who had already survived smallpox, and who reigned for sixty years under the era name "Kangxi" (hence he was known as the Kangxi Emperor). Because fewer documents have survived from the Shunzhi era than from later eras of the Qing dynasty, the Shunzhi era is a relatively little-known period of Qing history. (Full article...)
Brady was born an American citizen in Tientsin, China, and traveled frequently as a child, spending time in Los Angeles, California, British Columbia, and Austin, Texas. She studied in the University of California system, receiving her bachelor's and master's degrees, and her Ph.D. in 1935. She next became an English instructor at that university's College of Agriculture, and worked as an assistant professor of languages and literature at Berkeley from 1941 to 1946. The following three years were spent at the University of Pennsylvania, until, at the end of 1949, Brady moved to teach at Central Oregon Community College; her resignation due to "ill health" was announced a few months later. After being named the 1952–53 Marion Talbot Fellow of the American Association of University Women and writing two articles, Brady's scholarship ceased for a quarter of a century. In 1979, and posthumously in 1983, her final two articles were published. (Full article...)
Sino-Roman relations comprised the (primarily indirect) contacts and flows of trade goods, information, and occasional travelers between the Roman Empire and the Han dynasty, as well as between the later Eastern Roman Empire and various successive Chinese dynasties that followed. These empires inched progressively closer to each other in the course of the Roman expansion into ancient Western Asia and of the simultaneous Han military incursionsinto Central Asia. Mutual awareness remained low, and firm knowledge about each other was limited. Surviving records document only a few attempts at direct contact. Intermediate empires such as the Parthians and Kushans, seeking to maintain control over the lucrative silk trade, inhibited direct contact between the two ancient Eurasian powers. In 97 AD, the Chinese general Ban Chao tried to send his envoy Gan Ying to Rome, but Parthians dissuaded Gan from venturing beyond the Persian Gulf. Ancient Chinese historians recorded several alleged Roman emissaries to China. The first one on record, supposedly either from the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius or from his adopted son Marcus Aurelius, arrived in 166 AD. Others are recorded as arriving in 226 and 284 AD, followed by a long hiatus until the first recorded Byzantine embassy in 643 AD.
The indirect exchange of goods on land along the Silk Road and sea routes involved (for example) Chinese silk, Roman glassware and high-quality cloth. Roman coins minted from the 1st century AD onwards have been found in China, as well as a coin of Maximian (Roman emperor from 286 to 305 AD) and medallions from the reigns of Antoninus Pius (r. 138–161 AD) and Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180 AD) in Jiaozhi (in present-day Vietnam), the same region at which Chinese sources claim the Romans first landed. Roman glassware and silverware have been discovered at Chinese archaeological sites dated to the Han period (202 BC to 220 AD). Roman coins and glass beads have also been found in the Japanese archipelago. (Full article...)
Hu lived in Nanjing during the transition from the Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty. A Ming loyalist, he was offered a position at the rump court of the Hongguang Emperor, but declined the post, and never held anything more than minor political office. He did, however, design the Hongguang Emperor's personal seal, and his loyalty to the dynasty was such that he largely retired from society after the emperor's capture and death in 1645. He owned and operated an academic publishing house called the Ten Bamboo Studio, in which he practised various multi-colour printing and embossing techniques, and he employed several members of his family in this enterprise. Hu's work at the Ten Bamboo Studio pioneered new techniques in colour printmaking, leading to delicate gradations of colour which were not previously achievable in this art form. (Full article...)
The modern Chinese varieties make frequent use of what are called classifiers or measure words. One use of classifiers is when a noun is qualified by a numeral or demonstrative. In the Chinese equivalent of a phrase such as "three books" or "that person", it is normally necessary to insert an appropriate classifier between the numeral/demonstrative and the noun. For example, in Standard Chinese, the first of these phrases would be 三本书sān běn shū, where sān means 'three', shū means 'books', and běn is the required classifier. When a noun stands alone without any determiner, no classifier is needed. There are also various other uses of classifiers: for example, when placed after a noun rather than before it, or when repeated, a classifier signifies a plural or indefinite quantity.
The terms classifier and measure word are frequently used interchangeably—as equivalent to the Chinese term 量词 (量詞) liàngcí, literally 'measure word'. However, the two are sometimes distinguished, with classifier denoting a particle without any particular meaning of its own, as in the example above, and measure word denoting a word for a particular quantity or measurement of something, such as 'drop', 'cupful', or 'liter'. The latter type also includes certain words denoting lengths of time, units of currency, etc. These two types are alternatively called count-classifier and mass-classifier, since the first type can only meaningfully be used with count nouns, while the second is used particularly with mass nouns. However, the grammatical behavior of words of the two types is largely identical. (Full article...)
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A map of the Western Han dynasty in 2 AD
Principalities and centrally-administered commanderies
Chinese society during the Song Dynasty (AD 960–1279) was marked by political and legal reforms, a philosophical revival of Confucianism, and the development of cities beyond administrative purposes into centers of trade, industry, and maritime commerce. The inhabitants of rural areas were mostly farmers, although some were also hunters, fishers, or government employees working in mines or the salt marshes. Conversely, shopkeepers, artisans, city guards, entertainers, laborers, and wealthy merchants lived in the county and provincial centers along with the Chinese gentry—a small, elite community of educated scholars and scholar-officials. As landholders and drafted government officials, the gentry considered themselves the leading members of society; gaining their cooperation and employment was essential for the county or provincial bureaucrat overburdened with official duties. In many ways, scholar-officials of the Song period differed from the more aristocratic scholar-officials of the Tang Dynasty (618–907). Civil service examinations became the primary means of appointment to an official post as competitors vying for official degrees dramatically increased. Frequent disagreements amongst ministers of state on ideological and policy issues led to political strife and the rise of political factions. This undermined the marriage strategies of the professional elite, which broke apart as a social group and gave way to a multitude of families that provided sons for civil service.
Confucian or Legalist scholars in ancient China—perhaps as far back as the late Zhou Dynasty (c. 1046–256 BC)—categorized all socioeconomic groups into four broad and hierarchical occupations (in descending order): the shi (scholars, or gentry), the nong (peasant farmers), the gong (artisans and craftsmen), and the shang (merchants). Wealthy landholders and officials possessed the resources to better prepare their sons for the civil service examinations, yet they were often rivaled in their power and wealth by merchants of the Song period. Merchants frequently colluded commercially and politically with officials, despite the fact that scholar-officials looked down on mercantile vocations as less respectable pursuits than farming or craftsmanship. The military also provided a means for advancement in Song society for those who became officers, even though soldiers were not highly respected members of society. Although certain domestic and familial duties were expected of women in Song society, they nonetheless enjoyed a wide range of social and legal rights in an otherwise patriarchal society. Women's improved rights to property came gradually with the increasing value of dowries offered by brides' families. (Full article...)
St. Michael's Cathedral (Chinese: 圣弥爱尔大教堂; pinyin: Shèng Mí'ài'ěr Dàjiàotáng; German: Kathedrale St. Michael), also called the Zhejiang Road Catholic Church (Chinese: 浙江路天主教堂), is a Catholic church in Qingdao (Tsingtao), Shandong Province, China and is the seat of the Bishop of the Diocese of Qingdao (Tsingtao). It is located in the oldest part of Qingdao, at 15 Zhejiang Road, on the east side of Zhongshan Road in Shinan District. Built by German missionaries, the cathedral stands at the top of a hill in the center of the old German-built part of the city. It is the largest example of Romanesque Revival architecture in the province, resembling a German cathedral of the 12th century.
St. Michael's Cathedral is the product of a strong German presence in Shandong Province in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the mid-19th century the European powers forcibly opened China to foreign trade. The Divine Word Missionaries built a church in the Jiaozhou Bay concession in Shandong in 1902, and in 1934 erected the cathedral, which remained nominally under their administration until 1964. In 1942 it came under the control of the Japanese Army, returning to Chinese control when the Japanese left Qingdao in 1945. In the early 1950s, all foreign missionaries, including the Bishop of Qingdao, were either imprisoned or expelled from China, and during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) the cathedral was defaced and abandoned. In 1981, it was repaired by the government and reopened for services, and in 1992 it was listed as a Provincial Historic Building by the government of Shandong Province. (Full article...)
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United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court which held that "a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China", automatically became a U.S. citizen at birth. This decision established an important precedent in its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco in 1873, had been denied re-entry to the United States after a trip abroad, under the Chinese Exclusion Act, a law banning virtually all Chinese immigration and prohibiting Chinese immigrants from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. He challenged the government's refusal to recognize his citizenship, and the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, holding that the citizenship language in the Fourteenth Amendment encompassed the circumstances of his birth and could not be limited in its effect by an act of Congress. (Full article...)
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The empire in 661, when it reached its greatest extent
The 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 devastating An Lushan Rebellion (755–763) shook the nation and led to the decline of central authority in the dynasty's latter half. Like the previous Sui dynasty, the Tang maintained a civil-service system by recruiting scholar-officials through standardized examinations and recommendations to office. The rise of regional military governors known as jiedushi during the 9th century undermined this civil order. The dynasty and central government went into decline by the latter half of the 9th century; agrarian rebellions resulted in mass population loss and displacement, widespread poverty, and further government dysfunction that ultimately ended the dynasty in 907. (Full article...)
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The field shortly after the start.
The men's road race, a part of the cycling events at the 2008 Summer Olympics, took place on August 9 at the Urban Road Cycling Course in Beijing. It started at 11:00 China Standard Time (UTC+8), and was scheduled to last until 17:30 later that day. The 245.4-kilometre (152.5 mi) course ran north across the heart of the Beijing metropolitan area, passing such landmarks as the Temple of Heaven, the Great Hall of the People, Tiananmen Square and the Beijing National Stadium. After rolling over relatively flat terrain for 78.8 km (49.0 mi) north of the Beijing city center, the route entered a decisive circuit encompassing seven loops on a 23.8 km (14.8 mi) section up and down the Badaling Pass, including ramps as steep as a 10 percent gradient.
The race was won by the Spanish rider Samuel Sánchez in 6 hours, 23 minutes, 49 seconds, after a six-man breakaway group contested a sprint finish. It was the first medal in the men's individual road race for Spain. Davide Rebellin of Italy and Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland, finishing second and third place with the same time as Sánchez, received silver and bronze medals respectively for the event. The hot and humid conditions were in sharp contrast to the heavy rain weathered in the women's road race the following day. (Full article...)
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The Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident took place in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, on the eve of Chinese New Year on 23 January 2001. There is controversy over the incident; Chinese government sources say that five members of Falun Gong, a new religious movement that is banned in mainland China, set themselves on fire in the square. Falun Gong sources disputed the accuracy of these portrayals, and claimed that their teachings explicitly forbid violence or suicide. Some journalists have claimed that the self-immolations were staged.
According to Chinese state media, a group of seven people had travelled to Beijing from Henan province, and five set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square. In the Chinese press, the event was used as proof of the dangers of Falun Gong, and was used to legitimise the government's campaign against the group. (Full article...)
Pallas's leaf warbler is one of the smallest Palearcticwarblers, with a relatively large head and short tail. It has greenish upperparts and white underparts, a lemon-yellow rump, and yellow double wingbars, supercilia and central crown stripe. It is similar in appearance to several other Asian warblers, including some that were formerly considered to be its subspecies, although its distinctive vocalisations aid identification. (Full article...)
Cai Lun (Chinese: 蔡伦; courtesy name: Jingzhong (敬仲); c. 50–62 – 121 CE), formerly romanized as Ts'ai Lun, was a Chinese eunuch court official of the Eastern Han dynasty. He occupies a pivotal place in the history of paper due to his addition of pulp via tree bark and hemp ends which resulted in the large-scale manufacture and worldwide spread of paper. Although traditionally regarded as the inventor of paper, earlier forms of paper have existed since the 3rd century BCE, so Cai's contributions are limited to innovation, rather than invention.
Born in Guiyang Commandery [zh] (in what is now Leiyang), Cai arrived at the imperial court in Luoyang by 75 CE, where he served as a chamberlain for Emperor Ming, and then as Xiao Huangmen, an imperial messenger for Emperor Zhang. To assist Lady Dou in securing her adopted son as designated heir, he interrogated Consort Song and her sister, who then killed themselves. When Emperor He ascended the throne in 88 CE, Dou awarded Cai with two positions: Zhongchang shi [zh], a political counselor to the emperor that was the highest position for eunuchs of the time, and also as Shangfang Ling, where Cai oversaw the production of instruments and weapons at the Palace Workshop. (Full article...)
... that British oceanographer Sonya Legg has studied the South China Sea, where internal waves can be taller than 200 metres (660 ft)?
... that revenge buying after the lifting of a 2020 COVID-19 lockdown helped a Hermès store set a record for the most shopping at a luxury outlet in China in a single day?
....that in China, access to water supply and sanitation varies greatly between rural areas, where only 67% of the population has access to improved water supply, and cities, where 93% does?
Hunan cuisine, also known as Xiang cuisine, consists of the cuisines of the Xiang River region, Dongting Lake and western Hunan Province in China. It is one of the Eight Great Traditions of Chinese cuisine and is well known for its hot and spicy flavours, fresh aroma and deep colours. Despite this, only about 20% of the cuisine uses capsicum to produce a strong spicy taste. Common cooking techniques include stewing, frying, pot-roasting, braising and smoking. Due to the high agricultural output of the region, ingredients for Hunan dishes are many and varied. (Full article...)
Yangwei did not see any action during the Sino-French War, but in the First Sino-Japanese War, she was in the Chinese line at the Battle of Yalu River on 17 September 1894. She was set alight by combined fire from the Japanese fleet, and drifted south out of the battle until running aground on a reef. She was subsequently destroyed by a spar torpedo from a boat of the Japanese cruiser Chiyoda. (Full article...)
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Hu Lanqi (Chinese: 胡兰畦; pinyin: Hú Lánqí; Wade–Giles: Hu Lan-ch'i; 1901 – 13 December 1994), also spelled Hu Lanxi, was a Chinese writer and military leader. She joined the National Revolutionary Army in 1927 and the Chinese branch of the Communist Party of Germany in 1930. She was imprisoned by Nazi Germany in 1933 and wrote an influential memoir of her experience, for which she was invited by Maxim Gorky to meet him in Moscow. After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, she organized a team of women soldiers to resist the Japanese invasion, and became the first woman to be awarded the rank of Major General by the Republic of China. She supported the Communists during the Chinese Civil War, but was persecuted in Mao Zedong's political campaigns following the Communist victory in Mainland China. She survived the Cultural Revolution to see her political rehabilitation, and published a detailed memoir of her life in the 1980s.
Based on her early life, the writer Mao Dun wrote the novel Rainbow (1929), whose heroine, Mei, would become more famous than Hu herself. (Full article...)
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The title page of a 16th century Ming print of the Zuo Zhuan
The Zuo Zhuan (Chinese: 左傳; Wade–Giles: Tso chuan; [tswò ʈʂwân]), often translated The Zuo Tradition or The Commentary of Zuo, is an ancient Chinese narrative history that is traditionally regarded as a commentary on the ancient Chinese chronicle Spring and Autumn Annals. It comprises 30 chapters covering a period from 722 to 468BC, and focuses mainly on political, diplomatic, and military affairs from that era.
For many centuries, the Zuo Zhuan was the primary text through which educated Chinese learned their ancient history. The Zuo Zhuan does not simply explain the wording of the Spring and Autumn Annals, but rather expounds upon its historical background with rich and lively accounts of Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BC) history and culture. The Zuo Zhuan is the source of more Chinese sayings and idioms than any other classical work, and its concise, flowing style came to be held as a paragon of elegant Classical Chinese. Its tendency toward third-person narration and portraying characters through direct speech and action became hallmarks of Chinese narrative in general, and its style was imitated by historians, storytellers, and ancient style prose masters for over 2000 years of subsequent Chinese history. (Full article...)
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Shinan District as seen from the harbor
Shinan District (Chinese: 市南区; pinyin: Shìnán Qū; lit. 'South City District') is an urban district of Qingdao, Shandong. It has an area of 30.01 square kilometres (7,420 acres; 11.59 sq mi), and had approximately 588,800 inhabitants as of 2019. Shinan is located in coastal hilled terrain, and has a temperate monsoon climate. Common features include moderate temperatures, moist air, abundant rainfall, and four distinct seasons. It is notable for its early 20th-century German architecture, unusual in Chinese cities.
In the mid-19th century the European powers forcibly opened China to foreign trade. Germany acquired the Kiautschou Bay concession from China in 1898, and substantially developed a fishing village they spelled "Tsingtao" (simplified Chinese: 青岛; traditional Chinese: 青島; pinyin: Qīngdǎo). The area built by the Germans falls into the part of Qingdao known today as Shinan District. (Full article...)
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The Dening Hall (Chinese: 德宁殿; pinyin: Déníng Diàn) of the Beiyue Temple
Red yeast rice (simplified Chinese: 红曲米; traditional Chinese: 紅麴米; pinyin: hóng qū mǐ; Jyutping: Hung4 Kuk1 Mai5; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: âng-khak-bí; lit. 'red yeast rice'), red rice koji (べにこうじ (benikōji), lit. 'red koji'), red fermented rice, red kojic rice, red koji rice, anka, or angkak, is a bright reddish purple fermented rice, which acquires its color from being cultivated with the mold Monascus purpureus. Red yeast rice is what is referred to as a "koji" in Japanese, meaning "grain or bean overgrown with a mold culture", a food preparation tradition going back to ca. 300 BC. In both the scientific and popular literature in English that draws principally on Japanese traditional use, red yeast rice is most often referred to as "red rice koji." English language articles favoring Chinese literature sources prefer the translation "red yeast rice."
The CAC/PAC JF-17 Thunder (Urdu: جے ایف-17 گرج), or FC-1 Xiaolong (Chinese: 枭龙; pinyin: Xiāo Lóng; lit. 'Fierce Dragon'), is a lightweight, single-engine, multirole combat aircraft developed jointly by the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex (PAC) and Chengdu Aircraft Corporation (CAC) of China. It was designed and developed as a fourth-generation replacement for the third-generation A-5C, F-7P/PG, Mirage III, and Mirage V combat aircraft in the Pakistan Air Force (PAF). The JF-17 can be used for multiple roles, including interception, ground attack, anti-ship, and aerial reconnaissance. The Pakistani designation "JF-17" stands for "Joint Fighter-17", with the "Joint Fighter" denoting the joint Pakistani-Chinese development of the aircraft and the "-17" denoting that, in the PAF's vision, it is the successor to the F-16. The Chinese designation "FC-1" stands for "Fighter China-1".
Sun Tzu mastered the military science of ancient China and created the military doctrine of asymmetrical warfare. According to it, an attack on the enemy should begin only after the enemy has no opportunity to either defend or counterattack. It was used in the wars in the era of the Warring States in ancient China (about 475–221 BC). It's not the direct interpretation of the modern asymmetric military strategy. The ancient warriors used to call it the Victorious Methods of Warfare – Sheng Er Zhan Zhi, but it has the same meaning as the modern asymmetrical military strategy. The ancient professional warriors used it in individual combats against the enemies in the wars. As a result, a variety of armed and unarmed combat combinations have been created for various combat situations as the individual battle plans. Those combat combinations had specific names, descriptions and classifications. (Full article...)
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A dispute exists over the international name for the body of water which is bordered by Japan, Korea (North and South) and Russia. In 1992, objections to the name Sea of Japan were first raised by North Korea and South Korea at the Sixth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names. The Japanese government supports the exclusive use of the name "Sea of Japan" (Japanese: 日本海), while South Korea supports the alternative name "East Sea" (Korean: 동해; Hanja: 東海), and North Korea supports the name "Korean East Sea" (조선동해; 朝鮮東海). Currently, most international maps and documents use either the name Sea of Japan (or equivalent translation) by itself, or include both the name Sea of Japan and East Sea, often with East Sea listed in parentheses or otherwise marked as a secondary name. The International Hydrographic Organization, the governing body for the naming of bodies of water around the world, in 2012 decided it was still unable to revise the 1953 version of its publication S-23 – Limits of Oceans and Seas, which includes only the single name "Sea of Japan", to include "East Sea" together with "Sea of Japan".
The involved countries (especially Japan and South Korea) have advanced a variety of arguments to support their preferred name(s). Many of the arguments revolve around determining when the name Sea of Japan became the common name. South Korea argues that historically the more common name was East Sea, Sea of Korea, or another similar variant. South Korea further argues that the name Sea of Japan did not become common until Korea was under Japanese rule, at which time it had no ability to influence international affairs. Japan argues that the name Sea of Japan has been the most common international name since at least the beginning of the 19th century, long before its annexation of Korea. Both sides have conducted studies of antiquarian maps, but the two countries have produced divergent research results. Additional arguments have been raised regarding the underlying geography of the sea as well as potential problems regarding the ambiguity of one name or the other. (Full article...)
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The locations of the three cities which form the Economic Zone. Chongqing Municipality is shaded red.
The economies of all three cities are highly developed and serve as attractive investment locations within China. Many major international companies have factories or branches in the region, including Microsoft, Ford Motors, Citigroup, and over 200 other Fortune 500 companies. (Full article...)
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Maryang-san (right), Korea
The First Battle of Maryang-san (3–8 October 1951), also known as the Defensive Battle of Maliangshan (Chinese: 馬良山防衛戰; pinyin: Mǎliáng Shān Fángyù Zhàn), was fought during the Korean War between United Nations Command (UN) forces—primarily Australian, British and Canadian—and the Chinese People's Volunteer Army (PVA). The fighting occurred during a limited UN offensive by US I Corps, codenamed Operation Commando. This offensive ultimately pushed the PVA back from the Imjin River to the Jamestown Line and destroyed elements of four PVA armies following heavy fighting. The much smaller battle at Maryang-san took place over a five-day period, and saw the 1st Commonwealth Division dislodge a numerically superior PVA force from the tactically important Kowang-san (Hill 355), Hill 187, and Maryang-san (Hill 317, a.k.a. Hill 315) features.
Using tactics first developed against the Japanese in New Guinea during the Second World War, the Australians gained the advantage of the high ground and assaulted the PVA positions from unexpected directions. They then repelled repeated PVA counterattacks aimed at re-capturing Maryang San and Kowang-san (the latter on 12 October), with both sides suffering heavy casualties before the Australians were finally relieved by a British battalion. However, with the peace-talks ongoing, these operations proved to be the last actions in the war of manoeuvre, which had lasted the previous sixteen months. It was replaced by a static war characterised by fixed defences reminiscent of the Western Front in 1915–17. A month later, the PVA re-captured Maryang San during fierce fighting, and it was never re-gained. Today, the battle is widely regarded as one of the Australian Army's greatest accomplishments during the war. (Full article...)
In its formative years, the NCC became involved in the endeavors of Chinese nationalists. It sided with protesters in the May Thirtieth Incident and went as far as calling for the re-evaluation of "unequal treaties" China had with foreign powers. This angered foreign missionaries working in China. The NCC took an increasingly liberal theological stance, leading some foreign missionary organizations like the China Inland Mission and the Christian and Missionary Alliance to resign from its ranks. (Full article...)
Image 13Relief of a fenghuang in Fuxi Temple (Tianshui). They are mythological birds of East Asia that reign over all other birds. (from Chinese culture)
Image 14Main hall and tea house in Dunedin Chinese Garden (from Chinese culture)
Image 15Range of Chinese dialect groups according to the Language Atlas of China. (from Chinese culture)
Image 17Gilin with the head and scaly body of a dragon, tail of a lion and cloven hoofs like a deer. Its body enveloped in sacred flames. Detail from Entrance of General Zu Dashou Tomb (Ming Tomb). (from Chinese culture)
Image 26Photo showing serving chopsticks (gongkuai) on the far right, personal chopsticks (putongkuai) in the middle, and a spoon. Serving chopsticks are usually more ornate than the personal ones. (from Chinese culture)
Image 27People's Republic of China 10th Anniversary Parade in Beijing (from History of China)
Image 42Red lanterns are hung from the trees during the Chinese New Year celebrations in Ditan Park (Temple of Earth) in Beijing. (from Chinese culture)
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The President of the Republic of China is the head of state of the Republic of China (ROC).
The Constitution names the president as head of state and commander-in-chief of the Republic of China Armed Forces (formerly known as the National Revolutionary Army). The president is responsible for conducting foreign relations, such as concluding treaties, declaring war, and making peace. The president must promulgate all laws and has no right to veto. Other powers of the president include granting amnesty, pardon or clemency, declaring martial law, and conferring honors and decorations.
The current President is Tsai Ing-wen(picture), since May 20, 2016. The first woman to be elected to the office, Tsai is the seventh president of the Republic of China under the 1947 Constitution and the second president from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).