China is considered one of the cradles of civilization: the first human inhabitants in the region arrived during the Paleolithic; by the late second millennium BCE, the earliest dynastic states had emerged in the Yellow River basin. 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 both its neighbors and lands further afield. However, China began to cede parts of the country in the late 19th century to various European powers by a series of unequal treaties.
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Peking opera in Shanghai, 2014
Peking opera, or Beijing opera (Chinese: 京劇; pinyin: Jīngjù), is the most dominant form of Chinese opera, which combines instrumental music, vocal performance, mime, martial arts, dance and acrobatics. It arose in Beijing in the mid-Qing dynasty (1644–1912) and became fully developed and recognized by the mid-19th century. The form was extremely popular in the Qing court and has come to be regarded as one of the cultural treasures of China. Major performance troupes are based in Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai. The art form is also preserved in Taiwan, where it is also known as Guójù (Chinese: 國劇; lit. 'National opera'). It has also spread to other regions such as the United States and Japan.
Peking opera features four main role types, sheng (gentlemen), dan (women), jing (rough men), and chou (clowns). Performing troupes often have several of each variety, as well as numerous secondary and tertiary performers. With their elaborate and colorful costumes, performers are the only focal points on Peking opera characteristically sparse stage. They use the skills of speech, song, dance and combat in movements that are symbolic and suggestive, rather than realistic. Above all else, the skill of performers is evaluated according to the beauty of their movements. Performers also adhere to a variety of stylistic conventions that help audiences navigate the plot of the production. The layers of meaning within each movement must be expressed in time with music. The music of Peking opera can be divided into the xīpí (西皮) and èrhuáng (二黄) styles. Melodies include arias, fixed-tune melodies and percussion patterns. The repertoire of Peking opera includes over 1,400 works, which are based on Chinese history, folklore and, increasingly, contemporary life. (Full article...)
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...)
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...)
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Zhou Tong stroking his beard
Zhou Tong (Chinese: 周同 and 周侗; pinyin: Zhōu Tóng) (died late 1121 CE) was the archery teacher and second military arts tutor of famous Song dynasty general Yue Fei. Originally a local hero from Henan, he was hired to continue Yue Fei's military training in archery after the boy had rapidly mastered spearplay under his first teacher. In addition to the future general, Zhou accepted other children as archery pupils. During his tutelage, Zhou taught the children all of his skills and even rewarded Yue with his two favorite bows because he was his best pupil. After Zhou's death, Yue would regularly visit his tomb twice a month and perform unorthodox sacrifices that far surpassed that done for even beloved tutors. Yue later taught what he had learned from Zhou to his soldiers and they were successful in battle.
With the publishing of Yue Fei's 17th folklore biography, The Story of Yue Fei (1684), a new, fictional Zhou Tong emerged, who differed greatly from his historical persona. Not only was he now from Shaanxi, but he was Yue's adopted father, a learned scholar with knowledge of the eighteen weapons of war, and his personal name was spelled with a different, yet related, Chinese character. The novel's author portrayed him as an elderly widower and military arts tutor who counted Lin Chong and Lu Junyi, two of the fictional 108 outlaws on which the Water Margin is based, among his former pupils. A later republican erafolktale by noted Yangzhou storyteller Wang Shaotang not only adds Wu Song to this list, but represents Zhou as a knight-errant with supreme swordsmanship. The tale also gives him the nickname "Iron Arm", which he shares with the executioner-turned-outlaw Cai Fu, and makes the outlaw Lu Zhishen his sworn brother. Because of his association with the outlaws, he is often confused with the similarly named outlaw Zhou Tong. (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...)
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Luo Yixiu (Chinese: 羅一秀; 20 October 1889 – 11 February 1910), a Han Chinese woman, was the first wife of the later Chinese communist revolutionary and political leader Mao Zedong, to whom she was married from 1908 until her death. Coming from the area around Shaoshan, Hunan, in south central China – the same region as Mao – her family were impoverished local landowners.
Most of what is known about their marriage comes from an account Mao gave to the American reporter Edgar Snow in 1936, which Snow included in his book Red Star Over China. According to Mao, he and Luo Yixiu were the subject of an arranged marriage organised by their respective fathers, Mao Yichang and Luo Helou. Luo was eighteen and Mao just fourteen years old at the time of their betrothal. Although Mao took part in the wedding ceremony, he later said that he was unhappy with the marriage, never consummating it and refusing to live with his wife. Socially disgraced, she lived with Mao's parents for two years until she died of dysentery, while he moved out of the village to continue his studies elsewhere, eventually becoming a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party. Various biographers have suggested that Mao's experience of this marriage affected his later views, leading him to become a critic of arranged marriage and a vocal feminist. He married three more times, to Yang Kaihui, He Zizhen and Jiang Qing, the last of whom was better known as Madame Mao. (Full article...)
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Publicity photo of Anna May Wong from Stars of the Photoplay, 1930
Wong Liu Tsong (January 3, 1905 – February 3, 1961), known professionally as Anna May Wong, was an American actress, considered the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, as well as the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. Her varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio.
Born in Los Angeles to second-generation Taishanese Chinese American parents, Wong became engrossed with films and decided at the age of 11 that she would become an actress. Her first role was as an extra in the movie The Red Lantern (1919). During the silent film era, she acted in The Toll of the Sea (1922), one of the first films made in color, and in Douglas Fairbanks' The Thief of Bagdad (1924). Wong became a fashion icon and had achieved international stardom in 1924. Wong had been one of the first to embrace the flapper look. In 1934, the Mayfair Mannequin Society of New York voted her the "world's best dressed woman." In the 1920s and 1930s, Wong was acclaimed as one of the top fashion icons. (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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Engravings on a cliff-side near a widely accepted candidate site for the battlefield, in the vicinity of Chibi, Hubei. The engravings are at least 1000 years old, and include the Chinese characters 赤壁 ('red cliffs') written from right-to-left.
The Battle of Red Cliffs, also known as the Battle of Chibi, was a decisive naval battle in China that took place during the winter of AD 208–209. It was fought on the Yangtze River between the forces of warlords controlling different parts of the country during the end of the Han dynasty. The allied forces of Sun Quan, Liu Bei, and Liu Qi based south of the Yangtze defeated the numerically superior forces of the northern warlord Cao Cao. By doing so, Liu Bei and Sun Quan prevented Cao Cao from conquering any lands south of the Yangtze, frustrating Cao Cao's efforts to reunify the territories formerly held by the Eastern Han dynasty.
The allied victory at Red Cliffs ensured the survival of Liu Bei and Sun Quan and left them in control of the Yangtze, establishing defensible frontiers that would later serve as the basis for the states of Shu Han and Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period (220–280). Historians have arrived at different conclusions in their attempts to reconstruct the timeline of events at Red Cliffs. The location of the battlefield itself remains a subject of debate: most scholars consider either a location southwest of present-day Wuhan, or a location northeast of Baqiu in present-day Yueyang, Hunan as plausible candidate sites for the battle. (Full article...)
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A Western Han painted ceramic jar with raised reliefs of dragons, phoenixes, and taotie designs The Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) was the second imperial dynasty of China, following the Qin dynasty (221–207 BC). It was divided into the periods of Western (Former) Han (202 BC – 9 AD) and Eastern (Later) Han (25–220 AD), briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty (9–23 AD) of Wang Mang. The capital of Western Han was Chang'an, and the capital of Eastern Han was Luoyang. The emperor headed the government, promulgating all written laws, serving as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and presiding as the chief executive official. He appointed all government officials who earned a salary of 600 bushels of grain or more (though these salaries were largely paid in coin cash) with the help of advisors who reviewed each nominee. The empress dowager could either be the emperor's actual or symbolic mother, and was in practice more respected than the emperor, as she could override his decisions; she can even make decisions on behalf of the emperor in dilemma matters of the country or for the order and continuation of the dynasty, even if necessary, with the support of the courtiers, she would decide on his successor or his dismissal. Although such a challenge was raised by the empress dowager to the emperor during the emperor's youth or incapacity. The emperor's executive powers could also be practiced by any official upon whom he bestowed the Staff of Authority. These powers included the right to execute criminals without the imperial court's permission.
Felice Beato (c. 1832 – 29 January 1909), also known as Felix Beato, was an Italian–British photographer. He was one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers. He is noted for his genre works, portraits, and views and panoramas of the architecture and landscapes of Asia and the Mediterranean region. Beato's travels gave him the opportunity to create images of countries, people, and events that were unfamiliar and remote to most people in Europe and North America. His work provides images of such events as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Second Opium War, and represents the first substantial body of photojournalism. He influenced other photographers, and his influence in Japan, where he taught and worked with numerous other photographers and artists, was particularly deep and lasting. (Full article...)
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Comparison between Gwoyeu Romatzyh (top) and pinyin (bottom) for Gwoyeu Romatzyh's official name 國音字母第二式 ('Second Pattern of the National Alphabet'; middle)
Despite support from linguists both in China and overseas—including some early proponents who hoped it would eventually replace Chinese characters altogether—GR never achieved widespread use among the Chinese public, who generally lacked interest in the system or viewed it with hostility due to its complex spelling rules. In places where GR had gained traction, it was eventually replaced—largely by Hanyu Pinyin (or simply "pinyin"), which became the international standard during the 1980s, and itself follows principles originally introduced by GR. Widespread adoption of the system was also hindered by its narrow calibration to the Beijing dialect, during a period when China lacked the strong central government needed to impose use of a national spoken language. (Full article...)
The dynasty's history is divided into two periods: during the Northern Song (北宋; 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 (南宋; 1127–1279) comprise the period following the loss of control over the northern half of Song territory to the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in the Jin–Song Wars. At that time, the Song court retreated south of the Yangtze and established its capital at Lin'an (now Hangzhou). Although the Song dynasty had lost control of the traditional Chinese heartlands around the Yellow River, the Southern Song Empire contained a large population and productive agricultural land, sustaining a robust economy. In 1234, the Jin dynasty was conquered by the Mongols, who took control of northern China, maintaining uneasy relations with the Southern Song. Möngke Khan, the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, died in 1259 while besieging the mountain castle Diaoyucheng in Chongqing. His younger brother Kublai Khan was proclaimed the new Great Khan and in 1271 founded the Yuan dynasty. After two decades of sporadic warfare, Kublai Khan's armies conquered the Song dynasty in 1279 after defeating the Southern Song in the Battle of Yamen, and reunited China under the Yuan dynasty. (Full article...)
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There are no contemporaneous portraits of Du Fu; this is a later artist's impression.
Du Fu (Chinese: 杜甫; Wade–Giles: Tu Fu; 712–770) was a Chinese poet and politician during the Tang dynasty. Together with his elder contemporary and friend Li Bai, Du is often considered one of the greatest Chinese poets. His greatest ambition was to serve his country as a successful civil servant, but Du proved unable to make the necessary accommodations. His life, like all of China, was devastated by the An Lushan Rebellion of 755, and his last 15 years were a time of almost constant unrest.
Although initially he was little-known to other writers, his works came to be hugely influential in both Chinese and Japanese literary culture. Of his poetic writing, nearly fifteen hundred poems have been preserved over the ages. He has been called the "Poet-Historian" and the "Poet-Sage" by Chinese critics, while the range of his work has allowed him to be introduced to Western readers as "the Chinese Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, Béranger, Hugo or Baudelaire". (Full article...)
... that China limited online video games for children to three hours per week in 2021?
... that swimmer Jin Hao competed in eight events, the most of any participant, during the 2001 National Games of China, causing him to lose 4 kilograms (8.8 lb)?
This is a good article, an article that meets a core set of high editorial standards.
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Polo wearing a Tartar outfit, print from the 18th century
Marco Polo (/ˈmɑːrkoʊˈpoʊloʊ/ⓘ, Venetian:[ˈmaɾkoˈpolo], Italian:[ˈmarkoˈpɔːlo]ⓘ; c. 1254 – 8 January 1324) was a Venetian merchant, explorer and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His travels are recorded in The Travels of Marco Polo (also known as Book of the Marvels of the World and Il Milione, c. 1300), a book that described the then-mysterious culture and inner workings of the Eastern world, including the wealth and great size of the Mongol Empire and China under the Yuan dynasty, giving Europeans their first comprehensive look into China, Persia, India, Japan, and other Asian societies.
Born in Venice, Marco learned the mercantile trade from his father and his uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, who travelled through Asia and met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for the first time. The three of them embarked on an epic journey to Asia, exploring many places along the Silk Road until they reached "Cathay". They were received by the royal court of Kublai Khan, who was impressed by Marco's intelligence and humility. Marco was appointed to serve as Kublai's foreign emissary, and he was sent on many diplomatic missions throughout the empire and Southeast Asia, visiting present-day Burma, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. As part of this appointment, Marco also travelled extensively inside China, living in the emperor's lands for 17 years and seeing many things previously unknown to Europeans. Around 1291, the Polos offered to accompany the Mongol princess Kököchin to Persia; they arrived there around 1293. After leaving the princess, they travelled overland to Constantinople and then to Venice, returning home after 24 years. At this time, Venice was at war with Genoa. Marco joined the war effort on behalf of Venice and was captured by the Genoans. While imprisoned, he dictated stories of his travels to Rustichello da Pisa, a cellmate. He was released in 1299, became a wealthy merchant, married, and had three children. He died in 1324 and was buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Venice. (Full article...)
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Map showing the expansion of Han dynasty in the 2nd century BC
The Han campaigns against Minyue were a series of three Han military campaigns dispatched against the Minyue state. The first campaign was in response to Minyue's invasion of Eastern Ou in 138 BC. In 135 BC, a second campaign was sent to intervene in a war between Minyue and Nanyue. After the campaign, Minyue was partitioned into Minyue, ruled by a Han proxy king named Zou Yushan, and Dongyue. During the concluding months of 111 BC, after the unsuccessful uprising led by Zou Yushan in thwarting General Yang Pu's conspiratorial intentions to undermine him, the aspiration for autonomous rule in Dongyue gradually waned. The rebellion instigated by Zou was suppressed, prompting the Han dynasty's complete annexation of Dongyue into its dominion and the conquest of the residual territories that constituted the former Minyue, effectively consolidating the permanent integration of both domains into the Han empire indefinitely. (Full article...)
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The military of the Tang dynasty was staffed with a large population of Turkic soldiers, referred to as Tujue (突厥) in Chinese sources. Tang elites in northern China were familiar with Turkic culture, a factor that contributed to the empire's acceptance of Turkic recruits. The Emperor Taizong of Tang adopted the title of "Heavenly Khagan" and promoted a cosmopolitan empire. Turkic soldiers that served under the Tang dynasty originated from the Eastern Turkic Khaganate. It began with Taizong who sent his general Li Jing, eventually ended in defeating the Eastern Turks and capturing their leader Jiali Khan.
Taizong regularly recruited and promoted military officers of Turkic ancestry, whose steppe experience contributed to the western and northern expansion of the Tang empire. The Turkic general Ashina She'er participated in the Tang capture of the Karakhoja, Karasahr, and Kucha kingdoms in Xinjiang. The half-Turkic general An Lushan started a revolt that led to the decline of the Tang dynasty. (Full article...)
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Ruyijun zhuan (如意君傳), translated into English as The Lord of Perfect Satisfaction, is a Chinese erotic novella written in the Ming dynasty by an unknown author. Set in the Tang dynasty, it follows the political career and love life of Empress Wu Zetian. One of the earliest erotic novels published in China, it was repeatedly banned after its publication. (Full article...)
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Fossils of A. longicervia described in Wong et al. (2015)
The species was originally described as a pitcher plant with close affinities to extant members of the familySarraceniaceae. This would make it the earliest known carnivorous plant and the only known fossil record of Sarraceniaceae, or the New World pitcher plant family. Archaeamphora is also one of the three oldest known genera of angiosperms (flowering plants). Li (2005) wrote that "the existence of a so highly derived Angiosperm in the Early Cretaceous suggests that Angiosperms should have originated much earlier, maybe back to 280 mya as the molecular clock studies suggested". (Full article...)
The goals of the mission were to investigate the Communists politically and militarily and to determine if the US would benefit from establishing liaison. Communist local governments had cooperated in rescuing American pilots downed in North China after bombing Japan, and the invasion of Japan might still have been launched from China, which would have involved landing American troops in China. John S. Service, of the US Department of State, was responsible for political analysis, and Colonel David D. Barrett, of the US Army, performed the military analysis. Initially, they reported that the Chinese Communists might be a useful wartime and postwar ally and that the atmosphere in Yan'an was more energetic and less corrupt than in Nationalist-held areas. After the war, the Dixie Mission's reports and Service and Barrett were condemned by pro-Kuomintang factions in the American government. After the war, in the debate over the "loss of China", many put the blame on wartime China Hands. Service was fired from the State Department, and Barrett was denied a promotion to brigadier general. (Full article...)
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A column of the US 1st Marine Division moves through Chinese lines during its breakout from the Chosin Reservoir with a M46 Patton medium tank.
The Battle of Chosin Reservoir, also known as the Chosin Reservoir Campaign or the Battle of Lake Changjin (Korean: 장진호 전투; Hanja: 長津湖戰鬪; RR: Jangjinho jeontu; MR: Changjinho chŏnt'u), was an important battle in the Korean War. The name "Chosin" is derived from the Japanese pronunciation "Chōshin", instead of the Korean pronunciation.
The battle took place about a month after the People's Republic of China entered the conflict and sent the People's Volunteer Army (PVA) 9th Corps to infiltrate the northeastern part of North Korea. On 27 November 1950, the Chinese force surprised the US X Corps commanded by Major General Edward Almond in the Chosin Reservoir area. A brutal 17-day battle in freezing weather soon followed. Between 27 November and 13 December, 30,000 United Nations Command troops, later nicknamed "The Chosin Few", under the field command of Major General Oliver P. Smith were encircled and attacked by about 120,000 Chinese troops under the command of Song Shilun, who had been ordered by Mao Zedong to destroy the UN forces. (Full article...)
Chen was abandoned as an infant, and then lost both foster parents during early childhood. Before becoming a film director, Chen worked mainly in drama. His patriotic play Put Down Your Whip was highly influential and performed countless times during the Japanese invasion of China. During the war he also made a famous staging of the play Qu Yuan, and wrote one of the first Chinese books on film theory. (Full article...)
Shanhua Temple (Chinese: 善化寺; pinyin: Shànhùa Sì) is a Buddhisttemple located in Datong, Shanxi Province, China. The temple was first founded during the early 8th century of the Tang dynasty, but its earliest surviving building dates from the 11th century. The temple was heavily repaired over the years, and today three original halls and two recently rebuilt pavilions survive. The largest, and earliest hall, dating from the 11th-century Liao dynasty, is the Mahavira Hall and is one of the largest of its kind in China. Also historically significant are the Main Gate and Sansheng Hall, both dating from 12th century during the Jin dynasty. (Full article...)
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Li He, as depicted in the 1743 book Wanxiaotang Zhuzhuang Huazhuan (晩笑堂竹荘畫傳).
The film was announced in August 2012 after the rights to the book were purchased. Many of the cast members signed on in the spring of 2017, and filming took place from April to June of that year in parts of Singapore, Malaysia and New York City. It is the first film by a major Hollywood studio to feature a majority cast of Chinese descent in a modern setting since The Joy Luck Club in 1993. Despite such praises in the United States, the film was also criticized for casting biracial actors over fully ethnically Chinese ones in certain roles. Additional criticism was also directed at the film for failing to acknowledge Singapore's multiracial demographic by including other Singaporean ethnic groups—such as Malay and Indian actors—as characters, as well as perpetuating stereotypes of East and Southeast Asians. (Full article...)
A Northern Song coin (sheng song yuan bao聖宋元寶) The economy of the Song dynasty (960–1279) has been characterized as the most prosperous in the world at the time. The dynasty moved away from the top-down command economy of the Tang dynasty (618–907) and made extensive use of market mechanisms as national income grew to be around three times that of 12th century Europe. The dynasty was beset by invasions and border pressure, lost control of North China in 1127, and fell in 1279. Yet the period saw the growth of cities, regional specialization, and a national market. There was sustained growth in population and per capita income, structural change in the economy, and increased technological innovation such as movable print, improved seeds for rice and other commercial crops, gunpowder, water-powered mechanical clocks, the use of coal as an industrial fuel, improved iron and steel production, and more efficient canal locks. China had a steel production of around 100,000 tons plus urban cities with millions of people at the time.
Commerce in global markets increased significantly. Merchants invested in trading vessels and trade which reached ports as far away as East Africa. This period also witnessed the development of the world's first banknote, or printed paper money (see Jiaozi, Guanzi, Huizi), which circulated on a massive scale. A unified tax system and efficient trade routes by road and canal meant the development of a nationwide market. Regional specialization promoted economic efficiency and increased productivity. Although much of the central government's treasury went to the military, taxes imposed on the rising commercial base refilled the coffers and further encouraged the monetary economy. Reformers and conservatives debated the role of government in the economy. The emperor and his government still took responsibility for the economy, but generally made fewer claims than in earlier dynasties. The government did, however, continue to enforce monopolies on certain manufactured items and market goods to boost revenues and secure resources that were vital to the empire's security, such as tea, salt, and chemical components for gunpowder. (Full article...)
Ni has gone through multiple arrests, three prison sentences, and torture following her human rights cases against the Chinese government. Her license to practice law was later revoked by Chinese authorities. (Full article...)
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Hu Lanqi in 1937, when she was awarded the rank of Major General
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...)
The following are images from various China-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1Photo 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 23Map showing the expansion of Han dynasty in the 2nd century BC (from History of China)
Image 24Gilin 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 25Main hall and tea house in Dunedin Chinese Garden (from Chinese culture)
Image 29Relief of a fenghuang in Fuxi Temple (Tianshui). They are mythological birds of East Asia that reign over all other birds. (from Chinese culture)
Image 31Red 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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National Emblem of the Republic of ChinaTsai Ing-wen
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(pictured), 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).