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Sheng-King

Sheng-King

Shenyang () is the capital of Liaoning province in China. It is a sub-provincial city with a population of 7.2 million.

History

In the 12th century, Shenyang was one of the three capitals of the empire of the Jin Dynasty (Golden Empire). In 1625 the Manchu leader Nurhaci moved his capital to Shenyang. It was renamed to Shengjing (in Chinese, 盛京) in 1634. Shenyang remained the capital of the Qing Dynasty until the overthrow of the Ming dynasty, and relocation of the capital to Beijing in 1644. However, it retained considerable prestige as the older capital, treasures of the royal house were kept at its palaces, and the tombs of the early Qing rulers were once among the most famous monuments in China. In 1657 Shenyang was renamed Fengtianfu (奉天府/Mukden in Manchu) it changed back to its old name Shenyang in 1914. During the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), there was a Japanese victory at Shenyang on February 19-March 10, 1905. The Mukden Incident (September 18, 1931), which gave the Japanese an impetus to create the Manchukuo state in Manchuria, took place near Shenyang. During the Manchukuo era (1932-1945) the city was called Fengtian again. Soviet forces occupies Shenyang in early August 1945. The Soviets were replaced by the Nationalist Chinese on the surrender of Japan. During the Chinese Civil War, Shenyang was a Kuomintang stronghold from 1946-1948. It was captured by the Communist Chinese on October 30 1948. Since 1949, Shenyang has developed into a major industrial center.

Districts and zones

Communist Chinese
- Dadong District (大东区 Dàdōng Qū) (northeast of downtown)
- Heping District (和平区 Hépíng Qū) (downtown)
- Huanggu (皇姑区 Huánggū Qū) (directly north of downtown)
- Shenhe District (沈河区 Shĕnhé Qū) (east of downtown)
- Tiexi District (铁西区 Tǐexī Qū) (west side) :Farming and mining.
- Sujiatun District (17 Km south of downtown)
- Dongling (东陵 Dōnglíng) (Meaning East Tombs, burial site of Nurhaci)
- Xinchengzi (沈阳新城子 Shěnyáng Xīnchéngzi) (20 miles north of downtown)
- Xinmin (新民县 Xīnmín Xiàn)
- Yuhong

Tourism

Nurhaci

Heping District (和平区 Hépíng Qū) (downtown)

The downtown Heping district has all manner of businesses that are brightly lit by neon at night. At the center of the district, is the famous Zhongshan Square, featuring one of China's largest statues of Chairman Mao. To this day, flowers are still placed around a large statue of Chairman Mao around the holidays. Heping district also contains the Liaoning Provincial Museum.

Dadong District (大东区 Dàdōng Qū) (northeast of downtown)

Dadong District is the home of the 9.18 Museum and the Northern Pagoda. It is the largest district of the urban Shenyang city area.

Shopping districts

There are several shopping districts in Shenyang. Liaoning Provincial Museum One of the districts features western-style shopping and dining, including Walmart, a Pizza Hut (that is very different from those located in America, because it has an upscale interior design and a large staff), consumer electronics stores, and a number of large, multi-story department stores selling products from around the world. Another district features a large multi-story center with hundreds of mini or boutique stores that open very early in the morning and close in the early afternoon.

Huanggu district (皇姑区 Huánggū Qū) (directly north of downtown)

Liaoning Provincial Museum Huanggu district is the site of the large, historical tomb of Hong Taiji (of the Qing Dynasty), called Beiling park. The park covers an area of 3,300,000 sq. meters, and is serviced by trams for visitors who do not wish to (or cannot) traverse the length of the park. Huanggu district also hosts the Liaoning Mansion Hotel.

Shenhe District (沈河区 Shĕnhé Qū) (east of downtown)

Mukden Palace, a former imperial palace of the Qing emperors, now a museum and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Zhang Zuolin's former home and headquarter, Shengjing Ancient Cultural Street, and Gloria Plaza.

Tiexi District (铁西区 Tǐexī Qū) (west side)

This mixed-use district contains large blocks of residential complexes, as well as strips of small to medium-sized shopping. It recently featured in a documentary called West of the Tracks (the literal meaning of Tiexi) by the young filmmaker Wang Bing [http://newleftreview.net/Issue31.asp?Article=06]. Tiexi is also home to the Shenyang Economic and Technological Development Area, a state-level development zone. This new development area combined with Tiexi District has a population of 1 million people, a total area of 126 km², and enjoys the same administrative rank as municipality. (Administrative Committee of Shenyang)

Transportation

Shenyang is served by air, rail, and an extensive network of streets and expressways, with bus service throughout the city. Shenyang is connected by a major expressway, the Jingshen Expressway, to the city of Beijing, some 658 kilometers away. The city is also served by the Shenyang Taoxian International Airport (airport code SHE), as well as by several smaller, regional airports. The Shen-Da Expressway connecting Shenyang and Dalian is the first expressway ever built in China.

Environment

Dalian Although Shenyang still uses coal to generate power during its cold winters, the government is making numerous efforts to improve the environment of the city, from shutting down polluting industrial sites, to switching to cleaner power generation sources such as LPG, natural gas, and even thermal power.

Famous people born in Shenyang

Shenyang is the birthplace of the actress Gong Li and the famous singer Na Ying.

Major companies with offices in Shenyang

Na Ying
- Alcatel Shenyang Telecom (Telecommunications)
- BASF Vitamin Co., Ltd (Vitamins)
- Bridgestone Tire (Tires)
- Canon
- Coca-Cola Beverage Co.
- Emerson Climate Technologies - Copeland Shenyang Refrigeration
- Matsushita Battery (Lead Accumulators)
- Neusoft Group Ltd. (IT Services and Software Development) (6000 employees)
- Shenyang Aerospace Mitsubishi (Auto engines)
- Shenyang Kodenshi Co., Ltd (Semi-conductors)
- Shenyang President Enterprise (Noodles and food stuffs)
- Shenyang Tingyi Intl Food (Noodles and food stuffs)
- Shenyang Weiyong Precision (precision motors and machinery)
- Shenyang Xike Silica Ltd. (Silica and light fiber)
- SY Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical (Medicines) Many of these businesses are operated within the SETDZ (Shenyang Economic and Technological Development Zone), a special zone overseen by the State Council of China, with the goal of stimulating foreign investment in partnerships that manufacture and market in China.

Sports

The local soccer team is the Shenyang Jinde, in the Chinese Super League.

Education System

Shenyang has many schools, both public and private. There are also a number of privately-operated training centres that provide additional English skills. [http://www.syis.org/ Shenyang International School] provides primary and secondary education for expatriates, using the American SAT system.

Colleges and universities

- [http://www.neu.edu.cn/ Northeastern University] [http://www.neu.edu.cn/files/english_index.htm English Version]
- [http://www.sut.edu.cn/ Shenyang University of Technology]
- [http://www.cmu.edu.cn/ China Medical University] [http://www.cmu.edu.cn/eng/index.htm English Version]
- [http://www.lnu.edu.cn/index.jsp Liaoning University]
- [http://www.synu.edu.cn/ Shenyang Normal University] [http://www.synu.edu.cn/1024/english/index.htm English Version]
- [http://www.syict.edu.cn/ Shenyang Institute of Chemical Technology]
- [http://www.symc.edu.cn/ Shenyang Medical College]
- [http://www.syau.edu.cn/ Shenyang Agriculture University]
- [http://www.syiae.edu.cn/ Shenyang Institute of Aviation]
- [http://www.syphu.edu.cn/ Shenyang Pharmaceutical University] [http://www.syphu.edu.cn/en/index.htm English Version]
- [http://www.syu.edu.cn/ Shenyang University]
- [http://www.sjzu.edu.cn/ Shenyang Jianzhu University] [http://202.199.64.12/depart/english/English%20Version%20of%20Sjzu.asp English Version]
- [http://www.syty.edu.cn/ Shenyang Institute of Physical Education]
- [http://www.syit.edu.cn/ Shenyang Ligong University]
- [http://www.ccpc.edu.cn/ China Criminal Police University] [http://www.ccpc.edu.cn/english/ English Version]
- [http://www.sie.edu.cn/2004/ Shenyang Institute of Engeering]
- [http://www.lacpj.com/ Liaoning Administrators College of Police and Justice]
- [http://www.lntvu.com/ Liaoning Radio and TV University]
- [http://sytvu.ln.cninfo.net/ Shenyang Radio and TV University]
- [http://www.lumei.edu.cn/ LuXun Academy of Fine Arts]
- [http://www.lndx.gov.cn/ Liaoning Party Institute of CCP]
- [http://www.lnfvc.cn/ Liaoning Finance Vocational College]
- [http://www.lnemci.com/ Liaoning Economy Vocational College]
- [http://www.lnkn.edu.cn/ Liaoning Korean Normal School]
- [http://www.lncc.edu.cn/ Liaoning Traffic College]

External link

- [http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=41.780860,123.434943&spn=0.234507,0.324200&t=k&hl=en Satellite map via Google Maps] Category:Cities in Liaoning Category:Subprovincial cities ko:선양 ja:瀋陽

Provinces of China

A province, in the context of China, is a translation of sheng (省 shěng), which is an administrative division of China. Together with municipalities and autonomous regions, provinces make up the first level (known as the province level) of administrative division in Mainland China. The Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau are officially considered to be province-level as well, though in reality they have much more autonomy than regular provinces, autonomous regions, or municipalities. Theoretically, provinces are also the first level division of the Republic of China on Taiwan, though this role has been greatly diminished. The People's Republic of China currently administers 22 provinces, out of a total of 33 province level divisions, and claims a 23rd province, Taiwan Province. The Republic of China administers the entirety of Taiwan Province, as well as some offshore islands of Fujian province, and two municipalities (Taipei and Kaohsiung). In the PRC, every province has a Communist Party of China provincial committee, headed by a secretary. The committee secretary is first-in-charge of the province, rather than the governor of the provincial government.

Alternative meanings

"Province" is also a translation of zhou, a division of the Han Dynasty, as well as circuits, a division of the Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty. See History of the political divisions of China.

List and map

History of the political divisions of China]

History

The provinces of China were first set up during the Yuan Dynasty. There were initially 10 provinces. By the time of the Qing Dynasty there were 18, all of which were in China proper. These were: For every province, there was a xunfu (governor, 巡撫), a political overseer on behalf of the emperor behalf and a tidu (提督), a military governor. In addition, there was a zongdu (viceroy, 總督), a general military inspector or "governor general", for every two to three provinces. Outer regions of China (those beyond "China proper") were not divided into provinces. Manchuria (consisting of Fengtian (now Liaoning), Jilin, Heilongjiang), Xinjiang, and Mongolia were overseen by military leaders or generals (將軍) and vice-tudong (副都統), and civilian leaders were heads of the leagues (盟長), a subdivision of Mongolia. In 1878, Xinjiang became a province, in 1909, Fengtian, Jilin, and Heilongjiang were made provinces as well. Taiwan was made a province in 1887, but it was ceded to Japan in 1895. As a result, there were 22 provinces in China (Outer China and China proper) near the end of the Qing Dynasty. The Republic of China, established in 1912, set up 4 more provinces in Inner Mongolia and 2 provinces in historic Tibet, bringing the total to 28. 4 provinces were however lost with the establishment of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in Manchuria. After the defeat of Japan in World War II, Manchuria was reincorporated as 10 provinces, and Taiwan was also returned to China. As a result, the Republic of China had 35 provinces. Although the Republic of China now only controls one province (Taiwan Province) and some islands of a second province (Fujian), it continues to claim (in theory at least) 35 provinces. The People's Republic of China abolished many of the provinces in the 1950s and converted a number of them into autonomous regions. Hainan was set up as a separate province in 1988, bringing the total number of provinces to 22.

Various facts about the provinces

- The largest province is Qinghai but also has the smallest population of just over 5.3 million.
- Eight of the provinces (excluding Taiwan) have a sea coast. The remaining 14 are land-locked.
- Guangdong, Shandong and Liaoning all have a major peninsula.
- Guangdong is the only province bordering the only two Special Administrative Region of China.
- Separated from Guangdong and established in 1988, Hainan is the youngest province of China.
- Aside from Hainan (which is not physical attached to any provinces), all provinces shares borders with at least two or more provinces except for Heilongjiang.

Jin Dynasty (1115-1234)

The Jin Dynasty (金 pinyin: Jīn 1115-1234; Anchu in Jurchen), also known as the Jurchen dynasty, was founded by the Wanyan (完顏 Wányán) clan of the Jurchen, the ancestors of the Manchus who established the Qing Dynasty some 500 years later. The name is sometimes written as Jinn to differentiate it from an earlier Jin Dynasty of China whose name is spelled identically in the Roman alphabet. Jin Dynasty Founded in 1115 in northern Manchuria, it successfully annihilated in 1125 the Liao Dynasty which had held sway over Manchuria and the northern frontier of China for several centuries. On January 9, 1127 Jin forces ransacked Kaifeng, capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, capturing both Emperor Qinzong, and his father, Emperor Huizong, who had abdicated in panic in the face of Jin forces. Following the fall of Kaifeng, Song forces under the leadership of the succeeding Southern Song Dynasty continued to fight for over a decade with Jin forces, eventually signing a peace treaty in 1141, and ceding all of North China to the Jin in 1142 in return for peace. After taking over North China, the Jin Dynasty became increasingly Sinicized, moving its capital from Huining Fu in northern Manchuria (south of present-day Harbin) to Zhongdu (now Beijing). Starting from the early 13th century the Jin Dynasty began to feel the pressure of Mongols from the north. In 1214 the Jin Dynasty moved its capital to Kaifeng (the old Song capital) to evade the Mongols; but under the forces of the Mongol Empire led by Ögedei Khan, third son of Genghis Khan, as well as their allies in the Southern Song Dynasty, the dynasty crumbled in 1234. In 1616, Manchus under the leadership of Nurhaci established the Later Jin Dynasty, taking its name from this dynasty. Later Jin was renamed the Qing Dynasty in 1636, and went on to conquer China proper and become the last dynasty of Imperial China.

Sovereigns of Jin Dynasty 1115-1234
Temple Name Miao Hao 廟號 miàohào	Posthumous Name Shi Hao 諡號 shìhào	Birth Name 姓名 xìngmíng	Years of Reign	Era Name Nian Hao 年號 niánhào and Years
Convention: "Jin" + temple name or posthumous name
Tàizǔ 太祖	(1)	Wányán Āgǔdǎ 完顏阿骨打	1115-1123	Shōuguó 收國 1115-1116 Tiānfǔ 天輔 1117-1123
Tàizōng 太宗	(1)	Wányán Wúqǐmǎi 完顏吳乞買 or Wányán (Shèng or Chéng) 完顏晟	1123-1134	Tiānhuì 天會 1123-1134
Xīzōng 熙宗	(1)	Wányán Hélá 完顏合剌 or Wányán Dǎn 完顏亶	1135-1149	Tiānhuì 天會 1135-1138 Tiānjuàn 天眷 1138-1141 Huángtǒng 皇統 1141-1149
(2)	Hǎilíngwáng 海陵王	Wányán Liàng 完顏亮	1149-1161	Tiāndé 天德 1149-1153 Zhènyuán 貞元 1153-1156 Zhènglóng 正隆 1156-1161
Shìzōng 世宗	(1)	Wányán Yōng 完顏雍	1161-1189	Dàdìng 大定 1161-1189
Zhāngzōng 章宗	(1)	Wányán Jǐng 完顏璟	1190-1208	Míngchāng 明昌 1190-1196 Chéng'ān 承安 1196-1200 Tàihé 泰和1200-1208
(2)	Wèishàowáng 衛紹王 or Wèiwáng 衛王	Wányán Yǒngjì 完顏永濟	1209-1213	Dà'ān 大安 1209-1212 Chóngqìng 崇慶 1212-1213 Zhìníng 至寧 1213
Xuānzōng 宣宗	(1)	Wányán Xún 完顏珣	1213-1223	Zhēnyòu 貞祐 1213-1217 Xīngdìng 興定 1217-1222 Yuánguāng 元光 1222-1223
Āizōng 哀宗	(1)	Wányán Shǒuxù 完顏守緒	1224-1234	Zhèngdà 正大 1224-1232 Kāixīng 開興 1232 Tiānxīng 天興 1232-1234
(2)	Mòdì 末帝	Wányán Chénglín 完顏承麟	1234	(2)

(1) Quite long and thus not used when referring to this sovereign.
(2) Did not exist See also: Puxian Wannu Category:History of China ja:金 (王朝)

Manchu

:For the 1/9, 2/9 Infantry Regiments of the U.S. Army, see U.S. 9th Infantry Regiment. The Manchu (Manchu: Manju; ) are an ethnic group who originated in the "dong bei" or "North East" region consisting of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces, collectively known in English as Manchuria. During the Manchu conquest, they conquered the Ming Dynasty in the 17th century and founded the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until 1911. Manchus have been largely assimilated by the surrounding Han Chinese and the Manchu language is almost extinct, being spoken only among a small number of elderly people in remote areas of northeastern China; however, there are around 10,000 or so speakers of Sibe (Xibo), an innovative Manchu dialect spoken in the Ili region of Xinjiang. In recent years, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in Manchu culture among both ethnic Manchus and Han Chinese with some Manchu ancestry. The adoption of favourable policies towards ethnic minorities (such as preferential university admission and government employment opportunities) has also encouraged some people with mixed Han Chinese and Manchu ancestry to re-identify themselves as Manchu.

Origins

The Manchus were descendants of the Jurchen ethnic group, who had conquered northeastern China in the twelfth century. The name Manchu was formally adopted by Nurhaci of the Jianzhou Jurchens in 1635, though it may have been in use as early as 1605. Nurhaci originated in present-day North Korea near the Paektu/Changbai Mountains (Koryo dynasty period). Nurhaci and his family resided within the Koryo(Korean) kingdom and wished to be reunited with his brother in Korea, according to the Cambridge History of the Qing Dynasty by Giles. Nurhaci's son Hong Taiji decided the Jurchens would call themselves Manchus and prohibited the use of the name Jurchen. The Manchu language is a member of the Tungusic language family, itself a member of the disputed Altaic language group (and hypothetically related to the Korean, Mongolic and Turkic languages). The early significance of Manchu has not been established satisfactorily, although it seems that it may have been an old term for the Jianzhou Jurchens. One theory claims that the name came from the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī (the Bodhisattva of Wisdom), of which Nurhaci claimed to be an incarnation. Another theory is that the Manchus, like a number of other Tungusic peoples, take their name from the common Tungusic word
- mangu(n), 'a great river'. Before the seventeenth century, the ancestors of the Manchus were generally a pastoral people, hunting, fishing and engaging in limited agriculture and pig-farming. The native religion to Manchus is a form of shamanism that holds some similiarities to Mongol shamanism, notably the worship of a sky goddess whose temple in Beijing is the famous "Temple of Heaven" or "Tian Tan" that is now regarded more as a tourist attraction than a holy site. Despite its current state of desecration (from a Manchu spiritual pov), the Tian Tan retains its historical, cultural, and spiritual importance to Manchus who are aware of its importance. Besides the Sky Goddess, the Manchu pantheon also includes an earth god, sun god, and moon goddess, all of whom had temples in Beijing correlating to the Temple of Heaven. Of the four primary deities, the Moon Goddess was most important. These four primary deities were represented by four corresponding colors which became the four original colors in the Manchu banner system. Red was for the sun god. Yellow was for the earth god. Blue belonged to the sky goddess while white belonged to the moon goddess. Politically the red banner was of great importance as the ruling Aisin (Chinese Aixin) were/are red banner. Because of the exalted place in Manchu spirituality held by the Moon Goddess, the White Banner held a very special significance and membership to it was often related to matters of religion. A woman born to the white banner was presumed to be spiritually gifted. Shamanesses or those of shaman potential were required to be white banner--either by birth or by adoption to white banner earned through rigorous tests for spiritual ability. Once ordained, the Manchu shamaness was considered a holy vessal of great wisdom.

Founding of the Qing Dynasty

In 1616 a Manchu leader, Nurhaci (1559-1626) established the Later Jin Dynasty (後金 Hòu Jīn) / Amaga Aisin Gurun, domestically called the State of Manchu (manju gurun), and unified Manchu tribes, establishing (or at least expanding) the Manchu Banner system, a military structure which made their forces quite resilient in the face of superior Chinese numbers in the field. In 1636 Nurhaci's son Hong Taiji, headed by Manchus, Mongolians and Chinese, changed the dynasty's name to Qing. Nurhaci later conquered the Mukden area and built a new city in 1621.When Beijing was captured by Li Zicheng in 1644, the Qing Empire invaded China proper and moved the capital from Mukden (Walled city since the Warring States Period) to Beijing. For political purposes, the early Manchurian emperors took wives descended from the Mongol Great Khans, so that their descendants (such as the Kangxi Emperor) would also be seen as legitimate heirs of the Mongolian Yuan dynasty. During the Qing Dynasty, the Manchu government made efforts to preserve Manchu culture and the language. These efforts were largely unsuccessful in that Manchus gradually adopted the customs and language of the surrounding Han Chinese and, by the 19th century, spoken Manchu was rarely used even in the Imperial court. Written Manchu, however, was still used for the keeping of records and communication between the emperor and the Banner officials until the collapse of the dynasty. The Qing dynasty also maintained a system of dual appointments in which all major imperial offices would have a Manchu and a Han Chinese member. Because of the small number of Manchus, this insured that a large fraction of them would be government officials. Near the end of the Qing Dynasty, Manchus were portrayed as outside colonizers by Chinese nationalists such as Sun Yat-Sen, even though the Republican revolution he brought about was supported by many reform-minded Manchu officials and military officers. This portrayal quickly dissipated after the 1911 revolution as the new Republic of China now sought to include Manchus within its national identity.

Manchukuo

In 1931, the Japanese created a puppet state known as Manchukuo. By this time Manchuria was overwhelmingly Han Chinese, and even among the Manchus, this project failed to generate much genuine interest. It was abolished at the end of World War II, with its territory incorporated back into China.

Nurhaci

Also known as Emperor Tai Zu, Nurhaci or Nurgaci (Chinese: 努爾哈赤) (1559-September 30, 1626; r. 1616-September 30, 1626) was the chieftain of a Jurchen tribe in northeastern Manchuria. He is considered to be the founding father of the Manchu state and is also credited with ordering the creation of a written script for the Manchu language. Nurhaci's organisation of the Manchu people, his attacks on the Ming Dynasty and Joseon Dynasty Korea, and his conquest of China's northeastern Liaodong province, laid the groundwork for the conquest of China by the Qing Dynasty.

Background

Being a member of the Gioro (clan) of the Suksuhu River tribe, Nurhaci also claimed descent from Mönke Timur, a Jurchen headman who lived some two centuries earlier. He named his clan Aisin Gioro around 1612, when he formally ascended the throne. In 1582 his father Taksi and grandfather Giocangga were killed in an attack on Gure (see Jianzhou Jurchens) by the Ming Dynasty General Li Chengliang. The Aisin Gioro family originated in present day North Korea. According to Chinese sources, the young man grew up as a royal in the household of Li Chengliang in Fushun, where he became literate in Chinese. From 1583 onwards, Nurhaci began to unify the Jurchen bands. When he was 25, he attacked Nikan Wailan to avenge the deaths of his father and grandfather, starting out with only thirteen suits of armor. Nurhaci was the organizer of the Eight Banners, which would eventually form the backbone of the military that would dominate the Qing empire. In his later life, Nurhaci declared himself a Khan. He constructed a palace at Mukden (present-day Shenyang in Liaoning province). In 1599, he had two of his translators, Erdeni Baksi and Gagai Jarguchi, create the written Manchu language by adapting the Mongolian alphabet. In 1616, he founded the Jin Dynasty (aisin gurun), often called the Later Jin. The first Jin Dynasty of the eleventh century was formed by former citizens of the largest of the three Korean states, the Koguryo Empire. Jin was renamed Qing by his son Hong Taiji after his death but Nurhaci is usually referred to as the founder of the Qing Dynasty. In 1618, he commissioned a document entitled the Seven Great Vexations in which he enumerated seven grievances against the Ming and began to rebel against the Ming Dynasty. Nurhaci led many successful engagements against the Ming Dynasty, the Koreans, the Mongols, and other Jurchen clans, greatly enlarging the territory under his control. In the first serious military defeat of his life, Nurhaci was beaten by the Ming general Yuan Chonghuan at Ningyuan. Nurhaci was wounded in the battle by Yuan's Portuguese cannon. His morale and physical self did not recover, and he died on September 30, 1626. Nurhaci was succeeded by his eighth son, Hong Taiji, erroneously referred to as Abahai. His posthumous name was given on 1736: Chengtian-guangyun-shengde-shengong-zhaozhi-liji-renxiao-ruiwu-duanyi-qin'an-hongwen-dingye Gao Emperor (承天廣運聖德神功肇紀立極仁孝睿武端毅欽安弘文定業高皇帝).

Primary Sources

Information concerning Nurhaci can be found in later, propagandistic works such as the Manchu Veritable Records (in Chinese Manzhou Shilu 滿洲實錄, in Manchu the Yarkiyang Kooli.) Good contemporary sources are also available. For instance, much material concerning Nurhaci's rise is preserved within Korean sources such as the Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty (Joseon Wangjo Sillok朝鮮王朝實錄), especially the Seonjo Sillok and the Gwanghaegun Ilgi. Indeed, the record of Sin Chungil's trip to Jianzhou is preserved in the Seonjo Sillok. The original Manchu language records from Nurhaci's reign also survive in the form of the Old Manchu Archives. (more to come).

Trivia

In the adventure film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (first released May 23, 1984) an urn containing the remains of Nurhaci was portrayed as stolen in 1935 by Indiana Jones who attempted to trade it for a diamond (Peakocks eye, See YIJ Episode 20). This is a rare Western pop culture reference to a significant historical figure of the East.

Preceded by:
---

Qing Dynasty

Succeeded by:
Tiancong/Chongde Emperor of the Manchus

Category:1559 births Category:1626 deaths Category:Manchus Category:Qing Dynasty emperors Category:Inventors of writing systems ko:누르하치 ja:ヌルハチ Brother: Surgachi

Chinese language

The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, Pinyin: Hànyǔ, 华语/華語, Huáyǔ or 中文, Zhōngwén) forms part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. About one-fifth of the people in the world speak some form of Chinese as their native language, making it the language with the most native speakers. The terms Chinese language and Chinese can both refer to spoken Chinese or written Chinese. Spoken Chinese is tonal. Regional variation between different variants/dialects is comparable to that of, for instance, the Romance language family; many variants of spoken Chinese are different enough to be mutually incomprehensible (see Is Chinese a language or family of languages? below). For spoken Chinese, there are between six and twelve main regional groups (depending on classification scheme), including Mandarin, Cantonese, Fujianese and Hakka. However, variants of spoken Chinese almost always use the same written form (with occasional dialect-specific characters, such as in Cantonese). Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China, united Chinese writing in the 3rd century BC by setting standard written forms for which there had previously been many regional variations. Before the 20th century, the common written form was Literary Chinese (Classical Chinese), which no one spoke as a mother tongue. In the early 20th century, the baihuawen movement pushed the birth of the new written form, Vernacular Chinese, based on dialects of Mandarin. In the meantime, dialect-specific characters have contintued to develop primarily in Cantonese, but also occasionally in other dialects. The Chinese language, spoken in the form of Standard Mandarin, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China on Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore (together with English, Malay, and Tamil). Chinese—de facto, in spoken form, Mandarin—is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (alongside English, Arabic, French, Russian, and Spanish). Spoken in the form of Standard Cantonese, Chinese is one of the official languages of Hong Kong (together with English) and of Macau (together with Portuguese). Among Chinese diaspora, Cantonese is the most common language one can hear in Chinatowns, thanks to early immigrants from Southern China. However, the rise of Northern and Taiwanese immigrants has led to the increase in the use of Mandarin and various Min dialects. Min The terms and concepts used by Chinese to separate spoken language from written language are different from those used in the West, because the political and social development was different in China compared to Europe. Whereas Europe fragmented into smaller nation-states after the fall of the Roman Empire, whose identities were often defined by language, China was able to preserve cultural and political unity through the same period, and maintained a common written language throughout its entire history, despite the fact that its actual diversity in spoken language has always been comparable to that of Europe. As a result, Chinese makes a sharp distinction between "written language" (wén; 文) and "spoken language" (yǔ; 语/語). The concept of a distinct and unified combination of written and spoken forms of language is therefore much stronger in the West than in China.

Spoken Chinese

Chinese spoken language The map on the right depicts the subdivisions ("languages" or "dialect groups") within Chinese. The traditionally recognized seven main groups, in order of population size are:
- Mandarin 北方 or 官話/官话 (shown in the map as divided into East and West groups, but also includes the Jianghuai and Huguang areas depicted in the map)
- Wu 吳/吴 (Shanghainese)
- Cantonese 粵/粤
- Min Family 閩/闽, further divided into 5 to 7 subdivisions, all mutually unintelligible.
- Xiang 湘
- Hakka 客家
- Gan 贛/赣 In parentheses above are the culturally dominant or representative dialects of each language or dialect group today. Chinese linguists have recently distinguished 3 more groups from the traditional seven:
- Jin 晉/晋 from Mandarin
- Hui 徽 from Wu
- Pinghua 平話/平话 from Cantonese There are also many smaller groups that are not yet classified, such as: Danzhou dialect, spoken in Danzhou, on Hainan Island; Xianghua (乡话), not to be confused with Xiang (湘), spoken in western Hunan; and Shaozhou Tuhua, spoken in northern Guangdong. See List of Chinese dialects for a comprehensive listing of individual dialects within these large, broad groupings. There is also Standard Mandarin, the official standard language used by the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China, and Singapore. Pronunciation of Standard Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect, which is the dialect of Mandarin as spoken in Beijing, with vocabulary largely based on dialects of Mandarin, and grammar and syntax on vernacular Chinese. The governments intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. It is therefore used in government, in the media, and in instruction in schools. There is much controversy around the terminology used to describe the subdivisions of Chinese: some people call Chinese a language and its subdivisions dialects, while others call Chinese a language family and its subdivisions languages. Although Dungan is very closely related to Mandarin, not many people consider it "Chinese", because it is written in Cyrillic and spoken by people outside China who are not considered Chinese in any sense. It is common for speakers of Chinese to be able to speak several varieties of the language. Typically, in southern China, a person will be able to speak Standard Mandarin, the local dialect, and occasionally a more general regional dialect, such as Cantonese. Such polyglots frequently code switch between Standard Mandarin and the local dialect, depending on the situation. A person living in Taiwan, for example, may commonly mix pronunciations, phrases, and words from Standard Mandarin and Taiwanese, and this mixture is considered socially appropriate under many circumstances. In Hong Kong, it is not unusual for people to speak Cantonese and English, and sometimes Mandarin. In the sense that the written language is based on Standard Mandarin and the dialects are mostly spoken but not written, the situation in China is a complex and interesting case of diglossia.

Is Chinese a language or a family of languages?

Spoken Chinese comprises many regional and often mutually unintelligible variants. Linguistically, the situation is comparable to that of Romance languages, which are mutually unintelligible but all derive from Latin and so share many common underlying features. However, the socio-political context of Chinese language is quite different from that of European languages. In Europe, political fragmentation gave rise to independent states roughly the size of Chinese provinces. This generated a political desire to create separate cultural and literary standards to differentiate nation-states and standardize the language within a nation-state. In China, a single cultural and literary standard (Classical Chinese and later, Vernacular Chinese) continued to exist while the spoken language continued to diverge between different cities and counties, much as European languages diverged, due to the scale of the country, and the obstruction of communication by geography. For example, mountainous South China displays more linguistic diversity than the flat North China. In parts of south China, a major city's dialect may be marginally intelligible to close neighbours. For instance, Wuzhou is about 120 miles upstream from Guangzhou, but its dialect is more like Standard Cantonese spoken in Guangzhou, than is that of Taishan, 60 miles southwest of Guangzhou and separated by several rivers from it (Ramsey, 1987). The diverse Chinese spoken forms and common written form comprise a very different linguistic situation from that in Europe. In Europe, linguistic differences sharpened as the language of each nation-state was standardized. For example, a farmer on the French side of the border would start to model his speech and writing after Paris while his neighbour on the Spanish side after Madrid. The use of local speech became erroneous. In China, standardization of spoken dialects was weaker, and mostly due to cultural influence. Although, as with Europe, dialects of regional political or cultural capitals were still prestigious and widely used as the region's lingua franca, their linguistic influence depended more on the capital's status and wealth than entirely on the political boundaries of the region. China's linguistic situation is more similar to India's. Although India was historically not as unified as China, parts of it speaking multiple languages have long been united in various states, and many of its languages were not standardized until the last few decades through political centralization. Like Classical Chinese, Sanskrit long played a role as common written language. Unlike Classical Chinese, its descendants are recognized as separate languages, 18 of which are official national languages. Many Chinese languages do not have sharp boundaries. As with many areas that were linguistically diverse for a long time, it is not always clear whether the speech of a particular area of China should be considered a language in its own right or a dialect of another. The Ethnologue lists a total of [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90151 14], but the number varies between seven and seventeen depending on how strict the intelligibility criterion is. For Chinese people, regional linguistic differences are less important than cultural or nationalistic similarity. They generally consider Chinese a single language, partly because of the common written language. They refer to dialects as the speech of a location, for example Beijing dialect is (北京話/北京话), the speech of Beijing, and Shanghainese is (上海話/上海话), the speech of Shanghai. Often laypeople are not aware that various "dialects" are categorized into "languages" based on mutual intelligibility, though in areas where language varies greatly (such as the southeast) people do group dialects into categories like Wu or Hakka. There is a tendency to regard dialects as equal variations of a single Chinese language, even though many parts of north China are quite homogeneous in language, unlike parts of south China. As with the concept of Chinese language itself, the divisions among dialects are mostly geographical rather than based on linguistic distance. For example, Sichuan dialect is considered distinct from Beijing dialect in the same way that Cantonese is, although linguists consider Sichuan dialect and Beijing dialect Mandarin dialects, unlike Cantonese. The idea of single language has major political overtones, and explains the amount of emotion over this issue. The idea of Chinese as a language family may suggest that China consists of several different nations, challenge the notion of a single Han Chinese "race", and legitimize secessionist movements. This is why some Chinese are uncomfortable with it, while supporters of Taiwan independence tend to be strong promoters of Min- and Hakka-language education. Furthermore, for some, suggesting that Chinese is more correctly described as multiple languages implies that the notion of a single Chinese language and a single Chinese state or nationality is backward, oppressive, artificial, and out of touch with reality. However, the links between ethnicity, politics, and language can be complex. Many Wu, Min, Hakka, and Cantonese speakers consider their own varieties as separate spoken languages, but the Han Chinese race as one entity. They do not regard these two positions as contradictory, but consider the Han Chinese an entity of great internal diversity. Moreover, the government of the People's Republic of China officially states that China is a multinational state, and that the term "Chinese" refers to a broader concept Zhonghua Minzu that incorporates groups that do not natively speak Chinese, such as Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Mongols. (Groups that do speak Chinese and are considered "ethnic Chinese" are called Han Chinese.) This is seen as an ethnic and cultural concept, not a political one. Similarly, on Taiwan, some supporters of Chinese reunification promote the local language, while some supporters of Taiwan independence have little interest in the topic. And the Taiwanese identity incorporates Taiwanese aborigines, who are not considered Han Chinese because they speak Austronesian languages, predate Han Chinese settlement, and are culturally and genetically linked to other Austronesian-speaking peoples such as Polynesians.

Written Chinese

The relationship among the Chinese spoken and written languages is complex. It is compounded by the fact that spoken variations evolved for centuries, since at least the late Han Dynasty, while written Chinese changed much less. Until the 20th century, most formal Chinese writing was done in wényán (文言), translated as Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese, which was very different from any spoken variety of Chinese, much as Classical Latin differs from modern Romance languages. Since the May Fourth Movement of 1919, the formal standard for written Chinese was changed to báihuà (白話/白话), or Vernacular Chinese, which, while not completely identical to the grammar and vocabulary of dialects of Mandarin, was based mostly on them. The term standard written Chinese now refers to Vernacular Chinese. Chinese characters are morphemes independent of phonetic change. Thus, although the number one is "yi" in Mandarin, "yat" in Cantonese and "tsit" in Hokkien, they derive from a common ancient Chinese word and still share an identical character ("一"). Nevertheless, the orthographies of Chinese dialects are not completely identical. The vocabularies of different dialects have diverged. In addition, while literary vocabulary is mostly shared among all dialects, colloquial vocabularies are often different. Colloquially written Chinese usually involves "dialectal characters" which may not be understood in other dialects or characters that are considered archaic in standard written Chinese. Cantonese is unique among non-Mandarin regional languages in having a widely used written colloquial standard with a large number of unofficial characters for words particular to this variety of Chinese. By contrast, the other regional languages do not have such widely-used alternative written standards. Written colloquial Cantonese has become quite popular in online chat rooms and instant messaging, although for formal written communications Cantonese speakers still normally use standard written Chinese. Also, in Hunan, some women wrote their local language in Nü Shu, a syllabary derived from Chinese characters. The Dungan language, considered a dialect of Mandarin, is also nowadays written in Cyrillic, and was formerly written in the Arabic alphabet, although the Dungan people live outside China.

Chinese characters

The Chinese written language employs Chinese characters (漢字/汉字 pinyin: hànzì), which are logograms: each symbol represents a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). They are not just pictographs (pictures of their meanings), but are highly stylized and carry much abstract meaning. Only some characters are derived from pictographs. In 100 AD, the famed scholar Xushen in the Han Dynasty classified characters into 6 categories, only 4% as pictographs, and 82% as phonetic complexes consisting of a radical element that indicates meaning, and a phonetic element that arguably once indicated the pronunciation. All modern characters derive from Kaishu. There are currently two standards for Chinese characters. One is the traditional system, essentially a streamlined styling of Kaishu, still used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau. The other is the simplified system adopted during the 1950s Chinese Cultural Revolution in Mainland China. The simplified system requires fewer strokes to write certain radicals and has fewer synonymous characters. Singapore, which has a large Chinese community, is the first and only foreign country to recognize and officially adopt the simplified characters. Singapore Various written styles are used in Chinese calligraphy, including zhuanshu (篆書, "seal-script"), caoshu (草書, "grass script" or "haste script"), lishu (隸書, "official script") and kaishu (楷書, "standard script"). Calligraphers can write in traditional and simplified characters, but they tend to use traditional characters for traditional art. As with Latin script, a wide variety of fonts exist for printed Chinese characters, a great number of which are often based on the styles of single calligraphers or schools of calligraphy. There is no concrete record of the origin of Chinese characters. Legend suggests that Cangjie, a bureaucrat of the legendary emperor Huangdi of China about 2600 BC, invented Chinese characters. But archaeological evidence, mainly the oracles found in the 19-20th centuries, only dates Chinese characters to the Shang dynasty in 1700 BC. The vast majority of oracle bone inscriptions were found in Yinxu of the Shang Dynasty, although a few Zhou dynasty-related ones were also found. The forms of the characters in the inscriptions changed over the 200 to 300 years, and scholars date the inscriptions of the Shang to the ruler by the content, particularly from the name of the diviners who inscribed the shell or bone artifacts. Contemporaneous with the end of Shang and Western Zhou periods are the bronze inscriptions. Over the last century, a great many ancient bronze artifacts have been unearthed in China which contain dedicational texts of the Zhou aristocrats where the characters show similarities and innovations compared to the oracle inscriptions. It is said that during the reign of Zhou King Xuan (宣王 827-782 BCE), the form of written characters was revised, and these became refered to as the "greater seal script" or dazhuan.

History

Most linguists classify all of the variations of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family and believe that there was an original language, called Proto-Sino-Tibetan, similar to Proto Indo-European, from which the Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages descended. The relations between Chinese and other Sino-Tibetan languages are an area of active research, as is the attempt to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan. The main difficulty in this effort is that, while there is very good documentation that allows us to reconstruct the ancient sounds of Chinese, there is no written documentation of the division between proto-Sino-Tibetan and Chinese. In addition, many of the languages that would allow us to reconstruct Proto-Sino-Tibetan are very poorly documented or understood. Categorization of the development of Chinese is a subject of scholarly debate. One of the first systems was devised by the Swedish linguist Bernhard Karlgren in the early 1900s. The system was much revised, but always heavily relying on Karlgren's insights and methods. Old Chinese (), sometimes known as 'Archaic Chinese', was the language common during the early and middle Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC), texts of which include inscriptions on bronze artifacts, the poetry of the Shijing, the history of the Shujing, and portions of the Yijing (I Ching). The phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters also provide hints to their Old Chinese pronunciations. The pronunciation of the borrowed Chinese characters in Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean also provide valuable insights. Old Chinese was not wholly uninflected. It possessed a rich sound system in which aspiration or rough breathing differentiated the consonants, but probably had no tones yet. Work on reconstructing Old Chinese started with Qing dynasty philologists. Middle Chinese () was the language used during the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties (7th through 10th centuries AD). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by the 切韻 'Qieyun' rhyme table (601 AD), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by the 廣韻 'Guangyun' rhyme table. Linguists are confident of having a reconstructed how Middle Chinese sounded. The evidence for the pronunciation of Middle Chinese comes from several sources: modern dialect variations, rhyming dictionaries, foreign transliterations, "rhyming tables" constructed by ancient Chinese philologists to summarize the phonetic system, and Chinese phonetic translations of foreign words. However, all reconstructions are tentative; for example, scholars have shown that trying to reconstruct modern Cantonese from the rhymes of modern Cantopop would give a very inaccurate picture of the language. The development of the spoken Chinese languages from early historical times to the present has been complex. The language tree shown below indicates how the present main divisions of the Chinese language developed out of an early common language. Comparison with the map above gives some idea of the complexities left out of the tree. For instance, the Min language that is centered in Fujian Province contains five subdivisions, and the Mandarin dialects (Beifanghua) also contains nine, such as Yunnan hua and Sichuan hua.

Cantopop

Most northern Chinese people, in Sichuan and in a broad arc from the northeast (Manchuria) to the southwest (Yunnan), use various Mandarin dialects as their home language. The prevalence of Mandarin throughout northern China is largely due to north China's plains. By contrast, the mountains and rivers of southern China promoted linguistic diversity. The presence of Mandarin in Sichuan is largely due to a plague in the 12th century. This plague, which may have been related to the Black Death, depopulated the area, leading to later settlement from north China. Until the mid-20th century, most southern Chinese did not speak any Mandarin. However, despite the mix of officials and commoners speaking various Chinese dialects, Nanjing Mandarin became dominant at least during the officially Manchu-speaking Qing Empire. Since the 17th century, the Empire had set up orthoepy academies () to make pronunciation conform to the Qing capital Beijing's standard, but had little success. During the Qing's last 50 years in the late 19th century, the Beijing Mandarin finally replaced Nanjing Mandarin in the imperial court. For the general population, although variations of Mandarin were already widely spoken in China then, a single standard of Mandarin did not exist. The non-Mandarin speakers in southern China also continued to use their regionalects for every aspect of life. The new Beijing Mandarin court standard was thus fairly limited. This situation changed with the creation (in both the PRC and the ROC) of an elementary school education system committed to teaching Mandarin. As a result, Mandarin is now spoken fluently by a majority of people in mainland China and on Taiwan. In Hong Kong, the language of education and formal speech remains Cantonese, but Mandarin is becoming increasingly influential.

Influence on other languages

Throughout history Chinese culture and politics has had a great influence on unrelated languages such as Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese. Korean and Japanese both have writing systems employing Chinese characters (Hanzi), which are called Hanja and Kanji, respectively. The Vietnamese term for Chinese writing is Han Tu. It was the only available form to write the Vietnamese until the 14th century, used almost exclusively by Chinese-educated Vietnamese elites. From the 14th till late 19th century, Vietnamese was written with Chu Nom, a modified Chinese script incorporating sounds and syllables appropriate for native Vietnamese speakers. This is now completely replaced by a modified Latin script that incorporates a system of diacritical marks to indicate the tones, as well as modified consonants. Vietnamese language has mixed with multiple elements similar to Cantonese in regard to the specific intonations and rather sharp consonant endings. However, there is a slight influence from Mandarin due to the sharper vowels and, along with Mandarin, have the "kh" sound that missing from other Asiatic languages. In South Korea, the Hangul alphabet is generally used, but Hanja is used as a sort of boldface. (In North Korea, Hanja has been discontinued.) Since the modernization of Japan in the late 19th century, there has been debate about abandoning the use of Chinese characters, but the practical benefits of a radically new script have so far not been considered sufficient. Languages within the influence of Chinese culture also have a very large number of loanwords from Chinese. 50% or more of Korean vocabulary is of Chinese origin and the influence on Japanese and Vietnamese has been considerable. 10% of Philippine language vocabularies are of Chinese origin. Chinese also shares a great many grammatical features with these and neighboring languages, notably the lack of gender and the use of classifiers. The Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese languages seem to retain sounds of Classical Chinese that are otherwise only found in southern China.

Sounds

:For more specific information on phonology of Chinese see the respective main articles of each spoken variety. The phonological structure of each syllable consists of a nucleus consisting of a vowel (which can be a monophthong, diphthong, or even a triphthong in certain varieties) with an optional onset or coda consonant as well as a tone. There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where the nasal sonorant consonants and can stand alone as their own syllable. Across all the spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda, but syllables that do have codas are restricted to , , , , , , or . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Mandarin, are limited to only two, namely and . Consonant clusters do not generally occur in either the onset or coda. The onset may be an affricate or a consonant followed by a semivowel, but these are not generally considered consonant clusters. The number of sounds in the different spoken dialects varies, but in general there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more multisyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 10 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate the use of tones in Chinese are the five tones of Standard Mandarin applied to the syllable "ma". The tones correspond to these five characters:
- "mother" — high level
- "hemp" — high rising
- "horse" — low falling-rising
- "scold" — high falling
- question particle — neutral .

Romanization

Romanization is the process of transcribing a language in the Latin alphabet. There are many systems of romanization for the Chinese languages; this is due to the complex history of interaction between China and the West, and to the Chinese languages' lack of phonetic transcription until modern times. Chinese is first known to have been written in Latin characters by Western Christian missionaries of the 16th century, but may be written down by Western travelers of missionaries of earlier periods. At present, the most common romanization system for Standard Mandarin is Hanyu Pinyin, also known simply as Pinyin. Pinyin is the official Mandarin romanization system for the People's Republic of China, and the official one used in Singapore (see also Chinese language romanisation in Singapore). Pinyin is also very commonly used when teaching Mandarin in schools and universities of North America and Europe. Perhaps the second-most common system of romanization for Mandarin is Wade-Giles. This system was probably the most common system of romanization for Mandarin before Hanyu Pinyin was developmed. Wade-Giles is often found in academic use in the U.S., and is widely used in Taiwan. Here are a few examples of Hanyu Pinyin and Wade-Giles, for comparison: Regardless of system, tone transcription is often left out, either due to difficulties of typesetting or propriety for audience. Wade-Giles' extensive use of easily-forgotten apostrophes adds to the confusion. Thus, most Western readers will be much more familiar with Beijing than they will be with Běijīng, and with Taipei than with T'ai²-pei³. Regardless of romanization, the words are pronounced the same. Learning a system of romanization requires occasional deviations from the learner's own language, so, for example, Hanyu Pinyin uses "q" for very different values than an English speaker would probably be used to; the sound represented is similar to the English "ch", but is further back. This is a cause of confusion but is unavoidable, as Mandarin (and any language transcribed) will have phonemes different from those of the learner's own. On the other hand, this can be beneficial, since the learner knows immediately that he will have to learn a new pronunciation. Often with languages like Spanish, the pronunciation is similar enough to English that a learner will often revert to his habitual pronunciation when he sees the letters in Spanish words. There are many other systems of romanization for Mandarin, as well as systems for Cantonese, Minnan, Hakka, and other Chinese languages. Also there are at least two systems of cyrillization of Chinese. The most widespread is the Palladius system.

Morphology

Chinese morphology is strictly bound to a set number of syllables with a fairly rigid construction which are the morphemes, the smallest building blocks, of the language. Some of these single-syllable morphemes can stand alone as individual words, but contrary to what is often claimed, Chinese is not a monosyllabic language. Most words in the modern Chinese spoken varieties are in fact multisyllabic, consisting of more than one morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. The confusion arises in how one thinks about the language. In the Chinese writing system, each individual single-syllable morpheme corresponds to a single character, referred to as a zì (字). Most Chinese speakers think of words as being zì, but this view is not entirely accurate. Many words are multisyllabic, and are composed of more than one zì. This composition is what is known as a cí (詞), and more closely resembles the traditional Western definition of a word. However, the concept of cí was historically a technical linguistic term that until only the past century, the average Chinese speaker was not aware of. Even today, most Chinese speakers think of words as being zì. This can be illustrated in the following Mandarin Chinese sentence (romanized using pinyin): :Jīguāng, zhè liǎngge zì shì shéme yìsi? :激光, 這兩個字是甚麼意思? :激光, 这两个字是什么意思? The sentence literally translates to, "Jī 激 and guāng 光, these two zì 字, what do they mean?" However, the more natural English translation would probably be, "Laser, this word, what does it mean?" Even though jīguāng 激光 is a single word, speakers tend to think of its constituents as being separate (Ramsey, 1987). Old Chinese and Middle Chinese had many more monosyllabic words due to greater variability in possible sounds. The modern Chinese varieties lost many of these sound distinctions, leading to homonyms in words that were once distinct. Multisyllabic words arose in order to compensate for this loss. Most natively derived multisyllabic words still feature these original monosyllabic morpheme roots. Many Chinese morphemes still have associated meaning, even though many of them no longer can stand alone as individual words. This situation is analogous to the use of the English prefix pre-. Even though pre- can never stand alone by itself as an individual word, it is commonly understood by English speakers to mean "before," such as in the words predawn, previous, and premonition. Taking the previous example, jīguāng, jī and guāng literally mean "stimulated light," resulting in the meaning, "laser." However, jī is never found as a single word by itself, because there are too many other morphemes that are also pronounced in the same way. For instance, the morphemes that correspond to the meanings "chicken" 雞/鸡, "machine" 機/机, "basic" 基, "hit" 擊/击, "hunger" 饑/饥, and "sum" 積/积 are also pronounced jī in Mandarin. It is only in the context of other morphemes can an exact meaning of a zì be known. In certain ways, the logographic writing system helps to reinforce meaning in zì that are homophonous, since even though several morphemes may be pronounced the same way, they are written using different characters. Continuing with the example, we have: For this reason, it is very common for Mandarin speakers to put characters in context as a natural part of conversation. For example, when telling each other their names (which are often rare, or at least non-colloquial, combinations of zì), Mandarin speakers often state which words their names are found in. As a specific example, a speakers might say 名字叫嘉英，嘉陵江的嘉，英國的英 Míngzi jiào Jiāyíng, Jiālíngjiāng de jiā, Yíngguó de yíng "My name is Jiāyíng, the Jia of Jialing River and the Ying in England." The problem of homonyms also exists but is less severe in southern Chinese varieties like Cantonese and Taiwanese, which preserved more of the rimes of Middle Chinese. For instance, the previous examples of jī for "stimulated," "chicken," and "machine" have distinct pronunciations in Cantonese (romanized using jyutping): gik1, gai1, and gei1, respectively. For this reason, southern varieties tend to employ fewer multisyllabic words. There are a few morphemes in Chinese, many of them loanwords, that consist of more than one syllable. These words cannot be further divided into single-syllable meaningful units, however in writing each syllable is still written as separate zì. One example is the word for "spider," zhīzhū, which is written as 蜘蛛. Even in this case, Chinese tend to try to make some kind of meaning out of the constituent syllables. For this reason, the two characters 蜘 and 蛛 each have an associated meaning of "spider" when seen alone as individual characters. When spoken though, they can never occur apart.

Loanwords

Most Chinese words are formed out of native Chinese morphemes, including words describing imported objects and ideas. However, direct phonetic borrowing of foreign words has gone on since ancient times. Words borrowed from along the Silk Road in ancient times include 葡萄 "grape", 石榴 "pomegranate" and 獅子 "lion". Other words were borrowed from Buddhist scriptures, including 佛 "Buddha" and 菩薩 "bodhisattva". Foreign words continue to enter the Chinese language by transcription according to their pronunciations. This is done by employing Chinese characters with similar pronunciations; characters in this case are usually taken strictly for their phonetic values. For example, "Israel" becomes 以色列 (pinyin: yǐsèliè). The Chinese characters used here literally mean "using-colour-rank", or "ranking using colour", but the sense is automatically ignored because it is understood that the characters are used for their phonetic values only. Characters which are used nearly exclusively in the transcription of foreign words are present in Chinese; many of these characters date back to Middle Chinese when they were used to translate Sanskrit phonemes. For example, 斯 sī and 爾 ěr, which are Classical Chinese words for "this" and "you", are never used in their original senses (except in a limited number of idiomatic expressions) and more often used to transcribe the sounds /s/ and /l/ in foreign words. Nevertheless, this method tends to yield somewhat strange results, and is therefore overwhelmingly used to transcribe foreign names only. A rather small number of direct phonetic borrowings have survived as common words, including 幽默 yōumò "humour", 邏輯 luójí "logic", 時髦 shímáo "smart, fashionable", 麥克風 màikèfēng "microphone", and 歇斯底里 xiēsīdǐlǐ "hysterics". It is much more common to use existing Chinese morphemes to coin new words in order to represent imported concepts, such as technical expressions. Any Latin or Greek etymologies are dropped, making them more comprehensible for Chinese but introducing more difficulties in understanding foreign texts. For example, the word telephone was loaned phonetically as 德律風 (Standard Mandarin: délǜfēng) during the 1920s, but later 電話 (diànhuà "electric speech"), built out of native Chinese morphemes, became prevalent. Other examples include 電視 (diànshì "electric vision") for television, 電腦 (diànnǎo "electric brain") for computer; 手機 (shǒujī "hand machine") for cellphone, and 藍牙 (lányá "blue tooth") for Bluetooth. Occasionally half-transliteration, half-translation compromises are accepted, such as 漢堡包 (hànbǎo bāo, "Hamburg bun") for hamburger. Sometimes translations are designed so that they sound like the original while incorporating Chinese morphemes. This is often done for commercial purposes, for example 奔騰 (bēnténg "running leaping") for Pentium and 賽百味 (sàibǎiwèi "better-than hundred tastes") for Subway restaurants. Another important source came from a related writing system, kanji, which are Chinese characters used in the Japanese language. The Japanese used kanji to translate many European words in the late 19th century and early 20th century. These words are called wasei-kango in Japanese (和製漢語 literally Japanese-made Chinese), and many of these words were then loaned into Chinese. Examples include lìchǎng (立場, たちば, stance), zhéxué (哲學, てつがく, philosophy), chōuxiàng (抽象, ちゅうしょう, abstract), guóyǔ (國語, こくご, national language), zhǔyì (主義, しゅぎ, -ism) and làngmàn (浪漫、ロマンス、romance). Some of these terms were coined by the Japanese by giving new senses to existing Chinese terms or by referring to expressions used in classical Chinese literature. As a result, these terms are virtually indistinguishable from native Chinese words: indeed, there is dispute over some of these terms as to whether the Japanese or Chinese coined them first. As a result of this to-and-fro process, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese continue to share many terms describing modern terminology, in parallel to a similar corpus of terms built from Greco-Latin terms shared among European languages.

Grammar

In general, all spoken varieties of Chinese are isolating languages, in that they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure) rather than morphology (changes in the form of the word through inflection). Because they are isolating languages, they make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood. Chinese features Subject Verb Object word order, and like many other languages in East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic-comment construction to form sentences. Even though Chinese has no grammatical gender, it has an extensive system of measure words, another trait shared with neighbouring (but not related) languages like Japanese and Korean. See Chinese measure words for an extensive coverage of this subject. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction, pronoun dropping (and the related subject dropping), and the use of aspect rather than tense. Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess various differences. See Chinese grammar for the grammar of Standard Mandarin (the standardized Chinese spoken language), and the articles on other varieties of Chinese for their respective grammars.

References

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External links

Dictionaries

- [http://www.dict.cn Free Online Chinese - English Dictionary] 1,000,000 English and Chinese words
- [http://www.zhongwen.com Zhongwen.com:] Chinese to English dictionary and other resources presented in English; searchable by English meanings; Chinese text displayed as graphics (i.e. does not require any Chinese font)
- [http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=chardict MDBG free online Chinese-English dictionary]
- [http://www.chineselanguage.org/CCDICT/index.html Chinese Characters Dictionary]: supports Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, Hakka etc.
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Chinese-english/ Chinese - English Dictionary]: from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition
- [http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/chinese-french-dictionary.html Chinese - French Dictionary] search Chinese, pinyin or French
- [http://www.mandarintools.com/cedict.html CEDICT] Chinese-English Dictionary Project
- [http://www.online-dictionary.biz/english/chinese Chinese dictionary] Free Chinese-English-Chinese dictionary
- [http://stardict.sourceforge.net Stardict] free (GPL) multilanguage dictionary including simplified/traditional Chinese for Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, etc.) and win32
- [http://cdict.giga.net.tw English-Chinese Translation Dictionary]: Chinese-English-Chinese Online Dictionary (Taiwan-based; simplified characters not recognised)
- [http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/scripts/wordsearch.php CantoDict]: Cantonese-English Dictionary Project

Resources for students of Chinese

- [http://www.chinese-forums.com Chinese Forums:]Discussion of Chinese language and culture with some very knowledgable participants, mostly intermediate or advanced learners of Chinese but also many native speakers / overseas Chinese.
- [http://www.oneaday.org Oneaday.org] One Chinese idiom a day (simplified and traditional characters) with pinyin transliteration and English translation.
- [http://www.shufawest.us/language/tonedrill.html Mandarin Tone Drill] Testing your knowledge of Mandarin tones.
- [http://www.mandarin123.com/pronunciation.html Mandarin Tone Quizzes] Useful practices on Mandarin tones.
- [http://www.pinyinpractice.com/tones.htm Pinyin Practice] Pinyin practice for Mandarin learners in all level

1634

Events

- February 24-25 - Rebellious soldiers kill Albrecht von Wallenstein
- March 1 - Battle at Smolensk, King Ladislaus IV of Poland defeats Russian army.
- March 25 - The first settlers arrive in St. Mary's City, Maryland (led by Lord Baltimore), the fourth permanent settlement in British North America.
- September 5 and September 6 - Battle of Nördlingen (1634) results in Catholic victory
- Moses Amyraut's Traite de la predestination is published
- Curaçao captured by the Dutch
- Treaty of Polianovska
- First meeting of the Académie française
- The witchcraft affair at Loudun
- Jean Nicolet lands at Green Bay, Wisconsin
- Opening of Covent Garden Market in London
- English establish a settlement at Cochin, now Kochi on Malabar coast
- First decennial performance of the Oberammergau Passion Plays
- Oxford University Press receives its charter and becomes the second of the privileged presses

Births

- January 25 - Gaspar Fagel, Dutch statesman (d. 1688)
- March 18 - Marie-Madeleine de La Fayette, French novelist (d. 1693)
- June 20 - Charles Emmanuel II of Savoy (d. 1675)
- July 14 - Pasquier Quesnel, French Jansenist theologian (d. 1719)
- July 18 - Johannes Camphuys, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies (d. 1695)
- October 18 - Luca Giordano, Italian artist (d. 1705)
- December 15 - Thomas Kingo, Danish poet (d. 1703)
- Marc-Antoine Charpentier, French composer (d. 1704) See also :Category:1634 births.

Deaths

- February 25 - Albrecht von Wallenstein, Austrian general (assassinated) (b. 1583)
- May 12 - George Chapman, English author
- May 15 - Hendrick Avercamp, Dutch painter (b. 1585)
- June 22 - Johann Graf von Aldringen, Austrian soldier (b. 1588)
- June 25 - John Marston, English dramatist (b. 1576)
- August 9 - William Noy, English jurist (b. 1577)
- September 3 - Edward Coke, English colonial entrepreneur and jurist (b. 1552)
- December 29 - John Albert Vasa, Polish bishop (b. 1612)
- Adriano Banchieri, Italian composer (b. 1568) See also :Category:1634 deaths. Category:1634 ko:1634년

Capital of China

The Chinese phrase Four Great Ancient Capitals of China (Traditional Chinese: 中國四大古都; Simplified Chinese: 中国四大古都; pinyin Zhōngguó Sì Dà Gǔdū) traditionally refers to Nanjing, Beijing, Luoyang, and Xi'an. After the 1920s as more discoveries were made, other historical capitals were added to the list. The phrase Seven Ancient Capitals of China introduced later on, also include Kaifeng (added in the 1920s as the fifth ancient capital), Hangzhou (became the sixth ancient capital in the 1930s), and Anyang (after archaeologists' proposal in 1988, it became the seventh ancient capital); in 2004 the China Ancient Capital Society officially added Zhengzhou as an eighth thanks to archaeological finds there.

List of historical capitals of China

Zhengzhou Zhengzhou Numerous cities have been the capital of China during the course of history.
- Anyang was the capital during the Yin period of the Shang Dynasty: called Yin (殷 Yīn).
- Beijing (formerly Romanized as Peking, from Postal System Pinyin (PSP); briefly known as Peiping in Wade-Giles (WG) or Beiping in pinyin (py)) was and has been the capital of various Chinese governments including (sorted chronologically): ::State of Yan (Yen in WG) in Spring and Autumn Period (722-481 BC): called Ji (薊 Jì). ::Liao Dynasty (907-1125), as a secondary capital: called Yanjing (燕京 Yānjīng "capital of Yan"). ::Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) from Jin Shi Zong until