Download or read book Cang Jie written by Jian Li (Art teacher) and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In ancient times under the reign of Yellow Emperor (about 2500 B.C.), people kept records by piling stones and tying knots. One day, Cang Jie, a historical official who tied knots to keep records under Yellow Emperor, unexpectedly made a big mistake. Feeling very guilty, he was determined to find out a better way for keeping records. He went back to his hometown to think it over for many days and nights. Inspired by the footprints of animals, he began to carefully observe the sun, moon, stars, mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, as well as birds and animals. At the same time, he traveled around collecting signs created by fishermen, farmers, hunters and soldiers. In the end, he succeeded in creating Chinese characters, which are still widely used today. In this multicultural children's story, kids will find out that there is a story behind every Chinese character. Children will also learn about basic Chinese characters and how to make them.
Download or read book Cang Jie The Inventor of Chinese Characters written by Li Jian and published by Shanghai Press. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In ancient times under the reign of Yellow Emperor (about 2500 B.C.), people kept records by piling stones and tying knots. One day, Cang Jie, a historical official who tied knots to keep records under Yellow Emperor, unexpectedly made a big mistake. Feeling very guilty, he was determined to find out a better way for keeping records. He went back to his hometown to think it over for many days and nights. Inspired by the footprints of animals, he began to carefully observe the sun, moon, stars, mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, as well as birds and animals. At the same time, he traveled around collecting signs created by fishermen, farmers, hunters and soldiers. In the end, he succeeded in creating Chinese characters, which are still widely used today. In this multicultural children's story, kids will find out that there is a story behind every Chinese character. Children will also learn about basic Chinese characters and how to make them.
Download or read book The Paper Trail written by Alexander Monro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping, richly detailed history that tells the fascinating story of how paper—the simple Chinese invention of two thousand years ago—wrapped itself around our world, humankind’s most momentous ideas imprinted on its surface. The emergence of paper in the imperial court of Han China brought about a revolution in the transmission of knowledge and ideas, allowing religions, philosophies and propaganda to spread with ever greater ease. The first writing surface sufficiently cheap, portable and printable for books, pamphlets and journals to be mass-produced and distributed widely, paper opened the way for an unprecedented, ongoing dialogue between individuals and between communities across continents, oceans and time. The Paper Trail explores how the new substance was used to solidify social and political systems that influenced China even into our own time. We see how paper made possible the spread of the then new religions of Buddhism and Manichaeism into Japan, Korea and Vietnam . . . how it enabled theologians, scientists and artists to build the vast and signally intellectual empire of the Abbasid Caliphate and embed the Koran in popular culture . . . how paper was carried along the Silk Road by merchants and missionaries, finally reaching Europe in the late thirteenth century . . . and how, once established in Europe, along with the printing press, paper played an essential role in the three great foundations of Western modernity: the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution. Here is a dramatic, comprehensively researched, vividly written story populated by holy men and scholars, warriors and poets, rulers and ordinary men and women—an essential story brilliantly told in this luminous work of history.
Download or read book The Huainanzi written by John S. Major and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-14 with total page 1003 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compiled by scholars at the court of Liu An, king of Huainan, in the second century B.C.E, The Huainanzi is a tightly organized, sophisticated articulation of Western Han philosophy and statecraft. Outlining "all that a modern monarch needs to know," the text emphasizes rigorous self-cultivation and mental discipline, brilliantly synthesizing for readers past and present the full spectrum of early Chinese thought. The Huainanzi locates the key to successful rule in a balance of broad knowledge, diligent application, and the penetrating wisdom of a sage. It is a unique and creative synthesis of Daoist classics, such as the Laozi and the Zhuangzi; works associated with the Confucian tradition, such as the Changes, the Odes, and the Documents; and a wide range of other foundational philosophical and literary texts from the Mozi to the Hanfeizi. The product of twelve years of scholarship, this remarkable translation preserves The Huainanzi's special rhetorical features, such as parallel prose and verse, and showcases a compositional technique that conveys the work's powerful philosophical appeal. This path-breaking volume will have a transformative impact on the field of early Chinese intellectual history and will be of great interest to scholars and students alike.
Download or read book The Origins of Chinese Thought written by Zehou Li and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-10-22 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title "The Origins of Chinese Thought offers an account of the origins and nature of a uniquely Chinese way of thinking that, carried through Confucian tradition, continues to define the character of Chinese culture and society. Li Zehou argues that vestiges of the practices of early shamanistic ritual, rationalized in ritual regulations and internalized in morals and values, continue to shape Chinese thought and relationships. This outlook and its understanding of the world, the divine, ourselves, one another, what is right and what is good differ fundamentally from other world traditions. As an alternative to modern liberalism, it offers unique resources for addressing modern Chinese—and even global—philosophic and moral issues."
Download or read book The Origins of Chinese Writing written by Paola Demattè and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores the evidence for Chinese writing in the late Neolithic (3500-2000 BCE) and early Bronze Age (2000-1250 BCE) periods. Chinese writing is often said to have begun with little incubation during the late Shang period (c. 1300-1045 BCE) in the middle-lower Yellow River Valley area as a sudden independent invention. This explanation runs counter to evidence from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Mesoamerica that shows that independent developments of writing generally undergo a protracted evolution. It also ignores archaeological data from the Chinese Neolithic and early Bronze Age that reveals the existence of signs comparable to Shang characters. Paola Demattè takes this data into account to address the issue of what writing is, and when, why, and how it develops, by employing a theory of writing that does not privilege language as a prime mover. It focuses instead on visual systems of communication as well as ideological and socio-economic developments as key elements that promote the eventual development of writing. To understand the processes that led to primary developments of writing, The Origins of Chinese Writing draws from the latest research on the early writing systems of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Mesoamerica, and other forms of protowriting. The result is a novel and inclusive theoretical approach to the archaeological evidence, grammatological data, and textual sources, an approach that demonstrates that Chinese writing emerged out of a long process that began in the Late Neolithic and continued during the Early Bronze Age.
Download or read book Chinese Writing and Calligraphy written by Wendan Li and published by . This book was released on 2010-05-31 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The work covers three major areas: 1) descriptions of Chinese characters and their components, including stroke types, layout patterns, and indications of sound and meaning; 2) basic brush techniques; and 3) the social, cultural, historical, and philosophical underpinnings of Chinese calligraphy---all of which are crucial to understanding and appreciating this art form. --
Download or read book Planning Chinese Characters written by Shouhui Zhao and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-10-30 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the most comprehensive synthesis and analysis of major developments in reforming programs in modernizing the Chinese writing system. It traces the language policy and planning related developments for Chinese characters, with particular emphasis on post-1950 period in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the more recent challenges that technology, and particularly the World Wide Web, have posed for the language.
Download or read book Orthography of Early Chinese Writing written by Imre Galambos and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Dictionary of Chinese Characters written by Stewart Paton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-05-21 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By arranging frequently used characters under the phonetic element they have in common, rather than only under their radical, the Dictionary encourages the student to link characters according to their phonetic. The system of cross-referencing then allows the student to find easily all the characters in the dictionary which have the same phonetic element, thus helping to fix in the memory the link between a character and its sound and meaning. This innovative resource will be an excellent study-aid for students with a basic grasp of Chinese, whether they are studying with a teacher or learning on their own.
Download or read book Literary Information in China written by Bruce Rusk and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Information” has become a core concept across the disciplines, yet it is still often seen as a unique feature of the Western world that became central only in the digital age. In this book, leading experts turn to China’s textual tradition to show the significance of information for reconceptualizing the work of literary history, from its beginnings to the present moment. Contributors trace the organization of literary information across China’s three millennia of history, examining the forms and practices of information management that have evolved alongside the increasing scale and complexity of textual production. They reimagine literary history as information processing, detailing the many kinds of storage, encoding, sorting, and transmission that constitute and feed back into China’s long and ever-growing cultural tradition. The volume features state-of-the-field essays on all major forms of literary information management, from graphs to internet literature, and from commentaries to literary museums and archives. By shifting focus from individual works and their authors to the informatic schemata of literature, it identifies three scales of information management—the word, the document, and the collection—and surveys the forms that operate at each level, such as the dictionary, the anthology, and the library. Literary Information in China is a groundbreaking work that provides a systematic and innovative reassessment of literary history with implications that extend beyond the particular Chinese context, revealing how informatic practices shape literary tradition.
Download or read book A Cultural History of the Chinese Character Ta She written by Huang Xingtao and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-06-26 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a thorough examination of the history of a Chinese female pronoun – the Chinese character "Ta (她, She)" and demonstrates how the invention and identification of this new word is inextricably intertwined with matters of sociocultural politics. The Chinese character Ta for the third-person feminine singular pronoun was introduced in the late 1910s when the voices of women’s liberation rang out in China. The invention and dissemination of this word not only reflected an ideological gendering of the Chinese script but also provoked heated academic and popular debate well into the 1930s. Thus, the history of Ta provides a prism through which to explore modern Chinese history. The author provides an ambitious and informed examination of how Ta was invented and promoted in relation to the gender equality movement, the politics of neologism, and other domestic elements and international catalysts. This book is the first major work to survey Ta’s creation. It draws on diverse sources, including interviews with eight historians who experienced the popularisation of Ta as youths in the 1930s and 40s. This book will be an essential read for students and scholars of East Asian Studies, Chinese Cultural History, and those who are interested in the history of China.
Download or read book A Cultural History of the Chinese Language written by Sharron Gu and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-12-22 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinese, one of the oldest active languages, evolved over 5,000 years. As such, it makes for a fascinating case study in the development of language. This cultural history of Chinese demonstrates that the language grew and responded to its music and visual expression in a manner very similar to contemporary English and other Western languages. Within Chinese cultural history lie the answers to numerous questions that have haunted scholars for decades: How does language relate to worldview? What would happen to law after its language loses absolute binding power? How do music, visual, and theatrical images influence literature? By presenting Chinese not as a system of signs but as the history of a community, this study shows how language has expanded the scope of Chinese imagination and offers a glimpse into the future of younger languages throughout the world.
Download or read book Gods Goddesses of Ancient China written by Trenton Campbell and published by Encyclopaedia Britannica. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authoritative volume examines the two main faiths, Confucianism and Daoism, that developed before China had meaningful contact with the rest of the world. Aspects of Buddhism later joined features of these faiths to form elements of Chinese ideology and, with the beliefs in immortals and the worship of ancestors, they led to a popular religion. The narrative describes the gods and goddesses that dominated China's mythology and folk culture, roughly from the 3rd millennium to 221 BCE, including the Baxian (Eight Immortals), Chang'e (moon goddess), Guandi (god of war), the Men Shen (door spirits), and Pan Gu (first man).
Download or read book A Brief History of the Immortals of Non Hindu Civilizations written by Shri Bhagavatananda Guru and published by Shri Bhagavatananda Guru. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains a complete analysis of the legendary myths of civilizations like Roman, Greek, Celtic, Arabian, British, Japanese and Chinese. From the stories of the Trojan war and adventures of Hercules, Perseus and Theseus to the stories of the White Snake and Battle of Red Cliffs, this book is about the mesmerizing past of our ancestors.
Download or read book Behind the Brushstrokes written by Seow Hwa Khoo and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finally - a comprehensive study of Chinese calligraphy aimed at those who do not read Chinese but valuable for any reader seeking insight into the evolution of Chinese characters, as well as the philosophy of Chinese calligraphy and the lives of the great Chinese calligraphers. 'If you have always wanted to know what Chinese calligraphy is about, this is the book' - The Straits Times
Download or read book The Chinese Language Demystified written by Zhengming Du and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chinese Language Demystified offers a detailed exploration of the features that have made Mandarin Chinese so unique among the major languages of the world, particularly English and other European linguistic forms of communication. While discussing the aspects that contribute to the perception of the language as somewhat ‘mysterious,’ the book also investigates how it is comprehended and used by the Chinese people despite its lack of formal grammatical structure in the conventional terms of understanding.
