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The Sakyamuni Buddha, by Song painter Zhang Shengwen, c. AD 1181–1186; although Buddhism was in decline and under attack by Neo-Confucian critics in the Song era, it nonetheless remained one of the major religious ideologies in China.
Chinese society during the Song dynasty (AD 960–1279) was marked by political and legal reforms, a philosophical revival of Confucianism, and the development of cities beyond administrative purposes into centers of trade, industry, and maritime commerce. The inhabitants of rural areas were mostly farmers, although some were also hunters, fishers, or government employees working in mines or the salt marshes. Conversely, shopkeepers, artisans, city guards, entertainers, laborers, and wealthy merchants lived in the county and provincial centers along with the Chinese gentry—a small, elite community of educated scholars and scholar-officials. As landholders and drafted government officials, the gentry considered themselves the leading members of society; gaining their cooperation and employment was essential for the county or provincial bureaucrat overburdened with official duties. In many ways, scholar-officials of the Song period differed from the more aristocratic scholar-officials of the Tang dynasty (618–907). Civil service examinations became the primary means of appointment to an official post as competitors vying for official degrees dramatically increased. Frequent disagreements amongst ministers of state on ideological and policy issues led to political strife and the rise of political factions. This undermined the marriage strategies of the professional elite, which broke apart as a social group and gave way to a multitude of families that provided sons for civil service.
Confucian or Legalist scholars in ancient China—perhaps as far back as the late Zhou dynasty (c. 1046–256 BC)—categorized all socioeconomic groups into four broad and hierarchical occupations (in descending order): the shi (scholars, or gentry), the nong (peasant farmers), the gong (artisans and craftsmen), and the shang (merchants). Wealthy landholders and officials possessed the resources to better prepare their sons for the civil service examinations, yet they were often rivaled in their power and wealth by merchants of the Song period. Merchants frequently colluded commercially and politically with officials, despite the fact that scholar-officials looked down on mercantile vocations as less respectable pursuits than farming or craftsmanship. The military also provided a means for advancement in Song society for those who became officers, even though soldiers were not highly respected members of society. Although certain domestic and familial duties were expected of women in Song society, they nonetheless enjoyed a wide range of social and legal rights in an otherwise patriarchal society. Women's improved rights to property came gradually with the increasing value of dowries offered by brides' families. (Full article...)
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Choe Bu (Korean: 최부, 1454–1504) was a Korean diarist, historian, politician, and travel writer during the early Joseon Dynasty. He was most well known for the account of his shipwrecked travels in China from February to July 1488, during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). He was eventually banished from the Joseon court in 1498 and executed in 1504 during two political purges. However, in 1506 he was exonerated and given posthumous honors by the Joseon court.
Choe's diary accounts of his travels in China became widely printed during the 16th century in both Korea and Japan. Modern historians also refer to his written works, since his travel diary provides a unique outsider's perspective on Chinese culture in the 15th century. The attitudes and opinions expressed in his writing represent in part the standpoints and views of the 15th century Confucian Korean literati, who viewed Chinese culture as compatible with and similar to their own. His description of cities, people, customs, cuisines, and maritime commerce along China's Grand Canal provides insight into the daily life of China and how it differed between northern and southern China during the 15th century. (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. The battle has been the subject of or influenced numerous poems, dramas, movies and games. (Full article...)
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Nicole Cooke, gold medalist
The women's road race was one of the cycling events at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. It took place on 10 August 2008, featuring 66 women from 33 countries. It was the seventh appearance of an Olympic women's road race event and featured a longer course than any of the previous six races. The race was run on the Urban Road Cycling Course (one of Beijing's nine temporary venues), which is 102.6 kilometres (63.8 mi) total. Including a second lap around the 23.8 km (14.8 mi) final circuit, the total distance of the women's race was 126.4 km (78.5 mi), less than half the length of the men's race.
Heavy rain during most of the race made conditions difficult for the competitors. A group of five broke away during the final lap and worked together until the final sprint, where Nicole Cooke won the race. Cooke earned Great Britain's first medal at these Games and 200th Olympic gold medal overall. Emma Johansson of Sweden and Tatiana Guderzo of Italy, finishing second and third place with the same time as Cooke, received silver and bronze medals respectively. (Full article...)
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The Ming dynasty considered Tibet to be part of the Western Regions. While the Ming dynasty at its height had some degree of influence in Tibet, the exact nature of their relations is under dispute by modern scholars. Analysis of the relationship is further complicated by modern political conflicts and the application of Westphalian sovereignty to a time when the concept did not exist. The Historical Status of China's Tibet, a book published by the People's Republic of China, asserts that the Ming dynasty had unquestioned sovereignty over Tibet by pointing to the Ming court's issuing of various titles to Tibetan leaders, Tibetans' full acceptance of the titles, and a renewal process for successors of these titles that involved traveling to the Ming capital. Scholars in China also argue that Tibet has been an integral part of China since the 13th century and so it was a part of the Ming Empire. However, most scholars outside China, such as Turrell V. Wylie, Melvyn C. Goldstein, and Helmut Hoffman, say that the relationship was one of suzerainty, Ming titles were only nominal, Tibet remained an independent region outside Ming control, and it simply paid tribute until the Jiajing Emperor, who ceased relations with Tibet.
Some scholars note that Tibetan leaders during the Ming frequently engaged in civil war and conducted their own foreign diplomacy with neighboring states such as Nepal. Some scholars underscore the commercial aspect of the Ming–Tibetan relationship, noting the Ming dynasty's shortage of horses for warfare and thus the importance of the horse trade with Tibet. Others argue that the significant religious nature of the relationship of the Ming court with Tibetan lamas is underrepresented in modern scholarship. (Full article...)
Both in its lyrics and instruments, the song mixes traditional Chinese styles with modern rock elements. In the lyrics, the speaker addresses a girl who is scorning him because he has nothing. However, the song has also been interpreted as being about the dispossessed youth of the time, because it evokes a sense of disillusionment and lack of individual freedom that was common among the young generation during the 1980s. (Full article...)
Cai Lun (Chinese: 蔡伦; courtesy name: Jingzhong (敬仲); c. 50–62 – 121 CE), formerly romanized as Ts'ai Lun, was a Chinese eunuch court official of the Eastern Han dynasty. He occupies a pivotal place in the history of paper due to his addition of pulp via tree bark and hemp ends which resulted in the large-scale manufacture and worldwide spread of paper. Although traditionally regarded as the inventor of paper, earlier forms of paper have existed since the 3rd century BCE, so Cai's contributions are limited to innovation, rather than invention.
Born in Guiyang Commandery [zh] (in what is now Leiyang), Cai arrived at the imperial court in Luoyang by 75 CE, where he served as a chamberlain for Emperor Ming, and then as Xiao Huangmen, an imperial messenger for Emperor Zhang. To assist Lady Dou in securing her adopted son as designated heir, he interrogated Consort Song and her sister, who then killed themselves. When Emperor He ascended the throne in 88 CE, Dou awarded Cai with two positions: Zhongchang shi [zh], a political counselor to the emperor that was the highest position for eunuchs of the time, and also as Shangfang Ling, where Cai oversaw the production of instruments and weapons at the Palace Workshop. (Full article...)
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Posthumous portrait
Du Fu (Chinese: 杜甫; pinyin: Dù Fǔ; 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...)
From 1643 to 1650, political power lay mostly in the hands of the prince regent Dorgon. Under his leadership, the Qing conquered most of the territory of the fallen Ming dynasty, chased Ming loyalist regimes deep into the southwestern provinces, and established the basis of Qing rule over China proper despite highly unpopular policies such as the "hair cutting command" of 1645, which forced all Qing male subjects to shave their forehead and braid their remaining hair into a queue resembling that of the Manchus. After Dorgon's death on the last day of 1650, the young Shunzhi Emperor started to rule personally. He tried, with mixed success, to fight corruption and to reduce the political influence of the Manchu nobility. In the 1650s, he faced a resurgence of Ming loyalist resistance, but by 1661 his armies had defeated the Qing's last enemies, Koxinga and the Prince of Gui, both of whom would succumb the following year. (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 East 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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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 An Lushan rebellion (755–763) led to devastation and the decline of central authority during the latter half of the dynasty. Like the previous Sui dynasty, the Tang maintained a civil-service system by recruiting scholar-officials through standardised examinations and recommendations to office. The rise of regional military governors known as jiedushi during the 9th century undermined this civil order. The dynasty and central government went into decline by the latter half of the 9th century; agrarian rebellions resulted in mass population loss and displacement, widespread poverty, and further government dysfunction that ultimately ended the dynasty in 907. (Full article...)
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The 2001 Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident took place in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, on the eve of Chinese New Year on 23 January 2001. There is controversy over the incident; Chinese government sources say that five members of Falun Gong, a religious movement that is banned in mainland China, set themselves on fire in the square. Falun Gong sources disputed the accuracy of these portrayals, and claimed that their teachings explicitly forbid violence or suicide. Some journalists have claimed that the self-immolations were staged.
According to Chinese state media, a group of seven people had travelled to Beijing from Henan province, and five set themselves on fire on Tiananmen Square. In the Chinese press, the event was used as proof of the dangers of Falun Gong, and was used to legitimise the government's campaign against the group. (Full article...)
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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With the pale yellow rump visible. Buryatia, Russia.
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 subspecies of it, although its distinctive vocalisations aid identification. (Full article...)
Lactarius indigo, commonly known as the indigo milk cap, indigo milky, indigo lactarius, blue lactarius, or blue milk mushroom, is a species of agaric fungus in the family Russulaceae.
The fruit body color ranges from dark blue in fresh specimens to pale blue-gray in older ones. The milk, or latex, that oozes when the mushroom tissue is cut or broken (a feature common to all members of the genus Lactarius) is also indigo blue, but slowly turns green upon exposure to air. The cap has a diameter of 4–15 cm (2–6 in), and the stem is 2–8 cm (3⁄4–3+1⁄8 in) tall and 1–2.5 cm (3⁄8–1 in) thick. (Full article...)
The Teochew cuisine and Hakka cuisine of Guangdong are considered their own styles. However, scholars may categorize Guangdong cuisine into three major groups based on the region's dialect: Cantonese, Hakka and Chaozhou cuisines. Neighboring Guangxi's cuisine is also considered separate despite eastern Guangxi being considered culturally Cantonese due to the presence of ethnic Zhuang influences in the rest of the province. (Full article...)
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Title page of a Song dynasty (c. 1100) edition of the I Ching
The I Ching or Yijing (Chinese: 易經, Mandarin:[î tɕíŋ]ⓘ), usually translated Book of Changes or Classic of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. The I Ching was originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC). Over the course of the Warring States and early imperial periods (500–200 BC), it transformed into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the Ten Wings. After becoming part of the Chinese Five Classics in the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East and was the subject of scholarly commentary. Between the 18th and 20th centuries, it took on an influential role in Western understanding of East Asian philosophical thought.[1] As a divination text, the I Ching is used for a Chinese form of cleromancy known as I Ching divination in which bundles of yarrow stalks are manipulated to produce sets of six apparently random numbers ranging from 6 to 9. Each of the 64 possible sets corresponds to a hexagram, which can be looked up in the I Ching. The hexagrams are arranged in an order known as the King Wen sequence. The interpretation of the readings found in the I Ching has been discussed and debated over the centuries. Many commentators have used the book symbolically, often to provide guidance for moral decision-making, as informed by Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and been paralleled with many other traditional names for the processes of change such as yin and yang and Wuxing. (Full article...)
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The 2019 Shanghai Masters was a professional non-ranking snooker tournament that took place at the Regal International East Asia Hotel in Shanghai, China from 9 to 15 September 2019. It was the 12th edition of the Shanghai Masters, which was first held in 2007. Ronnie O'Sullivan was the defending champion, having defeated Barry Hawkins 11–9 in the 2018 final, and also having won the tournament in 2017. O'Sullivan successfully defended his title for a second consecutive year, defeating Shaun Murphy 11–9 in the final. This was the third consecutive title for O'Sullivan in this tournament.
The prize fund was £751,000 with the winner receiving £200,000. The event was broadcast by Great Sports Channel, Superstars Online, Youku and Zhibo.tv in China, as well as NowTV in Hong Kong and Eurosport in Europe. (Full article...)
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Forrest's pika (Ochotona forresti) is a species of mammal in the pika family, Ochotonidae. It is found in Bhutan, China, India, and Myanmar. The summer dorsal pelage and ventral pelage are dark rufous or blackish brown, and the winter dorsal pelage is a grayish brown, slightly lighter in tone than the ventral pelage. It is a generalist herbivore. It was assessed by the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species as insufficiently known in 1994, as near threatened in 1996, and re-assessed in 2008 as a species of least concern. (Full article...)
During the Great Leap Forward, Pan sympathized with Marshal Peng Dehuai, a critic of Mao Zedong's collectivization policy. As a result, in 1958, he was dismissed as party chief of Henan and subjected to persecution, but was later rehabilitated. (Full article...)
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Casts of the teeth of Yuanmou Man
Yuanmou Man (simplified Chinese: 元谋人; traditional Chinese: 元謀人; pinyin: Yuánmóu Rén, Homo erectus yuanmouensis) is a subspecies of H. erectus which inhabited the Yuanmou Basin in Yunnan Province, southwestern China, roughly 1.7 million years ago. It is the first fossil evidence of humans in China, though they probably reached the region by at least 2 million years ago. Yuanmou Man is known only from two upper first incisors presumed to have belonged to a male, and a partial tibia presumed to have belonged to a female. The female may have stood about 123.6–130.4 cm (4 ft 1 in – 4 ft 3 in) in life. These remains are anatomically quite similar to those contemporary early Homo in Africa, namely H. habilis and H. (e?) ergaster.
Yuanmou Man inhabited a mixed environment featuring grassland, bushland, marshland, and forest dominated by pine and alder. They lived alongside chalicotheres, deer, the elephant Stegodon, rhinos, cattle, pigs, and the giant short-faced hyaena. The site currently sits at an elevation of 1,050–1,150 m (3,440–3,770 ft). They manufactured simple cores, flakes, choppers, pointed tools, and scrapers which paralleled the technology of their African contemporaries. (Full article...)
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19th-century illustration from Xiangzhu liaozhai zhiyi tuyong (Liaozhai Zhiyi with commentary and illustrations; 1886)
The Leader (Chinese: 领风者; pinyin: Lǐng fēng zhě) is a 2019 Chinese anime-influenced animated web series based on the life of German philosopher Karl Marx. Commissioned by the Chinese Communist Party, a production team was formed in 2016 which included propaganda departments, scholars of Marxism, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The series was announced in 2018 by the streaming service Bilibili as part of the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Marx's birth. The seven-episode series was created to attract young people to Marxism, and it was streamed weekly on Bilibili between January 28, and March 4, 2019. A webcomic version was produced by Zhong Jun, the series' chief scriptwriter.
The series' announcement attracted international interest, and its promotional video had over 200,000 views on its release day. It was primarily considered propaganda by the Western media, while Chinese viewers commented on Marx's good looks. The series had a mixed response; the first episode had over 2.8 million views in one day, and the series as a whole had at least 5.5 million views. Although it was criticized for poor animation, propagandism, and its depiction of Marx, it has sparked a discussion on Marxism and labor rights in China. (Full article...)
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The North West Coast during the maritime fur trade era, about 1790 to 1840
The trade mostly serviced the market in Qing China, which imported furs and exported tea, silks, porcelain, and other Chinese goods, which were then sold in Europe and in the United States. (Full article...)
The Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) was a period of Imperial China divided into the Western Han (202 BCE – 9 CE) and Eastern Han (25–220 CE) periods, when the capital cities were located at Chang'an and Luoyang, respectively. It was founded by Emperor Gaozu of Han and briefly interrupted by the regime of Wang Mang (r. 9–23 CE) who usurped the throne from a child Han emperor.
Yangwei did not see any action during the Sino-French War, but in the First Sino-Japanese War, she was in the Chinese line at the Battle of Yalu River on 17 September 1894. She was set alight by combined fire from the Japanese fleet, and drifted south out of the battle until running aground on a reef. She was subsequently destroyed by a spar torpedo from a boat of the Japanese cruiser Chiyoda. (Full article...)
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Chun Afong, c. 1882
Chun Afong (Chinese: 陳芳; pinyin: Chén Fāng; c. 1825 – September 25, 1906) was a Chinese businessman and philanthropist who settled in the Hawaiian Kingdom during the 19th century and built a business empire in Hawaii, Macau and Hong Kong. He immigrated to Hawaii from Guangdong in 1849 and adopted the surname Afong after the diminutive form of his Cantonese given name, Ah Fong.
Afong started off working for his uncle's retail store in Honolulu and later became the co-owner of a chain of stores selling Oriental novelties. In due time, he made a fortune investing in retail, shipping, opium, sugar and coffeeplantations, eventually becoming the first Chinese millionaire on Hawaii. In 1856, Afong helped organize a ball in honor of the wedding of King Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma that helped to solidify the Chinese community's position in Honolulu. He briefly served as the commercial agent and diplomatic consul to the Hawaiian Kingdom and was a member of King Kalākaua's Privy Council. (Full article...)
In its formative years, the NCC became involved in the endeavors of Chinese nationalists. It sided with protesters in the May Thirtieth Incident and went as far as calling for the re-evaluation of "unequal treaties" China had with foreign powers. This angered foreign missionaries working in China. The NCC took an increasingly liberal theological stance, leading some foreign missionary organizations like the China Inland Mission and the Christian and Missionary Alliance to resign from its ranks. (Full article...)
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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...)
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Shamanism was the dominant religion of the Jurchen people of northeast Asia and of their descendants, the Manchu people. As early as the Jin dynasty (1115–1234), the Jurchens conducted shamanic ceremonies at shrines called tangse. There were two kinds of shamans: those who entered in a trance and let themselves be possessed by the spirits, and those who conducted regular sacrifices to heaven, to a clan's ancestors, or to the clan's protective spirits.
When Nurhaci (1559–1626), the chieftain of the Jianzhou Jurchens, who was originally a vassal to the Ming dynasty, unified other Jurchen tribes under his own rule and established the Later Jin dynasty in the early 17th century, he imposed the protective spirits of his clan, the Aisin Gioro, upon other clans, and often destroyed their shrines. As early as the 1590s, he placed shamanism at the center of his state's ritual, sacrificing to heaven before engaging in military campaigns. His son and successor Hong Taiji (1592–1643), who renamed the Jurchens "Manchu" and officially proclaimed the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) in 1636, further put shamanistic practices in the service of the state, notably by forbidding others to erect new tangse (shrines) for ritual purposes. In the 1620s and 1630s, the Qing ruler conducted shamanic sacrifices at the tangse of Mukden, the Qing capital. In 1644, as soon as the Qing seized Beijing to begin their conquest of China proper, they named it their new capital and erected an official shamanic shrine there. In the Beijingtangse and in the women's quarters of the Forbidden City, Qing emperors and professional shamans (usually women) conducted shamanic ceremonies until the abdication of the dynasty in 1912. (Full article...)
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The Shaoguan incident (Chinese: 韶关事件) was a civil disturbance which took place overnight on 25–26 June 2009 in Guangdong, China. A violent dispute erupted between migrant Uyghurs and Han Chinese workers at a toy factory in Shaoguan as a result of false allegations of the sexual assault of a Han Chinese woman. Groups of Han Chinese set upon Uyghur co-workers, leading to at least two Uyghurs being violently killed by angry Han Chinese men (although other reports indicate a higher death toll), and some 118 people injured, most of them Uyghurs.
The event was widely cited as the cause of the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, which some believe began as a peaceful street protest demanding official action over the two Uyghurs who were killed in Shaoguan. Following trials in October 2009, one person was executed and several others sentenced to terms between life imprisonment and five to seven years. (Full article...)
Image 2Gilin 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 36Photo 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 45Red lanterns are hung from the trees during the Chinese New Year celebrations in Ditan Park (Temple of Earth) in Beijing. (from Chinese culture)
Image 52Relief of a fenghuang in Fuxi Temple (Tianshui). They are mythological birds of East Asia that reign over all other birds. (from Chinese culture)
Image 53Main hall and tea house in Dunedin Chinese Garden (from Chinese culture)
Foreign ministers from Japan, China, and South Korea meet in Tokyo to discuss cooperation on shared challenges like aging populations and climate change, seeking to improve relations and prepare for a leaders' summit. Japan raises security concerns about North Korea while China criticizes protectionism and the politicization of science. (AP)
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 Lai Ching-te(pictured), since May 20, 2024. Lai is a Taiwanese politician and former physician, who is currently serving as the eighth president of the Republic of China under the 1947 Constitution and the third president from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
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