Chinese classic texts or canonical texts or simply dianji (典籍) refers to the Chinese texts which originated before the imperial unification by the Qin dynasty in 221 BC, particularly the "Four Books and Five Classics" of the Neo-Confucian tradition, themselves a customary abridgment of the "Thirteen Classics". All of these pre-Qin texts were written in classical Chinese. All three canons are collectively known as the classics.
Huangdi, translated into English as Emperor or Emperor of China, was the superlative title held by monarchs of China who ruled various imperial regimes in Chinese history. In traditional Chinese political theory, the emperor was considered the Son of Heaven and the autocrat of all under Heaven. Under the Han dynasty, Confucianism replaced Legalism as the official political theory and succession in most cases theoretically followed agnatic primogeniture. The lineage of emperors descended from a paternal family line constituted a dynasty.
The history of the Chinese literature, some scholars prefer the term "Sinophone literature", extends thousands of years, from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the mature vernacular fiction novels that arose during the Ming dynasty to entertain the masses of literate Chinese. The introduction of widespread woodblock printing during the Tang dynasty (618–907) and the invention of movable type printing by Bi Sheng (990–1051) during the Song dynasty (960–1279) rapidly spread written knowledge throughout China. In more modern times, the author Lu Xun (1881–1936) is considered an influential voice of baihua literature in China.
Chinese culture is one of the world's oldest cultures, originating thousands of years ago. The culture prevails across a large geographical region in East Asia with Sinosphere in whole and is extremely diverse, with customs and traditions varying greatly between counties, provinces, cities, towns. The terms 'China' and the geographical landmass of 'China' have shifted across the centuries, before the name 'China' became commonplace in modernity.
The Yongle Encyclopedia or Yongle Dadian is a largely-lost Chinese leishu encyclopedia commissioned by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty in 1403 and completed by 1408. It comprised 22,937 manuscript rolls or chapters, in 11,095 volumes. Fewer than 400 volumes survive today, comprising about 800 chapters (rolls), or 3.5 percent of the original work.
Chen Yuanyuan (1624–1681) was a Chinese Yiji who lived during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. She was the concubine of Wu Sangui, the Ming dynasty general who surrendered Shanhai Pass to the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and later rebelled in the Revolt of the Three Feudatories. Chen's life and relationship to Wu later became the subject of a number of popular stories and legends, many of them focusing on her supposed role in Wu's fateful decision to defect to the Qing, thereby sealing the fate of the Ming dynasty.
The small seal script, or Qin script, is an archaic form of Chinese calligraphy. It was standardized and promulgated as a national standard by the government of Qin Shi Huang, the founder of the Chinese Qin dynasty.
Jinshi was the highest and final degree in the imperial examination in Imperial China. The examination was usually taken in the imperial capital in the palace, and was also called the Metropolitan Exam. Recipients are sometimes referred to in English-language sources as Imperial Scholars.
The Nanjing Museum is located in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province in East China. With an area of 70,000 square metres, it is one of the largest museums in China. The museum has over 400,000 items in its permanent collection, making it one of the largest in China. Especially notable is the museum's enormous collections of Ming and Qing imperial porcelain, which is among the largest in the world.
The Chinese garden is a landscape garden style which has evolved over three thousand years. It includes both the vast gardens of the Chinese emperors and members of the imperial family, built for pleasure and to impress, and the more intimate gardens created by scholars, poets, former government officials, soldiers and merchants, made for reflection and escape from the outside world. They create an idealized miniature landscape, which is meant to express the harmony that should exist between man and nature.
Huang Zongxi, courtesy name Taichong (太冲), was a Chinese naturalist, political theorist, philosopher, and soldier during the latter part of the Ming dynasty into the early part of the Qing.
The Complete Library of the Four Treasuries was the largest collection of books in Chinese history with 36,381 volumes, 79,337 manuscript rolls, 2.3 million pages and about 997 million words. The complete encyclopedia contains an annotated catalogue of 10,680 titles along with a compendiums of 3,593 titles. The Complete Library of the Four Treasuries ended up even longer than the Ming dynasty's Yongle Encyclopedia of 1403, which had been China's largest encyclopedia until then. A complete copy of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries are held with each of the following: the National Library of China in Beijing, the National Palace Museum in Taipei, the Gansu Library in Lanzhou, and the Zhejiang Library in Hangzhou.
The literary inquisition, also known as speech crime (以言入罪), refers to official persecution of intellectuals for their writings in China. The Hanyu Da Cidian defines it as "the ruler deliberately extracts words or phrases from intellectual's writings and arbitrarily accuse him in order to persecute him" ("旧时谓统治者为迫害知识分子，故意从其著作中摘取字句，罗织成罪"). The inquisition took place under each of the dynasties ruling China, although the Ming dynasty was particularly notorious for the practice. In general, there are two ways a literary inquisition could be carried out. First is that the conviction came from the writing itself. That is, the writing was the direct cause of the persecution. The second is that the writing was used as a tool to provide legitimate evidence for a predetermined conviction. Such persecutions could owe even to a single phrase or word which the ruler considered offensive. Some of these were due to the naming taboo, such as writing a Chinese character that was part of the emperor's personal name. In the most serious cases, not only the writer, but also their immediate and extended families, as well as those close to them, would also be implicated and killed.
Gu Yanwu, also known as Gu Tinglin, was a Chinese philologist, geographer, and famous scholar-official in Qing dynasty. He spent his youth during the Manchu conquest of China in anti-Manchu activities after the Ming dynasty had been overthrown. He never served the Qing dynasty. Instead, he traveled throughout the country and devoted himself to studies.
The Wu Chinese people, also known as Wuyue people, Jiang-Zhe people (江浙民系) or San Kiang (三江), are a major subgroup of the Han Chinese. They are a Wu Chinese-speaking people who hail from Southern Jiangsu Province, the entirety of the city of Shanghai and all of Zhejiang Province, as well as smaller populations in Xuancheng prefecture-level city in Southern Anhui Province, Shangrao, Guangfeng and Yushan counties of Northeastern Jiangxi Province and some parts of Pucheng County in Northern Fujian Province.
All Men Are Brothers is a 2011 Chinese television series adapted from Shi Nai'an's 14th century novel Water Margin, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. The series is directed by Kuk Kwok-leung and features cast members from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The series was first broadcast on 8TV in March 2011 in Malaysia.
Hu Zhengyan was a Chinese artist, printmaker and publisher. He worked in calligraphy, traditional Chinese painting, and seal-carving, but was primarily a publisher, producing academic texts as well as records of his own work.
Li Yin, also known by her courtesy name Jinsheng (今生) and her art names Shi'an (是庵) and Kanshan Nüshi, was a Chinese painter, poet, and calligrapher during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, noted for her flowers and birds. Her artwork was sought after in her lifetime, resulting in as many as forty imitators in her area producing fakes of her works.
Word Of Honor, previously titled A Tale of the Wanderers (天涯客), is a 2021 Chinese costume streaming television series co-produced by Ciwen Media, and Youku, directed by Cheng Zhi Chao, Ma Hua Gan, and Li Hong Yu, written by Xiao Chu, adapted from the danmei novel "Faraway Wanderers" (天涯客) by Priest. It starred Zhang Zhehan and Gong Jun in the leading roles. The series aired on Youku from February 22 to May 5 with 36 episodes, plus a short bonus clip shows what happened after the end of the main series.
Huang Zongxi's Law, or Theory of Huang Zongxi, is an observation made by Huang Zongxi (1610–1695) on how the burden of the peasants often increased rather than decreased during the various dynasties in Chinese history when attempts were made to reduce it. This theorem was summarized and named by the Chinese historian Qin Hui.
