Chinese is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people speak a variety of Chinese as their first language.
Mandarin is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of China. Because Mandarin originated in North China and most Mandarin dialects are found in the north, the group is sometimes referred to as Northern Chinese. Many varieties of Mandarin, such as those of the Southwest and the Lower Yangtze, are not mutually intelligible with the standard language. Nevertheless, Mandarin as a group is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers.
Nanjing, alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in Eastern China. The city has 11 districts, an administrative area of 6,600 km2 (2,500 sq mi), and a total recorded population of 9,314,685 as of 2020.
Written vernacular Chinese, also known as Baihua or Huawen, is the forms of written Chinese based on the varieties of Chinese spoken throughout China, in contrast to Classical Chinese, the written standard used during imperial China up to the early twentieth century. A written vernacular based on Mandarin Chinese was used in novels in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and later refined by intellectuals associated with the May Fourth Movement. Since the early 1920s, this modern vernacular form has been the standard style of writing for speakers of all varieties of Chinese throughout mainland China, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore as the written form of Modern Standard Chinese. This is commonly called Standard Written Chinese or Modern Written Chinese to avoid ambiguity with spoken vernaculars, with the written vernaculars of earlier eras, and with other written vernaculars such as written Cantonese or written Hokkien.
Jiangsu is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its capital in Nanjing. Jiangsu is the third smallest, but the fifth most populous and the most densely populated of the 23 provinces of the People's Republic of China. Jiangsu has the highest GDP per capita of Chinese provinces and second-highest GDP of Chinese provinces, after Guangdong. Jiangsu borders Shandong in the north, Anhui to the west, and Zhejiang and Shanghai to the south. Jiangsu has a coastline of over 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) along the Yellow Sea, and the Yangtze River passes through the southern part of the province.
Suzhou, alternately romanized as Soochow, is a major city in southern Jiangsu province, East China. Suzhou is the largest city in Jiangsu, and a major economic center and focal point of trade and commerce. Administratively, Suzhou is a prefecture-level city with a population of 6,715,559 in the city proper, and a total resident population of 12,748,262 as of the 2020 census in its administrative area. The city jurisdiction area's north waterfront is on a lower reach of the Yangtze whereas it has its more focal south-western waterfront on Lake Tai – crossed by several waterways, its district belongs to the Yangtze River Delta region. Suzhou is now part of the Greater Shanghai metro area, incorporating most of Changzhou, Wuxi and Suzhou urban districts plus Kunshan and Taicang, with a population of more than 38,000,000 residents as of 2020. Its urban population grew at an unprecedented rate of 6.5% between 2000 and 2014, which is the highest among cities with more than 5,000,000 people.
Zhenjiang, alternately romanized as Chinkiang, is a prefecture-level city in Jiangsu Province, China. It lies on the southern bank of the Yangtze River near its intersection with the Grand Canal. It is opposite Yangzhou and between Nanjing and Changzhou. Zhenjiang was formerly the provincial capital of Jiangsu and remains as an important transportation hub. As of the 2020 census, its total population was 3,210,418 inhabitants whom 1,266,790 lived in the built-up area made of the 3 urban districts. The town is best known both in China and abroad for its fragrant black vinegar, a staple of Chinese cooking.
The Wu languages is a major group of Sinitic languages spoken primarily in Shanghai, Zhejiang Province, and the part of Jiangsu Province south of the Yangtze River, which makes up the cultural region of Wu. The Suzhou dialect was the prestige dialect of Wu as of the 19th century, and formed the basis of Wu's koiné dialect, Shanghainese, at the turn of the 20th century. Speakers of various Wu languages sometimes inaccurately labelled their mother tongue as "Shanghainese" when introduced to foreigners. The languages of Northern Wu are mutually intelligible with each other, while those of Southern Wu are not.
Changzhou is a prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province, China. It was previously known as Yanling, Lanling and Jinling. Located on the southern bank of the Yangtze River, Changzhou borders the provincial capital of Nanjing to the west, Zhenjiang to the northwest, Wuxi to the east, and the province of Zhejiang to the south. Changzhou is located in the highly developed Yangtze Delta region of China extending from Shanghai going northwest. The population of Changzhou city was 4,592,431 at the 2010 census. The city is the birthplace of Zhou Youguang who created the pinyin romanization system.
Mae Ngai is an American historian and Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History at Columbia University. She focuses on nationalism, citizenship, ethnicity, immigration, and race in 20th-century United States history.
Nanjing Library is the third largest library in China with over 10 million items. It houses important scientific, cultural and arts literature relating to Jiangsu province and other national historical records such as ancient Chinese and foreign publications. As located in the ancient capital Nanjing, the library contains 1.6 million ancient books and 100,000 volumes of books, documents and manuscripts dating from the Tang dynasty to the Ming dynasty.
Jiangsu Normal University is a provincial key university located in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, China. It was jointly constructed by the Chinese Ministry of Education and the Government of Jiangsu Province.
Zhou Youguang, also known as Chou Yu-kuang or Chou Yao-ping, was a Chinese economist, banker, linguist, sinologist, Esperantist, publisher, and supercentenarian, known as the "father of Pinyin", a system for the writing of Mandarin Chinese in Roman script, or romanization, which was officially adopted by the government of the People's Republic of China in 1958, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1982, and the United Nations in 1986.
Changzhou Senior High School was founded on November 15, 1907. It is located in the downtown of Changzhou, which is a city with 2500 years of history. It is adjacent to the picturesque local attractions Hongmei Park and Tianning Temple. In a 2016 ranking of Chinese high schools that send students to study in American universities, Changzhou Senior High School ranked number 49 in mainland China in terms of the number of students entering top American universities.
Nanjing University is a national public research university in Nanjing, Jiangsu. It is a member of C9 League and a Class A Double First Class University designated by the Chinese central government. NJU has two main campuses: the Xianlin campus in the northeast of Nanjing, and the Gulou campus in the city center of Nanjing.
The Jiangsu Second Normal University is located in the city of Nanjing, Jiangsu province, China. It was established as a modern university in 1952, and is the only one dedicated to both teacher education and educational science research in Jiangsu province. It has many national and provincial education research programs, to guide the province's education and scientific research work for the educational administrative departments at all levels of government and provide the basis for scientific decision-making.
Jiang Shi (1818-1866) was a Chinese official and poet of the late Qing period, primarily famous for his use of simpler language within the general context of Song School poetry (Neo-Confucianism). He was also an expert in calligraphy, line drawing and Chinese brush painting.
Baojuan, literally precious scrolls, are a genre of prosimetric texts of a religious or mystical nature, produced within the context of Chinese folk religion and individual Chinese folk religious sects. They are often written in vernacular Chinese and recount the mythology surrounding a deity or a hero, or constitute the theological and philosophical scriptures of organized folk sects. Baojuan is a type of performative text or storytelling found in China that emphasizes worship of ancient deities from Buddho-Daoist sects often recounting stories concerning suffering or apocalyptical scenarios. Due to the fact that Baojuan was not considered a serious art-form for most of its existence, nonlinear records of baojuan make it difficult to credit writers, actors, and other contributors to the genre because very little, if any, mark of these individuals exist.
The Four Great Academy Presidents is the title earned by four pioneers of Chinese modern art: Yan Wenliang, Lin Fengmian, Xu Beihong and Liu Haisu. These artists were revered in the early Republican Era due to their effective stewardship of the Soochow College of Art, the Hangzhou National School of Fine Art, the Art Department of Central University and the Shanghai Academy of Arts respectively.
Cheng Dan'an was a Chinese acupuncturist who founded the first school of acupuncture in modern China, made widespread changes to the practice, and served as chairperson of the Chinese Medical Association.
