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104-767: Pavilions are known to have been built as early as the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE), although no examples of that period remain today. The first use of the Chinese character for pavilion dates to the Spring and Autumn period (722–481 BCE) and the Warring States period (403–221 BCE). During the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE) they were used as watchtowers and local government buildings. These multi-story constructions had at least one floor without surrounding walls to allow observation of

208-401: A Chinese character, which apply only generally and are sometimes violated: As characters are essentially rectilinear and are not joined with one another, written Chinese does not require a set orientation. Chinese texts were traditionally written in columns from top to bottom, which were laid out from right to left. Prior to the 20th century, Literary Chinese used little to no punctuation, with

312-728: A common medium; however, the forms of individual characters generally provide little insight to their meaning if not already known. Ghil'ad Zuckermann's exploration of phono-semantic matching in Standard Chinese concludes that the Chinese writing system is multifunctional, conveying both semantic and phonetic content. The variation in vocabulary among varieties has also led to informal use of "dialectal characters", which may include characters previously used in Literary Chinese that are considered archaic in written Standard Chinese. Cantonese

416-521: A conclave of nobles met at Shen and declared the Marquis's grandson King Ping . The capital was moved eastward to Wangcheng , marking the beginning of the Eastern Zhou period. The Eastern Zhou period (771–256 BC) was characterized by an accelerating collapse of royal authority, although the king's ritual importance enabled more than five additional centuries of rule. The Spring and Autumn Annals ,

520-465: A considerable variety of ways to organize and index the characters. A traditional mechanism is the method of radicals, which uses a set of character roots. These roots, or radicals, generally but imperfectly align with the parts used to compose characters by means of logical aggregation and phonetic complex. A canonical set of 214 radicals was developed during the rule of the Kangxi Emperor (around

624-414: A given radical are ordered by the stroke count of the character. Usually, however, there are still many characters with a given stroke count under a given radical. At this point, characters are not given in any recognizable order; the user must locate the character by going through all the characters with that stroke count, typically listed for convenience at the top of the page on which they occur. Because

728-419: A hollow full stop (。), which is used to separate sentences in an identical manner to a Western full stop. A special mark called an enumeration comma (、) is used to separate items in a list, as opposed to the clauses in a sentence. Written Chinese is one of the oldest continuously used writing systems. The earliest examples universally accepted as Chinese writing are the oracle bone inscriptions made during

832-543: A language largely similar in vocabulary and syntax to that of the Shang; a recent study by David McCraw, using lexical statistics, reached the same conclusion. The Zhou emulated Shang cultural practices, possibly to legitimize their own rule, and became the successors to Shang culture. At the same time, the Zhou may also have been connected to the Xirong , a broadly defined cultural group to

936-484: A piece of land was divided into nine squares in the well-field system , with the grain from the middle square taken by the government and that of surrounding squares kept by individual farmers. This way, the government was able to store surplus food and distribute it in times of famine or bad harvest. Some important manufacturing sectors during this period included bronze smelting, which was integral to making weapons and farming tools. Again, these industries were dominated by

1040-437: A polysyllabic word. Most characters are constructed from smaller components that may reflect the character's meaning or pronunciation. Literacy requires the memorization of thousands of characters; college-educated Chinese speakers know approximately 4,000. This has led in part to the adoption of complementary transliteration systems (generally Pinyin ) as a means of representing the pronunciation of Chinese. Chinese writing

1144-516: A square. Character components can be further subdivided into individual written strokes. The strokes of Chinese characters fall into eight main categories: "horizontal" ⟨ 一 ⟩ , "vertical" ⟨ 丨 ⟩ , "left-falling" ⟨ 丿 ⟩ , "right-falling" ⟨ 丶 ⟩ , "rising", "dot" ⟨ 、 ⟩ , "hook" ⟨ 亅 ⟩ , and "turning" ⟨ 乛 ⟩ , ⟨ 乚 ⟩ , ⟨ 乙 ⟩ . There are eight basic rules of stroke order in writing

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1248-473: A system of mutual duty between superiors and inferiors. In contrast, the Legalists had no time for Confucian virtue and advocated a system of strict laws and harsh punishments. Agriculture in the Zhou dynasty was very intensive and, in many cases, directed by the government. All farming lands were owned by nobles, who then gave their land to their serfs , a situation similar to European feudalism . For example,

1352-615: A team of archaeologists at the University of Science and Technology of China in Anhui—has suggested that these symbols were precursors to Chinese writing. However, the palaeographer David Keightley argues instead that the time gap is too great to establish any connection. From the Late Shang period ( c.  1250  – c.  1050 BCE ), Chinese writing evolved into the form found in cast inscriptions on ritual bronzes made during

1456-480: A turning point, as rulers did not even entertain the pretense of vassalage of the Zhou court, instead proclaiming themselves fully independent kingdoms. A series of states rose to prominence before each falling in turn, and in most of these conflicts Zhou was a minor player. The last Zhou king is traditionally taken to be Nan , who was killed when Qin captured Wangcheng in 256 BC. Duke Wen of Eastern Zhou declared himself to be "King Hui", but his splinter state

1560-435: A vigorous duke would take power from his nobles and centralize the state. Centralization became more necessary as the states began to war among themselves and decentralization encouraged more war. If a duke took power from his nobles, the state would have to be administered bureaucratically by appointed officials. Despite these similarities, there are a number of important differences from medieval Europe. One obvious difference

1664-439: Is a writing system that uses Chinese characters and other symbols to represent the Chinese languages . Chinese characters do not directly represent pronunciation, unlike letters in an alphabet or syllabograms in a syllabary . Rather, the writing system is morphosyllabic : characters are one spoken syllable in length, but generally correspond to morphemes in the language, which may either be independent words, or part of

1768-593: Is first attested during the late Shang dynasty ( c.  1250  – c.  1050 BCE ), but the process of creating characters is thought to have begun centuries earlier during the Late Neolithic and early Bronze Age ( c.  2500–2000 BCE ). After a period of variation and evolution, Chinese characters were standardized under the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). Over the millennia, these characters have evolved into well-developed styles of Chinese calligraphy . As

1872-461: Is not based on an alphabet or syllabary. Most characters can be analyzed as compounds of smaller components, which may be assembled according to several different principles. Characters and components may reflect aspects of meaning or pronunciation. The best known exposition of Chinese character composition is the Shuowen Jiezi , compiled by Xu Shen c.  100 CE . Xu did not have access to

1976-596: Is not technically bound to any single variety; however, it most nearly represents the vocabulary and syntax of Mandarin, by far the most widespread Chinese dialectal family in terms of both geographical area and number of speakers. This form is known as written vernacular Chinese . While some written vernacular Chinese expressions are often ungrammatical or unidiomatic outside of Mandarin, its use permits some communication between speakers of different dialects. This function may be considered analogous to that of linguae francae , such as Latin . For literate speakers, it serves as

2080-450: Is not the eldest and hence not heir to the lineage territory has the potential of becoming a progenitor and fostering a new trunk lineage (Ideally he would strike out to cultivate new lineage territory). [...] According to the Zou commentary, the son of heaven divided land among his feudal lords, his feudal lords divided the land among their dependent families and so forth down the pecking order to

2184-481: Is that the Zhou ruled from walled cities rather than castles. Another was China's distinct class system, which lacked an organized clergy but saw Shang-descent yeomen become masters of ritual and ceremony, as well as astronomy, state affairs and ancient canons, known as ru ( 儒 ). When a dukedom was centralized, these people would find employment as government officials or officers. These hereditary classes were similar to Western knights in status and breeding, but unlike

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2288-589: Is unique among non-Mandarin regional languages in having a written colloquial standard, used in Hong Kong and overseas, with a large number of unofficial characters for words particular to this language. Written Cantonese has become quite popular on the Internet, while Standard Chinese is still normally used in formal written communications. To a lesser degree, Hokkien is used similarly in Taiwan and elsewhere, though it lacks

2392-575: Is written in rows from right to left, usually on signage or banners, though a left to right orientation remains more common. The use of punctuation has also become more common. In general, punctuation occupies the width of a full character, such that text remains visually well-aligned in a grid. Punctuation used in simplified Chinese shows clear influence from that used in Western scripts, though some marks are particular to Asian languages. For example, there are double and single quotation marks (『 』 and 「 」), and

2496-632: The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). However, pairs of letters such as b and p that correspond to a voicing distinction in languages such as French instead represent the aspiration distinction that is more abundant in Mandarin. Pinyin also uses several consonantal letters to represent markedly different sounds from their assignments in other languages. For example, pinyin q and x correspond to sounds similar to English ch and sh , respectively. While pinyin has become

2600-715: The Shuowen Jiezi , were developed earlier; the oldest known mention of them is in the Rites of Zhou , a text from c.  150 BCE . ) The first two principles produce simple characters, known as 文 ( wén ): The remaining four principles produce complex characters historically called 字 ( zì ), though this term is now generally used to refer to all characters, whether simple or complex. Of these four, two construct characters from simpler parts: The last two principles do not produce new written forms; they instead transfer new meanings to existing forms: In contrast to

2704-534: The Song dynasty (960–1279) show the isolated pavilions of scholar hermits in mountainous regions. Under the impetus of scholarly tastes for the simplicity of a rustic life, while previously pavilions were constructed from stone, other materials such as bamboo, grass and wood came into use. Pavilions are often classified according to their shape when viewed from above. Round, square, hexagonal and octagonal pavilions are common, while more unusual designs also exist such as

2808-460: The Spring and Autumn period ( c.  771  – c.  481 BC ), power became increasingly decentralized as the authority of the royal house diminished. The Warring States period ( c.  481  – 221 BC) that followed saw large-scale warfare and consolidation among what had formerly been Zhou client states, until the Zhou were formally extinguished by the state of Qin in 256 BC. The Qin ultimately founded

2912-474: The Western Zhou dynasty ( c.  1046  – 771 BCE) and the Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BCE), a form of writing called bronze script ( 金文 ; jīnwén ). Bronze script characters are less angular than their oracle bone script counterparts. The script became increasingly regularized during the Warring States period (475–221 BCE), settling into what is called 'script of

3016-576: The Yellow River and defeated King Zhou of Shang at the Battle of Muye , marking the beginning of the Zhou dynasty. The Zhou enfeoffed a member of the defeated Shang royal family as the Duke of Song , which was held by descendants of the Shang royal family until its end. This practice was referred to as Two Kings, Three Reverences  [ zh ] . According to Nicholas Bodman, the Zhou appear to have spoken

3120-621: The varieties of Chinese diverged, a situation of diglossia developed, with speakers of mutually unintelligible varieties able to communicate through writing using Literary Chinese . In the early 20th century, Literary Chinese was replaced in large part with written vernacular Chinese , largely corresponding to Standard Chinese , a form based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. Although most other varieties of Chinese are not written, there are traditions of written Cantonese , written Shanghainese and written Hokkien , among others. Written Chinese

3224-428: The "second sage" of Confucianism; Shang Yang and Han Fei , responsible for the development of ancient Chinese Legalism ; and Xunzi , who was arguably the center of ancient Chinese intellectual life during his time. The state theology of the Zhou dynasty used concepts from the Shang dynasty and mostly referred to the Shang god, Di , as Tian , a more distant and unknowable concept, yet one that anyone could utilize,

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3328-507: The Confucian chronicle of the early years of this process, gave the period its name as the Spring and Autumn period . The partition of Jin during the mid-5th century BC is a commonly cited as initiating the subsequent Warring States period . In 403 BC, the Zhou court recognized Han , Zhao , and Wei as fully independent states. In 344, Duke Hui of Wei was the first to claim the title of "king" for himself. Others followed, marking

3432-457: The European equivalent, they were expected to be something of a scholar instead of a warrior. Being appointed, they could move from one state to another. Some would travel from state to state peddling schemes of administrative or military reform. Those who could not find employment would often end up teaching young men who aspired to official status. The most famous of these was Confucius , who taught

3536-620: The Nanhai Pavilion located at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing , which consists of two round pavilions joined together. While the name is commonly believed to be related to its purpose as a place to stay and rest ( Chinese 停留休息, pinyin tínglíuxīuxi ), the fact that the earliest pavilions were used for military and governmental purposes casts doubt on this interpretation. Zhou dynasty The Zhou dynasty ( [ʈʂóʊ] ; Chinese : 周 )

3640-584: The Shang kings. Nobles of the Ji family proclaimed Duke Hui of Eastern Zhou as King Nan's successor after their capital, Chengzhou, fell to Qin forces in 256 BC. Ji Zhao, a son of King Nan, led a resistance against Qin for five years. The dukedom fell in 249 BC. The remaining Ji family ruled Yan and Wei until 209 BC. During Confucius's lifetime in the Spring and Autumn period, Zhou kings had little power, and much administrative responsibility and de-facto political strength

3744-400: The Shang's large scale production of ceremonial bronzes, they developed an extensive system of bronze metalworking that required a large force of tribute labor. Many of its members were Shang, who were sometimes forcibly transported to new Zhou to produce the bronze ritual objects which were then sold and distributed across the lands, symbolizing Zhou legitimacy. Western writers often describe

3848-460: The Shang. Zhou rulers introduced the Mandate of Heaven , which would prove to be among East Asia's most enduring political doctrines. According to the theory, Heaven imposed a mandate to replace the Shang on the Zhou, whose moral superiority justified seizing Shang wealth and territory in order to return good governance to the people. The Mandate of Heaven was presented as a religious compact between

3952-541: The Western Zhou. During the Western Zhou (1045–771 BC), King Wu maintained the old capital for ceremonial purposes but constructed a new one for his palace and administration nearby at Haojing . Although Wu's early death left a young and inexperienced heir, the Duke of Zhou assisted his nephew King Cheng in consolidating royal power. Wary of the Duke of Zhou's increasing power, the "Three Guards", Zhou princes stationed on

4056-574: The Zhou expanded to the north and the northwest at the expense of the Siwa culture . When King You demoted and exiled his Jiang queen in favor of the commoner Bao Si , the disgraced queen's father the Marquis of Shen joined with Zeng and the Quanrong. The Quanrong put an end to the Western Zhou in 771 BC, sacking the Zhou capital at Haojing and killing the last Western Zhou king You . With King You dead,

4160-428: The Zhou people and their supreme god in heaven. The Zhou agreed that since worldly affairs were supposed to align with those of the heavens, the heavens conferred legitimate power on only one person, the Zhou ruler. In return, the ruler was duty-bound to uphold heaven's principles of harmony and honor. Any ruler who failed in this duty, who let instability creep into earthly affairs, or who let his people suffer, would lose

4264-637: The Zhou period as feudal because the Zhou's fengjian system invites comparison with European political systems during the Middle Ages . There were many similarities between the decentralized systems. When the dynasty was established, the conquered land was divided into hereditary fiefs ( 諸侯 , zhūhóu ) that eventually became powerful in their own right. In matters of inheritance, the Zhou dynasty recognized only patrilineal primogeniture as legal. According to Hsi-Sheng Tao, "the Tsung-fa or descent line system has

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4368-550: The Zhou period clearly intoned this caution. The Zhou kings contended that heaven favored their triumph because the last Shang kings had been evil men whose policies brought pain to the people through waste and corruption. After the Zhou came to power, the mandate became a political tool. One of the duties and privileges of the king was to create a royal calendar. This official document defined times for undertaking agricultural activities and celebrating rituals. But unexpected events such as solar eclipses or natural calamities threw

4472-414: The archetypal Chinese writing and forms the basis for most printed forms. In addition, regular script imposes a stroke order , which must be followed in order for the characters to be written correctly. Strictly speaking, this stroke order applies to the clerical, running, and grass scripts as well, but especially in the running and grass scripts, this order is occasionally deviated from. Thus, for instance,

4576-600: The average stroke count per character, were developed by the Chinese government with the stated goal of increasing literacy among the population. During this time, literacy rates did increase rapidly, but some observers instead attribute this to other education reforms and a general increase in the standard of living. Little systematic research has been conducted to support the conclusion that the use of simplified characters has affected literacy rates; studies conducted in China have instead focused on arbitrary statistics, such as quantifying

4680-507: The baron of Li Rong ( 驪戎男 ), after being defeated by Jin , married his daughter Li Ji off. According to historian Li Feng , the term "Rong" during the Western Zhou period was likely used to designate political and military adversaries rather than cultural and ethnic "others". Cultural artifacts of the Western Rong coexisted with Western Zhou bronzes, indicating close bonds between the Rong and

4784-413: The beginning of the dictionary. Some dictionaries include almost one-seventh of all characters in this list. Alternatively, some dictionaries list "difficult" characters under more than one radical, with all but one of those entries redirecting the reader to the "canonical" location of the character according to Kangxi. Other methods of organization exist, often in an attempt to address the shortcomings of

4888-657: The breaks between sentences and phrases determined largely by context and the rhythms implied by patterns of syllables. In the 20th century, the layout used in Western scripts—where text is written in rows from left to right, which are laid out from top to bottom—became predominant in mainland China, where it was mandated by the Chinese government in 1955. Vertical layouts are still used for aesthetic effect, or when space limitations require it, such as on signage or book spines. The government of Taiwan followed suit in 2004 for official documents, but vertical layouts have persisted in some books and newspapers. Less frequently, Chinese

4992-482: The character 木 ( mù ; 'wood') must be written starting with the horizontal stroke, drawn from left to right; next, the vertical stroke, from top to bottom; next, the left diagonal stroke, from top to bottom; and lastly the right diagonal stroke, from top to bottom. Beginning in the mid-20th century, Chinese has primarily been written using either simplified or traditional character forms. Simplified characters, which merge some character forms and reduce

5096-401: The characters themselves generally remain discrete. This is contrasted with fully cursive script , where characters are often rendered unrecognizable by their canonical forms. Regular script is the most widely recognized script, and was considerably influenced by semi-cursive. In regular script, each stroke of each character is clearly drawn out from the others. Regular script is considered

5200-551: The corresponding varieties. The replacement of Chinese characters with a phonetic writing system was first prominently proposed during the May Fourth Movement, partly motivated by a desire to increase the country's literacy rate. The idea gained further support following the victory of the Communists in 1949, who immediately began two parallel programs regarding written Chinese. The first was the development of an alphabet to write

5304-411: The doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven while accommodating important Shang rituals at Wangcheng and Chengzhou . Over time, this decentralized system became strained as the familial relationships between the Zhou kings and the regional dynasties thinned over the generations. Peripheral territories developed local power and prestige on par with that of the Zhou. The conflicts with nomadic tribes from

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5408-548: The earlier oracle bone and bronze scripts . By the dynasty's end, an immature form of clerical script had also emerged. According to Chinese mythology , the Zhou lineage began when Jiang Yuan , a consort of the legendary Emperor Ku , miraculously conceived a child, Qi "the Abandoned One", after stepping into the divine footprint of Shangdi . Qi was a culture hero credited with surviving abandonment by his mother three times, and with greatly improving agriculture, to

5512-406: The earliest forms of Chinese characters, and his analysis is not considered to fully capture the nature of the writing system. Nevertheless, no later work has supplanted the Shuowen Jiezi in terms of breadth, and it is still relevant to etymological research today. According to the Shuowen Jiezi , Chinese characters are developed on six basic principles. (These principles, though popularized by

5616-515: The eastern plain, rose in rebellion against his regency. Even though they garnered the support of independent-minded nobles, Shang partisans, and several Dongyi tribes, the Duke of Zhou quelled the rebellion, and further expanded the Zhou Kingdom into the east. To maintain Zhou authority over its greatly expanded territory and prevent other revolts, he set up the fengjian system. Furthermore, he countered Zhou's crisis of legitimacy by expounding

5720-476: The following characteristics: patrilineal descent, patrilineal succession, patriarchate, sib-exogamy, and primogeniture" The system, also called "extensive stratified patrilineage", was defined by the anthropologist Kwang-chih Chang as "characterized by the fact that the eldest son of each generation formed the main of line descent and political authority, whereas the younger brothers were moved out to establish new lineages of lesser authority. The farther removed,

5824-499: The idea is no longer actively pursued. This change in priorities may have been due in part to pinyin's design being specific to Mandarin, to the exclusion of other dialects. Pinyin uses the Latin alphabet with diacritics to represent the phonology of Standard Chinese. For the most part, pinyin uses phonetic values for letters that reflect their existing pronunciations in Romance languages and

5928-427: The imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BC after conquering all of China . The Zhou period is often considered to be the zenith for the craft of Chinese bronzeware . The latter Zhou period is also famous for the advent of three major Chinese philosophies: Confucianism , Taoism and Legalism . The Zhou dynasty also spans the period when the predominant form of written Chinese became seal script , which evolved from

6032-573: The importance of the Di troops. King Xiang of Zhou also married a Di princess after receiving Di military support. During the Zhou dynasty, the origins of native Chinese philosophy developed, its initial stages of development beginning in the 6th century BC. The greatest Chinese philosophers, those who made the greatest impact on later generations of Chinese, were Confucius , founder of Confucianism , and Laozi , founder of Taoism . Other philosophers of this era were Mozi , founder of Mohism ; Mencius ,

6136-535: The indexing schemes described, thereby shortening the search process. Chinese characters do not reliably indicate their pronunciation. Therefore, many transliteration systems have been developed to write the sounds of different varieties of Chinese. While many use the Latin alphabet , systems using the Cyrillic and Perso-Arabic alphabets have also been designed. Among other purposes, these systems are used by students learning

6240-621: The kinds of strokes located nearest the four corners (hence the name of the method), or the Cangjie method , in which characters are broken down into a set of 24 basic components. Neither the four-corner method nor the Cangjie method requires the user to identify the proper radical, although many strokes or components have alternate forms, which must be memorized in order to use these methods effectively. The availability of computerized Chinese dictionaries now makes it possible to look characters up by any of

6344-495: The lesser the political authority". Ebrey defines the descent-line system as follows: "A great line (ta-tsung) is the line of eldest sons continuing indefinitely from a founding ancestor. A lesser line is the line of younger sons going back no more than five generations. Great lines and lesser lines continually spin off new lesser lines, founded by younger sons". K.E. Brashier writes in his book "Ancestral Memory in Early China" about

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6448-534: The level of standardization seen in Cantonese. However, Taiwan's Ministry of Education has promulgated a standard character set for Hokkien, which is taught in schools and encouraged for use by the general population. Over the history of written Chinese, a variety of media have been used for writing. They include: Since at least the Han dynasty, such media have been used to create hanging scrolls and handscrolls . Because

6552-420: The majority of modern Chinese words contain more than one character, there are at least two measuring sticks for Chinese literacy: the number of characters known, and the number of words known. John DeFrancis , in the introduction to his Advanced Chinese Reader , estimates that a typical Chinese college graduate recognizes 4,000 to 5,000 characters, and 40,000 to 60,000 words. Jerry Norman , in Chinese , places

6656-436: The mandate. Under this system, it was the prerogative of spiritual authority to withdraw support from any wayward ruler and to find another, more worthy one. In this way, the Zhou sky god legitimized regime change. In using this creed, the Zhou rulers had to acknowledge that any group of rulers, even they themselves, could be ousted if they lost the mandate of heaven because of improper practices. The book of odes written during

6760-468: The manner of the Xirong and Rongdi (see Hua–Yi distinction ). Ju's son Liu , however, led his people to prosperity by restoring agriculture and settling them at a place called Bin , which his descendants ruled for generations. Tai later led the clan from Bin to Zhou, an area in the Wei River valley (modern Qishan County ). The duke passed over his two elder sons Taibo and Zhongyong to favor

6864-412: The method of radicals is applied only to the written character, one need not know how to pronounce a character before looking it up; the entry, once located, usually gives the pronunciation. However, it is not always easy to identify which of the various roots of a character is the proper radical. Accordingly, dictionaries often include a list of hard to locate characters, indexed by total stroke count, near

6968-582: The nobility who directed the production of such materials. China's first projects of hydraulic engineering were initiated during the Zhou dynasty, ultimately as a means to aid agricultural irrigation. Sunshu Ao , the Chancellor of Wei who served King Zhuang of Chu , dammed a river to create an enormous irrigation reservoir in modern-day northern Anhui province. For this, Sunshu is credited as China's first hydraulic engineer. The later Wei statesman Ximen Bao , who served Marquis Wen of Wei (445–396 BC),

7072-500: The north and the northwest, variously known as the Xianyun , Guifang , or various "Rong" tribes, such as the Xirong , Shanrong or Quanrong , intensified towards the end of the Western Zhou period. These tribes are recorded as harassing Zhou territory, but at the time the Zhou were expanding northwards, encroaching on their traditional lands—especially the Wei River valley. Archaeologically,

7176-586: The northern Loess Plateau , modern Ningxia and the Yellow River floodplain. The military prowess of Zhou peaked during the 19th year of King Zhao 's reign, when the six armies were wiped out along with King Zhao on a campaign around the Han River . Early Zhou kings were true commanders-in-chief King Zhao was famous for repeated campaigns in the Yangtze region, and died on campaign. Later kings' campaigns were less effective. King Li led 14 armies against barbarians in

7280-513: The number of characters somewhat lower, at 3,000 to 4,000. These counts are complicated by the tangled development of Chinese characters. In many cases, a single character came to have multiple variants . This development was restrained to an extent by the standardization of the seal script during the Qin dynasty, but soon started again. Although the Shuowen Jiezi lists 10,516 characters—9,353 of them unique (some of which may already have been out of use by

7384-477: The number of strokes saved on average in a given text sample. Simplified characters are standard in mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia , while traditional characters are standard in Hong Kong , Macau , Taiwan and some overseas Chinese communities. Simplified forms have also been characterized as being inconsistent. For instance, the traditional 讓 ; ràn ; 'allow' is simplified to 让 , in which

7488-593: The officers who had their dependent kin and the commoners who "each had his apportioned relations and all had their graded precedence"" This type of unilineal descent-group later became the model of the Korean family through the influence of Neo-Confucianism , as Zhu Xi and others advocated its re-establishment in China. There were five peerage ranks below the royal ranks, in descending order with common English translations: gōng 公 "duke", hóu 侯 "marquis", bó 伯 "count", zǐ 子 "viscount", and nán 男 "baron". At times,

7592-453: The opposite view of the Shang's spirituality. The Zhou wanted to increase the number of enlightenment seekers, mystics, and those who would be interested in learning about such things as a way to further distance their people from the Shang-era paradigm and local traditions. Having emerged during the Western Zhou, the li ritual system encoded an understanding of manners as an expression of

7696-433: The others and Chinese society in sometimes unusual ways. The Mohists for instance found little interest in their praise of meritocracy but much acceptance for their mastery of defensive siege warfare; much later, however, their arguments against nepotism were used in favor of establishing the imperial examination system. The Zhou heartland was the Wei River valley; this remained their primary base of power after conquering

7800-501: The others were Confucianism as interpreted by Mencius and others, Legalism , Taoism , Mohism , the utopian communalist Agriculturalism , two strains of the School of Diplomacy , the School of Names , Sun Tzu 's School of the Military , and the School of Naturalists . While only the first three of these would receive imperial patronage in later dynasties, doctrines from each influenced

7904-531: The phonetic on the right side is reduced from 17 strokes to 3, and the ⾔   'SPEECH' radical on the left also being simplified. However, the same phonetic component is not reduced in simplified characters such as 壤 ; rǎng ; 'soil' and 齉 ; nàng ; 'snuffle'—these characters are relatively uncommon, and would therefore represent a negligible stroke reduction. Other simplified forms derive from long-standing calligraphic abbreviations, as with 万 ; wàn ; 'ten thousand', which has

8008-563: The point where he was granted lordship over Tai , the surname Ji , and the title Houji "Lord of Millet ", by the Emperor Shun . He even received sacrifice as a harvest god . The term Houji was probably a hereditary title attached to a lineage. Buzhu —Qi's son, or rather that of the Houji —is said to have abandoned his position as Agrarian Master ( 農師 ; Nóngshī ) in old age and either he or his son Ju abandoned their tradition, living in

8112-483: The political system created by the Zhou royal house survived in some form for several additional centuries. A date of 1046 BC for the Zhou's establishment is supported by the Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project and David Pankenier, but David Nivison and Edward L. Shaughnessy date the establishment to 1045 BC. The latter Eastern Zhou period is itself roughly subdivided into two parts. During

8216-400: The popular conception of written Chinese as ideographic , the vast majority of characters—about 95% of those in the Shuowen Jiezi —either reflect elements of pronunciation, or are logical aggregates. In fact, some phonetic complexes were originally simple pictographs that were later augmented by the addition of a semantic root. An example is 炷 ; zhù ; 'lampwick', now archaic, which

8320-503: The predominant form of written Chinese was Literary Chinese , which had vocabulary and syntax rooted in the language of the Chinese classics , as spoken around the time of Confucius ( c.  500 BCE ). Over time, Literary Chinese acquired some elements of grammar and vocabulary from various varieties of vernacular Chinese that had since diverged. By the 20th century, Literary Chinese was distinctly different from any spoken vernacular, and had to be learned separately. Once learned, it

8424-506: The radical method, but are less common. For instance, it is common for a dictionary ordered principally by the Kangxi radicals to have an auxiliary index by pronunciation, expressed typically in either pinyin or bopomofo . This index points to the page in the main dictionary where the desired character can be found. Other methods use only the structure of the characters, such as the four-corner method , in which characters are indexed according to

8528-448: The reign of the Shang king Wu Ding ( c.  1250  – c.  1192 BCE ). These inscriptions were made primarily on ox scapulae and turtle shells in order to record the results of divinations conducted by the Shang royal family. Characters posing a question were first carved into the bones. The question's answer was then divined by heating the bones over a fire and interpreting

8632-586: The resulting cracks that formed. The interpretation was then carved into the same oracle bone . In 2003, 11 isolated symbols carved on tortoise shells were found at the Jiahu archaeological site in Henan —with some bearing a striking resemblance to certain modern characters, such as 目 ( mù ; 'eye'). The Jiahu site dates from c.  6600 BCE , predating the earliest attested Chinese writing by more than 5,000 years. Garman Harbottle, who had headed

8736-413: The ruling house's mandate into question. Since rulers claimed that their authority came from heaven, the Zhou made great efforts to gain accurate knowledge of the stars and to perfect the astronomical system on which they based their calendar. Zhou legitimacy also arose indirectly from Shang material culture through the use of bronze ritual vessels, statues , ornaments, and weapons. As the Zhou emulated

8840-511: The seal script as the standard throughout China, which had been recently united under the imperial Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE). The initial adaptation of seal into clerical script can be attributed to scribes in the state of Qin working prior to the wars of unification. Clerical script forms generally have a "flat" appearance, being wider than their seal script equivalents. In the semi-cursive script that evolved from clerical script, character elements begin to run into each other, though

8944-428: The six states' ( 六国文字 ; liùguó wénzì ), that Xu Shen used as source material in the Shuowen Jiezi . These characters were later embellished and stylized to yield the seal script , which represents the oldest form of Chinese characters still in modern use. They are used principally for signature seals , or chops, which are often used in place of a signature for Chinese documents and artwork. Li Si promulgated

9048-452: The social hierarchy, ethics, and regulation concerning material life; the corresponding social practices became idealized within Confucian ideology. The system was canonized in the Book of Rites , Rites of Zhou , and Etiquette and Ceremonial compiled during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), thus becoming the heart of the Chinese imperial ideology. While the system

9152-580: The sounds of Mandarin, the variety spoken by around two-thirds of the Chinese population. The other program investigated the simplification of the standard character forms. Initially, character simplification was not competing with the idea of a phonetic script; rather, simplification was intended to make the transition to a fully phonetic writing system easier. By 1958, official priorities had shifted towards character simplification. The Hanyu Pinyin (or simply 'pinyin') alphabet had been developed, but plans to replace Chinese characters with it were deferred, and

9256-480: The south, but failed to achieve any victory. King Xuan fought the Quanrong nomads in vain. King You was killed by the Quanrong when Haojing was sacked. Although chariots had been introduced to China during the Shang dynasty from Central Asia, the Zhou period saw the first major use of chariots in battle. Recent archaeological finds demonstrate similarities between horse burials of the Shang and Zhou dynasties with

9360-555: The steppe populations in the west, such as the Saka and Wusun . Other possible cultural influences resulting from contact with these Iranic people of Central Asia in this period may include fighting styles, head-and-hooves burials, art motifs and myths. The Zhou army also included "barbarian" troops such as the Di people . King Hui of Zhou married a princess of the Red Di as a sign of appreciation for

9464-481: The surroundings. During the Sui (581–618) and Tang (618–907) dynasties wealthy officials and scholars incorporated pavilions into their personal gardens. During this period the function of pavilions shifted from the practical to the aesthetic . Pavilions provided a place to sit and enjoy the scenery, and they also became a part of the scenery itself, being attractive structures. Brush-and-ink landscape scrolls of

9568-656: The time it was compiled) plus 1,163 graphic variants—the Jiyun of the Northern Song dynasty , compiled less than a thousand years later in 1039, contains 53,525 characters, most of them graphic variants. Written Chinese is not based on an alphabet or syllabary, so Chinese dictionaries, as well as dictionaries that define Chinese characters in other languages, cannot easily be alphabetized or otherwise lexically ordered, as English dictionaries are. The need to arrange Chinese characters in order to permit efficient lookup has given rise to

9672-547: The traditional form of 萬 . Chinese characters have always been used to represent individual spoken syllables. While writing was being invented in the Yellow River valley, words in spoken Chinese were largely monosyllabic, and each written character corresponded to a monosyllabic word. Spoken Chinese varieties have since acquired much more polysyllabic vocabulary, usually compound words composed of morphemes corresponding to older monosyllabic words For over two thousand years,

9776-404: The tsung-fa system of patrilineal primogeniture: "The greater lineage, if it has survived, is the direct succession from father to eldest son and is not defined via the collateral shifts of the lesser lineages. In discussions that demarcate between trunk and collateral lines, the former is called a zong and the latter a zu, whereas the whole lineage is dubbed the shi. [...] On one hand, every son who

9880-484: The west of the Shang, which the Shang regarded as tributaries. For example, the philosopher Mencius (372–289 BC) acknowledged that King Wen of Zhou had ancestry from among the Xirong, as King Wen's descendants, the Zhou kings, claimed descent from Hou Ji , a legendary culture hero possibly related to the Xirong through his mother Jiang Yuan . Additionally, the late 4th-century BC Zuo Zhuan comments that

9984-509: The year 1700); these are sometimes called the Kangxi radicals. The radicals are ordered first by stroke count (that is, the number of strokes required to write the radical); within a given stroke count, the radicals also have a prescribed order. Every Chinese character falls (sometimes arbitrarily or incorrectly) under the heading of exactly one of these 214 radicals. In many cases, the radicals are themselves characters, which naturally come first under their own heading. All other characters under

10088-609: The younger Jili , a warrior in his own right. As a vassal of the Shang kings Wu Yi and Wen Ding , Jili went to conquer several Xirong tribes before being treacherously killed by Shang forces. Taibo and Zhongyong had supposedly already fled to the Yangtze delta, where they established the state of Wu among the tribes there. Jili's son Wen bribed his way out of imprisonment and moved the Zhou capital to Feng (present-day Xi'an ). Around 1046 BC, Wen's son Wu and his ally Jiang Ziya led an army of 45,000 men and 300 chariots across

10192-435: Was a royal dynasty of China that existed for 789 years from c.  1046 BC until 256 BC, the longest of all dynasties in Chinese history . During the Western Zhou period ( c.  1046  – 771 BC), the royal house, surnamed Ji , had military control over ancient China . Even as Zhou suzerainty became increasingly ceremonial over the following Eastern Zhou period (771–256 BC),

10296-400: Was a common medium for communication between people speaking different dialects, many of which were mutually unintelligible by the end of the first millennium CE. Varieties of Chinese vary in pronunciation, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary and grammar. Modern written Chinese, which replaced Classical Chinese as the written standard as an indirect result of the 1919 May Fourth Movement ,

10400-509: Was fully disassembled by 249. Qin's wars of unification concluded in 221 BC with Qin Shi Huang 's annexation of Qi . The Eastern Zhou is also remembered as the golden age of Chinese philosophy: the Hundred Schools of Thought which flourished as rival lords patronized itinerant scholars is led by the example of Qi's Jixia Academy . The Nine Schools of Thought which came to dominate

10504-499: Was initially a respected body of concrete regulations, the fragmentation of the Western Zhou period led the ritual to drift towards moralization and formalization in regard to: The rulers of the Zhou dynasty were titled wang ( 王 ), which was also the term used by the Shang rulers, normally translated into English as 'king'. In addition to these rulers, King Wu's immediate ancestors— Danfu , Jili , and Wen —are also referred to as "Kings of Zhou", despite having been nominal vassals of

10608-423: Was originally a pictograph of a lamp stand 主 , a character that is now pronounced zhǔ and means 'host', or the character 火 ( huǒ ; 'fire') was added to indicate that the meaning is fire related. Chinese characters are written to fit into a square, even when composed of two simpler forms written side-by-side or top-to-bottom. In such cases, each form is compressed to fit the entire character into

10712-527: Was the first hydraulic engineer of China to have created a large irrigation canal system. As the main focus of his grandiose project, his canal work eventually diverted the waters of the entire Zhang River to a spot further up the Yellow River . The early Western Zhou supported a strong army, split into two major units: "the Six Armies of the west" and "the Eight Armies of Chengzhou". The armies campaigned in

10816-465: Was wielded by rulers of smaller domains and local community leaders. In traditional Chinese astrology, Zhou is represented by two stars, Eta Capricorni ( 週一 ; Zhōu yī ; 'first star of Zhou') and 21 Capricorni ( 週二 ; Zhōu'èr ; 'second star of Zhou'), in "Twelve States" asterism. Zhou is also represented by the star Beta Serpentis in asterism "Right Wall", Heavenly Market enclosure . Written Chinese Written Chinese

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