Ming victory
29-480: A fleet crew of over 27,000, including non-combatant personnel The Ming–Kotte War ( Chinese : 明-錫蘭山國戰爭 ) was a military conflict between the expeditionary forces of Ming China and the Sinhalese Kotte Kingdom in the southern territories of Sri Lanka . The conflict happened when Ming China's treasure fleet arrived at Sri Lanka in 1410 or 1411. It resulted in the overthrow of King Alakeshvara and
58-584: A retronym applied to non-simplified character sets in the wake of widespread use of simplified characters. Traditional characters are commonly used in Taiwan , Hong Kong , and Macau , as well as in most overseas Chinese communities outside of Southeast Asia. As for non-Chinese languages written using Chinese characters, Japanese kanji include many simplified characters known as shinjitai standardized after World War II, sometimes distinct from their simplified Chinese counterparts . Korean hanja , still used to
87-503: A certain extent in South Korea , remain virtually identical to traditional characters, with variations between the two forms largely stylistic. There has historically been a debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters . Because the simplifications are fairly systematic, it is possible to convert computer-encoded characters between the two sets, with the main issue being ambiguities in simplified representations resulting from
116-532: A contingent of 2,000 Chinese troops traveled overland into Kotte, because Alakeshvara had lured them into his territory. Alakeshvara cut off Zheng and his troops from the Chinese treasure fleet anchored at Colombo . He planned to launch a surprise attack on the fleet. In response, Zheng and his contingent of troops invaded Kotte and conquered its capital. They captured Alakeshvara with his family and principal officials. For six days hereafter, they fought their way back to
145-850: Is 産 (also the accepted form in Japan and Korea), while in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan the accepted form is 產 (also the accepted form in Vietnamese chữ Nôm ). The PRC tends to print material intended for people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, and overseas Chinese in traditional characters. For example, versions of the People's Daily are printed in traditional characters, and both People's Daily and Xinhua have traditional character versions of their website available, using Big5 encoding. Mainland companies selling products in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan use traditional characters in order to communicate with consumers;
174-483: The Chinese Commercial News , World News , and United Daily News all use traditional characters, as do some Hong Kong–based magazines such as Yazhou Zhoukan . The Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified characters. DVDs are usually subtitled using traditional characters, influenced by media from Taiwan as well as by the two countries sharing the same DVD region , 3. With most having immigrated to
203-622: The Shanghainese -language character U+20C8E 𠲎 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-20C8E —a composition of 伐 with the ⼝ 'MOUTH' radical—used instead of the Standard Chinese 嗎 ; 吗 . Typefaces often use the initialism TC to signify the use of traditional Chinese characters, as well as SC for simplified Chinese characters . In addition, the Noto, Italy family of typefaces, for example, also provides separate fonts for
232-534: The Chinese admiral adopted a hostile attitude to Alakeshvara and espoused the cause of this prince. During the third Ming treasure voyage, the Chinese fleet returned to the Kotte Kingdom. This time, the Chinese came to depose Alakeshvara by military force. Dreyer (2007) states that the confrontation against Alakeshvara in Sri Lanka most likely happened during the outward journey of the Chinese fleet in 1410, rather than
261-482: The Ming court, nominated by the Ming emperor, and installed with the backing of Zheng and his fleet. Both economic and diplomatic relations between China and Sri Lanka improved, with Parakramavahu VI as the ruler in Sri Lanka. The Chinese treasure fleet experienced no hostilities during visits to Sri Lanka on subsequent voyages . On 13 September 1411, the emperor granted both rewards and promotions for those who participated in
290-547: The People's Republic of China, traditional Chinese characters are standardised according to the Table of Comparison between Standard, Traditional and Variant Chinese Characters . Dictionaries published in mainland China generally show both simplified and their traditional counterparts. There are differences between the accepted traditional forms in mainland China and elsewhere, for example the accepted traditional form of 产 in mainland China
319-576: The Sinhalese captives to the Yongle Emperor , who eventually decided to free Alakeshvara and return him to Sri Lanka. The Chinese were allied with Parakramabahu VI and dethroned Alakeshvara in favor of him. The Yongle Emperor requested from the Ministry of Rites to recommend someone to serve as the new king of Kotte. As documented in Chinese records, Parakramabahu VI was elected by the Sinhalese present at
SECTION 10
#1732858170768348-591: The Sinhalese confrontation after the joint recommendation of the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Rites. Traditional Chinese characters Traditional Chinese characters are a standard set of Chinese character forms used to write Chinese languages . In Taiwan , the set of traditional characters is regulated by the Ministry of Education and standardized in the Standard Form of National Characters . These forms were predominant in written Chinese until
377-521: The United States during the second half of the 19th century, Chinese Americans have long used traditional characters. When not providing both, US public notices and signs in Chinese are generally written in traditional characters, more often than in simplified characters. In the past, traditional Chinese was most often encoded on computers using the Big5 standard, which favored traditional characters. However,
406-618: The ascension of Parakramabahu VI . The kingdoms of Kotte and Jaffna had been in wars against each other. In these wars, Alakeshvara of the Alagakkonara family gained prestige due to his military successes. He had the de facto rule over Kotte under a puppet king from the previous royal dynasty and eventually usurped the throne of the kingdom. During the Ming treasure voyages , a large Chinese fleet, led by Admiral Zheng He , arrived into local waters to establish Chinese control and stability of
435-551: The fleet. The Sinhalese army hastily returned and surrounded the capital, but was repeatedly defeated in battle by the invading Chinese troops. Straight-away, their dens and hideouts we ravaged, And made captive that entire country, Bringing back to our august capital, Their women, children, families and retainers, leaving not one, Cleaning out in a single sweep those noxious pests, as if winnowing chaff from grain... These insignificant worms, deserving to die ten thousand times over, trembling in fear... Did not even merit
464-457: The homeward journey in 1411, but he also notes that most authorities think that the confrontation happened during the homeward journey in 1411. On their return to Sri Lanka, the Chinese were overbearing and contemptuous of the Sinhalese, whom they considered to be rude, disrespectful, and hostile. They also resented that the Sinhalese were committing hostilities towards neighboring countries that had diplomatic relations with Ming China. Zheng He and
493-493: The inverse is equally true as well. In digital media, many cultural phenomena imported from Hong Kong and Taiwan into mainland China, such as music videos, karaoke videos, subtitled movies, and subtitled dramas, use traditional Chinese characters. In Hong Kong and Macau , traditional characters were retained during the colonial period, while the mainland adopted simplified characters. Simplified characters are contemporaneously used to accommodate immigrants and tourists, often from
522-725: The mainland. The increasing use of simplified characters has led to concern among residents regarding protecting what they see as their local heritage. Taiwan has never adopted simplified characters. The use of simplified characters in government documents and educational settings is discouraged by the government of Taiwan. Nevertheless, with sufficient context simplified characters are likely to be successfully read by those used to traditional characters, especially given some previous exposure. Many simplified characters were previously variants that had long been in some use, with systematic stroke simplifications used in folk handwriting since antiquity. Traditional characters were recognized as
551-682: The majority of Chinese text in mainland China are simplified characters , there is no legislation prohibiting the use of traditional Chinese characters, and often traditional Chinese characters remain in use for stylistic and commercial purposes, such as in shopfront displays and advertising. Traditional Chinese characters remain ubiquitous on buildings that predate the promulgation of the current simplification scheme, such as former government buildings, religious buildings, educational institutions, and historical monuments. Traditional Chinese characters continue to be used for ceremonial, cultural, scholarly/academic research, and artistic/decorative purposes. In
580-480: The maritime routes in the waters around Sri Lanka and southern India . Alakeshvara posed a threat to Chinese trade by committing piracy and hostilities in the local waters. Due to Alakeshvara's hostilities against the Chinese presence in Sri Lanka during the first Ming treasure voyage, Zheng decided to leave the island for other destinations. It is probable that the then-prince Parakramabahu VI or others acting on his behalf solicited aid from Zheng during this time, so
609-975: The merging of previously distinct character forms. Many Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between these character sets. Traditional characters are known by different names throughout the Chinese-speaking world. The government of Taiwan officially refers to traditional Chinese characters as 正體字 ; 正体字 ; zhèngtǐzì ; 'orthodox characters'. This term is also used outside Taiwan to distinguish standard characters, including both simplified, and traditional, from other variants and idiomatic characters . Users of traditional characters elsewhere, as well as those using simplified characters, call traditional characters 繁體字 ; 繁体字 ; fántǐzì ; 'complex characters', 老字 ; lǎozì ; 'old characters', or 全體字 ; 全体字 ; quántǐzì ; 'full characters' to distinguish them from simplified characters. Some argue that since traditional characters are often
SECTION 20
#1732858170768638-448: The middle of the 20th century, when various countries that use Chinese characters began standardizing simplified sets of characters, often with characters that existed before as well-known variants of the predominant forms. Simplified characters as codified by the People's Republic of China are predominantly used in mainland China , Malaysia, and Singapore. "Traditional" as such is
667-665: The official script in Singapore until 1969, when the government officially adopted Simplified characters. Traditional characters still are widely used in contexts such as in baby and corporation names, advertisements, decorations, official documents and in newspapers. The Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative in Southeast Asia regarding simplification. Although major public universities teach in simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications such as
696-700: The original standard forms, they should not be called 'complex'. Conversely, there is a common objection to the description of traditional characters as 'standard', due to them not being used by a large population of Chinese speakers. Additionally, as the process of Chinese character creation often made many characters more elaborate over time, there is sometimes a hesitation to characterize them as 'traditional'. Some people refer to traditional characters as 'proper characters' ( 正字 ; zhèngzì or 正寫 ; zhèngxiě ) and to simplified characters as 簡筆字 ; 简笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'simplified-stroke characters' or 減筆字 ; 减笔字 ; jiǎnbǐzì ; 'reduced-stroke characters', as
725-477: The punishment of Heaven. Thus the august emperor spared their lives, And they humbly kowtowed, making crude sounds and Praising the sage-like virtue of the imperial Ming ruler. — Yang Rong (1515) about the confrontation in Sri Lanka The conflict resulted in the overthrow of King Alakeshvara of the Alagakkonara family. After their voyage, Zheng He returned to Nanjing on 6 July 1411 and presented
754-627: The traditional character set used in Taiwan ( TC ) and the set used in Hong Kong ( HK ). Most Chinese-language webpages now use Unicode for their text. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends the use of the language tag zh-Hant to specify webpage content written with traditional characters. In the Japanese writing system , kyujitai are traditional forms, which were simplified to create shinjitai for standardized Japanese use following World War II. Kyūjitai are mostly congruent with
783-970: The traditional characters in Chinese, save for minor stylistic variation. Characters that are not included in the jōyō kanji list are generally recommended to be printed in their traditional forms, with a few exceptions. Additionally, there are kokuji , which are kanji wholly created in Japan, rather than originally being borrowed from China. In the Korean writing system , hanja —replaced almost entirely by hangul in South Korea and totally replaced in North Korea —are mostly identical with their traditional counterparts, save minor stylistic variations. As with Japanese, there are autochthonous hanja, known as gukja . Traditional Chinese characters are also used by non-Chinese ethnic groups. The Maniq people living in Thailand and Malaysia use Chinese characters to write
812-509: The ubiquitous Unicode standard gives equal weight to simplified and traditional Chinese characters, and has become by far the most popular encoding for Chinese-language text. There are various input method editors (IMEs) available for the input of Chinese characters . Many characters, often dialectical variants, are encoded in Unicode but cannot be inputted using certain IMEs, with one example being
841-571: The words for simplified and reduced are homophonous in Standard Chinese , both pronounced as jiǎn . The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han dynasty c. 200 BCE , with the sets of forms and norms more or less stable since the Southern and Northern dynasties period c. the 5th century . Although
#767232