Eastward spread of Western learning
96-644: The Doubting Antiquity School or Yigupai ( Chinese : 疑古派 ; pinyin : Yígǔpài ; Wade–Giles : I-ku-p'ai ) refers to a group of scholars and writers in Chinese academia , starting during the New Culture Movement (mid-1910s to 1920s), who applied a critical historiographical approach to Chinese historical sources. They put forward theories doubting the authenticity of texts and narratives that, in traditional Chinese historiography, were often accepted as authentic. Hu Shih studied in
192-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
288-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
384-503: A 5% increase from the prior year. Anyang's primary sector comprised 9.7% of the city's GDP, the secondary sector comprised 43.7%, and the tertiary sector comprised 46.6%. The per capita disposable income in Anyang totaled 27,365 RMB as of 2021, an increase of 7.2% from 2020. The per capita disposable income of Anyang's urban residents was 37,464 RMB, a 6% annual increase, and the per capita disposable income of rural residents
480-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
576-556: A January 24-hour average of −0.8 °C (30.6 °F). Summers are hot and humid, with July averaging 27.2 °C (81.0 °F). A majority of the annual precipitation of 552 mm (21.7 in) falls in July and August alone, and the annual mean temperature is 14.28 °C (57.7 °F). With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 43% in July to 58% in May, the city receives 2,225 hours of bright sunshine annually, with April to June
672-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
768-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
864-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
960-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
1056-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
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#17327659157851152-676: A more specific way, the Doubting Antiquity School was represented by Gushibian 古史辨 ( Debates on Ancient History ), the scholarly movement led by Gu Jiegang, centered on the magazine of the same name. Seven issues of the magazine, 1926–1941, contain about 350 essays. Major critics of the Doubting Antiquity School were historians associated with the Critical Review , a journal founded in 1922. The historians included Liu Yizheng , Liang Qichao , Wang Guowei , Chen Yinque , and Miao Fenglin [ zh ] . In
1248-533: A number of world-class and national historical sites. At the end of 1986, it was recognized as a national historical and cultural city. Xiaonanhai, on the far western edge of the city, was home to prehistoric cavemen during the Stone Age . Over 7,000 artifacts (including stone tools and animal bone fossils) have been unearthed here, representing what has been dubbed the Xiaonanhai culture. Around 2000 BC,
1344-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
1440-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
1536-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
1632-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
1728-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
1824-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
1920-528: Is a prefecture-level city in Henan , China. Geographical coordinates are 35° 41'~ 36° 21' north latitude and 113° 38'~ 114° 59' east longitude. The northernmost city in Henan, Anyang borders Puyang to the east, Hebi and Xinxiang to the south, and the provinces of Shanxi and Hebei to its west and north respectively. Anyang had a total population of 5,477,614 as of the 2020 census , 2,675,523 of whom lived in
2016-655: Is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of
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#17327659157852112-592: Is an ancient city with a history of over 3,000 years and is one of the Eight Ancient Capitals of China , and also one of the best preserved. It is one of the key birthplaces of Chinese ancient culture. At the same time, it is a national historical and cultural city, the hometown of Oracle, the birthplace of the Book of Changes, the birthplace of the spirit of the Red Flag Canal, and the location of
2208-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
2304-509: Is located in the junction area of Anyang, Puyang and Hebi cities, covering an area of approximately 2,339 acres. The total project investment is 1.366 billion yuan. It is positioned as a domestic civil regional airport with a flight area level of 4C. The opening of the airport will directly serve the air travel of 11.6 million people in the three cities in northern Henan, and radiate about 60 million people within 150 kilometers of eastern Shanxi, southern Hebei and southwestern Shandong. Anyang city
2400-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
2496-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate
2592-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
2688-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
2784-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
2880-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
2976-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
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3072-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
3168-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
3264-449: The 2020 Chinese Census , Anyang has a population of 5.48 million people. The overwhelming majority of the city's population is ethnically Han Chinese , with ethnic minorities constituting a population of around 10,000 people. 43 different ethnic minorities live in the city, with prominent ethnic minority communities including the Hui , Mongols , Manchus , Zhuang , Miao , Tibetans , and
3360-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
3456-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
3552-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
3648-540: The Yi . Anyang is a largely industrial city, with major industries including the production of metals such as iron and steel , coal coking , and clothing production. Major Chinese steel producer Shagang Group has operations in Anyang. Major mineral reserves in Anyang include dolomite , potassium -bearing shale , nepheline syenite , quartzite , limestone , and clay . The city's total gross domestic product (GDP) totaled 243.55 billion renminbi (RMB) as of 2021,
3744-556: The Zhou in 1046 BC. Anyang was made the county seat of Anyang County c. 607 CE and it has held that position ever since. Anyang's Tangyin County was the ancient seat of Yue Village, the birthplace of the famous Song dynasty general, Yue Fei . This was also the historic home of Zhou Tong , Yue's military arts tutor (though fictional sources place him in Shaanxi ). The town
3840-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
3936-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
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4032-759: The "First Ancient Buddhist Temple in Henan", and 10,000-Buddha Ravine, as well as unique Wenfeng Pagoda, Xiuding Temple Pagoda and Mingfu Temple Pagoda. The city has three large museums: the Anyang Museum, the National Museum of Chinese Writing, and the Yinxu Museum on the ruins and royal tombs of the Shang dynasty. Anyang also has beautiful natural scenery—the Taihang Linlu Hill Scenic Area on the 400-km Taihang Mountains and
4128-717: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Anyang Anyang ( simplified Chinese : 安阳 ; traditional Chinese : 安陽 ; [án.jǎŋ] )
4224-487: The Doubting Antiquity School are now disproved or supported based on archaeological findings undermining or supporting the authenticity of the historical texts that the Doubting Antiquity School posited as inauthentic. Joseph Needham wrote in 1954 that many scholars doubted that classic texts such as Sima Qian 's Records of the Grand Historian contained accurate information about such distant history, including
4320-609: The Doubting Antiquity School were historians from the Historiography and Geography School (史地學派) of the National Central University in Nanjing and the academics associated with the academic journal Critical Review , or termed the Xueheng School . The major opposition included Chu Coching, Liu Yizheng, Liang Qichao, Wang Guowei, Chen Yinque, and Miao Fenglin. These historians claimed that
4416-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
4512-531: The West and was deeply influenced by Western thought. He then argued in Peking University that Chinese written history was not credible before Eastern Zhou without critical examination. This view was accepted by his students Fu Sinian and especially Gu Jiegang , who further advanced "our traditional knowledge of Chinese antiquity was built up in successive strata, but in an order exactly the reverse of
4608-446: The actual occurrence." Most of their criticism concerns the authenticity of pre-Qin texts and deals with questions put forward by the past dynastic writers, as well as other subjects. Hu Shih initiated the critical movement, with his pupil Gu Jiegang and his friend Qian Xuantong continuing this school of thought. Their writings also had influence on many western sinologists , including Bernhard Karlgren and Samuel Griffith . In
4704-516: The ancient site of Yangshao Village in 1921 and the excavation of the ancient site of Xiyin Village in 1926 made people seek its relationship with the early history of China. Some also use fashionable sociological and historical theories to explain the origin of ancient Chinese history and ancient history and culture. Some Western and Japanese scholars also use archaeology in the service of their political intentions and racial prejudice. At this time,
4800-418: The atmosphere of critical re-evaluation of traditional culture and learnings of the early 20th century, the Doubting Antiquity School found great influence. Some of their conjectures cast doubt on the authenticity of historical narratives about Chinese antiquity as presented in traditional texts that have been accepted as authentic for millennia. It is these conjectures that gained the greatest popular interest in
4896-514: The banks of the Huan River . The city, known as Yin , was the first stable capital in Chinese history and from that point on the dynasty that founded it would also become known as the Yin dynasty . The capital served 12 kings in 8 generations including Wu Ding , under whom the dynasty reached the zenith of its power, until it was wiped out along with the dynasty that was founded by King Wu of
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#17327659157854992-498: The built-up (or metro) area made of four urban districts and Anyang and Tangyin counties, now largely agglomerated with the city proper. Anyang is the location of the ancient city of Yin , which was the capital of the Shang dynasty and the first stable capital of China.As the ancient capital of the Seven Dynasties and one of the birthplaces of Chinese civilization, Anyang is rich in historical and cultural resources and has
5088-633: The culture of the West was very clamorous, and its influence was widespread. The excavation of Yin Ruins in Anyang in 1928 brought the understanding and discussion of ancient history into a new stage. The Yin Ruins have oracle bone inscriptions and their important content to confirm the lineage of the Shang Dynasty's ancestors and kings recorded in "Records of the Grand Historian Yin Benji", as well as exquisite bronze wares. In 1929,
5184-548: The deep historical-mindedness of the Chinese." In 1993, scholar Li Xueqin made an influential speech in which he called for historians to "leave the 'Doubting Antiquity' period", which became the manifesto of the "Believing Antiquity" movement (although Li himself favoured a third historiographical approach of "Interpreting Antiquity"). Scholars of the "Believing Antiquity" viewpoint argue that archaeological discoveries of recent decades have generally substantiated Chinese traditional accounts rather than contradicted them, rendering
5280-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
5376-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
5472-530: The dissolution of Pingyuan. Anyang spans a total area of 7,355 square kilometres (2,840 sq mi). The city's elevation is generally higher in the west, with the foothills of the Taihang Mountains running through the area, and lower in the east, which comprises part of the North China Plain . Anyang has a four-season, monsoon -influenced humid continental climate / semi-arid climate ( Köppen Dwa/BSk ). Winters are cold and very dry, with
5568-649: The doubts of the Doubting Antiquity School largely obsolete. For instance, manuscripts discovered in tombs have proved the authenticity of several texts long thought to be later forgeries, including the Wenzi , the Kongzi Jiayu , the Heguanzi , parts of the Yi Zhou Shu , and many others. The Doubting Antiquity School's opinion and claims were not universally accepted by other schools in 1920s. Major critics of
5664-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
5760-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
5856-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
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#17327659157855952-618: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
6048-561: The grand 1,500-km Red Flag Canal . Changchun Temple, a Taoist shrine, was built on the hillside of the mountains surrounding it during the Tang dynasty . It was officially opened to the public on 1 May 2014, after a period of cautious restoration. Tianning Si (Mansion Temple) was established during the Zhou dynasty , and has recently been restored by the Protection and Research Institute of Ancient Architecture of Anyang City, and opened to
6144-661: The grounds of the Tianning Temple is believed to have been constructed in 925 and is known, from inscriptions concerning the reconstruction of the temple, to have been in place by 952. The current pagoda was constructed during the Ming dynasty and received its current name during the Qing dynasty due to its proximity to the Confucian temple. The five-story dark red brick octagonal tower is 38.65m high and is, unusually, larger at
6240-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
6336-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
6432-407: The legendary sage-kings Zhuanxu and Emperor Ku are said to have established their capitals in the area around modern Anyang from where they ruled their kingdoms. Today their mausoleums are situated in Sanyang village south of Neihuang County. At the beginning of the 14th century BC, King Pangeng of the Shang dynasty established his capital 2 km (1.2 mi) north of the modern city on
6528-492: The many hypotheses of Doubting Antiquity School were radical and nationalist revisionisms influenced by the May Fourth Movement and New Culture Movement , which aimed to abolish Chinese tradition. And some claims of the Doubting Antiquity School, such as Sino-Babylonianism , were based on assumption without any archaeological evidence. Chinese writer Lu Xun dismissed Doubting Antiquity School and their publication Gushibian (古史辨, Debates on Ancient History ). He argued that
6624-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
6720-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
6816-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
6912-434: The non-academic media, such as: Nevertheless, the Doubting Antiquity School's more important legacy was the critical approach to sources they pioneered. The central tenet of their approach was that the history of Chinese antiquity was created iteratively. Ancient texts have been repeatedly edited, reorganised, tampered with or even completely fabricated, so the historical narrative of antiquity as presented in traditional texts
7008-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
7104-601: The public. The main structures within the temple compound include: the gate house, the three-room (8.4 m x 14 m) Hall of the Heavenly King with hanging-eaves over the gables rebuilt in 2002, the slightly larger Precious Hall of the Great Hero (17.8 m x 11.65 m) with single-eave gabled roof originally from the Qing dynasty and rebuilt in 2001, and the Wenfeng Pagoda . Wenfeng Ta (Literature Peak Pagoda) on
7200-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
7296-419: The real intention behind Doubting Antiquity School was to aggressively demolish the Chinese imperial legacy, so much so that they would reject real historiography. Much archaeological evidence discovered in 20th century, such as Yinxu and Taosi , proved some of the Doubting Antiquity School's claims to be incorrect. Zhang Guoan of Beijing Normal University believes the existence of Doubting Antiquity School
7392-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
7488-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
7584-517: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
7680-635: The sixth excavation of Yin Ruins in Anyang discovered a piece of painted pottery, which further aroused the thinking and discussion of the relationship between Yangshao and Xiaotun. It can be said that modern Chinese archaeology was developed in order to seek the roots of Chinese culture under the Doubting Antiquity School about the authenticity of historical documents and the stimulation of "Western Origin". Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
7776-511: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
7872-537: The sunniest period. Extreme temperatures have ranged from −21.7 °C (−7 °F) to 43.2 °C (110 °F). There are more northerly winds in winter, while southerly winds dominate in summer. The prefecture-level city of Anyang administers 10 county-level administrative divisions, including 4 districts , 1 county-level city , and 4 counties . These, in turn, administer 46 subdistricts , 66 towns , and 23 townships , which then administer 302 residential communities and 2,979 administrative villages . Per
7968-527: The thirty kings of the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–c. 1046 BC) listed by Sima. Many scholars argued that Sima could not have had access to written materials which detailed history a millennium before his time. However, the discovery of oracle bones at an excavation of the Shang capital at Anyang ( Yinxu ) matched 23 names of the 30 Shang kings listed by Sima. Needham writes that this remarkable archaeological find proves that Sima Qian "did have fairly reliable materials at his disposal—a fact which underlines once more
8064-623: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
8160-426: The top than the bottom and is topped with a 10-metre Lamaist stupa-style dagoba steeple. The pagoda stands on a two-metre-high stone pedestal and is decorated with multi-eave pent roofs and carvings of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. The unique pagoda is the symbol of Anyang. Located about 2 km (1.2 mi) northwest of Anyang are the ruins of the Shang dynasty capital known as Yin . This massive archaeological site
8256-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
8352-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
8448-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
8544-616: The world cultural heritage Yin Ruins, Cao Cao's Gaoling, and the Museum of Chinese Characters. Here are the primitive caves of 25,000 years ago, the overlapping strata of the Yangshao Culture , Longshan Culture and Xiaotun Culture, the memorial mausoleums of ancient Emperor Zhuanxu and Emperor Ku over 4,000 years ago, the first library of inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells , the Soul Spring Temple, known as
8640-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
8736-526: Was 18,424 RMB, an 8.4% annual increase. Sixteen foreign-funded enterprises ( joint ventures , cooperative enterprises , and wholly foreign-owned enterprises) have been established in Anyang. Recently, Anyang has established an economic and technological development zone covering a total area of 22.8 km (8.8 sq mi), and issued a series of preferential policies to attract many domestic Chinese and foreign businesses. The Anyang Hongqiqu Airport opened on November 29, 2023. Anyang Hongqiqu Airport
8832-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
8928-428: Was a reflection of the political climate of rising Chinese nationalism at the time. The influence of Doubting Antiquity School caused many people to lose confidence in many ancient books and traditional ancient histories. Driven by the special interest of Chinese people in history, they turned to Chinese archaeology, which was just born, in order to gain a better understanding of Chinese ancient history. The excavation of
9024-402: Was different at different points of time. As time went on, the history of antiquity became longer and more complicated, characters acquired more features, including more supernatural attributes. This means that it is not always possible to identify the "authentic" version of events from antiquity, only the narrative as stated in a text at a particular time. Some of the conjectures put forward by
9120-485: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
9216-518: Was known as Zhangde ( 彰德 ) until 1912, when it was given its present name of Anyang, following the establishment of the Republic of China . In August 1949, Anyang prefecture was detached from Henan and – along with Puyang and Xinxiang – consigned to the short lived experimental province of Pingyuan by the ruling Communist government. All three were eventually returned to Henan's territory in November 1953, with
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