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146-816: During the Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty , the lingua franca of administration was based on Lower Yangtze Mandarin. In the 19th century the base shifted to the Beijing dialect . Lower Yangtze Mandarin is spoken in central Anhui , eastern Hubei , most of Jiangsu north of the Yangtze, as well as the area around Nanjing . The number of speakers was estimated in 1987 at 67 million. The Language Atlas of China divides Lower Yangtze Mandarin into three branches: There are also small islands of Jianghuai Mandarin ( Jūnjiāhuà 軍家話) throughout Guangdong , Guangxi , Hainan and Fujian provinces, brought to these areas during

292-462: A 48 km (30 mi) long wall around Nanjing , as well as new palaces and government halls. The History of Ming states that as early as 1364 Zhu Yuanzhang had begun drafting a new Confucian law code, the Da Ming Lü , which was completed by 1397 and repeated certain clauses found in the old Tang Code of 653. Hongwu organized a military system known as the weisuo , which was similar to

438-543: A Jianghuai dialect being an expression of identity clearly differentiated from that of others: locals spoke the dialect, as opposed to sojourners, who spoke Huizhou dialect or Wu dialects. Large numbers of merchants from Huizhou lived in Yangzhou and effectively were responsible for keeping the town economically afloat. Professor Richard VanNess Simmons has claimed that the Hangzhou dialect , rather than being Wu as it

584-576: A character historically had a checked tone in Middle Chinese based on its current reading in Modern Standard Mandarin. However, there are many characters, such as 切 , 塔 , 六 , 刻 and 骨 which do not satisfy any of these conditions at all. or ㄖ (r) Most varieties of Wu Chinese preserve the entering tone. However, no contemporary Wu varieties preserve the /p/ , /t/ or /k/ distinction, but instead merges them all into

730-767: A coup against the Tianshun Emperor out of fear of being next on his purge-list of those who aided him in the Wresting the Gate Incident. Cao's rebel force managed to set fire to the western and eastern gates of the Imperial City (doused by rain during the battle) and killed several leading ministers before his forces were finally cornered and he was forced to commit suicide. While the Yongle Emperor had staged five major offensives north of

876-670: A eunuch servant, hanged himself on a tree in the imperial garden right outside the Forbidden City. Seizing opportunity, the Eight Banners crossed the Great Wall after the Ming border general Wu Sangui (1612–1678) opened the gates at Shanhai Pass . This occurred shortly after he learned about the fate of the capital and an army of Li Zicheng marching towards him; weighing his options of alliance, he decided to side with

1022-412: A falling-rising contour, making it unequivocally a phonemic tone in modern linguistics. The pitch of the entering tones are divided into two registers, depending on the initials: Many terms with grammatical functions also undergo sporadic evolution and gain a checked tone. This process can be considered a form of lenition , and is sometimes considered a form of glottalization . Romanization used

1168-588: A force personally to face the Oirats after a recent Ming defeat; the emperor left the capital and put his half-brother Zhu Qiyu in charge of affairs as temporary regent. On 8 September, Esen routed Zhengtong's army, and Zhengtong was captured—an event known as the Tumu Crisis . The Oirats held the Zhengtong Emperor for ransom. However, this scheme was foiled once the emperor's younger brother assumed

1314-459: A glottal stop /ʔ/ . For example, in Shanghainese , the three lexemes 濕／湿 ; 'wet', 失 ; 'lose', 塞 ; 'block', historically ending in /p/ , /t/ and /k/ , all end in a glottal stop, and are pronounced seq /səʔ⁵⁵/ . In some modern Wu varieties such as Wenzhounese , even the glottal stop has disappeared, and the entering tone is preserved as separate tone, with

1460-433: A historical work lambasting and belittling his political opponents. The instability at court came right as natural calamity, pestilence, rebellion, and foreign invasion came to a peak. The Chongzhen Emperor (r. 1627–44) had Wei dismissed from court, which led to Wei's suicide shortly after. The eunuchs built their own social structure, providing and gaining support to their birth clans. Instead of fathers promoting sons, it

1606-579: A house, busy, and not yet." The "Guanhua koiné " of the early Ming era was based on Jianghuai Guanhua (Jianghuai Mandarin). Western missionaries and Korean Hangul writings of the Ming Guanhua and Nanjing dialect showed differences that pointed to the Guanhua being a koiné and mixture of various dialects, strongly based on Jianghuai. Some linguists have studied the influence that Nanjing Jianghuai Mandarin had on Ming dynasty guanhua/Mandarin. Although

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1752-432: A low civil service rank. The one great advantage of the lesser functionaries over officials was that officials were periodically rotated and assigned to different regional posts and had to rely on the good service and cooperation of the local lesser functionaries. Eunuchs gained unprecedented power over state affairs during the Ming dynasty. One of the most effective means of control was the secret service stationed in what

1898-474: A major cause of "China's cultural stagnation and economic backwardness." However Benjamin Ellman argues there were some positive features, since the essay form was capable of fostering "abstract thinking, persuasiveness, and prosodic form" and that its elaborate structure discouraged a wandering, unfocused narrative". Scholar-officials who entered civil service through examinations acted as executive officials to

2044-447: A massive influx of South American silver. This abundance of specie remonetized the Ming economy, whose paper money had suffered repeated hyperinflation and was no longer trusted. While traditional Confucians opposed such a prominent role for commerce and the newly rich it created, the heterodoxy introduced by Wang Yangming permitted a more accommodating attitude. Zhang Juzheng 's initially successful reforms proved devastating when

2190-498: A much larger body of non-ranked personnel called lesser functionaries. They outnumbered officials by four to one; Charles Hucker estimates that they were perhaps as many as 100,000 throughout the empire. These lesser functionaries performed clerical and technical tasks for government agencies. Yet they should not be confused with lowly lictors, runners, and bearers; lesser functionaries were given periodic merit evaluations like officials and after nine years of service might be accepted into

2336-467: A rebellion that sparked a three-year civil war . Under the pretext of rescuing the young Jianwen from corrupting officials, Zhu Di personally led forces in the revolt; the palace in Nanjing was burned to the ground, along with Jianwen himself, his wife, mother, and courtiers. Zhu Di assumed the throne as the Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–24); his reign is universally viewed by scholars as a "second founding" of

2482-564: A series of lit beacons and signalling stations to allow rapid warning to friendly units of advancing enemy troops. There were many problems—fiscal or other—facing Ming China that started during the reign of the Wanli Emperor (1572–1620). In the beginning of his reign, Wanli surrounded himself with able advisors and made a conscientious effort to handle state affairs. His Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng (1572–82) built up an effective network of alliances with senior officials. However, there

2628-471: A slowdown in agriculture was produced by the Little Ice Age . The value of silver rapidly increased because of a disruption in the supply of imported silver from Spanish and Portuguese sources, making it impossible for Chinese farmers to pay their taxes. Combined with crop failure, floods, and an epidemic , the dynasty collapsed in 1644 as Li Zicheng's rebel forces entered Beijing. Li then established

2774-422: A split in sandhi behavior between two separate upper/dark entering 陰入 tones. This is believed to be a reflex of an earlier stage in its development, where final /k/ was distinguished from final /ʔ/. In the related Fuqing dialect , a proportion of entering tone lexemes have lost their glottal stop and have merged into the phonetically equivalent tones: This merger can also affect sandhi environments, but there

2920-551: A stop did not fit the three intonations and was categorised as the "entering tone" ( 入聲 ), thus forming the four-tone system. The use of this system flourished in the Sui and Tang dynasties (7th–10th centuries), during which the Qieyun ( Chinese : 切韻 ) rime dictionary was written. Note that modern linguistic descriptions of Middle Chinese often refer to the level, rising and departing tones as tones 1, 2 and 3, respectively. By

3066-426: A three-way tonal contrast. Syllables with stop codas (-p, -t and -k) had no phonemic tonal contrast, but were traditionally treated as comprising a fourth category, called the entering tone . In modern Mandarin varieties, the former three-way contrast has been reorganized as four tones that are generally consistent across the group, though the pitch values of the tones vary considerably. In most varieties, including

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3212-559: A vast imperial household, staffed with thousands of eunuchs, who were headed by the Directorate of Palace Attendants. The eunuchs were divided into different directorates in charge of staff surveillance, ceremonial rites, food, utensils, documents, stables, seals, apparel, and so on. The offices were in charge of providing fuel, music, paper, and baths. The bureaus were in charge of weapons, silverwork, laundering, headgear, bronze work, textile manufacture, wineries, and gardens. At times,

3358-442: A very expensive, sophisticated tutoring of the sort that wealthy gentry families specialized in providing their talented sons. In practice, 90 percent of the population was ineligible due to lack of education, but the upper 10 percent had equal chances for moving to the top. To be successful young men had to have extensive, expensive training in classical Chinese, the use of Mandarin in spoken conversation, calligraphy, and had to master

3504-407: Is Wugniu . This phenomenon can also be seen in many pronouns, such as Shanghainese a q -la ( 阿拉 , "we") and Yuyaonese ⁸ge q -la q ₈ ( 搿辣 , "they"). In general, Cantonese preserves the Middle Chinese finals intact, including the differentiation between -p, -t and -k final consonants. Standard Cantonese does not use any glottal stops as final consonants. There are a few isolated cases where

3650-543: Is logographic , rather than phonetic. From a phonetic perspective, the prototypical entering tone is simply a syllable ending with a voiceless stop that has no audible release : [p̚], [t̚], [k̚] , and/or a glottal stop [ʔ̚] depending on the language variety. Middle Chinese has only the first three. It is customarily called a tone regardless of whether a tonal distinction is possible in such syllables. In languages such as Early Middle Chinese and most varieties of Wu , such syllables do not have contrastive tones (i.e.

3796-531: Is Zaicheng Town, in Lishui County . Both Jianghuai and Wu were spoken in several towns in Lishui, with Wu being spoken by more people in more towns than Jianghuai. Wu is called "old Zaicheng Speech", and Jianghuai dialect is called "new Zaicheng speech", with Wu being driven rapidly to extinction. Only the elderly speak it to relatives. The Jianghuai dialect was present there for about a century even though all

3942-754: Is also found in the adjacent Wu dialect group, and in the Jin group, which many linguists include within Mandarin. In Lower Yangtze varieties, the initial /n-/ has merged with /l-/ . These initials have also merged in Southwestern Mandarin , but as /n-/ ; most other Mandarin varieties distinguish these initials. The Middle Chinese retroflex initials have merged with affricate initials in non-Mandarin varieties, and also in Southwestern Mandarin and most Lower Yangtze varieties. However,

4088-445: Is one of the four syllable types in the phonology of Middle Chinese . Although usually translated as "tone", a checked tone is not a tone in the phonetic sense but rather a type of syllable that ends in a stop consonant or a glottal stop . Separating the checked tone allows -p , -t , and -k to be treated as allophones of -m , -n , and -ng , respectively, since they are in complementary distribution . Stops appear only in

4234-528: Is possible by examining the historical kana used in spelling a word, which has also aided scholars in reconstructing historical Chinese pronunciation. Korean keeps the -k and -p endings while the -t ending is represented as -l ( tapped -r- , [ ɾ ] , if intervocalic) as Sino-Korean derives from a northern variety of Late Middle Chinese where final -t had weakened to [ r ] . Vietnamese preserves all endings /p/ , /t/ and /k/ (spelt -c ). Additionally, after

4380-601: Is the option to use the sandhi pattern of the former checked tone while still eliminating the final glottal stop. Additionally in Fuqingnese, sandhi environments where the light entering 陽入 tone is non-final cause the glottal stop to weaken and in some tones lost, and where the tone changes to a low sandhi tone /˨˩/ , the glottal stop is completely lost. The dark entering 陰入 tone on the other hand retains its glottal stop in sandhi environments. Many Chinese words were borrowed into Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese during

4526-588: Is underrepresented in modern scholarship. Others note the Ming need for Central Asian horses and the need to maintain the tea-horse trade . The Ming sporadically sent armed forays into Tibet during the 14th century, which the Tibetans successfully resisted. Several scholars point out that unlike the preceding Mongols, the Ming dynasty did not garrison permanent troops in Tibet. The Wanli Emperor (r. 1572–1620) attempted to reestablish Sino-Tibetan relations in

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4672-581: The fubing system of the Tang dynasty (618–907). In 1380 Hongwu had the Chancellor Hu Weiyong executed upon suspicion of a conspiracy plot to overthrow him; after that Hongwu abolished the Chancellery and assumed this role as chief executive and emperor, a precedent mostly followed throughout the Ming period. With a growing suspicion of his ministers and subjects, Hongwu established

4818-402: The Beijing dialect on which Standard Chinese is based, the final stops have disappeared, and these syllables have been divided between the tones in different ways in different subgroups. In Lower Yangtze Mandarin, however, the stop codas have merged as a glottal stop, but these syllables remain separate from the four tonal categories shared with other Mandarin varieties. A similar development

4964-736: The Censorate , and the Chief Military Commission and personally took charge of the Six Ministries and the regional Five Military Commissions. Thus a whole level of administration was cut out and only partially rebuilt by subsequent rulers. The Grand Secretariat , at the beginning a secretarial institution that assisted the emperor with administrative paperwork, was instituted, but without employing grand counselors, or chancellors . The Hongwu Emperor sent his heir apparent to Shaanxi in 1391 to "tour and soothe" ( xunfu )

5110-489: The Embroidered Uniform Guard , and other peoples such as Jurchens were also prominent. He frequently wrote to Mongol, Japanese, Korean, Jurchen, Tibetan, and Southwest frontier rulers offering advice on their governmental and dynastic policy, and insisted on leaders from these regions visiting the Ming capital for audiences. He resettled 100,000 Mongols into his territory, with many serving as guards in

5256-546: The Great Wall against the Mongols and the Oirats, the constant threat of Oirat incursions prompted the Ming authorities to fortify the Great Wall from the late 15th century to the 16th century; nevertheless, John Fairbank notes that "it proved to be a futile military gesture but vividly expressed China's siege mentality." Yet the Great Wall was not meant to be a purely defensive fortification; its towers functioned rather as

5402-643: The Han River to Wuchang , and finally along the northern border of Jiangxi province, Li Zicheng died there in the summer of 1645, thus ending the Shun dynasty . One report says his death was a suicide; another states that he was beaten to death by peasants after he was caught stealing their food. Despite the loss of Beijing and the death of the emperor, the Ming were not yet totally destroyed. Nanjing, Fujian, Guangdong, Shanxi, and Yunnan were all strongholds of Ming resistance. However, there were several pretenders for

5548-521: The Hongwu Emperor ( r.   1368–1398), attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty: the empire's standing army exceeded one million troops and the navy 's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world. He also took great care breaking the power of

5694-539: The Indian Ocean as far as Arabia and the eastern coasts of Africa. Hongwu and Yongle emperors had also expanded the empire's rule into Inner Asia . The rise of new emperors and new factions diminished such extravagances; the capture of the Emperor Yingzong of Ming during the 1449 Tumu Crisis ended them completely. The imperial navy was allowed to fall into disrepair while forced labor constructed

5840-621: The Japanese invasions of Korea in the 1590s. Ming officials declined the offer, but granted him the title of dragon-tiger general for his gesture. Recognizing the weakness of Ming authority in Manchuria at the time, he consolidated power by co-opting or conquering surrounding territories. In 1616 he declared himself Khan and established the Later Jin dynasty in reference to the previous Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty . In 1618 he openly renounced

5986-557: The Jinyiwei , a network of secret police drawn from his own palace guard. Some 100,000 people were executed in a series of purges during his rule. The Hongwu Emperor issued many edicts forbidding Mongol practices and proclaiming his intention to purify China of barbarian influence. However, he also sought to use the Yuan legacy to legitimize his authority in China and other areas ruled by

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6132-452: The Ming dynasty by soldiers from Jiangsu, Anhui and Henan during the reign of Hongwu Emperor . The Huizhou dialects, spoken in southern Anhui , share different features with Wu, Gan and Lower Yangtze Mandarin, making them difficult to classify. Earlier scholars had assigned to them one or other of those groups or to a top-level group of their own. The Atlas adopted the latter position, but it remains controversial. The relationship of

6278-517: The Nanjing dialect retains the distinction, like northern Mandarin varieties. Most Lower Yangtze varieties retain a /ʐ-/ initial, but in central Jiangsu (including Yangzhou) it has merged with /l-/ . The Tai–Ru varieties of eastern-central Jiangsu retain a distinct /ŋ-/ initial, but this has merged with the zero initial in other Mandarin varieties. It has been claimed that the Jianghuai varieties of Mandarin around Nanjing are an exception to

6424-523: The Qing dynasty in 1739—states that the Ming established itinerant commanderies overseeing Tibetan administration while also renewing titles of ex-Yuan dynasty officials from Tibet and conferring new princely titles on leaders of Tibetan Buddhist sects . However, Turrell V. Wylie states that censorship in the Mingshi in favor of bolstering the Ming emperor's prestige and reputation at all costs obfuscates

6570-527: The Second Manchu invasion of Korea and forced Joseon to become a Qing tributary. Shortly after, the Koreans renounced their long-held loyalty to the Ming dynasty. A peasant soldier named Li Zicheng mutinied with his fellow soldiers in western Shaanxi in the early 1630s after the Ming government failed to ship much-needed supplies there. In 1634 he was captured by a Ming general and released only on

6716-637: The Shaanxi earthquake of 1556 , occurred during the Jiajing Emperor 's reign, killing approximately 830,000 people. Originally a Ming vassal who officially considered himself a guardian of the Ming border and a local representative of imperial Ming power, Nurhaci , leader of the Jianzhou Jurchens , unified other Jurchen clans to create a new Manchu ethnic identity. He offered to lead his armies to support Ming and Joseon armies against

6862-601: The Shun dynasty , but it was defeated shortly afterwards by the Manchu -led Eight Banner armies of the Qing dynasty , with the help of the defecting Ming general Wu Sangui . The Mongol -led Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) ruled before the establishment of the Ming dynasty. Explanations for the demise of the Yuan include institutionalized ethnic discrimination against the Han people that stirred resentment and rebellion, overtaxation of areas hard-hit by inflation , and massive flooding of

7008-676: The Yellow River as a result of the abandonment of irrigation projects. Consequently, agriculture and the economy were in shambles, and rebellion broke out among the hundreds of thousands of peasants called upon to work on repairing the dykes of the Yellow River. A number of Han groups revolted, including the Red Turbans in 1351. The Red Turbans were affiliated with the White Lotus , a Buddhist secret society. Zhu Yuanzhang

7154-619: The Yongle Emperor in 1402. The Yongle Emperor established Yan as a secondary capital and renamed it Beijing , constructed the Forbidden City , and restored the Grand Canal and the primacy of the imperial examinations in official appointments. He rewarded his eunuch supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats . One eunuch, Zheng He , led seven enormous voyages of exploration into

7300-632: The conquest of Tibet by Güshi Khan (1582–1655) in 1642, establishing the Khoshut Khanate . The Hongwu Emperor specified his grandson Zhu Yunwen as his successor, and he assumed the throne as the Jianwen Emperor (r. 1398–1402) after Hongwu's death in 1398. The most powerful of Hongwu's sons, Zhu Di, then the militarily mighty disagreed with this, and soon a political showdown erupted between him and his nephew Jianwen. After Jianwen arrested many of Zhu Di's associates, Zhu Di plotted

7446-572: The court eunuchs and unrelated magnates, enfeoffing his many sons throughout China and attempting to guide these princes through the Huang-Ming Zuxun , a set of published dynastic instructions. This failed when his teenage successor, the Jianwen Emperor , attempted to curtail his uncle's power, prompting the Jingnan campaign , an uprising that placed the Prince of Yan upon the throne as

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7592-675: The "short entering tone"). Such clusters were later reduced to /s/, which, in turn, became /h/ and ultimately "departing tone" in Middle Chinese. The first Chinese philologists began to describe the phonology of Chinese during the Early Middle Chinese period (specifically, during the Northern and Southern Dynasties , between 400 and 600 AD), under the influence of Buddhism and the Sanskrit language that arrived along with it. There were several unsuccessful attempts to classify

7738-642: The 12th century. Ming era examinations were perhaps more difficult to pass since the 1487 requirement of completing the " eight-legged essay ", a departure from basing essays off progressing literary trends. The exams increased in difficulty as the student progressed from the local level, and appropriate titles were accordingly awarded successful applicants. Officials were classified in nine hierarchic grades, each grade divided into two degrees, with ranging salaries (nominally paid in piculs of rice) according to their rank. While provincial graduates who were appointed to office were immediately assigned to low-ranking posts like

7884-573: The Bedchamber, Bureau of Handicrafts, and Office of Staff Surveillance. Starting in the 1420s, eunuchs began taking over these ladies' positions until only the Bureau of Apparel with its four subsidiary offices remained. Hongwu had his eunuchs organized into the Directorate of Palace Attendants, but as eunuch power at court increased, so did their administrative offices, with eventual twelve directorates, four offices, and eight bureaus. The dynasty had

8030-538: The Liaodong palisade and connected and fortified the Great Wall into its modern form. Wide-ranging censuses of the entire empire were conducted decennially, but the desire to avoid labor and taxes and the difficulty of storing and reviewing the enormous archives at Nanjing hampered accurate figures. Estimates for the late-Ming population vary from 160 to 200 million, but necessary revenues were squeezed out of smaller and smaller numbers of farmers as more disappeared from

8176-543: The Lower Yangtze Mandarin varieties to other varieties of Chinese has been an ongoing subject of debate. One quantitative study from the late 20th century by linguist Chin-Chuan Cheng focused on vocabulary lists, yielding the result that Eastern dialects of Jianghuai cluster with the Xiang and Gan varieties, whilst Northern and Southern Mandarin , despite being supposedly "genetically" related, were not in

8322-580: The Manchus. The Eight Banners under the Manchu Prince Dorgon (1612–1650) and Wu Sangui approached Beijing after the army sent by Li was destroyed at Shanhaiguan ; the Prince of Shun's army fled the capital on the fourth of June. On 6 June, the Manchus and Wu entered the capital and proclaimed the young Shunzhi Emperor ruler of China. After being forced out of Xi'an by the Qing, chased along

8468-419: The Mandarin tongue is spoken well." Jianghuai Mandarin shares some characteristics with Ming dynasty Southern Mandarin. Jianghuai Mandarin, along with Northern Mandarin, formed the standard for Baihua before and during the Qing dynasty until its replacement by Standard Mandarin . Baihua was used by writers all over China, regardless of the dialect spoken. Chinese writers who spoke other dialects had to use

8614-417: The Middle Chinese period so they preserve the entering tone to varying degrees. Because Japanese does not allow a syllable to end with a consonant except ん n , the endings -k , -p , -t were rendered as separate syllables -ku or -ki , -pu , and -ti (Modern -chi ) or -tu (Modern -tsu ) respectively. Later phonological changes further altered some of the endings: Recovering the original ending

8760-660: The Ming court in 1557 to settle Macau as their permanent trade base in China. Their role in providing silver was gradually surpassed by the Spanish , while even the Dutch challenged them for control of this trade. Philip IV of Spain (r. 1621–1665) began cracking down on illegal smuggling of silver from New Spain and Peru across the Pacific through the Philippines towards China, in favor of shipping silver mined in

8906-400: The Ming dynasty since he reversed many of his father's policies. Yongle demoted Nanjing to a secondary capital and in 1403 announced the new capital of China was to be at his power base in Beijing . Construction of a new city there lasted from 1407 to 1420, employing hundreds of thousands of workers daily. At the center was the political node of the Imperial City , and at the center of this

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9052-473: The Ming dynasty, categorized several Jianghuai dialects with rounded finals. The eastern and southeastern variants of Jianghuai contain the rounded finals. The Nanjing dialect, on the other hand, is in another group. Matteo Ricci 's Dicionário Português-Chinês documented Ming dynasty Mandarin. A number of words appeared to be derived from Jianghuai Mandarin dialect, such as "pear, jujube, shirt, ax, hoe, joyful, to speak, to bargain, to know, to urinate, to build

9198-509: The Ming in campaigns against aboriginal tribes. In 1381, the Ming dynasty annexed the areas of the southwest that had once been part of the Kingdom of Dali following the successful effort by Hui Muslim Ming armies to defeat Yuan -loyalist Mongol and Hui Muslim troops holding out in Yunnan province. The Hui troops under General Mu Ying , who was appointed Governor of Yunnan, were resettled in

9344-593: The Ming overlordship and effectively declared war against the Ming with the " Seven Grievances ." In 1636, Nurhaci's son Hong Taiji renamed his dynasty the " Great Qing " at Mukden (modern Shenyang), which had been made their capital in 1625. Hong Taiji also adopted the Chinese imperial title huangdi , declared the Chongde ("Revering Virtue") era, and changed the ethnic name of his people from "Jurchen" to " Manchu ". In 1636, Banner Armies defeated Joseon during

9490-432: The Ming throne, and their forces were divided. These scattered Ming remnants in southern China after 1644 were collectively designated by 19th-century historians as the Southern Ming . Each bastion of resistance was individually defeated by the Qing until 1662, when the last Southern Ming emperor, Zhu Youlang , the Yongli Emperor, was captured and executed. Despite the Ming defeat, smaller loyalist movements continued until

9636-531: The Spanish Latin American colonies through Spanish ports. People began hoarding precious silver as there was progressively less of it, forcing the ratio of the value of copper to silver into a steep decline. In the 1630s a string of one thousand copper coins equaled an ounce of silver; by 1640 that sum could fetch half an ounce; and, by 1643 only one-third of an ounce. For peasants this meant economic disaster, since they paid taxes in silver while conducting local trade and crop sales in copper. Historians have debated

9782-554: The Wu varieties , which tend towards omission of preverbal prepositions. When vowels from Jianghuai Mandarin and Wu were compared to dialects from China's southeastern coast, it was concluded "that chain-type shifts in Chinese follow the same general rules as have been revealed by Labov for American and British English dialects." Dialogue from literature published in Yangzhou , such as the 18th-century novel Qingfengzha ( simplified Chinese : 清风闸 ; traditional Chinese : 清風閘 ; pinyin : Qīng Fēng Zhá ), contains evidence of

9928-527: The Yongle Emperor's reign (1402–1424) and afterwards managed huge imperial workshops, commanded armies, and participated in matters of appointment and promotion of officials. Yongle put 75 eunuchs in charge of foreign policy; they traveled frequently to vassal states including Annam, Mongolia, the Ryukyu Islands, and Tibet and less frequently to farther-flung places like Japan and Nepal. In the later 15th century, however, eunuch envoys generally only traveled to Korea. The eunuchs developed their own bureaucracy that

10074-434: The Yongle Emperor, the Ming Dynasty established the Nurgan Regional Military Commission on the banks of the Amur River , and Yishiha , a eunuch of Haixi Jurchen origin, was ordered to lead an expedition to the mouth of the Amur to pacify the Wild Jurchens. After the death of Yongle Emperor, the Nurgan Regional Military Commission was abolished in 1435, and the Ming court ceased to have substantial activities there, although

10220-417: The Yuan capital Dadu (present-day Beijing ) in 1368. The last Yuan emperor fled north to the upper capital Shangdu , and Zhu declared the founding of the Ming dynasty after razing the Yuan palaces in Dadu to the ground; the city was renamed Beiping in the same year. Zhu Yuanzhang took Hongwu, or "Vastly Martial", as his era name . Hongwu made an immediate effort to rebuild state infrastructure. He built

10366-402: The Yuan. He continued policies of the Yuan dynasty such as continued request for Korean concubines and eunuchs, Mongol-style hereditary military institutions, Mongol-style clothing and hats, promoting archery and horseback riding, and having large numbers of Mongols serve in the Ming military. Until the late 16th century Mongols still constituted one-in-three officers serving in capital forces like

10512-814: The aloof emperor and his officials; any senior official who wanted to discuss state matters had to persuade powerful eunuchs with a bribe simply to have his demands or message relayed to the emperor. There were several military campaigns, which included the Ordos campaign , Bozhou rebellion by the Chiefdom of Bozhou in southwestern China and the Imjin War , during the Wanli Emperor's reign. The Hongwu Emperor forbade eunuchs to learn how to read or engage in politics. Whether or not these restrictions were carried out with absolute success in his reign, eunuchs during

10658-515: The capital of the Taiping Kingdom. The fighting resulted in the loss of the population of Nanjing. Those events all played in role in forming today's Nanjing dialect. Immigrants from Northern China during the middle of the Song dynasty moved south, bringing a speech type from which Northern Wu and Jianghuai reading patterns both derive from. The northern immigrants almost totally replaced from

10804-460: The capital. The emperor also strongly advertised the hospitality and role granted to Chinggisid nobles in his court. Hongwu insisted that he was not a rebel, and he attempted to justify his conquest of the other rebel warlords by claiming that he was a Yuan subject and had been divinely-appointed to restore order by crushing rebels. Most Chinese elites did not view the Yuan's Mongol ethnicity as grounds to resist or reject it. Hongwu emphasised that he

10950-438: The character 葛 splitting on semantic grounds (tone 3 when it is used as a component of a name, mostly tone 2 otherwise). Similarly, the three characters 胳阁各 (MC /kak/ ) are now pronounced gē gé gè . The four characters 鸽蛤颌合 (MC /kop/ ) are now pronounced gē gé gé gě . In those cases, the two sets of characters are significant in that each member of the same set has the same phonetic component , suggesting that

11096-777: The checked tone, and nasals appear only in the other tones. Because of the origin of tone in Chinese, the number of tones found in such syllables is smaller than the number of tones in other syllables. Chinese phonetics have traditionally counted them separately. Final voiceless stops and therefore the checked "tones" have disappeared from most Mandarin dialects , spoken in northern and southwestern China, but have been preserved in southeastern Chinese branches like Yue , Min , and Hakka . Tones are an indispensable part of Chinese literature, as characters in poetry and prose were chosen according to tones and rhymes for their euphony . This use of language helps reconstructing Old Chinese and Middle Chinese pronunciations since Chinese writing system

11242-652: The control imposed upon the Jurchens in Manchuria by the Mongols, yet it created a norm of organization that would ultimately serve as the main instrument for the relations with peoples along the northeast frontiers. By the end of the Hongwu reign, the essentials of a policy toward the Jurchens had taken shape. Most of the inhabitants of Manchuria, except for the Wild Jurchens , were at peace with China. In 1409, under

11388-441: The county graduates, those who passed the palace examination were awarded a jinshi ('presented scholar') degree and assured a high-level position. In 276 years of Ming rule and ninety palace examinations, the number of doctoral degrees granted by passing the palace examinations was 24,874. Ebrey states that "there were only two to four thousand of these jinshi at any given time, on the order of one out of 10,000 adult males." This

11534-609: The court of the Tianqi Emperor (r. 1620–1627) and had his political rivals tortured to death, mostly the vocal critics from the faction of the Donglin Society . He ordered temples built in his honor throughout the Ming Empire, and built personal palaces created with funds allocated for building the previous emperor's tombs. His friends and family gained important positions without qualifications. Wei also published

11680-595: The dark-entering tone into two, with a higher tone for short vowels and a lower tone for long vowels. As a result, Cantonese now has three entering tones: Some variants of Yue Chinese , notably including that of Bobai County ( Chinese : 博白 ; pinyin : Bóbái ) in Guangxi and Yangjiang ( simplified Chinese : 阳江 ; traditional Chinese : 陽江 ; pinyin : Yángjiāng ; Cantonese Yale : Yèuhnggōng ) in Guangdong , have four entering tones:

11826-484: The early Ming dynasty Mandarin/Guanhua was a koine based on the Nanjing dialect, it was not entirely identical, with some non-Jianghuai characteristics being found in it. Francisco Varo advised that to learn Chinese, one must acquire it from "Not just any Chinese, but only those who have the natural gift of speaking the Mandarin language well, such as those natives of the Province of Nan king, and of other provinces where

11972-544: The emperor and ministers at times). The Secretariat operated as a coordinating agency, whereas the Six Ministries— Personnel , Revenue , Rites , War , Justice , and Public Works —were direct administrative organs of the state: The imperial household was staffed almost entirely by eunuchs and ladies with their own bureaus. Female servants were organized into the Bureau of Palace Attendance, Bureau of Ceremonies, Bureau of Apparel, Bureau of Foodstuffs, Bureau of

12118-531: The emperor, handling paperwork under the reign of the Yongle Emperor and later appointed as top officials of agencies and Grand Preceptor, a top-ranking, non-functional civil service post, under the Hongxi Emperor (r. 1424–25). The Grand Secretariat drew its members from the Hanlin Academy and were considered part of the imperial authority, not the ministerial one (hence being at odds with both

12264-497: The emperor. As in prior dynasties, the provincial administrations were monitored by a travelling inspector from the Censorate. Censors had the power to impeach officials on an irregular basis, unlike the senior officials who were to do so only in triennial evaluations of junior officials. Although decentralization of state power within the provinces occurred in the early Ming, the trend of central government officials delegated to

12410-645: The entering tone, and syllables that had the tone have been distributed into the four modern tonal categories, depending on their initial consonants. The Beijing dialect that forms the basis of Standard Mandarin redistributed syllables beginning with originally unvoiced consonants across the four tones in a completely random pattern. For example, the three characters 积脊迹 , all pronounced /tsjek/ in Middle Chinese (William Baxter's reconstruction), are now pronounced jī jǐ jì , with tones 1, 3 and 4 respectively. The two characters 割／葛 , both pronounced /kat/ , are now pronounced gē and gé/gě respectively, with

12556-557: The establishment of the Xi dynasty , while Li's center of power was in Hubei with extended influence over Shaanxi and Henan. In 1640, masses of Chinese peasants who were starving, unable to pay their taxes, and no longer in fear of the frequently defeated Chinese army, began to form into huge bands of rebels. The Chinese military, caught between fruitless efforts to defeat the Manchu raiders from

12702-466: The exam generally limited participants to those already coming from the landholding class. However, the government did exact provincial quotas while drafting officials. This was an effort to curb monopolization of power by landholding gentry who came from the most prosperous regions, where education was the most advanced. The expansion of the printing industry since Song times enhanced the spread of knowledge and number of potential exam candidates throughout

12848-524: The final consonant has changed as a result of final dissimilation , but they remain in the checked tone. Like most other Chinese variants, Cantonese has changed initial voiced stops, affricates and fricatives of Middle Chinese to their voiceless counterparts. To compensate for losing that difference, Cantonese has split each Middle Chinese tones into two, one for Middle Chinese voiced initial consonants ( light ) and one for Middle Chinese voiceless initial consonants ( dark ). In addition, Cantonese has split

12994-530: The final stop is voiced. The voiceless stops that typify the entering tone date back to the Proto-Sino-Tibetan , the parent language of Chinese as well as the Tibeto-Burman languages . In addition, Old Chinese is commonly thought to have syllables ending in clusters /ps/ , /ts/ , and /ks/ (sometimes called the "long entering tone" while syllables ending in /p/ , /t/ and /k/ are

13140-470: The founding emperor of the Ming dynasty , Zhu Yuanzhang and many of his military and civil officials. In the early Ming period, Wu speakers moved into the eastern Tong-Tai-speaking region, and Gan-speakers from Jiangxi moved into the western Huang–Xiao region, influencing the respective Jianghuai dialects. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, Jianghuai-speakers moved into Hui dialect areas. The Portuguese Chinese Dictionary (PCD), written by missionaries during

13286-504: The government to properly manage irrigation and flood-control projects caused widespread loss of life and normal civility. The central government, starved of resources, could do very little to mitigate the effects of these calamities. Making matters worse, a widespread epidemic, the Great Plague of 1633–1644 , spread across China from Zhejiang to Henan, killing an unknown but large number of people. The deadliest earthquake of all time,

13432-495: The grammar and the vocabulary of Jianghuai and Northern Mandarin for the majority of Chinese to understand their writing. By contrast, Chinese who did not speak southern dialects would not be able to understand southern dialects in writing. Peking opera got its start in parts of Anhui and Hubei that spoke the dialect. Jianghuai Mandarin is currently overtaking Wu as the language variety of multiple counties in Jiangsu. An example

13578-424: The guards continued to exist in Manchuria. Throughout its existence, the Ming established a total of 384 guards (衛, wei ) and 24 battalions (所, suo ) in Manchuria, but these were probably only nominal offices and did not necessarily imply political control. By the late Ming period, Ming's political presence in Manchuria has declined significantly. The Mingshi —the official history of the Ming dynasty compiled by

13724-430: The intricate poetic requirements of the eight-legged essay. Not only did the traditional gentry dominated the system, they also learned that conservatism and resistance to new ideas was the path to success. For centuries critics had pointed out these problems, but the examination system only became more abstract and less relevant to the needs of China. The consensus of scholars is that the eight-legged essay can be blamed as

13870-632: The kingdoms visited by Zheng He, Yongle proclaimed the Kingdom of Cochin to be its protectorate. The Chinese had sent diplomatic missions over land since the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) and engaged in private overseas trade , but these missions were unprecedented in grandeur and scale. To service seven different tributary voyages, the Nanjing shipyards constructed two thousand vessels from 1403 to 1419, including treasure ships measuring 112 to 134 m (367 to 440 ft) in length and 45 to 54 m (148 to 177 ft) in width. Yongle used woodblock printing to spread Chinese culture. He also used

14016-543: The largest political division was the circuit ( lu 路). However, after the Jurchen invasion in 1127, the Song court established four semi-autonomous regional command systems based on territorial and military units, with a detached service secretariat that would become the provincial administrations of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. Copied on the Yuan model, the Ming provincial bureaucracy contained three commissions: one civil, one military, and one for surveillance. Below

14162-459: The last opposing rebel faction, leaving Zhu Yuanzhang in uncontested control of the bountiful Yangtze River Valley and cementing his power in the south. After the dynastic head of the Red Turbans suspiciously died in 1367 while a guest of Zhu, there was no one left who was remotely capable of contesting his march to the throne, and he made his imperial ambitions known by sending an army toward

14308-413: The level of the province ( sheng 省) were prefectures ( fu 府) operating under a prefect ( zhifu 知府), followed by subprefectures ( zhou 州) under a subprefect. The lowest unit was the county ( xian 縣), overseen by a magistrate. Besides the provinces, there were also two large areas that belonged to no province, but were metropolitan areas ( jing 京) attached to Nanjing and Beijing. Departing from

14454-701: The local peoples. After the overthrow of the Mongol Yuan dynasty by the Ming dynasty in 1368, Manchuria remained under control of the Mongols of the Northern Yuan dynasty based in Mongolia . Naghachu , a former Yuan official and a Uriankhai general of the Northern Yuan dynasty, won hegemony over the Mongol tribes in Manchuria ( Liaoyang province of the former Yuan dynasty). He grew strong in

14600-492: The lower light tone is also differentiated according to vowel length, short vowels for upper light and long vowels for lower light. Thus in such varieties: Hakka preserves all Middle Chinese entering tones and is split into two registers. Meixian Hakka dialect often taken as the paradigm gives the following: Middle Chinese entering tone syllables ending in [k] whose vowel clusters have become front high vowels like [i] and [ɛ] shifts to syllables with [t] finals in some of

14746-664: The main central administrative system generally known as the Three Departments and Six Ministries system, which was instituted by various dynasties since late Han (202 BCE – 220 CE), the Ming administration had only one department, the Secretariat, that controlled the six ministries. Following the execution of the Chancellor Hu Weiyong in 1380, the Hongwu Emperor abolished the Secretariat,

14892-615: The military to expand China's borders. This included the brief occupation of Vietnam , from the initial invasion in 1406 until the Ming withdrawal in 1427 as a result of protracted guerrilla warfare led by Lê Lợi , the founder of the Vietnamese Lê dynasty . The Oirat leader Esen Tayisi launched an invasion into Ming China in July 1449. The chief eunuch Wang Zhen encouraged the Zhengtong Emperor (r. 1435–49) to lead

15038-508: The modern Hakka, as seen in the following table. Southern Min ( Minnan , including Taiwanese ) has two entering tones: A word may switch from one tone to the other by tone sandhi . Words with entering tones end with a glottal stop ([-ʔ]), [-p], [-t] or [-k] (all unaspirated). There are many words that have different finals in their literary and colloquial forms. Eastern Min , as exemplified by Fuzhounese , also has two entering tones: Within its complex tone sandhi laws, Fuzhounese has

15184-606: The most influential eunuch in the Directorate of Ceremonial acted as a de facto dictator over the state. Although the imperial household was staffed mostly by eunuchs and palace ladies, there was a civil service office called the Seal Office, which cooperated with eunuch agencies in maintaining imperial seals, tallies, and stamps. There were also civil service offices to oversee the affairs of imperial princes. The Hongwu emperor from 1373 to 1384 staffed his bureaus with officials gathered through recommendations only. After that

15330-667: The normal occurrence of the three medials [i] , [y] and [u] in Mandarin, along with eastern Shanxi and some Southwestern Mandarin dialects. The existence of literary and colloquial readings is a notable feature of Lower Yangtze Mandarin. The original dialect of Nanjing was the Wu dialect in the Eastern Jin dynasty . After the Wu Hu uprising , the Jin Emperor and many northern Chinese fled south. The new capital of Eastern Jin

15476-422: The north and huge peasant revolts in the provinces, essentially fell apart. Unpaid and unfed, the army was defeated by Li Zicheng—now self-styled as the Prince of Shun —and deserted the capital without much of a fight. On 25 April 1644, Beijing fell to a rebel army led by Li Zicheng when the city gates were opened by rebel allies from within. During the turmoil, Chongzhen , the last Ming emperor, accompanied only by

15622-457: The northeast, with forces large enough (numbering hundreds of thousands) to threaten invasion of the newly founded Ming dynasty in order to restore the Mongols to power in China. The Ming decided to defeat him instead of waiting for the Mongols to attack. In 1387 the Ming sent a military campaign to attack Naghachu , which concluded with the surrender of Naghachu and Ming conquest of Manchuria. The early Ming court could not, and did not, aspire to

15768-412: The nuanced history of Sino-Tibetan relations during the Ming era. Modern scholars debate whether the Ming dynasty had sovereignty over Tibet. Some believe it was a relationship of loose suzerainty that was largely cut off when the Jiajing Emperor (r. 1521–67) persecuted Buddhism in favor of Daoism at court. Others argue that the significant religious nature of the relationship with Tibetan lamas

15914-720: The official records or "donated" their lands to tax-exempt eunuchs or temples. Haijin laws intended to protect the coasts from Japanese pirates instead turned many into smugglers and pirates themselves. By the 16th century, the expansion of European trade —though restricted to islands near Guangzhou such as Macau —spread the Columbian exchange of crops, plants, and animals into China, introducing chili peppers to Sichuan cuisine and highly productive maize and potatoes , which diminished famines and spurred population growth. The growth of Portuguese , Spanish , and Dutch trade created new demand for Chinese products and produced

16060-510: The original 35-word list. In the 100-word list they did cluster, albeit with other varieties. Some Chinese linguists like Ting have claimed that Jianghuai is mostly Wu containing a superstratum of Mandarin; for example, the frequency and usage of the postposition 阿 as a postverbal aspect marker in the Taixing dialect of Jianghuai Mandarin can be seen as intermediate between Standard Mandarin , which tends to omit postverbal prepositions, and

16206-500: The original inhabitants on the Yangtze's northern bank. Jiang-huai, like other dialects of Chinese, has two forms for pronouncing words, the Bai (common, vulgar), and the Wen (literary). The Bai forms appear to preserve more ancient forms of speech dating from before the mass migration in the Song dynasty, which brought in the Wen pronunciations. Jianghuai Mandarin was possibly the native tone of

16352-471: The palace until the coup against the Jingtai Emperor in 1457 known as the "Wresting the Gate Incident". The former emperor retook the throne under the new era name Tianshun (r. 1457–64). Tianshun proved to be a troubled time and Mongol forces within the Ming military structure continued to be problematic. On 7 August 1461, the Chinese general Cao Qin and his Ming troops of Mongol descent staged

16498-428: The phonetic component of a character has little to do with the tone class that the character is assigned to. In other situations, however, the opposite appears to be the case. For example, the group 幅福蝠辐／腹复 of six homophones, all /pjuwk/ in Middle Chinese and divided into a group of four with one phonetic and a group of two with a different phonetic, splits so that the first group of four is all pronounced fú and

16644-461: The proclamation of the Republic of China . Described as "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history" by Edwin O. Reischauer , John K. Fairbank and Albert M. Craig , the Ming emperors took over the provincial administration system of the Yuan dynasty, and the thirteen Ming provinces are the precursors of the modern provinces. Throughout the Song dynasty,

16790-553: The provinces as virtual provincial governors began in the 1420s. By the late Ming dynasty, there were central government officials delegated to two or more provinces as supreme commanders and viceroys, a system which reined in the power and influence of the military by the civil establishment. Governmental institutions in China conformed to a similar pattern for some two thousand years, but each dynasty installed special offices and bureaus, reflecting its own particular interests. The Ming administration utilized Grand Secretaries to assist

16936-485: The provinces. For young schoolchildren there were printed multiplication tables and primers for elementary vocabulary; for adult examination candidates there were mass-produced, inexpensive volumes of Confucian classics and successful examination answers. As in earlier periods, the focus of the examination was classical Confucian texts, while the bulk of test material centered on the Four Books outlined by Zhu Xi in

17082-468: The region as part of a colonization effort. By the end of the 14th century, some 200,000 military colonists settled some 2,000,000 mu (350,000 acres) of land in what is now Yunnan and Guizhou . Roughly half a million more Chinese settlers came in later periods; these migrations caused a major shift in the ethnic make-up of the region, since formerly more than half of the population were non-Han peoples. Resentment over such massive changes in population and

17228-543: The region; in 1421 the Yongle Emperor commissioned 26 officials to travel the empire and uphold similar investigatory and patrimonial duties. By 1430 these xunfu assignments became institutionalized as " grand coordinators ". Hence, the Censorate was reinstalled and first staffed with investigating censors, later with censors-in-chief. By 1453, the grand coordinators were granted the title vice censor-in-chief or assistant censor-in-chief and were allowed direct access to

17374-448: The resulting government presence and policies sparked more Miao and Yao revolts in 1464 to 1466, which were crushed by an army of 30,000 Ming troops (including 1,000 Mongols) joining the 160,000 local Guangxi . After the scholar and philosopher Wang Yangming (1472–1529) suppressed another rebellion in the region, he advocated single, unitary administration of Chinese and indigenous ethnic groups in order to bring about sinification of

17520-468: The right to establish a new dynasty . In 1363, Zhu Yuanzhang eliminated his archrival and leader of the rebel Han faction, Chen Youliang , in the Battle of Lake Poyang , arguably the largest naval battle in history . Known for its ambitious use of fire ships , Zhu's force of 200,000 Ming sailors were able to defeat a Han rebel force over triple their size, claimed to be 650,000-strong. The victory destroyed

17666-408: The scholar-officials who populated the many ranks of bureaucracy were recruited through a rigorous examination system that was initially established by the Sui dynasty (581–618). Theoretically the system of exams allowed anyone to join the ranks of imperial officials (although it was frowned upon for merchants to join); in reality the time and funding needed to support the study in preparation for

17812-414: The scrutiny of recorded evaluation, although they were expected to confess any of their faults. There were over 4,000 school instructors in county and prefectural schools who were subject to evaluations every nine years. The Chief Instructor on the prefectural level was classified as equal to a second-grade county graduate. The Supervisorate of Imperial Instruction oversaw the education of the heir apparent to

17958-463: The second group of two is pronounced fù . Situations like this may result from the fact that only one of the characters in each group normally occurs in speech with an identifiable tone, and as a result, a " literary pronunciation " of the other characters was constructed based on the phonetic element of that character. The chart below summarizes the distribution in the different dialects. There are several conditions that can be used to determine if

18104-527: The surrounding areas around the town are Wu-speaking. Jianghuai was always confined to the town itself until the 1960s, but it is now overtaking Wu. Works cited Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty ( / m ɪ ŋ / MING ), officially the Great Ming , was an imperial dynasty of China , ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol -led Yuan dynasty . The Ming dynasty

18250-517: The terms that he return to service. The agreement soon broke down when a local magistrate had thirty-six of his fellow rebels executed; Li's troops retaliated by killing the officials and continued to lead a rebellion based in Rongyang, central Henan province by 1635. By the 1640s, an ex-soldier and rival to Li— Zhang Xianzhong (1606–1647)—had created a firm rebel base in Chengdu , Sichuan , with

18396-426: The throne under the era name Jingtai (r. 1449–57); the Oirats were also repelled once the Jingtai Emperor's confidant and defense minister Yu Qian (1398–1457) gained control of the Ming armed forces. Holding the Zhengtong Emperor in captivity was a useless bargaining chip for the Oirats as long as another sat on his throne, so they released him back into Ming China. The former emperor was placed under house arrest in

18542-408: The throne; this office was headed by a Grand Supervisor of Instruction, who was ranked as first class of grade three. Historians debate whether the examination system expanded or contracted upward social mobility. On the one hand, the exams were graded without regard to a candidate's social background, and were theoretically open to everyone. In actual practice, the successful candidates had years of

18688-510: The time of the Mongol invasion (the Yuan dynasty , 1279–1368), the former final stops had been reduced to a glottal stop /ʔ/ in Old Mandarin . The Zhongyuan Yinyun ( 中原音韻 ), a rime book of 1324, already shows signs of glottal stop disappearing and the modern Mandarin tone system emerging in its place. The precise time at which the loss occurred is unknown though it was likely gone by

18834-576: The time of the Qing Dynasty , in the 17th century. ( Nanjing dialect ) ( Ningbo dialect ) 怒髮衝冠，憑欄處，瀟瀟雨 歇 } [xĭɐt] ； 抬望眼，仰天長嘯，壯懷激 烈 [lĭɛt] 。 三十功名塵與土，八千里路雲和 月 [ŋĭwɐt] ； 莫等閒，白了少年頭，空悲 切 [ʦʰiet] 。 靖康恥，猶未 雪 [sĭuɛt] ； 臣子恨，何時 滅 [mĭɛt] 。 駕長車，踏破賀蘭山 缺 [kʰĭuɛt] ； 壯志飢餐胡虜肉，笑談渴飲匈奴 血 [xiwet] 。 待從頭，收拾舊山河，朝天 闕 [kʰĭwɐt] ！ The entering tone is extant in Jianghuai Mandarin and Minjiang Sichuanese . Other dialects have lost

18980-487: The tone or pitch of the syllable is entirely predictable) and are therefore phonologically toneless. In languages such as Cantonese or Hakka , a small number of tonal distinctions exist (typically 2), which historically developed as a substitute for the lost Middle Chinese initial voicing. Some Chinese varieties have innovated new final consonants from such historical syllables. A few dialects of Gan have [l] (from historical [t̚] ). In some dialects of Cantonese and Gan,

19126-483: The tones of Chinese before the establishment of the traditional four-tone description between 483 and 493. It is based on the Vedic theory of three intonations ( 聲明論 ). The middle intonation, udātta , maps to the "level tone" ( 平聲 ); the upwards intonation, svarita , to the "rising tone" ( 上聲 ); the downward intonation, anudātta , to the "departing tone" ( 去聲 ). The distinctive sound of syllables ending with

19272-456: The validity of the theory that silver shortages caused the downfall of the Ming dynasty. Famines became common in northern China in the early 17th century because of unusually dry and cold weather that shortened the growing season—effects of a larger ecological event now known as the Little Ice Age . Famine, alongside tax increases, widespread military desertions, a declining relief system, and natural disasters such as flooding and inability of

19418-399: The vowels ê or i , the ending - c changes to -ch , giving rise to -ich and -êch , and ach (pronounced /ajk/ ) also occurs for some words ending with -k . Only the sắc and nặng tones are allowed on checked tones. In Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary, those tones were split from the Middle Chinese "entering" tone in a similar fashion to Cantonese. Whether

19564-640: The wake of a Mongol-Tibetan alliance initiated in 1578, an alliance which affected the foreign policy of the subsequent Manchu Qing dynasty (1644–1912) in their support for the Dalai Lama of the Yellow Hat sect. By the late 16th century, the Mongols proved to be successful armed protectors of the Yellow Hat Dalai Lama after their increasing presence in the Amdo region, culminating in

19710-546: Was a matter of uncles promoting nephews. The Heishanhui Society in Peking sponsored the temple that conducted rituals for worshiping the memory of Gang Tie, a powerful eunuch of the Yuan dynasty. The Temple became an influential base for highly placed eunuchs, and continued in a somewhat diminished role during the Qing dynasty. During the last years of the Wanli era and those of his two successors, an economic crisis developed that

19856-401: Was a penniless peasant and Buddhist monk who joined the Red Turbans in 1352; he soon gained a reputation after marrying the foster daughter of a rebel commander. In 1356, Zhu's rebel force captured the city of Nanjing , which he would later establish as the capital of the Ming dynasty. With the Yuan dynasty crumbling, competing rebel groups began fighting for control of the country and thus

20002-545: Was called the Eastern Depot at the beginning of the dynasty, later the Western Depot. This secret service was overseen by the Directorate of Ceremonial, hence this state organ's often totalitarian affiliation. Eunuchs had ranks that were equivalent to civil service ranks, only theirs had four grades instead of nine. Entering tone A checked tone , commonly known by the Chinese calque entering tone ,

20148-478: Was centered on a sudden widespread lack of the empire's chief medium of exchange: silver. The Portuguese first established trade with China in 1516. Following the Ming Emperor's decision to ban direct trade with Japan, Portuguese traders acted as an intermediary between China and Japan by buying Chinese silks from China and selling it to Japan for silver. After some initial hostilities gained consent from

20294-586: Was classified by Yuen Ren Chao , is a Mandarin dialect closely related to Jianghuai Mandarin. Simmons claimed that, had Chao compared the Hangzhou dialect to the Common Wu syllabary that Chao developed, as well as to Jianghuai Mandarin, he would have found more similarities to Jianghuai than to Wu. A characteristic feature of Lower Yangtze Mandarin is the treatment of Middle Chinese syllable-final stops. Middle Chinese syllables with vocalic or nasal codas had

20440-729: Was created at Jiankang , now Nanjing. The Nanjing dialect started to transform into Jianghuai Mandarin from Wu. Further events, such as Hou Jing 's rebellions during the Liang dynasty and the Sui dynasty invasion of the Chen dynasty resulted in Jiankang's destruction. During the Ming dynasty, Ming Taizu relocated southerners from below Yangzi and made Nanjing the capital. During the Taiping Rebellion , Taiping rebels seized Nanjing and made it

20586-536: Was in comparison to the 100,000 shengyuan ('government students'), the lowest tier of graduates, by the 16th century. The maximum tenure in office was nine years, but every three years officials were graded on their performance by senior officials. If they were graded as superior then they were promoted, if graded adequate then they retained their ranks, and if graded inadequate they were demoted one rank. In extreme cases, officials would be dismissed or punished. Only capital officials of grade 4 and above were exempt from

20732-431: Was no one after him skilled enough to maintain the stability of these alliances; officials soon banded together in opposing political factions. Over time Wanli grew tired of court affairs and frequent political quarreling amongst his ministers, preferring to stay behind the walls of the Forbidden City and out of his officials' sight. Scholar-officials lost prominence in administration as eunuchs became intermediaries between

20878-503: Was not conquering territory from the Yuan dynasty but rather from the rebel warlords. He used this line of argument to attempt to persuade Yuan loyalists to join his cause. The Ming used the tribute they received from former Yuan vassals as proof that the Ming had taken over the Yuan's legitimacy. Tribute missions were regularly celebrated with music and dance in the Ming court. Hui Muslim troops settled in Changde , Hunan , after serving

21024-448: Was organized parallel to but was not subject to the civil service bureaucracy. Although there were several dictatorial eunuchs throughout the Ming, such as Wang Zhen , Wang Zhi, and Liu Jin , excessive tyrannical eunuch power did not become evident until the 1590s when the Wanli Emperor increased their rights over the civil bureaucracy and granted them power to collect provincial taxes. The eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627) dominated

21170-497: Was the Forbidden City , the palatial residence of the emperor and his family. By 1553, the Outer City was added to the south, which brought the overall size of Beijing to 6.5 by 7 kilometres (4 by 4 + 1 ⁄ 2 miles). Beginning in 1405, the Yongle Emperor entrusted his favored eunuch commander Zheng He (1371–1433) as the admiral for a gigantic new fleet of ships designated for international tributary missions . Among

21316-467: Was the last imperial dynasty of China ruled by the Han people , the majority ethnic group in China. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who established the short-lived Shun dynasty ), numerous rump regimes ruled by remnants of the Ming imperial family —collectively called the Southern Ming —survived until 1662. The Ming dynasty's founder,

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