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63-523: The city is the national and international top producer of ties. Shengzhou is the origin of the Yue opera , the second most popular Chinese opera . As of 2020, Shengzhou is divided into 4 Subdistricts , 10 Towns and 1 Township . Shengzhou is famous for its variety of local snacks and southeast China style dishes. Examples include: Xiaolongbao (小笼包), Doufubao (豆腐包), Youtiao, and Shengzhou Chaoniangao (嵊州炒年糕). This Zhejiang province location article

126-670: A Jesuit missionary in China, wrote the first book that used the Latin alphabet to write Chinese, entitled Xizi Qiji ( 西字奇蹟 ; 'Miracle of Western Letters') and published in Beijing in 1605. Twenty years later, fellow Jesuit Nicolas Trigault published 'Aid to the Eyes and Ears of Western Literati' ( 西儒耳目資 ; Xīrú ěrmù zī )) in Hangzhou. Neither book had any influence among

189-404: A tone number at the end of individual syllables. For example, tóng is written tong . Each tone can be denoted with its numeral the order listed above. The neutral tone can either be denoted with no numeral, with 0, or with 5. Briefly, tone marks should always be placed in the order a, e, i, o, u, ü , with the only exceptions being iu and io where the tone mark is placed on

252-637: A GB recommendation in 1996, and were last updated in 2012. In practice, however, published materials in China now often space pinyin syllable by syllable. According to Victor H. Mair , this practice became widespread after the Script Reform Committee, previously under direct control of the State Council , had its power greatly weakened in 1985 when it was renamed the State Language Commission and placed under

315-400: A common practice in some sub-dialects, is rarely used in official publications. Even though most initials contain a consonant, finals are not always simple vowels, especially in compound finals ( 复韵母 ; 複韻母 ; fùyùnmǔ ), i.e. when a "medial" is placed in front of the final. For example, the medials [ i ] and [ u ] are pronounced with such tight openings at the beginning of

378-495: A disproportionate number of love stories in its repertoire and very little acrobatic fighting. Prior to 1906, the antecedent to Yue opera was story-singing. It was initially an entertainment for people in Sheng County . Its lyrics are mostly collected from conversations between farmers while they were working. Audiences loved these ballads because of their vivid description of daily life. The Second Opium War interfered with

441-498: A final that some native Chinese speakers (especially when singing) pronounce yī ( 衣 ; 'clothes'), officially pronounced /í/ , as /jí/ and wéi ( 围 ; 圍 ; 'to enclose'), officially pronounced /uěi/ , as /wěi/ or /wuěi/ . Often these medials are treated as separate from the finals rather than as part of them; this convention is followed in the chart of finals below. The conventional lexicographical order derived from bopomofo is: In each cell below,

504-473: A front high rounded vowel, namely after the letters j , q , x , and y . For example, the sound of the word for 'fish' ( 鱼 ; 魚 ) is transcribed in pinyin simply as yú , not as * yǘ . This practice is opposed to Wade–Giles, which always uses ü , and Tongyong Pinyin , which always uses yu . Whereas Wade–Giles needs the umlaut to distinguish between chü (pinyin ju ) and chu (pinyin zhu ), this ambiguity does not arise with pinyin, so

567-479: A joint production instead of multiple separate retelling of the stories. The first performance was thus generated. The show turned out to be a great success, and residents were delighted and willing to talk about it. Over time more and more counties invited them to perform. Because the music's tones were similar to those of Shange (Shān Gē,山歌) people named this art Small Tunes and Songs Troupes ( pinyin : Xiao Gē Wén Shū Bān, simplified Chinese :小歌文书班). The small in

630-561: A living. These women usually received three months acting training, and then participated in performances to gain more experience in acting. Another explanation was that the performing style of Shaoxing Literal Opera fit with women's nature . As young women tend to be more glorious on stage according to Sheng County's newspaper at that time, the tender and gentle features of Shaoxing Literal Art became more outstanding under such highlighting. Furthermore, Four Gong Qiang worked more vividly and delicately under women's performances. Originating in

693-556: A pinnacle popularity in late 1950s and early 1960s. During this period there was increased emphasis on dramatic realism and expressionism. However, during the Cultural Revolution , like other traditional Chinese art forms, Yueju performances were outlawed, which caused a serious setback in its development. Since the 1980s, Yueju has become popular again, while being challenged by new amusement forms. Yueju features are elegant and soft, suitable for telling love stories. It

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756-630: A second home in Shanghai , China's most affluent city, where it managed to out-compete both Peking opera and the native Shanghai opera . As Yue opera is performed in a variant of Wu , it is most popular in Wu-speaking areas including southern Jiangsu , Zhejiang and Shanghai. In addition, the opera also has a sizeable following in Hong Kong due to Shanghainese migration to the city. Like its performers, Yue opera fans are mainly women, resulting in

819-773: A transliteration system for Chinese, his discussion ultimately led to a proliferation of proposed schemes. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and further improved by Herbert Giles , presented in Chinese–English Dictionary (1892). It was popular, and was used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. In 1943, the US military tapped Yale University to develop another romanization system for Mandarin Chinese intended for pilots flying over China—much more than previous systems,

882-687: A wooden clapper played by a performer offstage. This made the performances very mobile allowing the troupes to perform throughout the region. The opera used plain language in the vernacular which made it accessible and popular with local populations. As "Small Tunes and Songs Troupes" expanded in size and popularity, it entered Shanghai theaters. Due to its unique, elegant and soft singing style compared with other political and spectacular performances, Yue opera found an audience there. It soon changed its name to Shaoxing Civil Opera ( pinyin : Shào Xing Wén Xì 绍兴文戏) in 1916, to better represent its performances as art pieces that reflected regional culture. However, both

945-545: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Yue opera Yue opera ( Chinese : 越剧 ; pinyin : Yuèjù ), also known as Shaoxing opera , is a popular Chinese opera genre. Only Peking opera is considered more popular nationwide. Originating in Shengzhou , Shaoxing , Zhejiang Province in 1906, Yue opera features actresses in male roles as well as femininity in terms of singing, performing, and staging. Despite its rural origin, it has found

1008-662: Is based on the phonological system of Beijing Mandarin. Other romanization schemes have been devised to transcribe those other Chinese varieties, such as Jyutping for Cantonese and Pe̍h-ōe-jī for Hokkien . Based on the "Chinese Romanization" section of ISO 7098:2015, pinyin tone marks should use the symbols from Combining Diacritical Marks , as opposed by the use of Spacing Modifier Letters in bopomofo. Lowercase letters with tone marks are included in GB 2312 and their uppercase counterparts are included in JIS X 0212 ; thus Unicode includes all

1071-493: Is both a medial and a coda, the nucleus may be dropped from writing. In this case, when the coda is a consonant n or ng , the only vowel left is the medial i, u , or ü , and so this takes the diacritic. However, when the coda is a vowel, it is the coda rather than the medial which takes the diacritic in the absence of a written nucleus. This occurs with syllables ending in -ui (from wei : wèi → -uì ) and in -iu (from you : yòu → -iù ). That is, in

1134-473: Is distinct from the concept of consonant and vowel sounds as basic units in traditional (and most other phonetic systems used to describe the Chinese language). Every syllable in Standard Chinese can be described as a pair of one initial and one final, except for the special syllable er or when a trailing -r is considered part of a syllable (a phenomenon known as erhua ). The latter case, though

1197-533: Is economic incentive. In the early 20th century, young Chinese women had only two options to earn their livelihoods. They were either sent to a wealthy family as a child bride , or to the factories to work. In 1929, the Wall Street Crash had tremendous global influence. Many factories in Shanghai closed down, and as a result, women often had no option but to attend female-performed opera classes to earn

1260-519: Is not limited only to pinyin, since many languages that use the Latin alphabet natively also assign different values to the same letters. A recent study on Chinese writing and literacy concluded, "By and large, pinyin represents the Chinese sounds better than the Wade–Giles system, and does so with fewer extra marks." As pinyin is a phonetic writing system for modern Standard Chinese , it is not designed to replace characters for writing Literary Chinese ,

1323-614: Is not ordinarily reflected in pinyin spelling. Standard Chinese has many polysyllabic words. Like in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet, spacing in pinyin is officially based on word boundaries. However, there are often ambiguities in partitioning a word. The Basic Rules of the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Orthography were put into effect in 1988 by the National Educational and National Language commissions. These rules became

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1386-619: Is referred to as the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet . Hanyu ( 汉语 ; 漢語 ) literally means ' Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while pinyin literally means 'spelled sounds'. Pinyin is the official romanisation system used in China, Singapore, Taiwan, and by the United Nations . Its use has become common when transliterating Standard Chinese mostly regardless of region, though it is less ubiquitous in Taiwan. It

1449-460: Is sometimes used instead by convention. For example, it is common for cellphones to use v instead of ü . Additionally, some stores in China use v instead of ü in the transliteration of their names. The drawback is a lack of precomposed characters and limited font support for combining accents on the letter v , ( v̄ v́ v̌ v̀ ). This also presents a problem in transcribing names for use on passports, affecting people with names that consist of

1512-570: Is used to teach Standard Chinese, normally written with Chinese characters , to students already familiar with the Latin alphabet . Pinyin is also used by various input methods on computers and to categorize entries in some Chinese dictionaries . In pinyin, each Chinese syllable is spelled in terms of an optional initial and a final , each of which is represented by one or more letters. Initials are initial consonants, whereas finals are all possible combinations of medials ( semivowels coming before

1575-513: Is written over an i , then it replaces the tittle, as in yī . In dictionaries, neutral tone may be indicated by a dot preceding the syllable—e.g. ·ma . When a neutral tone syllable has an alternative pronunciation in another tone, a combination of tone marks may be used: zhī·dào ( 知道 ) may be pronounced either zhīdào or zhīdao . Before the advent of computers, many typewriter fonts did not contain vowels with macron or caron diacritics. Tones were thus represented by placing

1638-477: The Ministry of Education . Mair claims that proponents of Chinese characters in the educational bureaucracy "became alarmed that word-based pinyin was becoming a de facto alternative to Chinese characters as a script for writing Mandarin and demanded that all pinyin syllables be written separately." Pinyin superseded older romanization systems such as Wade–Giles and postal romanization , and replaced bopomofo as

1701-638: The "father of pinyin". They based their work in part on earlier romanization systems . The system was originally promulgated at the Fifth Session of the 1st National People's Congress in 1958, and has seen several rounds of revisions since. The International Organization for Standardization propagated Hanyu Pinyin as ISO 7098 in 1982, and the United Nations began using it in 1986. Taiwan adopted Hanyu Pinyin as its official romanization system in 2009, replacing Tongyong Pinyin . Matteo Ricci ,

1764-634: The Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the United States and China in 1979. In 2001, the Chinese government issued the National Common Language Law , providing a legal basis for applying pinyin. The current specification of the orthography is GB/T 16159–2012. Chinese phonology is generally described in terms of sound pairs of two initials ( 声母 ; 聲母 ; shēngmǔ ) and finals ( 韵母 ; 韻母 ; yùnmǔ ). This

1827-476: The Fifth Session of the 1st National People's Congress on 11 February 1958. It was then introduced to primary schools as a way to teach Standard Chinese pronunciation and used to improve the literacy rate among adults. Despite its formal promulgation, pinyin did not become widely used until after the tumult of the Cultural Revolution . In the 1980s, students were trained in pinyin from an early age, learning it in tandem with characters or even before. During

1890-601: The Private Use Areas, and some input methods (e.g. Sogou Pinyin) also outputs the Private Use Areas code point instead of the original character. As the superset GB 18030 changed the mappings of ⟨ḿ⟩ and ⟨ǹ⟩ , this has caused an issue where the input methods and font files use different encoding standards, and thus the input and output of both characters are mixed up. Other symbols are used in pinyin are as follows: The spelling of Chinese geographical or personal names in pinyin has become

1953-416: The absence of a written nucleus the finals have priority for receiving the tone marker, as long as they are vowels; if not, the medial takes the diacritic. An algorithm to find the correct vowel letter (when there is more than one) is as follows: Worded differently, The above can be summarized as the following table. The vowel letter taking the tone mark is indicated by the fourth-tone mark. Tone sandhi

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2016-403: The class after six years for marriage. The progress these artists achieved was noteworthy. As the influence of their opera grew, more and more female classes were founded. By the beginning of the 1930s, Zhejiang Province had about two hundred female classes as well and two thousand students. There are two well-known explanations for the rise of Shaoxing Literal Opera at that time. One of them

2079-609: The common accented characters from pinyin. Other punctuation mark and symbols in Chinese are to use the equivalent symbol in English noted in to GB 15834. According to GB 16159, all accented letters are required to have both uppercase and lowercase characters as per their normal counterparts. GBK has mapped two characters ⟨ḿ⟩ and ⟨ǹ⟩ to Private Use Areas in Unicode respectively, thus some fonts (e.g. SimSun) that adhere to GBK include both characters in

2142-421: The contemporary Chinese literati, and the romanizations they introduced primarily were useful for Westerners. During the late Qing, the reformer Song Shu (1862–1910) proposed that China adopt a phonetic writing system. A student of the scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan , Song had observed the effect of the kana syllabaries and Western learning during his visits to Japan. While Song did not himself propose

2205-646: The country after the People's Republic was established. Earlier attempts to romanize Chinese writing were mostly abandoned in 1944. Zhou became an economics professor in Shanghai, and when the Ministry of Education created the Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language in 1955, Premier Zhou Enlai assigned him the task of developing a new romanization system, despite the fact that he

2268-587: The essence of different opera styles including Beijing Opera they had seen in Shanghai. During this process, Four Gong Pitch (四工腔|p= Sì Gōng Qiāng) became the remarkable fruit of this blending. This music pitch is extraordinary because it resolved the unnatural status women have when they play male roles. The Shaoxing Civic Operatic Troupe further developed a systematic training in singing style and sound practice. It utilized erhu and other huqins as alternative accompaniments to adjust music. When Jinshui Wang came back to Sheng County, he had been deeply impressed by

2331-432: The first class existed for only six years. It was transformed into the first professional women's troupe at the end of the girl's apprenticeship. In the 1920s, the social status of both women and arts performers (also known as Xizi, 戏子) was very humble. Governments assumed that operas performed by women would lower the value of the art. Under great pressure and in a limited business market, the first wave of female artists left

2394-647: The folk music. It gradually became well known, both in Sheng County and neighboring counties. According to oral history passed down by Yue Opera practitioners, Yue Opera began in 1906. At the end of the first month of the lunar year Zhēngyuè ( simplified Chinese :正月) in 1906, artists gathered together in Chen Wanyuan ( simplified Chinese : 陈万元)'s house. Although these artists usually only performed in groups of two or three and had never performed together before, Chen and other residents encouraged them to put on

2457-804: The folk song and ballad singing of rural areas in Zhejiang, by drawing on the experience of other developed Chinese opera forms such as Peking opera and Kunqu , Yueju became popular in Shanghai in early 1930s. During the Second Sino-Japanese War , Yueju performers in Shanghai launched a movement to reform the Yueju performance which drew influences from, new-style literature (a part of the New Culture Movement ), Western drama and film, making their opera remarkably different from other forms in China. A director-centered system replaced

2520-461: The following is an exhaustive table of all possible finals. The only syllable-final consonants in Standard Chinese are -n , -ng , and -r , the last of which is attached as a grammatical suffix . A Chinese syllable ending with any other consonant either is from a non-Mandarin language (a southern Chinese language such as Cantonese , reflecting final consonants in Old Chinese ), or indicates

2583-598: The height of the Cold War the use of pinyin system over Wade–Giles and Yale romanizations outside of China was regarded as a political statement or identification with the mainland Chinese government. Beginning in the early 1980s, Western publications addressing mainland China began using the Hanyu Pinyin romanization system instead of earlier romanization systems; this change followed the Joint Communiqué on

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2646-441: The initials ⟨ l ⟩ and ⟨ n ⟩ when necessary in order to represent the sound [y] . This is necessary in order to distinguish the front high rounded vowel in lü (e.g. 驴 ; 驢 ; 'donkey') from the back high rounded vowel in lu (e.g. 炉 ; 爐 ; 'oven'). Tonal markers are placed above the umlaut, as in lǘ . However, the ü is not used in the other contexts where it could represent

2709-530: The local economy of Sheng County, located in the Jiangnan area, near Shanghai. Since Sheng County agriculturalists were experiencing difficulty earning their livelihoods, they started to turn this folk art into a second source of income. Over years, the accumulation of lyrics built up the fundamental source materials for Yue opera, and the folk music gradually developed its own style. Performers also began to integrate simple acting and accompanying instruments into

2772-772: The method of Chinese phonetic instruction in mainland China . The ISO adopted pinyin as the standard romanization for modern Chinese in 1982 (ISO 7098:1982, superseded by ISO 7098:2015). The United Nations followed suit in 1986. It has also been accepted by the government of Singapore , the United States's Library of Congress , the American Library Association , and many other international institutions. Pinyin assigns some Latin letters sound values which are quite different from those of most languages. This has drawn some criticism as it may lead to confusion when uninformed speakers apply either native or English assumed pronunciations to words. However, this problem

2835-404: The more convenient form ju is used instead of jü . Genuine ambiguities only happen with nu / nü and lu / lü , which are then distinguished by an umlaut. Many fonts or output methods do not support an umlaut for ü or cannot place tone marks on top of ü . Likewise, using ü in input methods is difficult because it is not present as a simple key on many keyboard layouts. For these reasons v

2898-440: The most common way to transcribe them in English. Pinyin has also become the dominant Chinese input method in mainland China, in contrast to Taiwan, where bopomofo is most commonly used. Families outside of Taiwan who speak Mandarin as a mother tongue use pinyin to help children associate characters with spoken words which they already know. Chinese families outside of Taiwan who speak some other language as their mother tongue use

2961-408: The name referred to its humble folk foundation and contrasted it with "large" formal opera from the area. Performances were simple. Actors were often peasants who would perform between busy agricultural seasons. They often had no costumes and only a few props, though sometimes rented simple costumes from larger local opera troupes. Musical accompaniment was sparse consisting of only a pair of drums and

3024-579: The names of several pinyin letters using -ê finals. According to the Scheme for the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet , ng can be abbreviated with the shorthand ŋ . However, this shorthand is rarely used due to difficulty of entering it on computers. (Starts with the vowel sound in f a ther and ends in the velar nasal ; like s ong in some dialects of American English) An umlaut is added to ⟨ u ⟩ when it occurs after

3087-558: The pinyin letters assigned to each initial are accompanied by their phonetic realizations in brackets, notated according to the International Phonetic Alphabet . In each cell below, the first line indicates the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcription, the second indicates pinyin for a standalone (no-initial) form, and the third indicates pinyin for a combination with an initial. Other than finals modified by an -r , which are omitted,

3150-412: The pinyin system, four main tones of Mandarin are shown by diacritics: ā, á, ǎ, and à. There is no symbol or diacritic for the neutral tone: a. The diacritic is placed over the letter that represents the syllable nucleus , unless that letter is missing. Tones are used in Hanyu Pinyin symbols, and they do not appear in Chinese characters. Tones are written on the finals of Chinese pinyin. If the tone mark

3213-411: The practice to use "LYU" and "NYU" in passports. Although nüe written as nue , and lüe written as lue are not ambiguous, nue or lue are not correct according to the rules; nüe and lüe should be used instead. However, some Chinese input methods support both nve / lve (typing v for ü ) and nue / lue . The pinyin system also uses four diacritics to mark the tones of Mandarin . In

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3276-403: The prosperous artistic atmosphere in Shanghai. Having seen different forms of opera during that time and saw the business opportunities in founding an opera performed by women. In February, 1923, he opened an all girls opera class and spent huge amount of money attracting and rewarding young women to join. ("Class" here is an organization in which members work and study at the same time.) However,

3339-487: The result appears very similar to modern Hanyu Pinyin. Hanyu Pinyin was designed by a group of mostly Chinese linguists, including Wang Li , Lu Zhiwei , Li Jinxi , Luo Changpei , as well as Zhou Youguang (1906–2017), an economist by trade, as part of a Chinese government project in the 1950s. Zhou, often called "the father of pinyin", worked as a banker in New York when he decided to return to China to help rebuild

3402-416: The scene plot system that dictated how a part or scene should be acted. There was an increasing focus on the depiction of the personality and psychology of characters. New operas on new themes were developed including an adaption of Lu Xun 's novel "New Year Sacrifice"《祝福》. After the foundation of People's Republic of China , Yueju was welcomed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party at first, and reached

3465-418: The second vowel instead. Pinyin tone marks appear primarily above the syllable nucleus—e.g. as in kuài , where k is the initial, u the medial, a the nucleus, and i is the coda. There is an exception for syllabic nasals like /m/ , where the nucleus of the syllable is a consonant: there, the diacritic will be carried by a written dummy vowel. When the nucleus is / ə / (written e or o ), and there

3528-517: The singing style and banhu fiddle (accompaniment) that the Shaoxing Civil Opera utilized were underdeveloped and vulgar compared with other, more delicate opera genres in Shanghai. It soon lost its prestige and popularity in this big city. Returning to their roots in Sheng County, Shaoxing Civic Opera performers like Wang Jinshui (王金水, 1879-1944) put great effort into improving their performance and singing style. These artists absorbed

3591-443: The sound lü or nü , particularly people with the surname 吕 ( Lǚ ), a fairly common surname, particularly compared to the surnames 陆 ( Lù ), 鲁 ( Lǔ ), 卢 ( Lú ) and 路 ( Lù ). Previously, the practice varied among different passport issuing offices, with some transcribing as "LV" and "NV" while others used "LU" and "NU". On 10 July 2012, the Ministry of Public Security standardized

3654-498: The standard written language prior to the early 1900s. In particular, Chinese characters retain semantic cues that help distinguish differently pronounced words in the ancient classical language that are now homophones in Mandarin. Thus, Chinese characters remain indispensable for recording and transmitting the corpus of Chinese writing from the past. Pinyin is not designed to transcribe varieties other than Standard Chinese, which

3717-441: The use of a non-pinyin romanization system, such as one that uses final consonants to indicate tones. Technically, i, u, ü without a following vowel are finals, not medials, and therefore take the tone marks, but they are more concisely displayed as above. In addition, ê [ɛ] ( 欸 ; 誒 ) and syllabic nasals m ( 呒 , 呣 ), n ( 嗯 , 唔 ), ng ( 嗯 , 𠮾 ) are used as interjections or in neologisms ; for example, pinyin defines

3780-435: The vowel), a nucleus vowel, and coda (final vowel or consonant). Diacritics are used to indicate the four tones found in Standard Chinese, though these are often omitted in various contexts, such as when spelling Chinese names in non-Chinese texts. Hanyu Pinyin was developed in the 1950s by a group of Chinese linguists including Wang Li , Lu Zhiwei , Li Jinxi , Luo Changpei and Zhou Youguang , who has been called

3843-528: Was authored in January 1956 by Ye Laishi , Lu Zhiwei and Zhou Youguang. A revised Pinyin scheme was proposed by Wang Li, Lu Zhiwei and Li Jinxi, and became the main focus of discussion among the group of Chinese linguists in June 1956, forming the basis of Pinyin standard later after incorporating a wide range of feedback and further revisions. The first edition of Hanyu Pinyin was approved and officially adopted at

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3906-513: Was initially performed by men only, but female groups started performing in the style in 1923, and during the 1930s, the form became female-only. Two Stage Sisters is a 1964 movie featuring Shaoxing Opera. In the new era, Shaoxing opera was included in the national intangible cultural heritage list. Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin , or simply pinyin , is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese . In official documents, it

3969-576: Was not a linguist by trade. Hanyu Pinyin incorporated different aspects from existing systems, including Gwoyeu Romatzyh (1928), Latinxua Sin Wenz (1931), and the diacritics from bopomofo (1918). "I'm not the father of pinyin", Zhou said years later; "I'm the son of pinyin. It's [the result of] a long tradition from the later years of the Qing dynasty down to today. But we restudied the problem and revisited it and made it more perfect." An initial draft

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