126-648: The Tuqi King ( Chinese : 屠耆王 ; pinyin : Túqí wáng ; Wade–Giles : T'u-ch'i wang ) was a high office of the Xiongnu , a title also known to the Chinese as "worthy/wise prince/king". In the 6th to 8th centuries, Chinese annalists used the expression 贤王 Xian wang only in reference to the Eastern Turkic Khaganate . The Tuqi King of the Left was generally designated as the successor of
252-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
378-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
504-455: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
630-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
756-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
882-596: A close phonetical resemblance with another ancient Turkic title, togrul , which is homophonic with the Turkic word togrul "falcon". Other philologists interpret the dā-grjəj as representing Old Turkic toğ(u)ru , toğrï (< toğur- ), Turkish , Azeri , Turkmen , Gagauz doğru , Tuvinian doora , etc., all meaning "overt, honest, just". This interpretation had initially been suggested by Friedrich von Schlegel (1772–1829) as direct semantical and phonetical correspondence. The Left Wise Prince belonged to
1008-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
1134-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
1260-589: A force of 3,000 Xiongnu but could not take the Southern Xiongnu capital due to disease among the horses of their Xianbei allies. The Xianbei under Qizhijian raided Han territory four times from 121 to 138. In 145, the Xianbei raided Dai Commandery . Around the mid-2nd century, a chieftain, Tanshihuai , unified the Xianbei tribes and established an imperial court at Mount Danhan (彈汗山; in present-day Shangdu County , Inner Mongolia ). Under Tanshihuai,
1386-505: A member of their tribe based on their character and abilities. Even as they established their states on the Central Plains and adopted the Chinese hereditary system, influential brothers, uncles and cousins of the Xianbei rulers often posed as rival claimants to the throne. Art of the Xianbei portrayed their nomadic lifestyle and consisted primarily of metalwork and figurines. The style and subjects of Xianbei art were influenced by
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#17327656775451512-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
1638-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
1764-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
1890-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
2016-524: A step further by decreeing the change of Xianbei names to Han names , even changing their own family name from Tuoba to Yuan. Xiaowen also moved the capital to Luoyang in the Chinese heartlands away from Pingcheng near the northern frontiers. While the population in Luoyang were open to accepting the policies, the population near the old capital were more conservative and held on to their Xianbei culture. Marriages to Han elite families were encouraged, and
2142-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
2268-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
2394-484: A variety of influences, and ultimately, the Xianbei were known for emphasizing unique nomadic motifs in artistic advancements such as leaf headdresses, crouching and geometricized animals depictions, animal pendant necklaces, and metal openwork . The leaf headdresses were very characteristic of Xianbei culture, and they are found especially in Murong Xianbei tombs. Their corresponding ornamental style also links
2520-672: A vassal for over eight decade after losing the battle during the chaos of China . Until Huo Qubing defeated the Nomadic Worthy Prince of the east, Xianbei , the successor of the Donghu people was able to reclaimed back their own land and break apart from Xiongnu to establish their own confederacy to declared independent. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
2646-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
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#17327656775452772-709: Is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of
2898-452: Is also possible that the Xianbei spoke more than one language. However, there are no remaining works written in Xianbei, which are thought to have been written using Chinese characters . Only a few words remain, such as 啊干 'elder brother'. According to Du, et al. (2024), some historians believe that the Xianbei could have had "exotic" features such as high nose bridges, blond hair and thick beards. However, other scholars have suggested
3024-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
3150-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
3276-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate
3402-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
3528-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
3654-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
3780-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
3906-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
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4032-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
4158-496: Is worn on top of the head and resembles a tree or animal with many leaf pendants, and the rare "Blossoming Vine" (huaman), which consists of "gold strips interwoven with wires with leaves." Leaf headdresses were made with hammered gold and decorated by punching out designs and hanging the leaf pendants with wire. The exact origin, use, and wear of these headdresses is still being investigated and determined. However, headdresses similar to those later also existed and were worn by women in
4284-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
4410-795: The Former Yan (337–370), Later Yan (384–407) and Southern Yan (398–410), as well as the Western Yan (384–394; not listed among the Sixteen Kingdoms). The Murong dominated the northeast and at one point vied to unify China, but fell short due to family infighting, corruption and weak rulers. Meanwhile, in Gansu , the Qifu established the Western Qin (385–431) while the Tufa established
4536-654: The Han dynasty , the Xianbei began occupying the Mongolian Plateau , absorbing 100,000 Xiongnu tribes and increasing their strength. In 109, the Wuhuan and Xianbei attacked Wuyuan Commandery and defeated local Han forces. The Southern Xiongnu chanyu Wanshishizhudi rebelled against the Han and attacked the Emissary Geng Chong but failed to oust him. Han forces under Geng Kui retaliated and defeated
4662-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
4788-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
4914-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
5040-639: The Northern Wei dynasty (386–535), becoming the first of the Northern dynasties (386–581). The Northern Wei grew in power after they defeated and supplanted the Later Yan on the Central Plains . In 439, they conquered the last of the Sixteen Kingdoms , thereby unifying the north and completing the transition into the Northern and Southern dynasties period . The Northern Wei unification
5166-911: The Oroqen people . A genetic study published in the Russian Journal of Genetics in April 2014 examined the mtDNA of 17 Tuoba Xianbei buried at the Shangdu Dongdajing cemetery in Inner Mongolia, China. The 17 samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to haplogroups D4 (four samples), D5 (three samples), C (five samples), A (three samples), G and B. A genetic study published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in November 2007 examined 17 individuals buried at
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5292-509: The Sixteen Kingdoms in northern China. The Murong of Liaodong were the most notable clan of this period. Having adopted the Jin governing system and customs, they rose to prominence during the fall of Western Jin by providing refuge and cooperating closely with the Chinese exiles, eventually establishing Xianbei rule over the Central Plains after they defeated the Ran Wei in 352. They founded
5418-668: The Southern Liang (397–414). The Tuoba retained their fiefdom of Dai (310–376), which was elevated to a kingdom in 315, before they were eventually conquered by the Di -led Former Qin dynasty . With the fall of Dai, northern China was briefly unified under the Qin, but as they rapidly collapsed following a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Fei River in 383, the Tuoba restored their state as
5544-664: The Tang dynasty (618–907). Both Sui and Tang were founded by families who identified with their Han Chinese heritage, and were backed by an alliance of Chinese and Xianbei nobles from the Northern Zhou who sought to protect their common interest. Through these political establishments, the Xianbei who entered China were largely merged with the Chinese, examples such as the wife of Emperor Gaozu of Tang , Duchess Dou and Emperor Taizong of Tang 's wife, Empress Zhangsun , both have Xianbei ancestries, while those who remained behind in
5670-888: The Tuoba tribe settled in the abandoned city of Shengle , north of the Yin Mountains . To the east of them, the Yuwen tribe settled between the Luan River and Liucheng , while the Murong tribe were allowed to move deeper into Liaodong . The Duan tribe was founded in Liaoxi within the Great Wall by a Xianbei ex-slave along with a group of exiles. In the west, an offshoot of the Murong moved into northern Qinghai and mixed with
5796-534: The Wuhuan and Xianbei when they were defeated by the Xiongnu at the end of the third century BC. Following the split, the Xianbei people did not have a direct contact with the Han dynasty, residing to the north of the Wuhuan. In the first century BC, the Xianbei began actively engaging in the struggle between the Han and Xiongnu, culminating in the Xianbei replacing the Xiongnu on the Mongolian Plateau in 93 AD. In
5922-597: The Wuhuan at the Battle of White Wolf Mountain in 207, Budugen, Fuluohan, Kebineng and others paid tribute to him. In 218, Fuluohan met with the Wuhuan chieftain Nengchendi to form an alliance, but Nengchendi double crossed him and called in Kebineng, who killed Fuluohan. Budugen went to the court of Cao Wei in 224 to ask for assistance against Kebineng, but he eventually betrayed them and allied with Kebineng in 233. Kebineng killed Budugen soon afterwards. Kebineng
6048-526: The chanyu . Two titles were awarded with each of them a commander-in-chief who derived his power from the eastern and western territories respectively. These served as two wings alongside the chanyu's main domain. The Chinese annalistic explanation was a "Worthy Prince of the Left (East)" and "Worthy Prince of the Right (West)". This organization of the state was traditional for the Eurasian nomadic states from
6174-423: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
6300-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
6426-814: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Xianbei state The Xianbei ( / ʃ j ɛ n ˈ b eɪ / ; simplified Chinese : 鲜卑 ; traditional Chinese : 鮮卑 ; pinyin : Xiānbēi ) were an ancient nomadic people that once resided in
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#17327656775456552-424: The Central Plains and give pushback on the Wei's sinicization policies. The Northern Qi was ruled by the Gao clan, a Xianbeified Han Chinese family who relied on the Xianbei elites and favoured their traditions. Meanwhile, the Northern Zhou was ruled by the Yuwen clan of Xianbei ethnicity. Ruling over a predominantly Chinese population, the military reforms of the Western Wei and Northern Zhou saw an attempt to revive
6678-433: The Chanyu clan, and in accordance with the lateral succession order , was an heir apparent to the reigning Chanyu; on the death of the reigning Chanyu, he was raised to the throne, and every member in the hierarchy of the Left Wing advanced one step up. Unlike the Left Wing, the members of the Right Wing belonged to the Khatun clan Huyan or later Xubu , were traditionally not eligible for the throne, and could be raised to
6804-435: The Chinese dynasties. As one of the so-called " Five Barbarians " that settled in northern China, the Xianbei fought as auxiliaries for the Western Jin dynasty during the War of the Eight Princes and the Upheaval of the Five Barbarians before eventually distancing themselves and declaring their autonomy as the Jin was pushed to the south. During the Sixteen Kingdoms period, the Xianbei founded several short-lived states in
6930-439: The Eastern Han Chinese pronunciation of 鮮卑 is /sian pie/, and he does not reconstruct syllables ending in -r for this stage. He reconstructed the Later Han pronunciation of 室韋 as /śit wui/. On the one hand, *Särpi may be linked to the Mongolic root *ser ~ *sir which means "crest, bristle, sticking out, projecting, etc." (cf. Khalkha сэрвэн serven ), possibly referring to the Xianbei's horses (semantically analogous with
7056-429: The Five Barbarians . For their services, the Duan and Tuoba were granted the duchies of Liaoxi and Dai , respectively. However, for varying reasons, most of the Xianbei eventually withdrew from the conflict, allowing the remnants of Jin to be quickly overwhelmed. Mass number of Chinese officers, soldiers and civilians fled south to join the Eastern Jin or north to join the Xianbei duchies. The Xianbei founded several of
7182-523: The Huns to the Turkic Khanates. Scholars, using the pronunciation of the Qing dynasty , phoneticized 屠耆 as chjuki ( Russian : Чжуки ), which is a direct rendering of the Turkic (j)ükü "wise", making it a literal translation of the Chinese annalistic expression "wise prince". However, Anna Dybo restored the Western Han period's Old Chinese pronunciation of 屠耆 as dā-grjəj , which traditional philologists interpret with some reservations as transcribing Turkic tegin "prince". Philologists also noted
7308-490: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
7434-410: The Northern Wei dynasty, and ultimately led to the creation of the Yungang Grottoes . The Xianbei are thought to have spoken Mongolic or Para-Mongolic languages, with early and substantial Turkic influences, as Claus Schönig asserts: The Xianbei derived from the context of the Donghu , who are likely to have contained the linguistic ancestors of the Mongols . Later branches and descendants of
7560-460: The Northern Wei started to arrange for Han Chinese elites to marry daughters of the Xianbei Tuoba royal family in the 480s. More than fifty percent of Tuoba Xianbei princesses of the Northern Wei were married to southern Han Chinese men from the imperial families and aristocrats from southern China of the Southern dynasties who defected and moved north to join the Northern Wei. Some Han Chinese exiled royalty fled from southern China and defected to
7686-405: The Shouyang Princess was wedded to the Liang dynasty ruler Emperor Wu of Liang 's son Xiao Zong (蕭綜). After the Six Frontier Towns Rebellion and the events that followed, the Northern Wei split into Eastern Wei (534–550) and Western Wei (535–556) before becoming the Northern Qi (550–577) and Northern Zhou (557–581) respectively. The chaos allowed the Xianbei frontier nobility to enter
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#17327656775457812-661: The Turkic ethnonym Yabaqu < Yapağu 'matted hair or wool', later 'a matted-haired animal, i.e. a colt') On the other hand, the Book of the Later Han and the Book of Wei stated that before becoming an ethnonym, Xianbei had been a toponym, referring to the Great Xianbei mountains (大鮮卑山), which is now identified as the Greater Khingan range ( simplified Chinese : 大兴安岭 ; traditional Chinese : 大興安嶺 ; pinyin : Dà Xīng'ān Lǐng ). Shimunek (2018) reconstructs * serbi for Xiānbēi and * širwi for 室韋 Shìwéi < MC *ɕiɪt̚-ɦʉi . Warring States period 's Chinese literature contains early mentions of Xianbei, as in
7938-436: The Xianbei are the same as the Wuhuan ". The first significant contact the Xianbei had with the Han dynasty was in 41 and 45, when they joined the Wuhuan and Xiongnu in raiding Han territory. In 49, the governor Ji Tong convinced the Xianbei chieftain Pianhe to turn on the Xiongnu with rewards for each Xiongnu head they collected. In 54, Yuchouben and Mantou of the Xianbei paid tribute to Emperor Guangwu of Han . In 58,
8064-408: The Xianbei attacked the Wusun in the west and repelled the Dingling from the north and Buyeo from the east. He divided the Xianbei empire into three sections, each governed by an appointed chieftain. Tanshihuai of the Xianbei divided his territory into three sections: the eastern, the middle and the western. From the You Beiping to the Liao River , connecting the Fuyu and Mo to the east, it
8190-415: The Xianbei chieftain Pianhe attacked and killed Xinzhiben, a Wuhuan leader causing trouble in Yuyang Commandery . In 85, the Xianbei secured an alliance with the Dingling and Southern Xiongnu . In 87, the Xianbei attacked the Xiongnu chanyu Youliu and killed him. They flayed him and his followers and took the skins back as trophies. In 93, as the Northern Xiongnu were forced to the northwest by
8316-428: The Xianbei include the Tabghach and Khitan , who seem to have been linguistically Para-Mongolic. [...] Opinions differ widely as to what the linguistic impact of the Xianbei period was. Some scholars (like Clauson) have preferred to regard the Xianbei and Tabghach (Tuoba) as Turks, with the implication that the entire layer of early Turkic borrowings in Mongolic would have been received from the Xianbei, rather than from
8442-412: The Xianbei of the northeast, primarily the Duan , were brought in to fight in the civil wars of the Jin princes and played a deciding factor in the wars. When the Xiongnu in Shanxi rebelled and founded the Han-Zhao dynasty , the Tuoba offered their assistance to Jin to fight the rebels. The Jin were heavily reliant on the Xianbei's military force as they gradually lost the north during the upheaval of
8568-479: The Xianbei run their state, but eventually the Xianbei became Sinophiles and promoted Buddhism. The beginning of this conversion is evidenced by the Buddha imagery that emerges in Xianbei art. For instance, the included Buddha imprinted leaf headdress perfectly represents the Xianbei conversion and Buddhist synthesis since it combines both the traditional nomadic Xianbei leaf headdress with the new imagery of Buddha. This Xianbei religious conversion continued to develop in
8694-480: The Xianbei to Bactria. These gold hat ornaments represented trees and antlers and, in Chinese, they are referred to as buyao ("step sway") since the thin metal leaves move when the wearer moves. Sun Guoping first uncovered this type of artifact, and defined three main styles: "Blossoming Tree" (huashu), which is mounted on the front of a cap near the forehead and has one or more branches with hanging leaves that are circle or droplet shaped, "Blossoming Top" (dinghua), which
8820-483: The Xianbei warrior culture, which includes reverting the sinicized names of the Northern Wei and rewarding Han Chinese officers with Xianbei names. The Prime Minister of Northern Zhou, Yang Jian , later had these names restored back to Han names. In 581, Yang Jian founded the Sui dynasty (581–618) and unified China in 589 after absorbing the Chen dynasty (557–589). When the Sui came to an end amidst peasant rebellions and renegade troops, his cousin, Li Yuan , founded
8946-407: The Xianbei was animal husbandry combined with agricultural practice. They were the first to develop the khanate system, in which formation of social classes deepened, and developments also occurred in their literacy, arts and culture. They used a zodiac calendar and favoured song and music. Tengrism and subsequently Buddhism were the main religions among the Xianbei people. After they abandoned
9072-470: The Xianbei, opposed and promoted sinicization at one point or another but trended towards the latter and had merged with the general Chinese population by the Tang dynasty . The Northern Wei also arranged for ethnic Han elites to marry daughters of the Tuoba imperial clan in the 480s. More than fifty percent of Tuoba Xianbei princesses of the Northern Wei were married to southern Han men from
9198-458: The Xianbei. Historian Edward H. Schafer believes many of the Xianbei were blondes, but others such as Charles Holcombe think it is "likely that the bulk of the Xianbei were not visibly very different in appearance from the general population of northeastern Asia." Chinese anthropologist Zhu Hong and Zhang Quan-chao studied Xianbei crania from several sites of Inner Mongolia and noticed that anthropological features of studied Xianbei crania show that
9324-605: The Xianbei. Several daughters of the Xianbei Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei were married to Han Chinese elites, the Liu Song royal Liu Hui (劉輝), married Princess Lanling (蘭陵公主) of the Northern Wei, Princess Huayang (華陽公主) to Sima Fei (司馬朏), a descendant of Jin dynasty (266–420) royalty, Princess Jinan (濟南公主) to Lu Daoqian (盧道虔), Princess Nanyang (南陽長公主) to Xiao Baoyin (蕭寶寅), a member of Southern Qi royalty. Emperor Xiaozhuang of Northern Wei's sister
9450-442: The Xianbei. They were defeated and returned with only one-tenth of their original forces. A memorial made that year records that the Xianbei had taken all the lands previously held by the Xiongnu and their warriors numbered 100,000. Han deserters who sought refuge in their lands served as their advisers and refined metals as well as wrought iron came into their possession. Their weapons were sharper and their horses faster than those of
9576-399: The Xiongnu. Another memorial submitted in 185 states that the Xianbei were making raids on Han settlements nearly every year. Despite the constant raids, the loose Xianbei confederacy lacked the organization of the Xiongnu empire, and they were struggling to sustain their growing population. Tanshihuai died in 181 and was succeeded by his son, Helian, but he lacked his father's abilities and
9702-530: The Xiongnu. However, since the Mongolic (or Para-Mongolic) identity of the Xianbei is increasingly obvious in the light of recent progress in Khitan studies, it is more reasonable to assume (with Doerfer) that the flow of linguistic influence from Turkic into Mongolic was at least partly reversed during the Xianbei period, yielding the first identifiable layer of Mongolic (or Para-Mongolic) loanwords in Turkic. It
9828-453: The appearance of the Xianbei was not dramatically different from modern East Asians. A genetic analysis of Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou revealed that he had an East Asian appearance, consistent with the hypothesis that the Xianbei were primarily of East Asian appearance. Yellow hair in Chinese sources could have meant brown rather than blonde and described other people such as the Jie rather than
9954-442: The back of hammered metal sheets. The nomadic traditions of the Xianbei inspired them to portray horses in their artwork. The horse played a large role in the existence of the Xianbei as a nomadic people, and in one tomb, a horse skull lay atop Xianbei bells, buckles, ornaments, a saddle, and one gilded bronze stirrup. The Xianbei not only created art for their horses, but they also made art to depict horses. Another recurring motif
10080-400: The backgrounds were decorated with openwork or mountainous landscapes, which harks back to the Xianbei nomadic lifestyle. With repeated animal imagery, an openwork background, and a rectangular frame, the included image of the three deer plaque is a paradigm of the Xianbei art style. Concave plaque backings imply that plaques were made using lost-wax casting , or raised designs were impressed on
10206-494: The border commanderies and claimed many lives. Though the Han was able to repel them at times, they were concerned that they would not be able to subdue Tanshihuai. The Han attempted to appease him by offering him the title of King, but Tanshihuai rejected them and continued to harass their borders. In 177, Xia Yu , Tian Yan and the Southern Xiongnu Chanyu , Tute Ruoshi Zhujiu led a force of 30,000 against
10332-433: The courts. Another key form of Xianbei art is animal iconography, which was implemented primarily in metalwork. The Xianbei stylistically portrayed crouching animals in geometricized, abstracted, repeated forms, and distinguished their culture and art by depicting animal predation and same-animal combat. Typically, sheep, deer, and horses were illustrated. The artifacts, usually plaques or pendants, were made from metal, and
10458-526: The daily operations, and his prime function during war and peace was a control of the army. Being a Luanti by birth, with a Suibi Khatun mother, the Left Wise Prince was always a prime target for his younger siblings with the same pedigree. Both Left and Right Wise Princes were fairly autonomous in their actions, had a right to appoint their subordinates at their will, were free to conduct their own local wars and retaliatory raids, and were in charge of
10584-399: The deceased in afterlife processions and guard their tomb. Furthermore, the figurine clothing specifies the according social statuses: higher-ranking Xianbei wore long-sleeved robes with a straight neck shirt underneath, while lower-ranking Xianbei wore trousers and belted tunics. Xianbei Buddhist influences were derived from interactions with Han culture. The Han bureaucrats initially helped
10710-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
10836-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
10962-474: The eastern Eurasian steppes in what is today Mongolia , Inner Mongolia , and Northeastern China . The Xianbei were strongly suggested to be a multilingual, multi-ethnic confederation consisting of mainly Proto-Mongols (who spoke either pre-Proto-Mongolic, or Para-Mongolic languages ), and, to a minor degree, Tungusic and Turkic peoples. They originated from the Donghu people who splintered into
11088-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
11214-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
11340-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
11466-534: The frigid north and migrated into Northern China , they gradually abandoned nomadic lifestyle and were sinicized and assimilated with the Han Chinese . Emperor Xiaowen of the Xianbei-led state of Northern Wei in northern China, eventually decreed the changes of Xianbei names to Han names . Prior to Tanshihuai, the Xianbei did not have a hereditary system , and their chieftains were chosen by electing
11592-516: The frontier by Cao Zhang . In 220, he acknowledged Cao Pi as emperor of Cao Wei. Eventually, he turned on the Wei for frustrating his advances on Suli. Kebineng conducted raids on Cao Wei before he was killed in 235, after which his confederacy disintegrated. Many of the Xianbei tribes migrated south and settled on the borders of the Wei-Jin dynasties, where they often offered their submission. In 258,
11718-618: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
11844-666: The imperial families and aristocrats from southern China of the Southern dynasties who defected and moved north to join the Northern Wei. Paul Pelliot tentatively reconstructs the Eastern Han Chinese pronunciation of 鮮卑 as */serbi/, from * Särpi , after noting that Chinese scribes used 鮮 to transcribe Middle Persian sēr ( lion ) and 卑 to transcribe foreign syllable /pi/; for instance, Sanskrit गोपी gopī "milkmaid, cowherdess" became Middle Chinese 瞿卑 ( ɡɨo-piᴇ ) (> Mand. qúbēi ). According to Schuessler, however,
11970-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
12096-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
12222-475: The mid-2nd century, the chieftain, Tanshihuai unified the Xianbei and waged war against the Han dynasty. His confederation threatened the Han's northern borders for many years, but quickly disintegrated following his death in 181 AD. After suffering several defeats by the end of the Three Kingdoms period , the Xianbei migrated south and settled in close proximity to Han society and submitted as vassals to
12348-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
12474-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
12600-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
12726-724: The native Qiang people , becoming Tuyuhun . The Qifu tribe settled near the Longxi basin , while a branch of the Tuoba, the Tufa tribe, roamed the Hexi corridor . In 270, the Tufa chieftain, Tufa Shujineng , led the various ethnic tribes in the northwest in a rebellion against the Jin dynasty in Qin and Liang provinces but was defeated in 279 by Ma Long . During the War of the Eight Princes ,
12852-635: The north and established themselves on the Central Plains . The Xianbei were at one point all subjected to the Di -led Former Qin dynasty before it fell apart not long after its defeat in the Battle of Fei River by the Eastern Jin. In the wake of the Former Qin's collapse, the Tuoba formed the Northern Wei dynasty and eventually reunited northern China, ushering China into the Northern and Southern dynasties period. The Northern dynasties , all of which were either led or heavily influenced by
12978-726: The northern grassland evolved into tribes of the Rouran and Khitan . In the West, the Xianbei kingdom of Tuyuhun remained independent until it was defeated by the Tibetan Empire in 670. After the fall of the kingdom, the Xianbei people underwent a diaspora over a vast territory that stretched from the northwest into central and eastern parts of China. Murong Nuohebo led the Tuyuhun people eastward into central China, where they settled in modern Yinchuan , Ningxia. The economic base of
13104-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
13230-576: The poem " The Great Summons " ( Chinese : 大招 ; pinyin : Dà zhāo ) in the anthology Verses of Chu and possibly the chapter "Discourses of Jin 8" in Discourses of the States . When the Donghu "Eastern Barbarians" were defeated by Modu Chanyu around 208 BC, the Donghu splintered into the Xianbei and Wuhuan. According to the Book of the Later Han , "the language and culture of
13356-871: The racial type is closely related to the modern East-Asians, and some physical characteristics of those skulls are closer to modern Mongols, Manchu and Han Chinese . A genetic study published in The FEBS Journal in October 2006 examined the mtDNA of 21 Tuoba Xianbei buried at the Qilang Mountain Cemetery in Inner Mongolia , China. The 21 samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to haplogroups O (9 samples), D (7 samples), C (5 samples), B (2 samples) and A . These haplogroups are characteristic of Northeast Asians. Among modern populations they were found to be most closely related to
13482-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
13608-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
13734-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
13860-517: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
13986-561: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
14112-531: The throne only as a result of a court coup. Accordingly, the Left Wise Prince commanded a larger contingent of the army, and during military actions in the absence of the Chanyu held a post of a Supreme Commander. Unlike the Right Wing Wise Prince, who held a position akin to a Supreme Judge and Prime Minister, and was involved in the daily rule of the country, the Left Wise Prince was detached from
14238-574: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
14364-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
14490-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
14616-546: The various tribes assigned to their respective Wings. The two dynastic clans formed a permanent dynastic union of the state, ensuring its stability, and being an object of political games by their southern neighbour. Suggestion for the establishment of the Tuqi King from the ruler of the Xiongnu is currently unknown. Speculation stated, it might be kept an watchful eye on the Donghu tribe for trying to reclaimed back their land or rebellion after submitting to Chanyu and becoming
14742-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
14868-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
14994-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
15120-407: Was from a minor Xianbei tribe. He rose to power west of Dai Commandery by taking in a number of Chinese refugees, who helped him drill his soldiers and make weapons. After the defeat of the Wuhuan in 207, he also sent tribute to Cao Cao, and even provided assistance against the rebel Tian Yin. In 218 he allied himself to the Wuhuan rebel Nengchendi but they were heavily defeated and forced back across
15246-485: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
15372-712: Was killed in a raid on Beidi during the last years of Emperor Ling of Han . Helian's son, Qianman was too young at the time of his father's death, so the chieftains elected his nephew, Kuitou, to succeed him. Once Qianman came of age, however, he challenged his cousin to succession, destroying the last vestiges of unity among the Xianbei. By the Jian'an era (196–220), the Xianbei had split into many different groups, most notably with Kuitou ruling in Inner Mongolia , Kebineng in northern Shanxi , and Suli and Mijia in northern Liaodong . Following his death, Kuitou's brothers Budugen and Fuluohan succeeded him. After Cao Cao defeated
15498-497: Was long-lasting and brought a period of relative peace to the north in the wake of the chaotic Sixteen Kingdoms period. The Xianbei had naturally been in the process of sinicization since they first entered the Chinese interior, but this process became systemic during the late Northern Wei period. Emperor Xiaowen of Northern Wei established a policy of systematic sinicization that was continued by his successors and largely abandoned Xianbei traditions. The royal family took sinicization
15624-515: Was the eastern section. There were more than twenty counties. The darens (chiefs) (of this section) were called Mijia 彌加, Queji 闕機, Suli 素利 and Huaitou 槐頭. From the You Beiping to Shanggu to the west, it was the middle section. There were more than ten counties. The darens of this section were called Kezui 柯最, Queju 闕居, Murong 慕容, et al. From Shanggu to Dunhuang, connecting the Wusun to the west, it
15750-531: Was the western section. There were more than twenty counties. The darens (of this section) were called Zhijian Luoluo 置鞬落羅, Rilü Tuiyan 曰律推演, Yanliyou 宴荔游, et al. These chiefs were all subordinate to Tanshihuai. Throughout his reign, Tanshihuai aggressively raided the Han dynasty's northern borders, with his first recorded raid being in 156. In 166, he even allied with the Southern Xiongnu and Wuhuan to attack Shaanxi and Gansu . These raids devastated
15876-578: Was the winged horse. It has been suggested by archaeologist Su Bai that this symbol was a "heavenly beast in the shape of a horse" because of its prominence in Xianbei mythology. This symbol is thought to have guided an early Xianbei southern migration, and is a recurring image in many Xianbei art forms. Xianbei figurines help to portray the people of the society by representing pastimes, depicting specialized clothing, and implying various beliefs. Most figurines have been recovered from Xianbei tombs, so they are primarily military and musical figures meant to serve
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