121-579: The Twenty-four Filial Exemplars , also translated as The Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety ( Chinese : 二十四孝 ), is a classic text of Confucian filial piety written by Guo Jujing ( 郭居敬 ) during the Yuan dynasty (1260–1368). The text was extremely influential in the medieval Far East and was used to teach Confucian moral values. The text is generally attributed to Guo Jujing ( 郭居敬 ) but other sources suggested two other possible authors or editors: Guo Shouzheng ( 郭守正 ) and Guo Juye ( 郭居業 ). Some of
242-469: 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
363-457: 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
484-551: A 'public example.' The other Chinese gathered around him had come to enjoy the spectacle. In March 1906, Lu Xun abruptly and secretly terminated his pursuit of the degree and left college. At the time he told no one. After arriving in Tokyo he made sure that the Chinese embassy would not cancel his scholarship and registered at the local German Institute, but was not required to take classes there. He began to read Nietzsche , and wrote
605-455: 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
726-599: 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
847-462: 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
968-615: 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
1089-714: 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
1210-580: A falling out with his brother, Zuoren, after which Lu moved with his wife and mother to a separate house. Neither Lu nor Zuoren ever publicly explained the reason for their disagreement, but Zuoren's wife later accused Lu of making sexual advances towards her. Some writers have speculated that their relationship may have worsened as a result of issues related to money, that Lu walked in on Zuoren's wife bathing, or that Lu had an inappropriate "relationship" with Zuoren's wife in Japan that Zuoren later discovered. After
1331-403: A great number of younger writers such as Mao Dun . At first Lu was skeptical that his writing could serve any social purpose. He told Qian: "Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation. But you know since they will die in their sleep, they will not feel the pain of death. Now if you cry aloud to wake a few of
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#17327658258441452-411: A literary journal with his brother, New Life , but before its first publication its other writers and its financial backers all abandoned the project, and it failed. In 1909 Lu and his brother published their translations of Western fiction, including Edgar Allan Poe, as Tales from Abroad , but the book sold only 41 copies of the 1,500 copies that were printed. The publication failed for many reasons: it
1573-576: 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
1694-497: A novel about the communist revolution set in rural China, but he declined, citing his lack of background and understanding of the subject. Lu was a heavy smoker, which may have contributed to the deterioration of his health throughout his last year. By 1936 he had developed chronic tuberculosis, and in March of that year he was stricken with bronchial asthma and a fever. The treatment for this involved draining 300 grams of fluid in
1815-489: A number of essays in the period that were influenced by his philosophy. In June 1906, Lu's mother heard a rumor that he had married a Japanese girl and had a child with her, and feigned illness as a pretext to ask Lu to return home, where she would then force him to take part in an arranged marriage she had agreed to several years before. The girl, Zhu An, had little in common with Lu, was illiterate, and had been subject to foot binding . Lu Xun married her, but they never had
1936-423: A romantic relationship. Despite that fact, Lu took care of her material needs for the rest of his life. Several days after the ceremony Lu sailed back to Japan with his younger brother, Zuoren, and left behind his new wife. After returning to Japan he took informal classes in literature and history, published several essays in student-run journals, and in 1907 he briefly took Russian lessons. He attempted to found
2057-542: 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
2178-508: 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
2299-678: 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
2420-541: A slide. One, with his hands tied behind him, was in the middle of the picture; the others were gathered around him. Physically, they were as strong and healthy as anyone could ask, but their expressions revealed all too clearly that spiritually they were calloused and numb. According to the caption, the Chinese whose hands were bound had been spying on the Japanese military for the Russians. He was about to be decapitated as
2541-624: A tuition-free military school in Nanjing . As a consequence of Lu's decision to attend a military school specializing in Western education , his mother wept, he was instructed to change his name to avoid disgracing his family, and some of his relatives began to look down on him. Lu attended the Jiangnan Naval Academy for half a year, and left after it became clear that he would be assigned to work in an engine room , below deck, which he considered degrading. He later wrote that he
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#17327658258442662-631: 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
2783-575: 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
2904-564: A variety of periodicals in the 1930s, including Lin Yutang 's humor magazine The Analects Fortnightly , and corresponded with writers in Japan as well as China. Although he had renounced writing fiction years before, in 1934 he published his last collection of short stories, Old Tales Retold . In 1935, he sent a telegram to CCP forces in Shaanxi congratulating them on the recent completion of their Long March . The CCP requested that he write
3025-570: A work which, because traditional scholars had not valued fiction, had little precedent in China. After Yuan Shikai declared himself the Emperor of China in 1915, Lu was briefly forced to participate in rituals honoring Confucius, which he ridiculed in his diaries. In 1917, an old friend of Lu's, Qian Xuantong, invited Lu to write for New Youth , a radical populist literary magazine that had recently been founded by Chen Duxiu , which also inspired
3146-535: Is "an insult to the ancients, and a bad influence on future generations". The city name Xiaogan in Hubei , meaning Filial Piety Moves [the Heaven] ( Chinese : 孝 行 感 天 ), is from the story of Dong Yong. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
3267-602: 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
3388-709: 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
3509-490: 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,
3630-603: 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
3751-445: 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
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3872-668: 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
3993-489: 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,
4114-607: Is the oldest extant text related to The Twenty-four Filial Exemplars . During the Southern Song dynasty , the artist Zhao Zigu ( 趙子固 ) drew a painting, Ershisi Xiao Shuhua Hebi ( 二十四孝書畫合璧 ), about The Twenty-four Filial Exemplars . During the Yuan dynasty , the scholar Xie Yingfang ( 謝應芳 ) mentioned in Gui Chao Ji ( 龜巢集 ) that a certain Wang Dashan ( 王達善 ) once praised The Twenty-four Filial Exemplars and
4235-501: 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
4356-500: 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
4477-552: 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
4598-428: 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
4719-614: The Classic of Filial Piety . During the Qing dynasty , Wu Zhengxiu ( 吳正修 ) mentioned in Ershisi Xiao Gu Ci ( 二十四孝鼓詞 ) that the Twenty-four Filial Exemplars were very well known. After the release of The Twenty-four Filial Exemplars , revised editions of the text and other similar works were published. Some of these include: Riji Gushi Daquan Ershisi Xiao ( 日記故事大全二十四孝 ; Complete Diary Stories of
4840-697: 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
4961-533: 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
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5082-709: The Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party (CCP). After the Shanghai massacre in April 1927, he attempted to secure the release of several students through the university, but failed. His failure to save his students led him to resign from his position at the university, and he left for the Shanghai International Settlement in September 1927. By the time he left Guangzhou, he was one of
5203-710: 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
5324-595: 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
5445-576: The Tongmenghui . He experienced anti-Chinese racism , but was simultaneously disgusted with the behaviour of some Chinese who were living in Japan. His earliest surviving essays, written in Literary Chinese , were published while he was attending this school, and he published his first Chinese translations of famous and influential foreign novels, including Jules Verne 's From the Earth to
5566-636: The Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty and was followed by the founding of the Republic of China , Lu gained a position at the national Ministry of Education. He was hired in Nanjing, but then moved with the ministry to Beijing, where he lived from 1912 to 1926. At first, his work consisted almost completely of copying books, but he was later appointed Section Head of the Social Education Division, and eventually to
5687-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
5808-596: 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
5929-767: 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. Lu Xun Eastward spread of Western learning Lu Xun ( Chinese : 鲁迅 ; 25 September 1881 – 19 October 1936), born Zhou Zhangshou ,
6050-704: The Beijing Women's College, Xu Guangping. In March 1926 there was a mass student protest against the warlord Feng Yuxiang 's collaboration with the Japanese. The protests degenerated into a massacre , in which two of Lu's students from Beijing Women's College were killed. Lu's public support for the protesters forced him to flee from the local authorities. Later in 1926, when the warlord troops of Zhang Zuolin and Wu Peifu took over Beijing, Lu left northern China and fled to Xiamen . After arriving in Xiamen, later in 1926, Lu began teaching at Xiamen University , but
6171-486: The Education Ministry three days a week for three hours a day. In 1923 he lost his front teeth in a rickshaw accident, and in 1924 he developed the first symptoms of tuberculosis . In 1925 he founded a journal, Wilderness , and established the "Weiming Society" in order to support young writers and encourage the translation of foreign literature into Chinese. In the 20 years after the 1911 revolution there
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#17327658258446292-556: The Kobun Institute, a preparatory language school for Chinese students attending Japanese universities. After encouragement from a classmate, he cut off his queue that Han Chinese were obliged to wear at the time, and practiced jujutsu in his free time. He had an ambiguous attitude towards Chinese revolutionary politics during the period, and it is not clear whether he joined any of the revolutionary parties that were popular among Chinese expatriates in Japan at that time, such as
6413-529: The Kuomintang passed new, stricter censorship laws, allowing for writers producing literature deemed "endangering the public" or "disturbing public order" to be imprisoned for life or executed. Later that month he went into hiding. In early February, less than a month later, the Kuomintang executed twenty-four local writers (including five who belonged to the League) whom they had arrested under this law. After
6534-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
6655-669: The Moon and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas . In 1904, Lu began studying at the Sendai Medical Academy in northern Honshu , but remained there for less than two years. He generally found his studies at the school tedious and difficult, partially due to his imperfect Japanese. While studying in Sendai he befriended one of his professors, Fujino Genkurō, who helped him prepare class notes. Because of their friendship Lu
6776-567: The Twenty-four Filial Exemplars ), Nü Ershisi Xiao ( 女二十四孝 ; Female Twenty-four Filial Exemplars ), and Nan Nü Ershisi Xiao ( 男女二十四孝 ; Male and Female Twenty-four Filial Exemplars ). The philologist Yang Bojun mentioned the development of The Twenty-four Filial Exemplars in Jingshu Qiantan ( 經書淺談 ). After the book was compiled by Guo Shouzheng during the Yuan dynasty, a new illustrated edition with drawings by Wang Kexiao ( 王克孝 )
6897-471: The age of 35. He might have suffered from dropsy . Lu Xun half-heartedly participated in the first, district-level civil service examination in 1898, but then abandoned pursuing a traditional Confucian education or career. He intended to study at a prestigious school, the "Seeking Affirmation Academy", in Hangzhou, but was forced by his family's poverty to instead study at the "Jiangnan Naval Academy",
7018-529: The city. In 1930 Lu became one of the co-founders of the League of Left-Wing Writers , but shortly after he moved to Shanghai other leftist writers accused him of being "an evil feudal remnant", the "best spokesman of the bourgeoisie", and "a counterrevolutionary split personality". The League continued in various forms until 1936, when the constant disputes among its members led the CCP to dissolve it. In January 1931,
7139-402: The conversation in his short story collection, Call to Arms . It is widely known in China as a metaphor for the traditional Chinese cultural values and norms that Lu opposed. After the publication of "Diary of a Madman", the story was praised for its anti-traditionalism, its synthesis of Chinese and foreign conventions and ideas, and its skillful narration, and Lu became recognized as one of
7260-399: 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
7381-484: 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
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#17327658258447502-576: 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
7623-400: The execution of the "24 Longhua Martyrs" (in addition to other students, friends, and associates), Lu's political views became distinctly anti-Kuomintang. In 1933 Lu met Edgar Snow . Snow asked Lu whether there were any Ah Q's left in China. Lu responded, "It's worse now. Now it's Ah Q's who are running the country." Despite the unfavorable political climate, Lu Xun contributed regularly to
7744-423: The extreme example of Guo Ju deciding to kill his son so that he could free up his son's share of the family's food consumption to feed his mother. The negative examples also include stories in which the protagonist harms himself in the process of fulfilling filial piety, such as Wu Meng allowing mosquitoes to suck his blood in the hope that they would not bother his parents, and Wang Xiang lying naked on ice to thaw
7865-408: The falling out with Zuoren, Lu became depressed. In 1920, Lu began to lecture part-time at several colleges, including Peking University , Beijing Normal University , and Beijing Women's College, where he taught traditional fiction and literary theory. His lecture notes were later collected and published as A Brief History of Chinese Fiction . He was able to work part-time because he only worked at
7986-506: The family finances. Zuoren wanted to remain in Japan to study French, but Lu wrote that "French... does not fill stomachs". He encouraged another one of his brothers, Jianren, to become a botanist. He began to drink heavily, a habit he continued for the rest of his life. In 1911 he wrote his first short story, Nostalgia , but he was so disappointed with it that he threw it away. Zuoren saved it, and had it successfully published two years later under his own name. In February 1912, shortly after
8107-413: 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
8228-454: The first time was able to make a living solely as a professional writer, with a monthly income of roughly 500 yuan. He was also appointed by the government as a "specially appointed writer" by the national Ministry of Higher Education, which secured him an additional 300 yuan per month. He began to study and identify with Marxist politics, made contact with local CCP members, and became involved in literary disputes with other leftist writers in
8349-491: 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
8470-618: 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
8591-434: The highest position possible for aspiring civil servants at that time. Zhou's mother was a member of the same landed gentry class as Lu Xun's father, from a slightly smaller town in the countryside (Anqiaotou, Zhejiang; a part of Tongxiang ). Because formal education was not considered socially appropriate for girls, she had not received any education, but she still taught herself how to read and write. The surname Lu ( 魯 )
8712-399: The history of his native town, Shaoxing. He explained to an old friend that his activities were not "scholarship", but "a substitute for 'wine and women'". In his personal letters he expressed disappointment about his own failure, China's political situation, and his family's continuing impoverishment. In 1911 he returned to Japan to retrieve his brother, Zuoren, so that Zuoren could help with
8833-615: The ice so that he could catch fish for his mother. Some stories have been heavily criticised and even deemed contrary to Confucian principles. One example is the story of Cai Shun being rewarded by the Chimei rebels for his filial piety. The story paints the rebels in a positive light when they actually violated the Confucian virtue of loyalty to one's country . Another example is the story of Laolaizi behaving childishly to amuse his parents. The modern writer Lu Xun said that Laolaizi's story
8954-586: 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
9075-528: 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
9196-577: The leading writers of the New Culture Movement . Lu continued writing for the magazine, and produced his most famous stories for New Youth between 1917 and 1921. These stories were collected and re-published in Nahan (" Outcry ") in 1923. In 1919, Lu moved his family from Shaoxing to a large compound in Beijing, where he lived with his mother, his two brothers, and their Japanese wives. This living arrangement lasted until 1923, when Lu had
9317-399: The lighter sleepers, making those unfortunate few suffer the agony of irrevocable death, do you think you are doing them a good turn?" Qian replied, "But if a few awake, you can't say that there is no hope of destroying the iron house." Shortly afterwards, in 1918 Lu wrote the first short story published in his name, "Diary of a Madman", for the April 2, 1918 magazine issue. Lu recounted
9438-412: The lungs through a puncture. From June to August, he was again sick, and his weight dropped to only 83 pounds (38 kg). He recovered somewhat, and wrote two essays in the fall reflecting on mortality. These included "Death", and "This Too Is Life". A month before his death, he wrote: "Hold the funeral quickly... do not stage any memorial services. Forget about me, and care about your own life – you're
9559-455: 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
9680-676: The most famous intellectuals in China. In 1927 Lu was considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature , for the short story The True Story of Ah Q , despite a poor English translation and annotations that were nearly double the size of the text. Lu rejected the possibility of accepting the nomination. Later, he renounced writing fiction or poetry in response to China's deteriorating political situation and his own poor emotional state, and restricted himself to writing argumentative essays. In 1929, he visited his mother, and reported that she
9801-530: The movement's leaders, Lu was a leftist. After the proclamation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, his work received considerable acclaim from the Chinese government, with Mao Zedong being an admirer of Lu's writing throughout his life. Though he was sympathetic to socialist ideas, Lu never joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Lu Xun was born in Shaoxing , Zhejiang. As
9922-425: 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
10043-583: 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
10164-538: 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
10285-664: The position of Assistant Secretary. Two of his major accomplishments in office were the renovation and expansion of the National Library of China in Beijing, the establishment of the Natural History Museum, and the establishment of the Library of Popular Literature. Together with Qian Daosun and Xu Shoushang , he designed the Twelve Symbols national emblem in 1912. Between 1912 and 1917 he
10406-404: 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 ,
10527-552: 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
10648-509: 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
10769-427: The school with relatively little effort, and occasionally experienced racism directed at him from resident Manchu bannermen . The racism he experienced may have influenced his later sense of Han Chinese nationalism. After graduating Lu Xun planned to become a foreign doctor. In 1902, Lu Xun left for Japan on a Qing government scholarship to pursue an education in foreign medicine. After arriving in Japan he attended
10890-517: 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
11011-561: 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
11132-749: The stories in The Twenty-four Filial Exemplars were taken from other texts such as the Xiaozi Zhuan ( 孝子傳 ), Yiwen Leiju , Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era and In Search of the Supernatural . There were earlier precedents of The Twenty-four Filial Exemplars . A Buddhist bianwen titled Ershisi Xiao Yazuowen ( 二十四孝押座文 ), which was among the manuscripts discovered in Dunhuang 's Mogao Caves ,
11253-623: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
11374-547: 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
11495-512: 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
11616-452: 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
11737-517: 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
11858-462: Was Lu's first exposure to foreign literature, philosophy, history, and science, and he studied English and German intensively. Some of the influential authors that he read during that period include T. H. Huxley , John Stuart Mill , Yan Fu , and Liang Qichao . His later social philosophy may have been influenced by several novels about social conflict that he read during the period, including Ivanhoe and Uncle Tom's Cabin . He did very well at
11979-528: Was a pen name chosen upon the initial publishing of his story "Diary of a Madman" in 1918. By the time Lu Xun was born, the Zhou family had been prosperous for centuries, and had become wealthy through landowning, pawnbroking, and by having several family members promoted to government positions. His paternal grandfather, Zhou Fuqing, was appointed to the Imperial Hanlin Academy in Beijing,
12100-411: Was a Chinese writer, literary critic, lecturer, and state servant. He was a leading figure of modern Chinese literature . Writing in vernacular and Literary Chinese , he was a short story writer, editor, translator, literary critic, essayist, poet, and designer. In the 1930s, he became the titular head of the League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai during republican-era China (1912–1949). Lu Xun
12221-450: Was a child. By the time Lu was born, his family's prosperity had already been declining. His father, Zhou Boyi, had been successful at passing the county-level imperial examinations , the route to wealth and social success in imperial China, but was unsuccessful in writing the more competitive provincial-level examinations (the juren exam). In 1893 Zhou Boyi was discovered attempting to bribe an examination official. Lu Xun's grandfather
12342-526: Was a flowering of literary activity with dozens of journals. The goal was to reform the Chinese language to make universal education possible. Lu Xun was an active participant. His greatest works, such as "Diary of a Madman" and Ah Q , exemplify this style of "peasant dirt literature" ( Chinese : 乡土文学 ; pinyin : xiāngtǔ wénxué ). The language is fresh and direct. The subjects are country peasants. In 1925, Lu began what may have been his first meaningful romantic relationship, with one of his students at
12463-453: 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,
12584-468: Was a member of an ineffectual censorship committee, informally studied Buddhist sutras , lectured on fine arts, wrote and self-published a book on the history of Shaoxing, and edited and self-published a collection of folk stories from the Tang and Song dynasties. He collected and self-published an authoritative book on the work of an ancient poet, Ji Kang , and wrote A Brief History of Chinese Fiction ,
12705-491: Was accused by his classmates of receiving special assistance from Fujino. Lu later recalled his mentor affectionately in the essay "Mr Fujino", published in Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk . The essay has since become one of his most widely renowned works, and is read in the Chinese middle school curriculum. Fujino later reciprocated Lu's respect in an obituary written for Lu after his death in 1937. While Lu Xun
12826-468: Was attending medical school, the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) broke out. Part of the war was fought on disputed Chinese land. Lantern slides used in the classroom also featured news items. One news slide showed a public execution of a Chinese prisoner being executed by the Japanese military for being an alleged Russian spy. The on-lookers shown in the slide were mainly Chinese, and Lu
12947-471: Was born into a family of landlords and government officials in Shaoxing , Zhejiang; the family's financial resources declined over the course of his youth. Lu aspired to take the imperial examinations , but due to his family's relative poverty he was forced to attend government-funded schools teaching " foreign education ". Upon graduation, Lu studied medicine at Tohoku University in Japan, but later dropped out. He became interested in studying literature but
13068-414: Was common before the 20th century, Lu used several names. His birth name was "Zhou Zhangshou" ( Chinese : 周樟壽 ). His courtesy name was "Yushan" ( 豫山 ), which he later changed to "Yucai" ( 豫才 ). In 1898, before he went to the Jiangnan Naval Academy, he took the given name "Shuren" ( 樹人 ), which figuratively means "to be an educated man". The name "Lu Xun", by which he is most well known internationally,
13189-459: Was disappointed by the petty disagreements and unfriendliness of the university's faculty. During the short time he lived in Xiamen, Lu wrote his last collection of fiction, Old Tales Retold , which would not be published until several years later, and most of his autobiography, published as Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk . He also published a collection of prose poetry, entitled Wild Grass . In January 1927, he and Xu moved to Guangzhou , where he
13310-449: Was dissatisfied with the quality of teaching at the academy. After leaving the school, Lu sat for the lowest level of the civil service exams, and finished 137th of 500. He intended to sit for the next-highest level, but became upset when one of his younger brothers died, and abandoned his plans. Lu Xun transferred to another government-funded school, the " School of Mines and Railways", and graduated from that school in 1902. The school
13431-416: Was doing when his/her parent(s) died and mourn for three years. There were sayings such as "When a ruler wants a subject to die, the subject must die; when a father wants a son to die, the son must die", and "A loyal subject should be sought from a family with filial sons." However, some stories in The Twenty-four Filial Exemplars are regarded as negative examples in contemporary times. These stories include
13552-474: Was eventually forced to return to China because of his family's lack of funds. After returning to China, Lu worked for several years teaching at local secondary schools and colleges before finally finding an office at the Republic of China Ministry of Education. Following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, Lu's writing began to exert a substantial influence on Chinese literature and popular culture. Like many of
13673-449: Was finally released in 1901. After the family's attempt at bribery was discovered, Zhou Boyi engaged in heavy drinking and opium use and his health declined. Local Chinese doctors attempted to cure him through a series of expensive quack prescriptions, including monogamous crickets, sugar cane that had survived frost three times, ink, and the skin from a drum. Despite these expensive treatments, Zhou Boyi died of an asthma attack in 1896, at
13794-433: 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
13915-423: Was hired as the head of the Chinese literature department at Sun Yat-sen University . His first act in his position was to hire Xu as his personal assistant, as well as Xu Shoushang, one of his old classmates from Japan, as a lecturer. While in Guangzhou, he edited numerous poems and books for publication, and served as a guest lecturer at Whampoa Academy . Through his students, he established connections within both
14036-484: Was implicated, and was arrested and sentenced to beheading for his son's crime. The sentence was later commuted, and he was imprisoned in Hangzhou instead. After the affair, Zhou Boyi was stripped of his position in the government and forbidden to ever again write the civil service examinations. The Zhou family only prevented Lu's grandfather from being executed through regular, expensive bribes to authorities, until he
14157-814: Was only sold in Tokyo, which did not have a large Chinese population, and in a single silk shop in Shanghai. Additionally, Lu wrote in Literary Chinese, which was very difficult for ordinary people to read. Lu intended to study in Germany in 1909, but did not have sufficient funds, and was forced to return home. Between 1909 and 1911 he held a number of brief teaching positions at local colleges and secondary schools that he felt were unsatisfying, partly to support his brother Zuoren's studies in Japan. Lu spent these years in traditional Chinese literary pursuits: collecting old books, researching pre-modern Chinese fiction, reconstructing ancient tombstone inscriptions, and compiling
14278-482: Was pleased at the news of Guangping's pregnancy. Xu Guangping gave birth to a son named Haiying on 27 September. She was in labor with the baby for 27 hours. The child's name meant simply "Shanghai infant". His parents chose the name thinking that he could change it himself later, but he never did so. Haiying was Lu Xun's only child. After moving to Shanghai, Lu rejected all regular teaching positions (though he sometimes gave guest lectures at different campuses), and for
14399-502: Was released, and this made the book even more popular. Towards the end of the Qing dynasty, Zhang Zhidong and others edited and expanded the book and released it as Bai Xiao Tu Shuo ( 百孝圖說 ; Illustrated Hundred Stories of Filial Piety ). The concept of filial piety has played a strong role in Chinese culture since ancient times. There was also a tradition of filial mourning , in which a person had to temporarily put aside whatever he/she
14520-422: Was shocked by what he viewed as their complete apathy. In his preface to Nahan , the first collection of his short stories, Lu explained how viewing this scene influenced him to quit studying Western medicine , and to become a literary physician to what he perceived to be China's spiritual problems instead: At the time, I hadn't seen any of my fellow Chinese in a long time, but one day some of them showed up in
14641-402: Was the same as his mother's. Lu's early education was based on the Confucian classics , in which he studied poetry, history, and philosophy—subjects which, he later reflected, were neither useful nor interesting to him. Instead, he enjoyed folk stories and opera, including the mythological narratives of the Classic of Mountains and Seas and the ghost stories told to him by a servant when he
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