Xuhui District is a core urban district of Shanghai . It has a land area of 54.76 km (21.14 sq mi) and a population of 1,113,078 as of 2020. Xuhui District has 12 subdistricts and two townships.
83-529: The Xuhui District is named after its namesake, the historic area of Xujiahui . Xujiahui was historically land owned by Ming dynasty bureaucrat and scientist Xu Guangqi , and later donated to the Roman Catholic Church . It and Luwan District jointly formed the core of Catholic Shanghai, centered in the former French Concession of Shanghai . Vestiges of the French influence can still be seen in
166-547: 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
249-646: A humid subtropical climate ( Köppen climate classification Cfa ). The average annual temperature in Xuhui is 16.9 °C (62.4 °F). The average annual rainfall is 1,259.3 mm (49.58 in) with July as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in July, at around 28.6 °C (83.5 °F), and lowest in January, at around 4.8 °C (40.6 °F). The educational tradition begun by Jesuits in Xuhui continues with Shanghai Jiao Tong University ,
332-469: 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
415-457: 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
498-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
581-599: 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
664-518: A center of education. The Aurora University was founded by the Jesuits in Xujiahui. The imperial Nanyang Public School system was founded in Xujiahui at the end of the 19th century, and the historic main campus of its most prominent descendent school, Jiao Tong University , one of Shanghai's most prestigious, is still located in Xujiahui. Fudan University , also one of Shanghai's most prestigious,
747-462: 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
830-615: 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
913-714: 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
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#1732765197063996-576: 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
1079-542: 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
1162-508: 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
1245-631: 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
1328-575: 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
1411-602: 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
1494-418: Is available within five minutes, but the type of product that Xujiahui is most famous for is electronics. It is one of the biggest places for people to get electronic equipment, from cameras to PSPs to Xboxes and modchips for those Xboxes and other game consoles as well. However, the biggest shopping mall for electronic equipment has closed in 2016. Currently, a brand new shopping center is under construction, it
1577-490: 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,
1660-553: Is located on Hongqiao Road, right beside the Grand Gateway. The new shopping center will officially open in 2016. The historic main campus of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University is located in Xujiahui, to the north of the Xujiahui junction. While due to space limitations the university has moved its undergraduate department to a new campus on the outskirts of Shanghai, the Xujiahui campus still houses
1743-603: Is named after the locality. The area is a well-known precinct for shopping and entertainment in Shanghai. It is served by the Xujiahui Station of the Shanghai Metro . Xujiahui means "Xu family junction" - more precisely, "property of Xu family at the junction of two rivers". The "Xu family" refers to the family of Xu Guangqi (Hsü Kuang-ch'i; 1562–1633), China's most notable Catholic convert. Most of what
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#17327651970631826-617: Is now Xujiahui was once the ancestral home of the Xu family. Baptized by famed Italian Jesuit, Matteo Ricci , Xu Guangqi and his descendants donated large plots of land to the Catholic Church, including the site of the St. Ignatius Cathedral. During the 18th century it was known by Shanghai's western residents as "Ziccawei" or "Siccawei" in English, and "Zikawei" or "Zi-ka-wei" in French, from
1909-705: Is now known as North Caoxi Road and is still referred to in English as the St. Ignatius Cathedral . The sign on the street calls it simply "Catholic Church." The cathedral was featured in the opening scenes of Steven Spielberg 's 1987 film Empire of the Sun . A number of other structures survive from its days as a center of Catholicism. One is the Collège Saint Ignace or Xuhui College on 68 Hongqiao Road, now renamed Xuhui High School (or Xuhui Middle School). Established by Jesuits in 1850, Xuhui (St. Ignatius) College
1992-603: 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
2075-445: 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
2158-668: 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
2241-410: Is still in Xujiahui. The former Shanghai Medical University , now Fudan University Shanghai Medical College , is located close to Xujiahui metro station. The Bibliotheca Zi-Ka-Wei (Xujiahui Library) is in the area. On the location of a former brick factory now stands the Xujiahui park, which was completed in 2002. The park also contains a manmade meandering brook (miniature model of the course of
2324-489: 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,
2407-501: 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
2490-500: 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
2573-552: 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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2656-428: 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
2739-753: 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
2822-626: 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 a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in
2905-678: The Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War . A few years after the People's Liberation Army entered Shanghai, the Jesuits abandoned Xujiahui and relocated to nearby posts such as Macau or Manila . Many of those who remained were imprisoned by Communist authorities. These include Cardinal Ignatius Kung, who spent decades in prison, and Father Chang-min "Beda" Chang, who died in prison in November 1951. From 1949 onwards, most of
2988-578: The Huangpu River ), basketball courts, and a children's playground. The park is traversed by a roughly 250 meter (820 feet)-long elevated pathway. The eastern part of the park features the historic Red House, which once housed the Pathé China record company. The Shanghai Conservatory of Music - also located in Xuhui district - often stages free performances during the Spring and Autumn months in
3071-533: 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
3154-710: 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
3237-595: 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
3320-523: The St. Ignatius Cathedral of Shanghai , Xuhui College, the Xujiahui Observatory, and some remaining boulevards and French-style districts. Xujiahui itself has been redeveloped as a financial center , with a proliferation of large-scale shopping centers and department stores, and is now a major shopping destination in the city with shopping malls such as Grand Gateway Shanghai and Pacific Sogo . Parts of today's Xuhui District were once
3403-478: 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
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3486-596: 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
3569-787: The Catholic church retains a significant presence and there are still educational and scientific institutions in the area. The main Xujiahui shopping district is centered on the intersection of the streets Hongqiao Rd, Huashan Rd, Zhaojiabang Rd and North Caoxi Rd. Each of these streets terminates at the intersection, which is home to three supermarkets, six major shopping malls and nine large-scale office towers. (Clockwise from Hongqiao Road, Grand Gateway, Huashan Road, Pacific Sogo, Hengshan Road Tunnel, Huijin Department Store, Zhaojiabang Road, Metro-City , North Caoxi Road, Oriental Shopping Mall.) Everything from cosmetics to cars to cucumbers
3652-565: 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
3735-575: The Xuhui District Government and People's Procurate. The Tou-Se-We Orphanage ( Mandarin : Tushanwan) operated by the church, whose workshops supplied much of the religious art on Xujiahui's religious buildings, is half a mile to the south of Xujiahui junction; the sole surviving building of the orphanage is now the Tou-Se-We Museum. The educational institutions founded by the Catholic church led to Xujiahui's reputation as
3818-656: The Yum China Building ( Chinese : 百胜中国大厦 ; pinyin : Bǎishèng Zhōngguó Dàshà ) in Xuhui District. Toei Animation Shanghai has its head office in Unit 807 of Feidiao International Plaza in the district. miHoYo has its headquarters in Xuhui. Yoozoo Games is headquartered in Xuhui. Previously Web International English had its headquarters in Xuhui. Xuhui District has twelve subdistricts, one town and one special township-level division. Xuhui has
3901-643: The cathedral, the French Jesuits also built orphanages, monasteries, schools, libraries and the Xujiahui observatory [ zh ] (now the Shanghai Bureau of Meteorology). In time, it became a stronghold of Catholics in East Asia. One of the first structures to be built by the Jesuits was the St. Ignatius Cathedral in 1847, later reconstructed in 1906. The Cathedral is located on what
3984-399: 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
4067-484: 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
4150-597: The district was the Xiangyang Crafts and Gifts Market, a haven for souvenirs and intellectual property -infringing products; it was closed on June 30, 2006 by municipal authorities. Xujiahui itself has been redeveloped as a financial center , with a proliferation of large-scale shopping centers and department stores, and is now a major shopping destination in the city with shopping malls such as Grand Gateway Shanghai and Pacific Sogo . Home Inn has its headquarters in Xuhui. Yum China has its headquarters in
4233-515: The district. The subdistrict is not co-extensive with the geographical locality. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing') 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
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#17327651970634316-576: 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
4399-413: 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
4482-491: 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
4565-565: 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
4648-586: 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
4731-405: The large houses and estates in Xujiahui were compulsarily acquired or seized by the government and converted into factories. Up until the late 1990s, the area was predominantly an industrial area. During the late 1990s, many of the state-owned factories were sold off and torn down. Xujiahui is now mainly a retail district of downtown Shanghai. Xujiahui today is mainly a commercial area, though
4814-528: 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
4897-455: 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
4980-425: 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
5063-583: 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
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#17327651970635146-538: 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
5229-624: The park is a traditional house relocated here as a result of urban redevelopment elsewhere in the district. The main intersection at Xujiahui is a transportation hub. It is served by dozens of bus routes, and by the Xujiahui metro station on Lines 1 , 9 and 11 of the Shanghai Metro . Xujiahui Subdistrict was established in May 1994 as a subdistrict of Xuhui District , Shanghai. The subdistrict covers 4.04 square kilometers (1.56 sq mi). There are 31,624 households which total 94,872 residents. There are roughly 110,000 permanent residents in
5312-439: The park, as these are the times when weather in Shanghai is the best. The other notable park in Xujiahui is Guangqi Park, which features the tomb of Xu Guangqi , after whom the area and district are ultimately named. The tomb, recently restored according to its original set-up, is a curious combination of a large Christian cross as the grave marker, with a traditional Chinese "spirit way" lined with stone animals. Also located in
5395-428: The premier residential districts of Shanghai. The former french neighborhoods in parts of Xuhui today constitute some of the city´s most popular café areas, including places such as pedestrian Tianzifang . After the revolution, however, the large estates near Xujiahui were turned into factories. In the 1990s, the Shanghai municipal government developed the district as a commercial zone. A once-prominent commercial area in
5478-634: The premier university in China. The district also has some of the best secondary schools in the municipality, such as South West Weiyu Middle School , Shanghai High School and Nanyang Model High School . Universities High schools Xuhui is currently served by seven metro lines operated by Shanghai Metro : Xuhui is currently served by one suburban railway operated by China Railway Shanghai Group . A number of former residences of prominent personalities remain, including Soong Ching-ling and Sun Yat-sen 's former residence. Yao Ming of Houston Rockets
5561-681: The pronunciation of its name in Shanghainese . These names survive in the names of some institutions, such as the Bibliotheca Zi-Ka-Wei , and the area is still listed in a number of contemporary guidebooks and literature as "Zikawei" or some variant thereof. With land donated by Xu Guangqi's family and those acquired by other means, the Society of Jesus established a grand cathedral as well as an entire one square mile complex that covers most of present-day Xujiahui. In addition to
5644-404: 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 ,
5727-552: 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
5810-509: 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
5893-517: 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
5976-561: 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
6059-568: 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
6142-547: 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
6225-484: The university's School of International Education and several research institutes. The campus is notable for a number of historic buildings dating from the early 20th century, including its imperial-style gate and remnants of the imperial-style marble bridges, reflecting the university's former status as the Imperial Polytechnic. The former Collège Saint Ignace, founded in 1850 and now Xuhui High School ,
6308-512: 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
6391-452: 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
6474-517: 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
6557-453: 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,
6640-587: Was a resident of the district. Luo "Ferrari 430" Feichi lives in Xuhui. 31°11′N 121°26′E / 31.183°N 121.433°E / 31.183; 121.433 Xujiahui Xujiahui ( Chinese : 徐家汇 , Wu Chinese pronunciation: [ʑ̥i˨ ka̠˥ ɦɯe̞˨˩] , romanized as: Zikawei , Ziccawei , or Siccawei ) is a locality in Shanghai . It is a historic area of commerce and culture administratively within Xuhui District , which
6723-485: 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
6806-623: Was located in Xujiahui until 1922. While central Xujiahui was administratively part of the Chinese area of Shanghai, it was in reality controlled by the Catholic Church , which was closely associated with the French authorities of the French Concession . From 1914, Xujiahui sat just outside the borders of the French Concession, and remained under heavy French influence. Catholic Xujiahui came to an abrupt end with
6889-472: Was the first educational institution in China to offer a fully western curriculum. Another is the Bibliotheca Zikawei (or Bibliotheque de Mission ), now a branch of Shanghai Library , adjacent to the cathedral. Several of the convent buildings scattered around Xujiahui are still visible in various states of preservation: one (structurally modified but still recognizable) serves as the office of
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