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Gu (poison)
''Gu'' ( zh, s=蛊, t=蠱) or jincan ( zh, t=金蠶, s=金蚕) was a venom-based poison associated with cultures of south China, particularly Nanyue. The traditional preparation of ''gu'' poison involved sealing several venomous creatures (e.g., centipede, snake, scorpion) inside a closed container, where they devoured one another and allegedly concentrated their toxins into a single survivor, whose body would be fed upon by larvae until consumed. The last surviving larva held the complex poison. ''Gu'' was used in black magic practices such as manipulating sexual partners, creating malignant diseases, and causing death. According to Chinese folklore, a ''gu'' spirit could transform into various animals, typically a worm, caterpillar, snake, frog, dog, or pig. Names Circa 14th-century BCE Shang dynasty oracle inscriptions recorded the name ''gu'', while 7th-century CE Tang dynasty texts first used ''jincan'' "gold silkworm". ''Gu'' The term , says Loewe, "can be traced from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seal Script
Seal script or sigillary script () is a Chinese script styles, style of writing Chinese characters that was common throughout the latter half of the 1st millennium BC. It evolved organically out of bronze script during the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC). The variant of seal script used in the state of Qin eventually became comparatively standardized, and was adopted as the formal script across all of China during the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC). It was still widely used for decorative engraving and seal (East Asia), seals during the Han dynasty (202 BC220 AD). The literal translation given above was coined during the Han dynasty, and reflects the role of the script being reduced to ceremonial inscriptions. Types The term ''seal script'' may refer to several distinct varieties, including the large seal script and the small seal script. Without qualification, ''seal script'' usually refers to the small seal script—that is, the lineage which evolved with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wug Test
Jean Berko Gleason (born 1931) is an American psycholinguist and professor emerita in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Boston University who has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of language acquisition in children, aphasia, gender differences in language development, and parent–child interactions. Gleason created the Wug Test, in which a child is shown pictures with nonsense names and then prompted to complete statements about them, and used it to demonstrate that even young children possess implicit knowledge of Morphology (linguistics), linguistic morphology. Lise Menn, Menn and Nan Bernstein Ratner, Ratner have written that "Perhaps no innovation other than the invention of the tape recorder has had such an indelible effect on the field of child language research", the "wug" (one of the imaginary creatures Gleason drew in creating the Wug Test) being "so basic to what [psycholinguists] know and do that increasingly it appears in the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Calendar
The traditional Chinese calendar, dating back to the Han dynasty, is a lunisolar calendar that blends solar, lunar, and other cycles for social and agricultural purposes. While modern China primarily uses the Gregorian calendar for official purposes, the traditional calendar remains culturally significant. It determines the timing of Chinese New Year with traditions like the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, Chinese Zodiac still widely observed. The traditional Chinese calendar uses the Sexagenary cycle, sexagenary cycle, a repeating system of Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, to mark years, months, and days. This system, along with astronomical observations and mathematical calculations, was developed to align solar and lunar cycles, though some approximations are necessary due to the natural differences between these cycles. Over centuries, the calendar was refined through advancements in astronomy and horology, with dynasties introducing variations to improve accu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duanwu Festival
The Dragon Boat Festival ( zh, s=端午节, t=端午節, first=t, p=Duānwǔ jié, cy=Dyūnńgh jit) is a traditional Chinese holiday that occurs on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese calendar, which corresponds to late May or early June in the Gregorian calendar. The holiday commemorates Qu Yuan who was the beloved prime minister of the southern Chinese state of Chu during the Warring States period, about 600 B.C. to 200 B.C., and is celebrated by holding dragon boat races and eating sticky rice dumplings called ''zongzi'', which were southern Chinese traditions. Dragon Boat Festival integrates praying for good luck and taking respite from the summer heat. In September 2009, UNESCO officially approved the holiday's inclusion in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, becoming the first Chinese holiday to be selected. Names The English language name for the holiday is "Dragon Boat Festival", used as the official English translation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hou Han Shu
The ''Book of the Later Han'', also known as the ''History of the Later Han'' and by its Chinese name ''Hou Hanshu'' (), is one of the Twenty-Four Histories and covers the history of the Han dynasty from 6 to 189 CE, a period known as the Later or Eastern Han. The book was compiled by Fan Ye and others in the 5th century during the Liu Song dynasty, using a number of earlier histories and documents as sources. Background In 23 CE, Han dynasty official Wang Mang was overthrown by a peasants' revolt known as the Red Eyebrows. His fall separates the Early (or Western) Han dynasty from the Later (or Eastern) Han dynasty. As an orthodox history, the book is unusual in being completed over two hundred years after the fall of the dynasty. Fan Ye's primary source was the '' Dongguan Hanji'' (東觀漢記; "Han Records of the Eastern Lodge"), which was written during the Han dynasty itself. Contents References Citations Sources ; General * Chavannes, Édouard (1906) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Li Xian (prince)
Li Xian () (29 January 655 – 13 March 684), courtesy name Mingyun (), formally Crown Prince Zhanghuai (), named Li De () from 675 to 680, was a crown prince of the Chinese Tang dynasty. He was the sixth son of Emperor Gaozong, and the second son of his second wife Empress Wu (later known as Wu Zetian). He was known for writing commentaries for the '' Book of Later Han'', the official history of the Eastern Han dynasty. He became crown prince in 675 after his older brother Li Hong's death (which traditional historians believed to be a poisoning by Empress Wu), but soon fell out of favor and generosity with Empress Wu herself and that's what caused his downfall. In 680, Empress Wu had her associates accuse Li Xian of treason, and he was demoted to commoner rank and exiled. In 684, after Emperor Gaozong's death, Empress Wu, then empress dowager, had her associate Qiu Shenji (丘神勣) visit Li Xian to force him to commit suicide. In 706, his younger brother Emperor Zhongzong p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synonym
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all synonyms of one another: they are ''synonymous''. The standard test for synonymy is substitution: one form can be replaced by another in a sentence without changing its meaning. Words may often be synonymous in only one particular sense: for example, ''long'' and ''extended'' in the context ''long time'' or ''extended time'' are synonymous, but ''long'' cannot be used in the phrase ''extended family''. Synonyms with exactly the same meaning share a seme or denotational sememe, whereas those with inexactly similar meanings share a broader denotational or connotational sememe and thus overlap within a semantic field. The former are sometimes called cognitive synonyms and the latter, near-synonyms, plesionyms or poecilonyms. Lexic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oracle Bone
Oracle bones are pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron which were used in pyromancya form of divinationduring the Late Shang period () in ancient China. '' Scapulimancy'' is the specific term if ox scapulae were used for the divination, ''plastromancy'' if turtle plastrons were used. A recent count estimated that there were about 13,000 bones with a total of a little over 130,000 inscriptions in collections in China and some fourteen other countries. Diviners would submit questions to deities regarding weather, crop planting, the fortunes of members of the royal family, military endeavors, and similar topics. These questions were carved onto the bone or shell in oracle bone script using a sharp tool. Intense heat was then applied with a metal rod until the bone or shell cracked due to thermal expansion. The diviner would then interpret the pattern of cracks and write the prognostication upon the piece as well. Pyromancy with bones continued in China into the Zhou dynasty, bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oracle Bone Script
Oracle bone script is the oldest attested form of written Chinese, dating to the late 2nd millennium BC. Inscriptions were made by carving characters into oracle bones, usually either the shoulder bones of oxen or the plastrons of turtles. The writings themselves mainly record the results of official divinations carried out on behalf of the Late Shang royal family. These divinations took the form of '' scapulimancy'' where the oracle bones were exposed to flames, creating patterns of cracks that were then subjected to interpretation. Both the prompt and interpretation were inscribed on the same piece of bone that had been used for the divination itself. Out of an estimated 150,000 inscriptions that have been uncovered, the vast majority were unearthed at Yinxu, the site of the final Shang capital (modern-day Anyang, Henan). The most recent major discovery was the Huayuanzhuang cache found near the site in 1993. Of the 1,608 Huayuanzhang pieces, 579 bear inscriptions. E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ideogram
An ideogram or ideograph (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'idea' + 'to write') is a symbol that is used within a given writing system to represent an idea or concept in a given language. (Ideograms are contrasted with phonogram (linguistics), phonograms, which indicate sounds of speech and thus are independent of any particular language.) Some ideograms are more arbitrary than others: some are only meaningful assuming preexisting familiarity with some convention; others more directly resemble their signifieds. Ideograms that represent physical objects by visually illustrating them are called ''pictograms''. * Numeral system, Numerals and List of mathematical symbols, mathematical symbols are ideograms, for example ⟨1⟩ 'one', ⟨2⟩ 'two', ⟨+⟩ 'plus', and ⟨=⟩ 'equals'. * The ampersand ⟨&⟩ is used in many languages to represent the word ''and'', originally a stylized Ligature (writing), ligature of the Latin word . * Other typographical examples include ⟨§⟩ 'sect ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Character
Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only one that has remained in continuous use. Over a documented history spanning more than three millennia, the function, style, and means of writing characters have changed greatly. Unlike letters in alphabets that reflect the sounds of speech, Chinese characters generally represent morphemes, the units of meaning in a language. Writing all of the frequently used vocabulary in a language requires roughly 2000–3000 characters; , nearly have been identified and included in '' The Unicode Standard''. Characters are created according to several principles, where aspects of shape and pronunciation may be used to indicate the character's meaning. The first attested characters are oracle bone inscriptions made during the 13th century BCE in w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
