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Nine Pieces
Jiu Zhang ( Pinyin: Jiu Zhang; en, Nine Pieces) is a collection of poems attributed to Qu Yuan and printed in the Chu Ci (楚辭 ''Songs of Chu'', sometimes ''Songs of the South''). Title translation ''Jiu zhang'' is a transliteration of the title of this section of the ''Chu ci''. ''Jiu'' means nine, as in the number. It is not entirely clear why this number was chosen to divide this work into sections, although performance purposes or imitation of prior ''Chu ci'' works are both likely factors. ''Zhang'' was commonly used in ancient Chinese to mean a section of a literary work, such as a paragraph of a prose piece or for a stanza of a song or poem. ''Jiu zhang'' may also be translated into English alternatively, such as Nine Declarations. The nine pieces The nine poems of the ''Jiu Zhang'' form a diverse collection. Table of contents The "Nine Pieces" consists of nine titles of poems: Note that poem numbers 1, 6, 7, and 9 actually lack titles in the original text; rather, t ...
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Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese characters, Chinese form, to learners already familiar with the Latin alphabet. The system includes four diacritics denoting tone (linguistics), tones, but pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written in the Latin script, and is also used in certain computer Chinese input methods for computers, input methods to enter Chinese characters. The word ' () literally means "Han Chinese, Han spoken language, language" (i.e. Chinese language), while ' () means "spelled sounds". The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by a group of Chinese linguists including Zhou Youguang and was based on earlier forms of Romanization of Chinese, romanizations of Chinese. It was published by the Chinese G ...
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Qu Yuan
Qu Yuan ( – 278 BCE) was a Chinese poet and politician in the State of Chu during the Warring States period. He is known for his patriotism and contributions to classical poetry and verses, especially through the poems of the ''Chu Ci'' anthology (also known as ''The Songs of the South'' or ''Songs of Chu''): a volume of poems attributed to or considered to be inspired by his verse writing. Together with the '' Shi Jing'', the ''Chu Ci'' is one of the two greatest collections of ancient Chinese verse. He is also remembered in connection to the supposed origin of the Dragon Boat Festival. Historical details about Qu Yuan's life are few, and his authorship of many ''Chu Ci'' poems has been questioned at length. However, he is widely accepted to have written "The Lament," a ''Chu Ci'' poem. The first known reference to Qu Yuan appears in a poem written in 174 BCE by Jia Yi, an official from Luoyang who was slandered by jealous officials and banished to Changsha b ...
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Chu Ci
The ''Chu ci'', variously translated as ''Verses of Chu,'' ''Songs of Chu'', or ''Elegies of Chu'', is an ancient anthology of Chinese poetry including works traditionally attributed mainly to Qu Yuan and Song Yu from the Warring States period (ended 221 BC), and also a large number of works composed several centuries later, during the Han dynasty.Hawkes, David. Ch'u Tz'u: ''Songs of the South, an Ancient Chinese Anthology''. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 28. The traditional version of the ''Chu ci'' contains 17 major sections, anthologized with its current contents by Wang Yi, a 2nd-century AD librarian who served under Emperor Shun of Han. The early (pre-Qin dynasty) Classical Chinese poetry is mainly known through the two anthologies the ''Chu ci'' and the ''Shi jing'' (''Classic of Poetry'' or ''Book of Songs''). Background ''Chu ci'' was named after a form of poetry that originated in the State of Chu, which was located in what is now central China, but was the ...
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Chu Ci
The ''Chu ci'', variously translated as ''Verses of Chu,'' ''Songs of Chu'', or ''Elegies of Chu'', is an ancient anthology of Chinese poetry including works traditionally attributed mainly to Qu Yuan and Song Yu from the Warring States period (ended 221 BC), and also a large number of works composed several centuries later, during the Han dynasty.Hawkes, David. Ch'u Tz'u: ''Songs of the South, an Ancient Chinese Anthology''. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 28. The traditional version of the ''Chu ci'' contains 17 major sections, anthologized with its current contents by Wang Yi, a 2nd-century AD librarian who served under Emperor Shun of Han. The early (pre-Qin dynasty) Classical Chinese poetry is mainly known through the two anthologies the ''Chu ci'' and the ''Shi jing'' (''Classic of Poetry'' or ''Book of Songs''). Background ''Chu ci'' was named after a form of poetry that originated in the State of Chu, which was located in what is now central China, but was the ...
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Lament For Ying
Lament for Ying ( Chinese: 哀郢, pinyin: ''Āi Yǐng'') is a poem which has sometimes been attributed to Chinese poet Qu Yuan, and dated to around 278 BCE. Lament for Ying is from the " Nine Declarations" (''Jiu Zhang'') section of the ''Chuci'' poetry anthology, compiled in ancient China. The ''Ying'' in the title is a toponym (placename). The word ''Ai'' implies a post-destruction lamentation for this place. Hawkes, 163 Ying was famous as the capital of the kingdom of Chu, Qu Yuan's homeland. Background According to tradition, Qu Yuan, a patriot of the State of Chu, his home country, wrote the work in anguish as the Qin general Bai Qi marched his troops upon Ying, capital of Chu (in present-day Hubei Province), threatening to invade. In the face of the imminent peril confronting his homeland, he was filled with fury and grief. The poem expresses his deep concern and worry for his country's fate, his pity for the people of Chu, and his anger at the country's self-indulgent rul ...
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Ju Song
''Ju Song'' () is a Classical Chinese poem which has been preserved in the '' Nine Pieces'' (''Jiu Zhang'') section of the ancient Chinese poetry anthology, the ''Chu ci'', or ''The Songs of Chu''. The poem has been translated into English by David Hawkes as "In Praise of the Orange-Tree". In the poem, the orange-tree is used as a metaphor for certain human qualities, such as "steadfastness". Hawkes explains this by the tradition that this type of orange tree is supposed to grow naturally only in the part of China of which the ancient land of Chu was included in (as opposed to the northern plain). The particular orange-tree (''ju'') mentioned is what David Hawkes calls "''citrus nobilis''"; but, this type of orange (or, its hybrids) is now usually botanically referred to as ''Citrus reticulata'', or else by the common name of "mandarin orange". Symbolism The word ''ju'', meaning "orange (fruit or tree)" is phonetically reminiscent of the word ''zhù'' (祝), which means "to wis ...
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List Of Chuci Contents
This is a list of the sections and individual pieces contained within the ancient poetry anthology ''Chu Ci'' (), also known as ''Songs of the South'' or ''Songs of Chu'', which is an anthology of Classical Chinese poetry verse traditionally attributed to Qu Yuan and Song Yu from the Warring States period, though about half of the poems seem to have been composed several centuries later, during the Han Dynasty.Hawkes, David. Ch'u Tz'u: ''Songs of the South, an Ancient Chinese Anthology''. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 28. The traditional version of the ''Chu Ci'' contains 17 major sections, and was edited by Wang Yi (), a 2nd-century AD librarian who served under Emperor Shun of Han. The ''Chu Ci'' and the ''Shi Jing'' together constitute the chief sources of pre-Qin dynasty Chinese verse. "Encountering Sorrow" "Li Sao" () is one of the most famous of the works contained in the ''Chu Ci'': it mainly is upon a theme of seemingly autobiographical material about the relationship ...
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Liu An
Liú Ān (, c. 179–122 BC) was a Han dynasty Chinese prince, ruling the Huainan Kingdom, and an advisor to his nephew, Emperor Wu of Han (武帝). He is best known for editing the (139 BC) ''Huainanzi'' compendium of Daoist, Confucianist, and Legalist teachings and is credited for inventing tofu. Early texts represent Liu An in three ways: the "author-editor of a respected philosophical symposium", the "bumbling rebel who took his life to avoid arrest", and the successful Daoist adept who transformed into a '' xian'' and "rose into the air to escape prosecution for trumped-up charges of treason and flew to eternal life." Life He was the grandson of Liu Bang, the founding emperor of the Han Dynasty. After his father died, he became the Prince of Huainan, the lands south of the Huai River, at the age of 16. Liu An had two sons. The younger was Liu Qian (刘迁), who was born by his princess consort and thus became heir to Huainan, while the elder, Liu Buhai (刘不害), w ...
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Liu Xiang (scholar)
Liu Xiang (77–6BCE), born Liu Gengsheng and bearing the courtesy name Zizheng, was a Chinese astronomer, historian, poet, politician, librarian, and writer of the Western Han Dynasty. Among his polymathic scholarly specialties were history, literary bibliography, and astronomy. He is particularly well known for his bibliographic work in cataloging and editing the extensive imperial library. Life Liu Gengsheng was born in Xuzhou. Being a distant relative of Liu Bang, the founder of the Han dynasty, he was thus a member of the ruling dynastic clan (the Liu family). Liu Xiang's father ranked as a marquess. Liu Xiang's son, Liu Xin, would continue the scholarly tradition of his father and his relative Liu An (the Prince of Huainan). By the beginning of Han Yuandi's reign, Liu Xiang was a member of a group of Confucian officials, including Xiao Wangzhi, who wished to limit the power of the emperor's female family members relatives' clans, the Shi and the Xu. He ended up on the l ...
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Song Yu
Song Yu (; 298–263 BC) was a Chinese poet from the late Warring States period, and is known as the traditional author of a number of poems in the ''Verses of Chu (Chu ci'' 楚辭'')''. Among the ''Verses of Chu'' poems usually attributed to Song Yu are those in the '' Jiu Bian'' section. Also credited to Song Yu, somewhat improbably, are several '' fu'' collected in the 6th century literary anthology '' Wen Xuan''. Biography Biographic information about Song Yu tends to be anecdotal, rather than truly historical, and little reliable information about Song's life exists. Historical accounts agree that Song was from the state of Chu Chu, or Ch'u in Wade–Giles romanization, (, Hanyu Pinyin: Chǔ, Old Chinese: ''*s-r̥aʔ'') was a Zhou dynasty vassal state. Their first ruler was King Wu of Chu in the early 8th century BCE. Chu was located in the south of the Zhou ..., and was born in the city of Yan (modern Yicheng, Hubei Province), and lived during the rei ...
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Wang Yi (librarian)
Wang Yi (; ), courtesy name Shushi (), was a Chinese poet during the Eastern Han dynasty who was employed in the Imperial Library by the Later Han emperor Shun Di (). Wang Yi is known for his work on the poetry anthology ''Chu Ci''. Although with varying reliability, his commentaries on this work are a main source of information regarding some of its often obscure textual references. Biography Wang Yi was born in the former territory of the State of Chu, in what is now Yicheng, Hubei. (Hawkes, 2011 985 28 and 307) Chu had existed as an independent political entity for many centuries, and for much of that time as one of the major regional powers, until its defeat in BCE 223, by Qin, some four centuries before the birth of Wang Yi. The Qin political unification of China by military conquest was followed by a deliberate policy of enforcing cultural uniformity throughout the new empire. Still, his associations with the former Chu region gave Wang an advantage in terms of explain ...
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