|
Chang-k'ien
Zhang Qian (; died c. 114 BC) was a Chinese diplomat, explorer, and politician who served as an imperial envoy to the world outside of China in the late 2nd century BC during the Western Han dynasty. He was one of the first official diplomats to bring back valuable information about Central Asia, including the Greco-Bactrian remains of the Macedonian Empire as well as the Parthian Empire, to the Han dynasty imperial court, then ruled by Emperor Wu of Han. He played an important pioneering role for the future Chinese conquest of lands west of Xinjiang, including swaths of Central Asia and even lands south of the Hindu Kush (see Protectorate of the Western Regions). This trip created the Silk Road that marked the beginning of globalization between the countries in the east and west. Zhang Qian's travel was commissioned by Emperor Wu with the major goal of initiating transcontinental trade in the Silk Road, as well as create political protectorates by securing allies. His m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greco-Bactrian Kingdom
The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom () was a Ancient Greece, Greek state of the Hellenistic period located in Central Asia, Central-South Asia. The kingdom was founded by the Seleucid Empire, Seleucid satrap Diodotus I, Diodotus I Soter in about 256 BC, and continued to dominate Central Asia until its fall around 120 BC. At its peak the kingdom consisted of present-day Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and for a short time, small parts of Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Iran. An extension further east, with military campaigns and settlements, may have reached the borders of the Qin (state), Qin State in China by about 230 BC. Although a Greek population was already present in Bactria by the 5th century BC, Alexander the Great conquered the region by 327 BC and founded many cities, most of them named List of cities founded by Alexander the Great, Alexandria, and further settled with Ancient Macedonians, Macedonians and other Ancient Greece, Greeks. After the death of Alexande ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zhang (surname)
Zhang (; ) is the List of common Chinese surnames, third most common surname in China and Taiwan (commonly spelled as Chang in Taiwan), and it is one of the most common surnames in the world. It is spoken in the Chinese tones, first tone ''Zhāng''. It is a surname that exists in many languages and cultures, corresponding to the surname 'Archer' in English for example. In the Wade–Giles system of Romanization of Chinese, romanization, it is romanized as Chang, which is commonly used in Taiwan. Cheung is commonly used in Hong Kong as a romanization. It is the 24th name on the ''Hundred Family Surnames'' poem, contained in the verse 何呂施張 ''(Hé Lǚ Shī Zhāng)''. Zhang is also the pinyin romanization of the less-common surnames (''Zhāng''), which is the 40th name on the ''Hundred Family Surnames'' poem, and (''Zhǎng''). Today, it is one of the most common surnames in the world at over 100 million people worldwide. Zhang was listed by the People's Republic of China's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wu Shuang Pu
''Wu Shuang Pu'' () is a book of woodcut prints, first printed in 1694, early on in the Qing dynasty. This book contains the biographies and imagined portraits of 40 notable heroes and heroines from the Han dynasty to the Song dynasty, all accompanied by a brief introduction and guided by a related poem in yuefu style. The illustrations from the book were widely distributed and re-used, often as motifs on Chinese porcelain. The original book has a seal that says Nanling, which is why the book is also known as Nanling Wu Shuang Pu. A re-edition of this book from the year 1699 is kept in the National Museum of China. The scholar and philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ... Mao Qiling praised the book in the preface, he felt that the prose in this book ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dayuan
Dayuan (or Tayuan; ; Middle Chinese ''dâiC-jwɐn'' < : ''dɑh-ʔyɑn'') is the Chinese for a country that existed in in , described in the Chinese historical works of '' Records of the Grand Historian
[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kunlun Mountains
The Kunlun Mountains constitute one of the longest mountain chains in Asia, extending for more than . In the broadest sense, the chain forms the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau south of the Tarim Basin. Located in Western China, the Kunlun Mountains have been known as the "Forefather of Mountains" in China. The exact definition of the Kunlun Mountains varies over time. Older sources used Kunlun to mean the mountain belt that runs across the center of China, that is, Altyn Tagh along with the Qilian and Qin Mountains. Recent sources have the Kunlun range forming most of the south side of the Tarim Basin and then continuing east, south of the Altyn Tagh. Sima Qian ('' Records of the Grand Historian'', scroll 123) says that Emperor Wu of Han sent men to find the source of the Yellow River and gave the name Kunlun to the mountains at its source. The name seems to have originated as a semi-mythical location in the classical Chinese text '' Classic of Mountains and Seas''. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tarim Basin
The Tarim Basin is an endorheic basin in Xinjiang, Northwestern China occupying an area of about and one of the largest basins in Northwest China.Chen, Yaning, et al. "Regional climate change and its effects on river runoff in the Tarim Basin, China." Hydrological Processes 20.10 (2006): 2207–2216.online 426 KB) Located in China's Xinjiang region, it is sometimes used synonymously to refer to the southern half of the province, that is, Southern Xinjiang or Nanjiang (), as opposed to the northern half of the province known as Dzungaria or Beijiang. Its northern boundary is the Tian Shan mountain range and its southern boundary is the Kunlun Mountains on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. The Taklamakan Desert dominates much of the basin. The historical Uyghur name for the Tarim Basin is Altishahr (Uyghur language, Traditional Uyghur: , ), which means 'six cities' in Uyghur language, Uyghur. The region was also called ''Little Bukhara'' or ''Little Bukharia''. Geography and relation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lop Nor
Lop Nur or Lop Nor (, , from an Oirat Mongolic name meaning "Lop Lake", where "Lop" is a toponym of unknown origin) is a now largely dried-up salt lake formerly located within the ''Lop Depression'' in the eastern fringe of the Tarim Basin in the southeastern portion of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, northwestern China, between the Taklamakan and Kumtag deserts. Administratively, the lake is in Lop Nur town (), also known as Luozhong () of Ruoqiang County, which in its turn is part of the Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture. The lake system, into which the Tarim River and Shule River drain from the west and east respectively, is the last remnant of the historical post-glacial Tarim Lake, which once covered more than in the Tarim Basin but had progressively shrunk throughout the Holocene due to rain shadowing by the Tibetan Plateau. Lop Nur is hydrologically endorheic, it is landbound and has no outlet, and has relied largely on meltwater runoffs from the Tianshan, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julia Lovell
Julia Lovell (born 1975) is a British scholar, author, and translator whose non-fiction books focus on China. Lovell is professor of Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of London. Her works on the Opium Wars (''The Opium Wars: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China'') and Maoism (''Maoism: A Global History'') were widely reviewed. Her translations include works by Lu Xun, Han Shaogong, Eileen Chang and others. Life and career Lovell was born in 1975 in Carlisle. Her parents were teachers who encouraged her to study foreign languages. She decided to study Chinese after reading Jung Chang's book '' Wild Swans'', which her mother lent her. Lovell completed her undergraduate and graduate degrees at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. She is an alumna of the Hopkins–Nanjing Center. Lovell is professor of Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, where her research has been focused principally on the relationship between cult ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frances Wood
Frances Wood (; born 1948) is an English librarian, sinologue and historian known for her writings on Chinese history, including Marco Polo, life in the Chinese treaty ports, and the First Emperor of China. Biography Wood was born in London in 1948, and went to art school in Liverpool in 1967, before going to Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied Chinese. She went to China to study Chinese at Peking University in 1975–1976. Wood joined the staff of the British Library in London in 1977 as a junior curator, and later served as curator of Chinese collections until her retirement in 2013. She is also a member of the steering committee of the International Dunhuang Project, and the editor of the ''Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society''. She was also a governor of Ashmount Primary School for 20 years, relinquishing this post on the completion of her current term of office in July 2014. She has argued in her 1995 book, '' Did Marco Polo go to China?'', t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tajikistan
Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Dushanbe is the capital city, capital and most populous city. Tajikistan borders Afghanistan to the Afghanistan–Tajikistan border, south, Uzbekistan to the Tajikistan–Uzbekistan border, west, Kyrgyzstan to the Kyrgyzstan–Tajikistan border, north, and China to the China–Tajikistan border, east. It is separated from Pakistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor. It has a population of over 10.7 million people. The territory was previously home to cultures of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, including the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex, Oxus civilization in west, with the Indo-Iranians arriving during the Andronovo culture. Parts of country were part of the Sogdia, Sogdian and Bactria, Bactrian civilizations, and was ruled by those including the Achaemenid Empire, Achaemenids, Alexander the Great, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Greco-Bactrians, the Kushan Empire, Kushans, the Kid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yuezhi
The Yuezhi were an ancient people first described in China, Chinese histories as nomadic pastoralists living in an arid grassland area in the western part of the modern Chinese province of Gansu, during the 1st millennium BC. After a major defeat at the hands of the Xiongnu in 176 BC, the Yuezhi split into two groups migrating in different directions: the Greater Yuezhi and Lesser Yuezhi. This started a complex domino effect that radiated in all directions and, in the process, set the course of history for much of Asia for centuries to come. The Greater Yuezhi initially migrated northwest into the Ili River, Ili Valley (on the modern borders of China and Kazakhstan), where they reportedly displaced elements of the Sakas. They were driven from the Ili Valley by the Wusun and migrated southward to Sogdia and later settled in Bactria. The Greater Yuezhi have consequently often been identified with peoples mentioned in classical European sources as having overrun the Greco-Bactrian K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Regions
The Western Regions or Xiyu (Hsi-yü; ) was a historical name specified in Ancient Chinese chronicles between the 3rd century BC to the 8th century AD that referred to the regions west of the Yumen Pass, most often the Tarim Basin in present-day southern Xinjiang (also known as Altishahr) and Central Asia (specifically the easternmost portion around the Ferghana Valley), though it was sometimes used more generally to refer to other regions to the west of China as well, such as Parthia (which technically belonged to West Asia) and Tianzhu (as in the novel ''Journey to the West'', which refers to the Indian subcontinent in South Asia). Because of their strategic location astride the Silk Road, the Western Regions have been historically significant to China since at least the 3rd century BC. History Han dynasty In 138 BC, the Emperor Wu of Western Han dynasty sent a diplomatic envoy represented by Zhang Qian to Xiyu in an effort to contact and make alliance with Yue ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
