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Tianyi Pavilion
The Tianyi Ge (), translated as Tianyi Pavilion or Tianyi Chamber, is a library and garden located in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China. Background Establishment Tianyi Ge was built in 1561 during the 40th year of the Jiajing reign of the Ming Dynasty by Fan Qin. He was passionate about reading and got "Jinshi" in 1532, a title given to candidates who successfully passed the highest and most prestigious level of the imperial examination in ancient China. He was also an official in the Ministry of Military Affairs. Tianyi Ge collected many valuable books and classics, and it also influenced how other libraries were built later on. During its peak, Tianyi Ge had over 70,000 volumes, but because of issues like corruption, theft, and damage over time, only 13,000 books are left in the 1940s. After the People's Republic of China was established, the number of books increased to 300,000 thanks to inspections and donations. The name Tian Yi'' refers to the concept of cosmic unity ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ming Dynasty
The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of China ruled by the Han people, the majority ethnic group in China. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who established the short-lived Shun dynasty), numerous rump state, rump regimes ruled by remnants of the House of Zhu, Ming imperial family, collectively called the Southern Ming, survived until 1662. The Ming dynasty's founder, the Hongwu Emperor (1368–1398), attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty: the empire's standing army exceeded one million troops and the naval history of China, navy's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fan Qin
Fan Qin (, 1506–1585, courtesy name: Yaoqing (堯卿), pseudonym: Dongming (東明)) was a politician and bibliophile of the Ming Dynasty. Born in Ningbo in 1506, Fan Qin succeeded in the highest level of the Imperial examination in 1532 and obtained jinshi degree. In 1560, he was appointed right vice-minister of war (兵部右侍郎) under the Jiajing Emperor. Later, he resigned because of the dissatisfaction to Yan Song, the corrupt chancellor. In 1561, Fan Qin founded Tianyi Chamber in Ningbo Ningbo is a sub-provincial city in northeastern Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China. It comprises six urban districts, two satellite county-level cities, and two rural counties, including several islands in Hangzhou Bay and the Eas ... city, which is now the oldest existing library in China. References * 清光绪《鄞县志·范钦传》 {{DEFAULTSORT:Fan, Qin 1506 births 1585 deaths Ming dynasty government officials Chinese bibliophiles Politicians from N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yuan Dynasty
The Yuan dynasty ( ; zh, c=元朝, p=Yuáncháo), officially the Great Yuan (; Mongolian language, Mongolian: , , literally 'Great Yuan State'), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after Division of the Mongol Empire, its division. It was established by Kublai (Emperor Shizu or Setsen Khan), the fifth khagan-emperor of the Mongol Empire from the Borjigin clan, and lasted from 1271 to 1368. In Chinese history, the Yuan dynasty followed the Song dynasty and preceded the Ming dynasty. Although Genghis Khan's enthronement as Khagan in 1206 was described in Chinese language, Chinese as the Han Chinese, Han-style title of Emperor of China, Emperor and the Mongol Empire had ruled territories including modern-day northern China for decades, it was not until 1271 that Kublai Khan officially proclaimed the dynasty in the traditional Han style, and the conquest was not complete until 1279 when the Southern Song dynasty was defeated in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wood Type
In letterpress printing, wood type is movable type made out of wood. First used in China for printing body text, wood type became popular during the nineteenth century for making large display typefaces for printing posters, because it was lighter and cheaper than large sizes of metal type. Wood has been used since the earliest days of European printing for woodcut decorations and emblems, but it was not generally used for making typefaces due to the difficulty of reproducing the same shape many times for printing. In the 1820s, Darius Wells introduced Mechanization, mechanised wood type production using the powered Router (woodworking), router, and William Leavenworth in 1834 added a second major innovation of using a pantograph to cut a letter's shape from a pattern. This made it possible to mass-produce the same design in wood repeatedly. Wood type was manufactured and used worldwide in the nineteenth century for display use. In the twentieth century lithography, phototype ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wang Zhen (inventor)
Wang Zhen (, 1290–1333) was a Chinese agronomist, inventor, mechanical engineer, politician, and writer of the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). He was one of the early innovators of the wooden movable type printing History of Science and Technology in China, technology. His illustrated agricultural treatise was also one of the most advanced of its day, covering a wide range of equipment and technologies available in the late 13th and early 14th century. Life and works Wang Zhen was born in Shandong province, and spent many years as an official of both Anhui and Jiangxi provinces.Needham, Volume 6, Part 2, 59. From 1290 to 1301, he was a magistrate for Jingde, Anhui province, where he was a pioneer of the use of wooden movable type printing. The wooden movable type was described in Wang Zhen's publication of 1313, known as the ''Nong Shu'' (), or ''Book of Agriculture''. Although the title describes the main focus of the work, it incorporated much more information on a wide variet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Song Dynasty
The Song dynasty ( ) was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 960 to 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song, who usurped the throne of the Later Zhou dynasty and went on to conquer the rest of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period#Ten Kingdoms, Ten Kingdoms, ending the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The Song frequently came into conflict with the contemporaneous Liao dynasty, Liao, Western Xia and Jin dynasty (1115–1234), Jin dynasties in northern China. After retreating to southern China following attacks by the Jin dynasty, the Song was eventually conquered by the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The History of the Song dynasty, dynasty's history is divided into two periods: during the Northern Song (; 960–1127), the capital was in the northern city of Bianjing (now Kaifeng) and the dynasty controlled most of what is now East China. The #Southern Song, 1127–1279, Southern Song (; 1127–1279) comprise the period following ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Typography
Typography is the art and technique of Typesetting, arranging type to make written language legibility, legible, readability, readable and beauty, appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, Point (typography), point sizes, line lengths, line spacing, letter spacing, and Kerning, spaces between pairs of letters. The term ''typography'' is also applied to the style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols created by the process. Type design is a closely related craft, sometimes considered part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers. Typography also may be used as an ornamental and decorative device, unrelated to the communication of information. Typography is also the work of graphic designers, art directors, manga artists, comic book artists, and, now, anyone who arranges words, letters, numbers, and symbols for publication, display, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tiangong Kaiwu
The ''Tiangong Kaiwu'' (), or ''The Exploitation of the Works of Nature'' was a Chinese encyclopedia compiled by Song Yingxing. It was published in May 1637 with funding provided by Song's patron Tu Shaokui.Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 36.Song, xiv. The ''Tiangong Kaiwu'' is an encyclopedia covering a wide range of technical issues, including the use of various gunpowder weapons. Copies of the book were very scarce in China during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) (due to the government's establishment of monopolies over certain industries described in the book), but original copies of the book were preserved in Japan. Overview It featured detailed illustrations that were valuable for historians in understanding many early Chinese production processes. For example, illustrations for brick-making; one shows a kilnmaster checking the temperature of a furnace while an assistant stands by and douses the kiln to induce superficial glazing; another illustration shows a brick-maker fil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Song Yingxing
Song Yingxing (Traditional Chinese: 宋應星; Simplified Chinese: 宋应星; Wade Giles: Sung Ying-Hsing; 1587–1666 AD) was a Chinese scientist and encyclopedist who lived during the late Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). He was the author of ''Tiangong Kaiwu'', an encyclopedia that covered a wide variety of technical subjects, including the use of gunpowder weapons.Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 36. The British biochemist, sinologist, and historian Joseph Needham called Song Yingxing "The Diderot of China."Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 102. Biography Song Yingxing was born in Yichun of Jiangxi in 1587 to a gentry family of reduced circumstances, he participated in the imperial examinations, and passed the provincial test in 1615, at the age of 28. He achieved only modest wealth and influence during his life. However, he was repeatedly unsuccessful in the metropolitan examination. Song sat for the test five times, the last being in 1631 at the age of 44. After this last failure, he h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phyllostachys Aurea
''Phyllostachys aurea'' is a species of bamboo, and is of the 'running bamboo' type, belonging to the diverse Bambuseae tribe. It is native to Fujian and Zhejiang in China. It is commonly known by the names fishpole bamboo, golden bamboo, monk's belly bamboo, and fairyland bamboo (Australia). Cultivation ''Phyllostachys aurea'' is cultivated as an ornamental plant for gardens. In the United States, Australia, South Africa and Italy, it is considered an invasive species that crowds out native species and becomes a monoculture that is difficult to remove. It is a cold-hardy bamboo, performing well in USDA zones 6 to 10, (Connecticut to Florida). In the UK it has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. It is a tall evergreen species growing to tall by broad. Like most bamboos it can become invasive if kept in warm, moist conditions in good quality soil with access to full sunlight. It is a prohibited species in New York. Cultivars Cultivars include: * ''P. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
