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Xuan Wu (god)
Xuanwu () or Xuandi (), also known as Zhenwu (, ) or Zhenwu Dadi (, ), is a revered deity in Chinese religion, one of the higher-ranking deities in Taoism. He is revered as a powerful god, able to control the elements and capable of great magic. He is identified as the god of the north ''Heidi'' (, ) and is particularly revered by martial artists. He is the patron god of Hebei, Henan, Manchuria and Mongolia. As some Han Chinese (now the modern-day Cantonese and Fujianese peoples) migrated into the south from Hebei and Henan during the Tang-Song era, Xuanwu is also widely revered in the Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian provinces, as well as among the overseas diaspora. Since the usurping Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty claimed to receive the divine assistance of Xuanwu during his successful Jingnan Campaign against his nephew, he had a number of Taoist monasteries constructed in the Wudang Mountains of Hubei, where Xuanwu allegedly attained immortality. According to Taoist be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penghu
The Penghu ( , Hokkien Pe̍h-ōe-jī, POJ: ''Phîⁿ-ô͘'' or ''Phêⁿ-ô͘'' ) or Pescadores Islands are an archipelago of 90 islands and islets in the Taiwan Strait, about west of the main island of Taiwan across the Penghu Channel, covering an area of . The archipelago collectively forms of Taiwan and is the smallest County (Taiwan), county of Taiwan. The largest city is Magong, on the largest island, which is also named Magong. The Penghu islands first appear in the historical record in the Tang dynasty and were inhabited by Chinese people under the Southern Song dynasty, during which they were attached to Jinjiang, Fujian, Jinjiang County of Fujian Circuit, Fujian. The archipelago was formally incorporated as an administrative unit of China in 1281 under Tong'an County of Jiangzhe Province in the Yuan dynasty. It continued to be controlled by Imperial China with brief European occupations by the Dutch Empire (1622–1624) and Second French colonial empire ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guangxi
Guangxi,; officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, is an Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People's Republic of China, located in South China and bordering Vietnam (Hà Giang Province, Hà Giang, Cao Bằng Province, Cao Bằng, Lạng Sơn Province, Lạng Sơn, and Quảng Ninh Provinces) and the Gulf of Tonkin. Formerly a Provinces of China, province, Guangxi became an autonomous region in 1958. Its current capital is Nanning. Guangxi's location, in mountainous terrain in the far south of China, has placed it on the frontier of Chinese civilization throughout much of History of China, Chinese history. The current name "Guang" means "expanse" and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in 226 AD. It was given Administrative divisions of the Yuan dynasty, provincial level status during the Yuan dynasty, but even into the 20th century, it was considered an open, wild territory. The abbreviation of the regi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Snake
Snakes are elongated limbless reptiles of the suborder Serpentes (). Cladistically squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales much like other members of the group. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors and relatives, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads ( cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most only have one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have independently evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs at least twenty-five times via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, althoug ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turtle
Turtles are reptiles of the order (biology), order Testudines, characterized by a special turtle shell, shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Cryptodira (hidden necked turtles), which differ in the way the head retracts. There are 360 living and recently extinct species of turtles, including land-dwelling tortoises and freshwater terrapins. They are found on most continents, some islands and, in the case of sea turtles, much of the ocean. Like other Amniote, amniotes (reptiles, birds, and mammals) they breathe air and do not lay eggs underwater, although many species live in or around water. Turtle shells are made mostly of bone; the upper part is the domed Turtle shell#Carapace, carapace, while the underside is the flatter plastron or belly-plate. Its outer surface is covered in scale (anatomy), scales made of keratin, the material of hair, horns, and claws. The carapace bones deve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Constellations
Traditional Chinese astronomy has a system of dividing the celestial sphere into asterisms or constellations, known as "officials" ( Chinese ''xīng guān''). The Chinese asterisms are generally smaller than the constellations of Hellenistic tradition. The Song dynasty (13th-century) Suzhou planisphere shows a total of 283 asterisms, comprising a total of 1,565 individual stars. The asterisms are divided into four groups, the Twenty-Eight Mansions (, ''Èrshíbā Xiù'') along the ecliptic, and the Three Enclosures of the northern sky. The southern sky was added as a fifth group in the late Ming dynasty based on European star charts, comprising an additional 23 asterisms. The Three Enclosures (, ''Sān Yuán'') include the Purple Forbidden Enclosure, which is centered on the north celestial pole and includes those stars which could be seen year-round,Needham, J.Astronomy in Ancient and Medieval China. ''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London''. Ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Four Symbols
The Four Symbols are mythological creatures appearing among the Chinese constellations along the ecliptic, and viewed as the guardians of the four cardinal directions. These four creatures are also referred to by a variety of other names, including "Four Guardians", "Four Gods", and "Four Auspicious Beasts". They are the Azure Dragon of the East, the Vermilion Bird of the South, the White Tiger of the West, and the Black Tortoise (also called "Black Warrior") of the North. Each of the creatures is most closely associated with a cardinal direction and a color, but also additionally represents other aspects, including a season of the year, an emotion, virtue, and one of the Chinese " five elements" (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water). Each has been given its own individual traits, origin story and a reason for being. Symbolically, and as part of spiritual and religious belief and meaning, these creatures have been culturally important across countries in the Sinosphere. His ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daode Tianzun
Daode Tianzun (), also known as Taishang Laojun () is a high Taoist god. He is the Taiqing (, lit. the Grand Pure One) which is one of the Three Pure Ones, the highest immortals of Taoism. Laozi is regarded to be a manifestation of Daode Tianzun who authored the classic ''Tao Te Ching''. He is traditionally regarded as the founder of Taoism, intimately connected with "primordial" (or "original") Taoism. Popular ("religious") Taoism typically presents the Jade Emperor as the official head deity. Intellectual ("orthodox") Taoists, such as the Celestial Masters sect, usually present Laozi (''Laojun'', "Lord Lao") and the Three Pure Ones at the top of the pantheon of gods. Name His other names include Daode Zhizun (, lit. 'The Universally Honored Virtuous One') and Daojiao Zhizu (, lit. 'The Taoist Ancestor'). Legends Taishang Laojun believed to be the true incarnation of the spiritual philosopher Laozi, he was already identified as a personification of the Tao as early as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hubei
Hubei is a province of China, province in Central China. It has the List of Chinese provincial-level divisions by GDP, seventh-largest economy among Chinese provinces, the second-largest within Central China, and the third-largest among inland provinces. Its provincial capital at Wuhan serves as a major political, cultural, and economic hub for the region. Hubei is associated with the historical state of E that existed during the Western Zhou dynasty (771 BCE). Its name means 'north of the lake', referring to Dongting Lake. It borders Henan to the north, Anhui and Jiangxi to the east, Hunan to the south, and Chongqing and Shaanxi to the west. The high-profile Three Gorges Dam is located at Yichang in the west of the province. History The Hubei region was home to sophisticated Neolithic cultures. By the Spring and Autumn period (770–476 BC), the territory of today's Hubei formed part of the powerful Chu (state), State of Chu. Chu, nominally a tributary state of the Zh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wudang Mountains
The Wudang Mountains () are a mountain range in the northwestern part of Hubei, China. They are home to a famous complex of Taoist temples and monasteries associated with the Lord of the North, Xuantian Shangdi. The Wudang Mountains are renowned for the practice of tai chi and Taoism as the Taoist counterpart to the Shaolin Monastery, which is affiliated with Chan Buddhism. The Wudang Mountains are one of the " Four Sacred Mountains of Taoism" in China, an important destination for Taoist pilgrimages. The monasteries such as the Wudang Garden were made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 because of their religious significance and architectural achievement. Geography On Chinese maps, the name "Wudangshan" () is applied both to the entire mountain range (which runs east-west along the southern edge of the Han River, crossing several county-level divisions of Shiyan), and to the group of peaks located within Wudangshan subdistrict of Danjiangkou, Shiyan. It is the latter speci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jingnan Campaign
The Jingnan campaign, or the campaign to clear away disorders, was a three-year civil war from 1399 to 1402 in the early years of the Ming dynasty of China between the Jianwen Emperor and his uncle, Zhu Di, Prince of Yan. The war was sparked by the removal of the emperor's uncles and the restriction of Zhu Di's power by the central government after the Jianwen Emperor ascended to the throne in 1398. In 1399, Zhu Di rebelled under the guise of restoring order and the rights of the princes. After three years of fighting, he successfully conquered the capital of Nanjing in June 1402, while the emperor and his family were likely killed in the palace fire. This marked the end of the war. Soon after, Zhu Di ascended to the throne as the third emperor of the Ming dynasty. Upon assuming power, he made efforts to erase the legacy of the Jianwen Emperor by removing his supporters from positions of authority and reversing his reforms. Despite initially rebelling in the name of protecting th ... [...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] |
