Chinasage : All about China
China sage's information will be of use to anyone keen to learn more about the world's upcoming nation. We cover all aspects of China in hundreds of detailed pages which include all sorts of cultural traditions , descriptions of every Chinese province and all the dynasties . We hope you find ChinaSage the home for your study of China.
You can also check out your knowledge of China with our Quiz section .
Traditions
About Chinasage
We're building an extensive set of information all about China. We found other sites too detailed (such as Wikipedia) or just too old-fashioned. What we thought was needed was a carefully constructed site with strict editorial control so that everything is consistent and easy to navigate without clutter.
The name “Chinasage” came about because it can be read as either “China sage” (中 国 英 明 zhōng guó yīng míng ) or “China’s age” (中 国 时 代 zhōng guó shí dài ) , which promotes our new knowledge resource at a time when China has come of age in the world.
Fire symbolism
Although fire is chiefly seen as one of the five elements of nature it also has a symbolic meaning. It is one of the parts of the Imperial insignia where it represents the Emperor's burning zeal to govern the people wisely. Fierce and active Buddhist deities are shown surrounded by flames.
Traditionally Chinese homes in the north did not have an open fire but a ‘kang’ as a form of heated seat and bed. All fires for winter heating were put out before the Qing Ming spring festival. The active meaning of fire may come from its closeness in sound to 活 New Year festival attract the good gods and scare away the bad ones. The ritual burning of ghost money and other offerings sends them to the spirit world. Some consider Fuxi was the deity who brought fire to mankind, but others say it was the Yellow Emperor .
Getting by in China There are many customs and traditions that you should know before traveling to China. Our customs page covers such things as giving gifts, banquets, sealing business deals and how to behave in public. A respect for age old traditions will impress your hosts who will appreciate your efforts to embrace the culture. Read more…
Ancient Chinese numerology The Chinese have studied the properties of numbers from ancient times. Many interesting beliefs came from the magic square that unified other traditions such as yin-yang, five elements, compass directions and the taiju figure. Read more…
All about the religions of China Untangling the religions of China is quite a challenge. There are three main belief systems (principally: Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism) that have co-existed in harmony for a very long time. Islam, Christianity and Ancestor veneration are also described in our comprehensive guide. Read more…
China's Neighbors The countries that surround China have an interesting history. Wars, conquest and religion have defined the current boundaries of the Peoples' Republic. India, Russia, Pakistan, Myanmar and Afghanistan all have important borders with China. Read more…
Toad Frogs and toads are valued in China because they keep down insect pests on crops. In some regions their name is similar to qián 'money, coin' and this has given them an association with good fortune and luck. Read more…
Lotus The lotus is an emblem with strong Buddhist links. As the plant grows in mud and muck and yet produces a pure white flower it is considered a metaphor for favorable transformation. Read more…
A history of Chinese Painting China has a very long tradition of painting. Most painting is done with the same brush and ink as calligraphy. Landscapes are the most cherished but exquisite paintings of nature subjects and portraits are also well represented. Read more…
Chinese Calligraphy The Chinese language is a treasure trove of history and traditions. The language script has been in use for over 4,000 years. Fine historic pieces by the great masters continue to achieve as high a price at auction as a great painting. To appreciate Chinese writing it is important to know how the characters are made with the brush. Read more…
Cracking China book
Your A-Z key to understanding China
We are proud to announce a printed book all about China based loosely on this web site. It is a set of sixty topics in A-Z order covering everything from hair to kiwifruit, clapping to rhubarb, eunuchs to dragons. Buying a copy will help support Chinasage . Now available as a Kindle eBook for just $3.90.
Details... ➚
Kites Along with many other things the Chinese lay claim to the invention of the kite. Kite flying remains very popular in China and many can be seen flying in public parks. In the past they have even been used for military purposes. Read more…
History
Dip into history Our history section has a page for each major dynasty, for the whole period from the time of myths and legends 5,000 years ago all the way through the Han, Tang, Song, Ming dynasties to the last great dynasty the Qing Read more…
Top Academy in China 725-1911 China can lay claim to having the longest lived academic institution. The Hanlin Academy was founded way back in the Tang dynasty long before any European university. For nearly 1,200 years it comprised all the top scholars in many disciplines and had its own set of buildings at the Imperial capital. The academy produced Imperial edicts, the Imperial histories as well as educating the Emperor's children and setting the university examination system . Read more…
Spirit Ways to Imperial Tombs For 2,000 years illustrious people had an elaborate underground burial tomb. Although many tombs have been looted over the ages, the spirit way or sacred way with rows of stone sculptures have often survived. Read more…
Mandate of Heaven The emperor ruled China not by individual right but because he possessed the 'Mandate of Heaven'. When this is lost by mis-management, ill fortune or corruption he loses the mandate and the people have the right to depose him. Read more…
Earliest printed book
One of the most important inventions that China can lay claim to is printing . The oldest printed book is the Diamond Sutra, printed in 868CE and now held at the British Library, London. It is a large book of Buddhist scripture. It was produced from hand produced wooden blocks that were inked to produce copies on paper. Read more…
The Peoples of China China although predominately populated with the Han Chinese , has over 100 million people identified as belonging to other ethnic minorities. However these people are concentrated in the less densely populated 'fringes' of China so may form the majority in some regions. Read more…
Chinese Universities We include a comprehensive guide to the top Universities in China giving details of student numbers, location, ranking and a bit about their history. Read more…
Fire symbolism
Although fire is chiefly seen as one of the five elements of nature it also has a symbolic meaning. It is one of the parts of the Imperial insignia where it represents the Emperor's burning zeal to govern the people wisely. Fierce and active Buddhist deities are shown surrounded by flames.
Traditionally Chinese homes in the north did not have an open fire but a ‘kang’ as a form of heated seat and bed. All fires for winter heating were put out before the Qing Ming spring festival. The active meaning of fire may come from its closeness in sound to 活 New Year festival attract the good gods and scare away the bad ones. The ritual burning of ghost money and other offerings sends them to the spirit world. Some consider Fuxi was the deity who brought fire to mankind, but others say it was the Yellow Emperor .
Geography
China's diverse geography China has deserts, mountains, lakes, rain forests and almost every other type of geographical feature you can think of. Our geography section has pages for each individual province as well as the great Yangzi and Yellow rivers. There are also pages on climate, cities, population, ethnic people, airports and universities. Read more…
Chinese Cities Statistics on all the major cities in China. Gives Population, Chinese name and shows map of location within China as well as calculating distances to any other Chinese city. Read more…
Beijing Read all about Beijing the historic and bustling capital city of China. Our description includes a detailed map of the central area and travel guides to all the important attractions: Forbidden City; Summer Palace; Temple of Heaven; Beihai Park; Ming Tombs and Tiananmen Square . Read more…
Great City of Shanghai The huge city of Shanghai has become the leading city in Eastern Asia once again - just as it was in the 1920s. Known for its dynamism and cosmopolitanism, Shanghai rivals Beijing as the nation's most important metropolis. It is ideally placed near the mouth of the Yangzi river to act as a gateway into China. Read more…
China's ancient heartland The modern province of Shaanxi has many sites of historic interest. Perhaps none more so than the tomb of the First Qin Emperor with its thousands of Terracotta warriors. With the great Yellow River, mountains and arid areas there is a great deal of scenic beauty too. Read more…
Yang Guifei
If ever there was a story of a ruinous love affair it must be that of the love affair of Tang Emperor Xuanzong for his concubine Yang Guifei. Emperor Xuanzong after a splendid reign in his early years became totally infatuated with Yang, his son's concubine. An Lushan took advantage of the situation and launched a tumultuous revolt that brought an effective end to Tang dynasty peace and prosperity. Emperor Xuanzong was forced to have Yang Guifei killed and abdicated from power. It did not end well for An Lushan either, after barely a year of Imperial power he became blind and was murdered by his own son. Read more…
Thu 3rd Nov 2022Brother excluded from wedding An incident at Zunyi in Guizhou province has sparked much online debate.
It is here that a couple has chosen to go back to some age-old traditions for marriage.
One of the strangest of the many customs is that if you have a younger sibling (brother or sister) who marries before you do then you are excluded from the marriage ceremony. You are expected to hide away while everyone else was having fun.
Perhaps this tradition provides a strong encouragement to anyone delaying become married. Remaining single used to be a fairly rare event as marriages were typically arranged by parents without their children’s approval.
So in 2022 people are debating whether it is appropriate to bring this custom back again. What do you think?
Chinese wedding couple Not the actual married couple Read full story…
Language
The Chinese Language The Chinese language is rightly treasured as the country's greatest accomplishment. Our language section introduces the language. The section includes some introductory lessons and a guide to writing the characters. Read more…
Online Chinese Dictionary Have a word or character to look-up? Use our free and extensive online dictionary . Read more…
Chinese Poetry The Chinese language is ideally suited for writing poems. The long history of Chinese has allowed poems written over two thousand years ago to still be appreciated today. The characters provide a concise method for conveying impressions and emotion. Read more…
Ancient stone writings Stone steles form the most permanent of records. Over the centuries they have been used as memorials, reference libraries, calligraphy samples and poems. Visitors to China will have seen these revered inscriptions in all sorts of locations: mountains, houses, parks and museums documenting the lives and feelings of people over the centuries. They are a powerful and permanent expression of the continuity of Chinese history. Read more…
Book: The Complete Confucius Analects of Confucius but also The Doctrine Of The Mean and The Great Learning .Amazon details... ➚
Bits and Pieces
We need your help to keep the Chinasage web site growing. We'd love to keep this web site completely free of advertisements like Wikipedia. Please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber for however little or much you can afford. We have been running this campaign for two months and have so far raised only 10% of our target. So please help… or else advertisements will make a comeback!
To read more and take out a subscription simply click on the Patreon Patreon
Many thanks, much appreciated.
Tue 20th Sep 2022Patreon pictures Thanks to the generous donations from Chinasage's Patreon ➚ sponsors we've just added quality photographs to many of our pages.
Although you can get images of all sorts of thing for free you do still have to pay for quality, particularly for specialist subjects. This time we have used 123rf for the new images who claim to have 200 million images to choose from. It takes a long time to make a choice and then they all need editing for usage, tagging and finally putting on the appropriate place on our hundreds of pages. We hope you will agree that they make a significant improvement.
New Year dragon, Shanghai Read more…
Fire symbolism
Although fire is chiefly seen as one of the five elements of nature it also has a symbolic meaning. It is one of the parts of the Imperial insignia where it represents the Emperor's burning zeal to govern the people wisely. Fierce and active Buddhist deities are shown surrounded by flames.
Traditionally Chinese homes in the north did not have an open fire but a ‘kang’ as a form of heated seat and bed. All fires for winter heating were put out before the Qing Ming spring festival. The active meaning of fire may come from its closeness in sound to 活 New Year festival attract the good gods and scare away the bad ones. The ritual burning of ghost money and other offerings sends them to the spirit world. Some consider Fuxi was the deity who brought fire to mankind, but others say it was the Yellow Emperor .
The governance of modern China Governing 1,400 million people is no mean feat. China's structure of government is a power pyramid with the President at its head. In theory the people elect representatives who decide policy, in practice the ruling elite are rarely challenged by the democratic process. However the strong military involvement in government has been on the wane for over 25 years. Read more…
The standing of women in China Attitudes to women have changed greatly in China over the centuries. The traditional subservient position of women in society was removed in only the last sixty years but there yet to be a woman appointed to the top rung of government. Our section describes the role of women down the centuries including the role of concubines and how some Imperial women bucked the trend. Read more…
Daily fact and information Our diary page changes each day to bring you an interesting piece of information about China. The page also lists important events that happened on this day throughout Chinese history. Read more…
Looking for something? We carefully tag references to traditions, people, symbols, dynasties... everything. To learn more about something use our search page to look up a topic by keyword or else use Google search of just this site for the information you want - it is almost bound to be there. Read more…
Interactive map of China We have overlaid a Google map of China with our own additional information: airports, cities and visitor attractions to make it a far richer way to explore this vast country. Read more…
Ming dynasty village at Chuandixia near Beijing
Conventions
We use a consistent style for links within Chinasage. An internal link taking you to another page within our site is shown like this while a link to a page on any other web site is shown like this ➚ .
We use Chinese characters wherever appropriate. Most browsers should display both the characters and the pinyin correctly. We highlight any use of the older Wade Giles system for 'spelling' characters. Except where stated all characters are the modern simplified form used in the People's Republic rather than the traditional ones (pre-1970s). To help you learn Chinese characters many of the very common characters are highlighted thus: 中
Dates are given using the BCE/CE ➚ (Before Common Era and in Common Era) year convention rather than BC/AD. If a date is not followed by BCE or CE it should be taken as CE.
Authorship
All the text on the Chinasage web site is my own, I do not copy and paste from other web sites. I research each topic from a number of authoritative sources (mainly books ). The only exception to this are quotations and image credits. All text is our copyright and can not be used/copied without my permission. I am independent of any other company or government, the opinions expressed are my own. I do not receive funding or backing from any agency or organization .
Teacup Media (China History Podcast)
I am delighted to be able to promote links to Laszlo Montgomery's excellent Teacup Media ➚ series created over the last 14 years. Laszlo Montgomery ➚ has in depth knowledge of building commercial contacts with China over 30 years. The set of 290 podcasts totals 150 hours of audio commentary which covers every conceivable topic in Chinese history. Highly recommended.
Acknowledgments
I am extremely grateful to the many people who have put their photographs online for anyone to adapt and use. Without them this site would be very drab. If I am not using the image license correctly please let me know. I am grateful to Kim Dramer ➚ for permission to use her short videos all about Chinese culture and traditions. Patreon subscribers have supported the web site and allowed us to amongst other things purchase some quality images of China for use here. Some pages use Javascript ➚ to create special effects such as our airport table and calendar . I am grateful to the original authors for providing their code to be used and adapted by anyone else. The online Chinese dictionary uses the definition from the CC-CEDICT project ➚ for which I am grateful for a generous free license. Sound files kindly provided by shtooka.net ➚ under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License.
Feel free to contact Chinasage to point out any errors, omissions or suggestions on how to improve this web site.
If you would like to support my work and keep us independent become a Patreon or make a Donation via Paypal.
