Tag: Brief Intro

A Brief introduction of Chinese Phonetics

The official name of Chinese phonetic system is Pinyin which means "spelled sound" in Chinese. The Pinyin system transcribe Chinese characters into Latin script with 25 letters(the letter "V" is not used). It was developed in the 1950s and published by the Chinese government in 1958. The system was adopted as the official standard in Taiwan in 2009, where it is generally referred to as the New Phonetic System.

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Brief Introduction of China

Location The People Republic of China is situated in eastern Asia on the western shore of the Pacific Ocean, with an area of 9.6 million square kilometers. China's continental coastline extends for about 18,000 kilometers, and its vast sea surface is studded with more than 5,000 islands, of which Taiwan and Hainan are the largest.

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Pailou 牌楼

Today let's take a brief introduction of pailou. The pailou, also known as paifang, is an archway of a memorial or decorative nature. It could be made of wood, brick or stone, with or without glazed tiles, often carrying some inscriptions on the middle beam. The normal places wher such archways stood were thoroughfare crossroads, shrines and temples, government offices, bridges, parks, tombs and mausoleumns, and they generally carried inscriptions to propagate certain moral principles or to extol government achievements. The pailou could also serve as the facade of a shop to prettify its entrance and attract customers. Many a pailou was erected to praise the "lofty virtues' of certain individuals in the locality. Fettered by the feudal ethical code, many widowed women refrained from remarriage just in the hope to have "pailou of chastity" built for them when they reached a ripe old age.

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