Tag: Ancient Chinese

Chinese dress: Changshan长衫

In traditional Chinese dress, a changshan (长衫chángshān) is the male equivalent of the women's cheongsam (qipao). Today we will introduce some basic character about long shirt for ancient Chinese women. It is also known as a changpao (chángpáo 长袍) or dagua (大褂 dàguà).

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Chinese Culture : Feng Shui 中国文化之风水

Feng Shui (meaning literally "wind water") is part of an ancient Chinese philosophy of nature. Feng shui is often identified as a form of geomancy, divination by geographic features, but it is mainly concerned with understanding the relationships between nature and ourselves so that we might live in harmony within our environment.

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Chinese dynasty history—Xia dynasty 夏王朝

Chinese civilization, as described in mythology, begins with Pangu (磐古), the creator of the universe, and a succession of legendary sage-emperors and culture heroes (among them are Huang Di i黄帝, Yao, and Shun) who taught the ancient Chinese to communicate and to find sustenance, clothing, and shelter.中华文明,正如神话中描述的一样,是始于世界的创造者盘古,已经后来的一系列圣帝和文明的英雄(他们包括黄帝,尧和顺),他们教会了中国古人如何交流,如何找食物,做衣服和搭建避身处。
The first prehistoric dynasty is said to be Xia (夏),from about the twenty-first to the sixteenth century B.C. Until scientific excavations were made at early bronze-age sites at Anyang (安阳),Henan(河南) Province, in 1928, it was difficult to separate myth from reality in regard to the Xia. But since then, and especially in the 1960s and 1970s, archaeologists have uncovered urban sites, bronze implements, and tombs that point to the existence of Xia civilization in the same locations cited in ancient Chinese historical texts. At minimum, the Xia period marked an evolutionary stage between the late neolithic cultures and the typical Chinese urban civilization of the Shang dynasty.第一个历史悠久的朝代据说是夏,大约是公元前21世纪到公元前16世纪。直到1928年,在河南省安阳市旧铜器时代遗址的科学考古发现,使得人们分不清夏朝的历史是神话还是事实了。但是从那以后,特别是20世纪60年代和70年代,考古学家发现了古城遗址,铜器和墓穴,这些东西证明了夏王朝的存在地址,和中国史书上的记载是相吻合的。夏朝标志着人类社会从新石器时代到典型的中国城市化进程阶段商朝的过渡。

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Chinese art: Nanyin Music——a traditional opera中国南音

Fujian is a mountainous coastal province of China. Its provincial capital is Fuzhou, while Quanzhou was a major port in the 7th century CE, the period between the Sui and Tang eras. Situated upon an important maritime trade route, it was a conduit for elements of distant cultures. The result was what is now known as Nanyin music, which today preserves many archaic features.

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Chinese art:Ansai Waist Drum Dance 安塞腰鼓

 A special art——called Ansai Waist Drum Dance(安塞腰鼓ān sāi yāo gǔ ), is a unique, large-scale folk dance with a history of more than 2,000 years. Like a hurricane sweeping across the yellow earth, the dance displays the unsophisticated and wild character of peasant life on the Loess Plateau(黄土高原huáng tǔ gāo yuán), revealing its unique artistic charm.

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History of Seal Engraving 印章雕刻

A dazzling star of the traditional Chinese art——seal engraving ,whose origin can trace back to thousand years ago,is in common use for Literati poet or artist.one has to relate it to the discovery of the Chinese characters. The most ancient Chinese characters first originated in the Yin Dynasty (i.e., the later period of the Shang Dynasty, from 16th-11th century BC) as inscriptions on animal bones or tortoise shells. Inscriptions on ancient bronze objects appeared in the Zhou Dynasty (11thcentury – 256BC).

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Color Me Confused: Colors and Meaning in Chinese

Green with envy? Feeling blue? Irrespective of whether you’ve been forced to pour over the symbolism of a certain shade of gray, perhaps as part of a Literature degree, most Westerners have a decent idea of which colors equate to which emotions. But the Chinese palette is an entirely different animal, with the potential to ruin the best intentions – just try giving your Chinese girlfriend a white rose on Valentine’s Day.

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