We're building an exciting new information source all about China. We found other sites were poorly structured, too detailed (such as Wikipedia) or just too old-fashioned. What we thought was needed was a carefully constructed set of pages with strict editorial control so that links and pages are consistent, up-to-date and easy to navigate without clutter.
The name “Chinasage” came about because this 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.
China Sage News
We keep track of news reports from China but steer clear of the headlines that are well reported elsewhere. Here are the latest couple of reports. For more stories visit news section.
In a merger of the very old and very new it is now possible to download a computer model of a terracotta warrior and print it out with a 3-D printer. In a scheme to engage youngsters with the Chinese Qin dynasty a miniature plastic model complete with banner engraved with words of your choosing, can be yours for free. A number of different forms are available, the charioteer can be used as a pen holder for instance. It's a novel way to promote an interest in history and archeology.
There are currently no plans for life-size models to be made available.
For thousands of years Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been used very widely in China. The World Health Organization (special agency of the UN) has aroused some debate by publicly supporting TCM as a legitimate medicinal option by including a chapter on it in their global compendium.
Since the PRC was founded in 1949 China has supported both the Western system of medicine and the Traditional. Initially this was a necessity as funds could not support the rapid creation of a Western system of hospitals and medicines for 1,000 million people. Since then there has been a drift towards using both systems for different purposes. For injuries and infections Western treatments are sought while for long-term and minor ailments the traditional system is used. Another factor is cost, China does not have a free health service and so a cheap TCM treatment is attractive compared to a hospital visit. Many Chinese believe TCM can be a good preventive before a disease takes hold.
One of the main concerns about TCM is that quite a few remedies require parts of endangered animals. With increased prosperity these supposed cures for arthritis; impotence and so on have become increasingly sought after. However many ingredients are from common plants and fungi and do not give the same cause for concern as with tigers, pangolins, sea horses and other animals. Acupuncture and moxibustion are part of TCM and these do not require ingesting dubious ingredients.
The main criticism has always been that it has unproven efficacy; however some of the ingredients have been shown to have useful medical properties. The use of herbal medicine in Europe only came to an end in the early 20th century. Every village would have a herbalist with there own special potions. Here also some treatments were beneficial, many of no demonstrable effect (placebo) and a few were dangerously toxic. In China the government spent considerable effort in the 1970s and 80s to choose the ones that are beneficial and this is one reason why TCM has better credentials than remedies from elsewhere.
Dispensing traditional medicine prescriptions. Graham Street Market, Hong Kong. 2010
Image by deror_avi ➚ available under a Creative Commons license ➚.
The impressive stonework of the Great Wall can not fail to impress visitors, but for a good proportion of its great length the wall is in a dilapidated state. In the dry region of the Gobi desert, rain is so infrequent that stone was not needed to protect the wall - it could be built up in layers of tamped earth.
In Ningxia province there used to be 936 miles [1,507 kms] but only 314 miles [506 kms] of Great Wall remaining. Restorer Yang Long is working slowly and carefully to restore the old tamped earth. After many experiments they have come up with a close modern alternative using the same old material and tools. Layers of earth are reinforced with layers of gravel and needle-grass. The soil is tamped by hand with iron or wooden hammers. It is a slow process, it takes Yang Long a whole year to restore just 875 yards [800 meters] of the wall. It is hoped the restored wall will be good for another two thousand years.
The ruins of the Great Wall, this section is a mud built wall that was erected during the rule of the Ming Dynasty, Ningxia. Part of the Great Wall awaiting restoration.
Here are the last few news updates about our web site. For older entries please visit our site news section.
Tue 1st Jan
Dances, Puppetry and Theater in China
The performing arts in China have a long history. Although modern media has reduced audiences there are still dedicated practitioners who spend their lives honing their skills at puppetry, story-telling, street theater, lion and dragon dancing.
We have added a page describing these art forms and by using a dozen carefully selected YouTube videos you can see these art-forms brought to life.
Our page on Chinese opera has proven very popular and we hope this new page will bring the less well known performing arts to wider attention.
The stimulus to writing this brief survey was the recent death of the noted Pingshu story-teller Shan Tianfang.
We've completed our one month fund raiser. Thanks for everyone who donated. However as there was only ten donations in all we can't consider it a success. This represents a donation from about 0.01% of our site visitors. We would receive about ten times that donation amount from advertisements so we will now experiment with targeted adverts again.
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. 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 hovering the mouse over the character pops up a box showing further information about the character.
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 our own, we do not copy and paste from other web sites. We research each topic from a number of separate sources. The only exception to this are quotations and image credits. All text is our copyright and can not be used/copied without our permission. We are independent of any other company or government, the opinions expressed are our own. We do not receive funding from any external agency or organization.
Teacup Media (China History Podcast)
We are delighted to be able to promote links to Laszlo Montgomery's excellent Teacup Media ➚ series created over the last six years. Lazlo Montgomery ➚ has in depth knowledge of building commercial contacts with China over 25 years. This set of 200 podcasts totals 100 hours of audio commentary which covers every conceivable topic in Chinese history. Highly recommended.
Acknowledgments
We are extremely grateful to the many people who have put their photographs online for anyone to adapt and use. Without them our site would be very drab. If we are not using the image license correctly please let us know. Some pages use Javascript ➚ to create special effects such as our airport table and calendar. We are 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 we are grateful for a generous free license.
Feel free to contact Chinasage to point out any errors, omissions or suggestions on how to improve this web site.
