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.
All the tea in China
Tea was the most important export that was weighed in the traditional Chinese unit of measurement called a 'catty'. It is known colloquially as the Chinese pound and is about 1.1pounds. In China it is known as the jin 斤 the word catty probably came from the Malay word. The modern weight is aligned to the metric system as exactly 500grams. The container for tea, a 'caddy', is believed to have been named after the measure.
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…
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…
The Chinese Emperor The institution of Emperor , as head of the Chinese family of people, lasted for thousands of years and to some extent lives on with the Presidency. In China there has been great respect for the Emperor/President who in turn is expected to rule wisely with the best interests of his subjects in mind. To early European visitors to China the structure was considered close to the ideal form of society. Read more…
The building of China's railways The building of railways became a competitive scramble in the late 19th and early 20th century. Railways were seen as the key step to opening up inland China for trade. Britain, France, Germany, Japan and America all invested heavily in railway construction only for the the money to be lost in the following years of turmoil. Read more…
Feng Shui The ancient tradition of Feng Shui has been far reaching for thousands of years. It is still practiced today, particularly for choosing the site for buildings and graves. With the goal of harmony and balance with nature, it has excellent environmental credentials. 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 great paintings. To appreciate Chinese writing it is important to know how the characters are made with the brush. Read more…
Traditional performance China has a great range of traditional performing arts: theater, opera, dance, shadow and glove puppetry and story-telling. Many of these have roots back in ancient times - over a thousand years. Mass media has reduced popularity of most forms but devoted practitioners are helping to keep the art-forms alive. Read more…
The Chinese Stars The Chinese system of astronomical observation is as ancient and distinctly different that as that developed in Europe and the Middle East. More emphasis was put on the moon than the sun and stars were arranged into groups according to the layout of the Imperial court. 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... ➚
All the tea in China
Tea was the most important export that was weighed in the traditional Chinese unit of measurement called a 'catty'. It is known colloquially as the Chinese pound and is about 1.1pounds. In China it is known as the jin 斤 the word catty probably came from the Malay word. The modern weight is aligned to the metric system as exactly 500grams. The container for tea, a 'caddy', is believed to have been named after the measure.
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…
Chinese porcelain Together with tea and silk, porcelain from China is its most famous export. Prized the world over, high quality porcelain commands high prices at auction. Like silk the secret of its manufacture was a closely guarded secret for centuries. Read more…
Ancient states and kingdoms within China Before the Qin empire was formed China was split into several distinct kingdoms or states. These names are often mentioned in old tales and histories. There are also other kingdoms that split off from China for brief periods. 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…
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…
China's Space Mission China is putting a great deal of money and effort in building a space exploration program . Already missions have put people into orbit around the Earth and landed robots onto the Moon. Plans exist for a large space lab and manned landings on the Moon and even missions to Mars. In a race to put people on Mars it could well be China that gets there first. Read more…
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…
Yellow River The valley of the mighty Yellow River was the cradle of Chinese civilization. The heavy load of silt that turns the waters 'yellow' creates rich farming land in the lower stretches. It is the second longest river in China after the Yangzi River . 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…
The 13 Ming Tombs The tombs of the 13 Ming Emperors is one of the largest and most lavish burial complexes anywhere in the world. Like the Valley of the Kings in Egypt the tombs are scattered around a valley of 17 square miles but here only one tomb has been excavated and was found to be completely intact. Read more…
Best China Sights In this page we give information on the top attractions all over China to tempt you to explore further. Each attraction is clearly marked on a map and further information on each place is readily available. From furthest Heilongjiang to Hong Kong and Lhasa to Shanghai we have selected the top travel highlights. Read more…
Proverb
郑人 争年
Zheng men argue over their age
A futile quarrel over a trifling matter. The story is of two men from the state of Zheng arguing endlessly and furiously as to who was born first.
Roughly equivalent to: Apropos of nothing.
All about Chinese proverbs
Language
The Chinese Language The Chinese language is rightly treasured as the country's greatest accomplishment. Our language section describes the language and its history. The section includes some introductory lessons and a guide to writing the characters. Read more…
The Chinese Language Let's get you started with a few simple sentences and phrases in both spoken and written Chinese. We begin with key concepts and introduces the most common and useful words and phrases in Chinese. Read more…
Online Chinese Dictionary Have a word or character to look-up? Use our free and extensive online dictionary . Read more…
China's Ancient Script The discovery of a huge number of 'oracle bones' has greatly added to the knowledge of the origins of China's written script. It pushes back the written language to at least 3,500 years ago. Careful study of the inscriptions is still revealing information about life in Shang dynasty times. Read more…
Proverb
投鞭断流
Tóu biān duàn liú
Throwing in whips to stop the river
An immense number of people. If all the people carried whips that were thrown into the river Yangzi then they would be so numerous as to block its flow. Overwhelming odds.
All about Chinese proverbs
Book of Changes - Deciphered
The Yi Jing is the premier ancient classic in China, and yet at the heart of this very strange but important book is a mystery that has remained unsolved for 3,000 years. The ‘Book of Changes - Deciphered’ describes the history and importance of the Yi Jing (I Ching) and proposes a new solution to the ancient mystery. Buying a copy will help support Chinasage . Now also available in Kindle eBook format for just $5.99.
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…
All the tea in China
Tea was the most important export that was weighed in the traditional Chinese unit of measurement called a 'catty'. It is known colloquially as the Chinese pound and is about 1.1pounds. In China it is known as the jin 斤 the word catty probably came from the Malay word. The modern weight is aligned to the metric system as exactly 500grams. The container for tea, a 'caddy', is believed to have been named after the measure.
Chinese Cities We have all the important 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…
The Republic of China 1912-1949 The years 1912-49 marked the difficult transition from centuries of Imperial dynastic rule to that of a Republic. Sun Yatsen's dream of a democratic Republic was never achieved amidst the turmoil of the Japanese Occupation and then the Civil War with the Communists. Read more…
The illustrious Ming dynasty The most famous Chinese dynasty is the Ming dynasty . China emerged from the Mongol conquest to become pre-eminent nation, with the greatest wealth, population and foreign trade of any nation. It was during the Ming dynasty that China achieved many accomplishments: a vast fleet sailed the seas and made many discoveries and an encyclopedia of all knowledge was distilled into 11,000 chapters. Read more…
Han Dynasty After the trauma of the Qin dynasty it was the succeeding Han dynasty that established China as a stable nation. Many Imperial institutions inaugurated at this time lasted for the next two thousand years. Together with the Tang and Ming it is considered one of the great periods of Chinese history. Read more…
Peking ducks
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.
