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 history , including all the dynasties. We hope you make 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.
Southern refuge
When northern China was overrun by Khitans and then Mongols 800 years ago the Imperial Song family moved to Hangzhou . It proved to be a peaceful and prosperous time for 150 years. In memory of this period some scenes of Hangzhou are still to be found in the long corridors of the Summer Palace , Beijing.
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…
The early history of China from pre-history to 770BCE Most of the ancient traditions of China had become established 3,000 years ago. The institution of Emperor, the written scripts and the key technologies (including silk) all come from China's distant past. The longevity and continuity of Chinese culture are the two key principles to understanding China - even today. Read more…
Good fortune You will often see the character for good fortune 褔 fú on decorations and gifts. 'Fu' is also associated with bats and oranges and this has a surprising explanation... Read more…
Proverb
磨杵成 针
Mó chǔ chéng zhēn
Grinding an iron pestle down to a needle
Patiently setting about a great, lengthy task step by step. Anything can be achieved with a firm resolve,
Roughly equivalent to: Little strokes fell great oaks.
All about Chinese proverbs
Plum The plum is one of the earliest trees to flower and this often coincides with Chinese New Year. It is considered one of the three friends of winter for this reason. As a symbol it represents long life as the tree is long lived and takes many years to come to flower. Read more…
Year of the ... Most people are familiar with the twelve years and their animals. Chinese astrology is about the year of birth rather than the month of birth and so all people born in a particular year share some characteristics. Even to this day couples arrange birth of children to fall in 'lucky' years. 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…
Three Character Classic The Three Character Classic (San Zi Jing 三 字 经 ) was for centuries a language primer for children who aspired to a scholarly life. It introduces the student to Chinese history, philosophy as well as the most common characters. It contains many exhortations for the student to study long and hard. 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... ➚
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... ➚
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…
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 Great Mongol Empire The conquest of China by the Mongols took over 50 years. The north was taken in 1215 and the south held out until 1279. The horde of brutal horsemen from Mongolia swept all before them. The Mongols took to Chinese ways, using existing administration and traditions rather than imposing their own. It became China's most cosmopolitan era. Read more…
Quintessence of the Nation Traditional Chinese Opera was the entertainment of all Chinese over many centuries. A long evening performance contains elements of drama, music, comedy, acrobatics and martial arts. Each region has its own distinctive form. Over time complex body movements represent specific meanings as a very sparse set is used. The art form has inspired many Western composers and playwrights to emulate the style. Read more…
Imperial servants - the eunuchs For over two thousand years the Chinese Emperor was served by a large number of Imperial servants who had been castrated as young boys. With no possibility of having children themselves they were seen as having more loyalty to the Emperor than the, often scheming, Imperial family. Some eunuchs became fabulously rich as a result of their control of access to the Emperor. Read more…
Righteous Fists 1898-1901 The Boxer rebellion came in the final, faltering stage of the Qing dynasty. Dowager Empress Cixi used the widespread hatred of foreigners taking unfair advantage of China's weakness to support the grassroots revolt. It did not end well. 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…
Yangzi River The mighty Yangzi River is the longest in China and third longest in the world. It has carried huge quantities of people and goods over the centuries. Many great cities lie close to its banks: Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanjing and Shanghai. Read more…
Mountainous Tibet The mountainous province of Tibet forms the highest possible land border between India and China. On the border with Nepal is the world's highest mountain: Mount Everest (or Qomolangma). Tibet's unique culture is a key attraction to visitors. 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…
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…
Southern refuge
When northern China was overrun by Khitans and then Mongols 800 years ago the Imperial Song family moved to Hangzhou . It proved to be a peaceful and prosperous time for 150 years. In memory of this period some scenes of Hangzhou are still to be found in the long corridors of the Summer Palace , Beijing.
All Chinese Festivals Our extensive section on Chinese festivals gives the dates and backgrounds on over 30 of them. Our festivals page has full details of the origin and observance of each of them as well as a handy diary for when they will next fall. Essential when planning a trip to China. Read more…
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…
Cantonese Language The Cantonese language or 'Yue' language is still spoken by over 50 million people in Southern China (Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong and Macau ). Although the written form is very similar to Mandarin the spoken language is very different. Read more…
Online Chinese Dictionary Have a word or character to look-up? Use our free and extensive online dictionary . Read more…
Understanding the Date and Time in Chinese Telling the date and time is essential for travelers. In China the Arabic numbers are used for writing but the Chinese characters are used for reading. Read more…
Population
China has the largest population of any country in the world, more than the populations of the United States, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Russia, Japan, Germany, France and the United Kingdom put together. 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... ➚
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 button below, it will take you to the Patreon web site where you can subscribe simply and securely.
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…
Southern refuge
When northern China was overrun by Khitans and then Mongols 800 years ago the Imperial Song family moved to Hangzhou . It proved to be a peaceful and prosperous time for 150 years. In memory of this period some scenes of Hangzhou are still to be found in the long corridors of the Summer Palace , Beijing.
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…
Superpower China An in-depth overview of the position of China in the world and its likely future. Is China on track to become the leading world super-power as it once was? For thousands of years China was by any measure the top nation on Earth, and so it seems natural that after 150 years of turmoil China will become the leading country again. We speculate on what this might mean to China and the rest of the world. Read more…
Great Inventions The four great Chinese inventions are considered to be: paper; printing ; compass and gunpowder . Other key inventions include the abacus, iron casting, pasta, silk etc.. However the production of paper and then printing must be considered the most important of these. 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…
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... ➚
Morning mists lift from Guizhou landscape
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 hovering the mouse over the character will pop up a box showing further information about it.
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 15 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 definitions 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.