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 fortune telling In ancient China the Emperor would always consult the Yi Jing (I Ching) before making important decisions. The Imperial court had experts to interpret the answers given by this method of Divination. Because it produces a set for the 'present' and also a 'change' it is called the Book of Changes and contains explanations of the transformations. Our online free consultation uses the original yarrow stick method and is not random - you make decisions that guide the consultation. We provide a full translation of the commentaries for each of the 64 hexagrams. Read more…
Peony The peony is a frequent art motif in China. It is considered one of the best flowers of spring and was much loved by Empress Wu Zetian . Read more…
Consult the Yi Jing We offer a free consultation for Yi Jing (I Ching) the Chinese system for fortune telling. It uses the ancient yarrow stick method and gives full information about the 'gua' (hexagram) that is chosen. The consultation takes account of user action - it is not random. Read more…
Foot binding The custom of binding the feet of girls from a very early age lasted from the Sui to the Qing dynasty and was at times inflicted on half of all girls. It was seen as a badge of wealth of a household because it implied that the family was rich enough to not need women to carry out physical work and kept them house-bound. Read more…
Kites Along with many other things the Chinese lay claim to the invention of the kite remains very popular in China and many can be seen flying in public parks. In the past they have even been used for military purposes. Read more…
Pantheon of Chinese gods and heroes China has a rich array of heroes, gods and goddesses to draw on. Temples are full of images of people from China's long history. Often an historical figure is over time upgraded and considered an immortal. Most depictions can be identified by the objects the deity is carrying. Some are associated with Buddhism, others with Daoism and others to no particular religion at all. 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... ➚
Equality of women
The role of women in China was through most of the Imperial Era one of subjugation to men. Women had to defer to men in all things; it was only as a widow that she would have the power to control their son's household. The position eased on the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 but it was not until the Communist party victory in 1949 that equality began to be introduced across the country. Read more…
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…
Warring States The second part of the Zhou dynasty was known for incessant warfare between kingdoms. It was a time of great importance to China as the philosophical traditions were developed that went on to dominate Chinese thinking in the next two thousand years as it was the time of Confucius and Laozi. Read more…
First British contacts with China A survey of all the first British contacts to China up until 1700. These include 'pirates' like John Weddell who sought to force China into trading with England down the barrel of a cannon and John Webb a committed fan of everything about China. Regrettably this honeymoon period of relations was not to last. Read more…
Proverb
集腋成 裘
Jí yè chéng qiú
A fur coat can be made from poor scraps
Make do with what you have.
Roughly equivalent to: Beggars can't be choosers.
All about Chinese proverbs
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…
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…
Delicious Chinese food A fine Chinese meal is a carefully balanced mixtures of flavors, textures, colors and food types. Although Western fast food has made major inroads in the cities there is still a great appreciation of Chinese food as one of the finer pleasures in life. Etiquette at formal banquets is important for visitors to understand before visiting China. Each region in China has its own variations with local specialities, the cuisine in southerly Guangdong is very different from that of northerly Gansu. 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…
The governance of modern China Governing 1,400 million people is no mean feat. China's structure of government is a power pyramid with the President at its head. In theory the people elect representatives who decide policy, in practice the ruling elite are rarely challenged by the democratic process. However the strong military involvement in government has been on the wane for over 25 years. Read more…
Philippines and China The Philippines represent the most distant of China's neighbors across the South China Sea . Extensive trade over the centuries and the Spanish and then US occupation has its legacy in relations with mainland China. 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…
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…
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.
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…
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 and Simplified When you start learning Chinese you soon across the fact that there are two written forms still in use, the simplified form used in China and the old, traditional form still used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and other overseas Chinese communities. With 4,000 years of use the written Chinese language has many archaic features. On the formation of the Peoples' Republic an ambitious reform of the script was instigated which has made the learning of the characters far easier. Read more…
Three Character Classic The Three Character Classic (San Zi Jing 三 字 经 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... ➚
Fancy a challenge? We have over a dozen quizzes covering all aspects of China: history, traditions, geography and pictures at a wide range of difficulty levels. We give a full explanation in the answers which are somewhere on this web site. See how well you know China and learn something along the way. Read more…
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.
Population China has been the most populous nation for much of the last few thousand years. The draconian 'One Child Policy ' measure was introduced to curb the worrying explosive growth in the period 1950-80.
Read more…
The standing of women in China Attitudes to women have changed greatly in China over the centuries. The traditional subservient position of women in society was removed in only the last sixty years but there yet to be a woman appointed to the top rung of government. Our section describes the role of women down the centuries including the role of concubines and how some Imperial women bucked the trend. Read more…
The Long March The epic tale of the struggle of thousands of soldiers over thousands of miles of challenging terrain has been held up as the chief heroic episode in the early days of the Communist party. It was during the Long March that Mao Zedong emerged as leader with his own vision for the future of China. 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…
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…
Boats on the ancient Grand Canal , China
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.
