Pallas's leaf warbler is one of the smallest Palearcticwarblers, with a relatively large head and short tail. It has greenish upperparts and white underparts, a lemon-yellow rump, and yellow double wingbars, supercilia and central crown stripe. It is similar in appearance to several other Asian warblers, including some that were formerly considered to be subspecies of it, although its distinctive vocalisations aid identification. (Full article...)
Lactarius indigo, commonly known as the indigo milk cap, indigo milky, indigo lactarius, blue lactarius, or blue milk mushroom, is a species of agaric fungus in the family Russulaceae.
The fruit body color ranges from dark blue in fresh specimens to pale blue-gray in older ones. The milk, or latex, that oozes when the mushroom tissue is cut or broken (a feature common to all members of the genus Lactarius) is also indigo blue, but slowly turns green upon exposure to air. The cap has a diameter of 4–15 cm (2–6 in), and the stem is 2–8 cm (3⁄4–3+1⁄8 in) tall and 1–2.5 cm (3⁄8–1 in) thick. (Full article...)
After the Chinese Communist Revolution, the Party sought to memorialize their achievements through artworks. Dong was commissioned to create a visual representation of the October 1 ceremony, which he had attended. He viewed it as essential that the painting show both the people and their leaders. After working for three months, he completed an oil painting in a folk art style, drawing upon Chinese art history for the contemporary subject. The success of the painting was assured when Mao viewed it and liked it, and it was reproduced in large numbers for display in the home. (Full article...)
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Jin dynasty (blue) and Song dynasty (orange) in 1141
The Jin–Song Wars were a series of conflicts between the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty (1115–1234) and the Han-led Song dynasty (960–1279). In 1115, Jurchen tribes rebelled against their overlords, the Khitan-led Liao dynasty (916–1125), and declared the formation of the Jin. Allying with the Song against their common enemy the Liao dynasty, the Jin promised to cede to the Song the Sixteen Prefectures that had fallen under Liao control since 938. The Song agreed but the Jin's quick defeat of the Liao combined with Song military failures made the Jin reluctant to cede territory. After a series of negotiations that embittered both sides, the Jurchens attacked the Song in 1125, dispatching one army to Taiyuan and the other to Bianjing (modern Kaifeng), the Song capital.
Surprised by news of an invasion, Song general Tong Guan retreated from Taiyuan, which was besieged and later captured. As the second Jin army approached the capital, Song emperor Huizong abdicated and fled south. Qinzong, his eldest son, was enthroned. The Jin dynasty laid siege to Kaifeng in 1126, but Qinzong negotiated their retreat from the capital by agreeing to a large annual indemnity. Qinzong reneged on the deal and ordered Song forces to defend the prefectures instead of fortifying the capital. The Jin resumed war and again besieged Kaifeng in 1127. They captured Qinzong, many members of the imperial family and high officials of the Song imperial court in an event known as the Jingkang Incident. This separated north and south China between Jin and Song. Remnants of the Song imperial family retreated to southern China and, after brief stays in several temporary capitals, eventually relocated to Lin'an (modern Hangzhou). The retreat divided the dynasty into two distinct periods, Northern Song and Southern Song. (Full article...)
A cannon is a large-calibergun classified as a type of artillery, which usually launches a projectile using explosive chemical propellant. Gunpowder ("black powder") was the primary propellant before the invention of smokeless powder during the late 19th century. Cannons vary in gauge, effective range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees, depending on their intended use on the battlefield. A cannon is a type of heavy artillery weapon.
The word cannon is derived from several languages, in which the original definition can usually be translated as tube, cane, or reed. In the modern era, the term cannon has fallen into decline, replaced by guns or artillery, if not a more specific term such as howitzer or mortar, except for high-caliber automatic weapons firing bigger rounds than machine guns, called autocannons. (Full article...)
The modern Chinese varieties make frequent use of what are called classifiers or measure words. One use of classifiers is when a noun is qualified by a numeral or demonstrative. In the Chinese equivalent of a phrase such as "three books" or "that person", it is normally necessary to insert an appropriate classifier between the numeral/demonstrative and the noun. For example, in Standard Chinese, the first of these phrases would be: (Full article...)
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Choe Bu (Korean: 최부, 1454–1504) was a Korean diarist, historian, politician, and travel writer during the early Joseon Dynasty. He was most well known for the account of his shipwrecked travels in China from February to July 1488, during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). He was eventually banished from the Joseon court in 1498 and executed in 1504 during two political purges. However, in 1506 he was exonerated and given posthumous honors by the Joseon court.
Choe's diary accounts of his travels in China became widely printed during the 16th century in both Korea and Japan. Modern historians also refer to his written works, since his travel diary provides a unique outsider's perspective on Chinese culture in the 15th century. The attitudes and opinions expressed in his writing represent in part the standpoints and views of the 15th century Confucian Korean literati, who viewed Chinese culture as compatible with and similar to their own. His description of cities, people, customs, cuisines, and maritime commerce along China's Grand Canal provides insight into the daily life of China and how it differed between northern and southern China during the 15th century. (Full article...)
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Beato c. 1866
Felice Beato (c. 1832 – 29 January 1909), also known as Felix Beato, was an Italian–British photographer. He was one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers. He is noted for his genre works, portraits, and views and panoramas of the architecture and landscapes of Asia and the Mediterranean region. Beato's travels gave him the opportunity to create images of countries, people, and events that were unfamiliar and remote to most people in Europe and North America. His work provides images of such events as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Second Opium War, and represents the first substantial body of photojournalism. He influenced other photographers, and his influence in Japan, where he taught and worked with numerous other photographers and artists, was particularly deep and lasting. (Full article...)
The dynasty's history is divided into two periods: during the Northern Song (北宋; 960–1127), the capital was in the northern city of Bianjing (now Kaifeng) and the dynasty controlled most of what is now East China. The Southern Song (南宋; 1127–1279) comprise the period following the loss of control over the northern half of Song territory to the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty in the Jin–Song wars. At that time, the Song court retreated south of the Yangtze and established its capital at Lin'an (now Hangzhou). Although the Song dynasty had lost control of the traditional Chinese heartlands around the Yellow River, the Southern Song Empire contained a large population and productive agricultural land, sustaining a robust economy. In 1234, the Jin dynasty was conquered by the Mongols, who took control of northern China, maintaining uneasy relations with the Southern Song. Möngke Khan, the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, died in 1259 while besieging the mountain castle Diaoyucheng in Chongqing. His younger brother Kublai Khan was proclaimed the new Great Khan and in 1271 founded the Yuan dynasty. After two decades of sporadic warfare, Kublai Khan's armies conquered the Song dynasty in 1279 after defeating the Southern Song in the Battle of Yamen, and reunited China under the Yuan dynasty. (Full article...)
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Engravings on a cliff-side near a widely accepted candidate site for the battlefield, in the vicinity of Chibi, Hubei. The engravings are at least 1000 years old, and include the Chinese characters 赤壁 ('red cliffs') written from right to left.
The Battle of Red Cliffs, also known as the Battle of Chibi, was a decisive naval battle in China that took place during the winter of AD 208–209. It was fought on the Yangtze River between the forces of warlords controlling different parts of the country during the end of the Han dynasty. The allied forces of Sun Quan, Liu Bei, and Liu Qi based south of the Yangtze defeated the numerically superior forces of the northern warlord Cao Cao. By doing so, Liu Bei and Sun Quan prevented Cao Cao from conquering any lands south of the Yangtze, frustrating Cao Cao's efforts to reunify the territories formerly held by the Eastern Han dynasty.
The allied victory at Red Cliffs ensured the survival of Liu Bei and Sun Quan and left them in control of the Yangtze, establishing defensible frontiers that would later serve as the basis for the states of Shu Han and Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period (220–280). Historians have arrived at different conclusions in their attempts to reconstruct the timeline of events at Red Cliffs. The location of the battlefield itself remains a subject of debate: most scholars consider either a location southwest of present-day Wuhan, or a location northeast of Baqiu in present-day Yueyang, Hunan as plausible candidate sites for the battle. The battle has been the subject of or influenced numerous poems, dramas, movies and games. (Full article...)
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The field shortly after the start.
The men's road race, a part of the cycling events at the 2008 Summer Olympics, took place on August 9 at the Urban Road Cycling Course in Beijing. It started at 11:00 China Standard Time (UTC+8), and was scheduled to last until 17:30 later that day. The 245.4-kilometre (152.5 mi) course ran north across the heart of the Beijing metropolitan area, passing such landmarks as the Temple of Heaven, the Great Hall of the People, Tiananmen Square and the Beijing National Stadium. After rolling over relatively flat terrain for 78.8 km (49.0 mi) north of the Beijing city center, the route entered a decisive circuit encompassing seven loops on a 23.8 km (14.8 mi) section up and down the Badaling Pass, including ramps as steep as a 10 percent gradient.
The race was won by the Spanish rider Samuel Sánchez in 6 hours, 23 minutes, 49 seconds, after a six-man breakaway group contested a sprint finish. It was the first medal in the men's individual road race for Spain. Davide Rebellin of Italy and Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland, finishing second and third place with the same time as Sánchez, received silver and bronze medals respectively for the event. The hot and humid conditions were in sharp contrast to the heavy rain weathered in the women's road race the following day. (Full article...)
Hu lived in Nanjing during the transition from the Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty. A Ming loyalist, he was offered a position at the rump court of the Hongguang Emperor, but declined the post, and never held anything more than minor political office. He did, however, design the Hongguang Emperor's personal seal, and his loyalty to the dynasty was such that he largely retired from society after the emperor's capture and death in 1645. He owned and operated an academic publishing house called the Ten Bamboo Studio, in which he practised various multi-colour printing and embossing techniques, and he employed several members of his family in this enterprise. Hu's work at the Ten Bamboo Studio pioneered new techniques in colour printmaking, leading to delicate gradations of colour which were not previously achievable in this art form. (Full article...)
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The Sakyamuni Buddha, by Song painter Zhang Shengwen, c. AD 1181–1186; although Buddhism was in decline and under attack by Neo-Confucian critics in the Song era, it nonetheless remained one of the major religious ideologies in China.
Chinese society during the Song dynasty (AD 960–1279) was marked by political and legal reforms, a philosophical revival of Confucianism, and the development of cities beyond administrative purposes into centers of trade, industry, and maritime commerce. The inhabitants of rural areas were mostly farmers, although some were also hunters, fishers, or government employees working in mines or the salt marshes. Conversely, shopkeepers, artisans, city guards, entertainers, laborers, and wealthy merchants lived in the county and provincial centers along with the Chinese gentry—a small, elite community of educated scholars and scholar-officials. As landholders and drafted government officials, the gentry considered themselves the leading members of society; gaining their cooperation and employment was essential for the county or provincial bureaucrat overburdened with official duties. In many ways, scholar-officials of the Song period differed from the more aristocratic scholar-officials of the Tang dynasty (618–907). Civil service examinations became the primary means of appointment to an official post as competitors vying for official degrees dramatically increased. Frequent disagreements amongst ministers of state on ideological and policy issues led to political strife and the rise of political factions. This undermined the marriage strategies of the professional elite, which broke apart as a social group and gave way to a multitude of families that provided sons for civil service.
Confucian or Legalist scholars in ancient China—perhaps as far back as the late Zhou dynasty (c. 1046–256 BC)—categorized all socioeconomic groups into four broad and hierarchical occupations (in descending order): the shi (scholars, or gentry), the nong (peasant farmers), the gong (artisans and craftsmen), and the shang (merchants). Wealthy landholders and officials possessed the resources to better prepare their sons for the civil service examinations, yet they were often rivaled in their power and wealth by merchants of the Song period. Merchants frequently colluded commercially and politically with officials, despite the fact that scholar-officials looked down on mercantile vocations as less respectable pursuits than farming or craftsmanship. The military also provided a means for advancement in Song society for those who became officers, even though soldiers were not highly respected members of society. Although certain domestic and familial duties were expected of women in Song society, they nonetheless enjoyed a wide range of social and legal rights in an otherwise patriarchal society. Women's improved rights to property came gradually with the increasing value of dowries offered by brides' families. (Full article...)
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A Western Han painted ceramic jar with raised reliefs of dragons, phoenixes, and taotie designs The Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) was the second imperial dynasty of China, following the Qin dynasty (221–207 BC). It was divided into the periods of Western (Former) Han (202 BC – 9 AD) and Eastern (Later) Han (25–220 AD), briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty (9–23 AD) of Wang Mang. The capital of Western Han was Chang'an, and the capital of Eastern Han was Luoyang. The emperor headed the government, promulgating all written laws, serving as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and presiding as the chief executive official. He appointed all government officials who earned a salary of 600 bushels of grain or more (though these salaries were largely paid in coin cash) with the help of advisors who reviewed each nominee. The empress dowager could either be the emperor's actual or symbolic mother, and was in practice more respected than the emperor, as she could override his decisions; she can even make decisions on behalf of the emperor in dilemma matters of the country or for the order and continuation of the dynasty, even if necessary, with the support of the courtiers, she would decide on his successor or his dismissal. Although such a challenge was raised by the empress dowager to the emperor during the emperor's youth or incapacity. The emperor's executive powers could also be practiced by any official upon whom he bestowed the Staff of Authority. These powers included the right to execute criminals without the imperial court's permission.
...that the first railway locomotive in China was in service for only 15 months between 1876 and 1877 (pictured) before being purchased and deliberately destroyed by the ruling Qing dynasty?
The conquest of the Western Turks, known as the Western Tujue in Chinese sources, was a military campaign in 655–657 led by the Tang dynasty generals Su Dingfang and Cheng Zhijie against the Western Turkic Khaganate ruled by Ashina Helu. The Tang campaigns against the Western Turks began in 640 with the annexation of the Tarim Basin oasis state Gaochang, an ally of the Western Turks. Several of the oasis states had once been vassals of the Tang dynasty, but switched their allegiance to the Western Turks when they grew suspicious of the military ambitions of the Tang. Tang expansion into Central Asia continued with the conquest of Karasahr in 644 and Kucha in 648. Cheng Zhijie commanded the first foray against the West Tujue, and in 657 Su Dingfang commanded the main army dispatched against the Western Turks, while the Turkic generals Ashina Mishe and Ashina Buzhen led the side divisions. The Tang troops were reinforced by cavalry supplied by the Uyghurs, a tribe that had been allied with the Tang since their support for the Uyghur revolt against the Xueyantuo. Su Dingfang's army defeated Helu at the battle of Irtysh River.
The victory strengthened Tang control of the Western Regions, now modern Xinjiang, and brought the regions formerly ruled by the Khaganate into the Tang empire. Puppet qaghans, the Turkic title for ruler, and military garrisons were installed to administer the newly acquired territories. The Tang dynasty achieved its maximum territorial extent as its western borders reached the eastern frontier of the Umayyad Caliphate. Later on, Turkic revolts ended Tang hegemony beyond the Pamir Mountains in modern Tajikistan and Afghanistan, but a Tang military presence remained in Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin. Central Asia absorbed cultural influences from the conflict. Turkic culture and language spread into Central Asia, as did artistic and political influences from the Tang dynasty. Many of the Tang generals and soldiers stationed in the region were ethnically Turkic, and the prevalence of Indo-European languages in Central Asia declined with acceleration of Turkic migration. The Turks, Tibetans, and the Tang competed for control over Central Asia for the next few centuries. (Full article...)
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A Chinese woman wearing traditional clothes and one shopping for modern clothes. The contrast shows that globalization has changed fashion and culture for Chinese women.
The study of the impact of globalization on women in China examines the role and status of Chinese women relative to the political and cultural changes that have taken place in the 20th century as a consequence of globalization. Globalization refers to the interaction and integration of people, products, cultures and governments between various nations around the globe; this is fostered by trade, investment, and information technology. Globalization affected women's rights and the gender hierarchy in China, in aspects of domestic life such as marriage and primogeniture, as well as in the workplace. These changes altered the quality of life and the availability of opportunities to women at different junctures throughout the modern globalization process.
The dynamics of gender inequity are related with the ideological principles held by the ruling political regime. The imperial era was dominated by the social paradigm of Confucianism, which was a pervasive philosophy throughout the Orient. Confucian ideals emphasized morality, character, social relationship, and the status quo. Confucius preached jen (humanity) and the equality and educability of all people; Neo-Confucianists and Imperial leaders used his beliefs in social hierarchy, particularly in the family setting, for the physical and social oppression of women. As the Chinese government began to re-assimilate themselves into the global community in the late 19th to early 20th century, it shifted away from conventional Confucian ideals and women's role in society changed as well. After Mao Zedong established the People's Republic of China in 1949, a change in traditional gender roles came about. Mao's death marked the beginning of the current communist administration, and an influx of international communications in the areas of commerce, politics and social ideals. Since the 1980s, under the new communist party, the women's rights movement has gained momentum and has become a national issue as well as a sign of modernization. Some reporters state that increased globalization and the Belt and Road Initiative have led to an increase in sex trafficking of women in China. (Full article...)
She began writing film scripts in the mid-1950s, and later became an acclaimed writer of reportage literature. She was a three-time winner of the National Award for Outstanding Reportage Literature, for "The Flight of the Wild-Geese", "Mandarin Oranges", and "The Wooden Cabin". (Full article...)
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The Bahamas sent a delegation of athletes to compete in the 2008 Summer Olympics, which were held in Beijing, People's Republic of China from 8 to 24 August 2008. Its Beijing appearance marked its fourteenth time at the Olympics since its début at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. The delegation included 25 athletes across four sports (track and field, boxing, swimming and tennis) and nineteen distinct events. Its athletes advanced to semifinals in eight events and finals in five events, medaling in two of them (a silver in men's 4x400 meters relay by Andretti Bain, Michael Mathieu, Andrae Williams, Chris Brown, Avard Moncur and Ramon Miller, and a bronze in men's triple jump by Leevan Sands). The Bahamian delegation was one of the largest sent between its début and 2008. The country's flag bearer was Debbie Ferguson-McKenzie. (Full article...)
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Autographed photo, taken in the 1940s
Shangguan Yunzhu (Chinese: 上官雲珠; Wade–Giles: Shang-kuan Yün-chu; 2 March 1920 – 23 November 1968) was a Chinese actress active from the 1940s to the 1960s. She was considered one of the most talented and versatile actresses in China, and was named one of the 100 best actors of the 100 years of Chinese cinema in 2005.
Born Wei Junluo, she fled to Shanghai when her hometown Jiangyin was attacked by the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War. In Shanghai she became a drama and film actress, and her career took off after the end of the war. She starred in several prominent leftist films such as Spring River Flows East, Crows and Sparrows, and Women Side by Side. After the Communist victory in mainland China in 1949, her career was set back when her husband was embroiled in the anti-capitalist Five-anti Campaign, but she later portrayed a wide variety of characters in many films. (Full article...)
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Fossils of A. longicervia described in Wong et al. (2015)
The species was originally described as a pitcher plant with close affinities to extant members of the familySarraceniaceae. This would make it the earliest known carnivorous plant and the only known fossil record of Sarraceniaceae, or the New World pitcher plant family. Archaeamphora is also one of the three oldest known genera of angiosperms (flowering plants). Li (2005) wrote that "the existence of a so highly derived Angiosperm in the Early Cretaceous suggests that Angiosperms should have originated much earlier, maybe back to 280 mya as the molecular clock studies suggested". (Full article...)
Lhasa is a prefecture-level city, one of the main administrative divisions of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It covers an area of 29,274 square kilometres (11,303 sq mi) of rugged and sparsely populated terrain. Its urban center is Lhasa, with around 300,000 residents, which mostly corresponds with the administrative Chengguan District, while its suburbs extend into Doilungdêqên District and Dagzê District. The consolidated prefecture-level city contains additional five, mostly rural, counties.
The city boundaries roughly correspond to the basin of the Lhasa River, a major tributary of the Yarlung Tsangpo River. It lies on the Lhasa terrane, the last unit of crust to accrete to the Eurasian plate before the continent of India collided with Asia about 50 million years ago and pushed up the Himalayas. The terrain is high, contains a complex pattern of faults and is tectonically active. The temperature is generally warm in summer and rises above freezing on sunny days in winter. Most of the rain falls in summer. The upland areas and northern grasslands are used for grazing yaks, sheep and goats, while the river valleys support agriculture with crops such as barley, wheat and vegetables. Wildlife is not abundant, but includes the rare snow leopard and black-necked crane. Mining has caused some environmental problems. (Full article...)
A gilded bronze oil lamp in the shape of a female servant, dated 2nd century BCE, found in the tomb of Dou Wan, wife to the Han prince Liu Sheng (d. 113 BCE); its sliding shutter allows for adjustments in the direction and brightness of light while it also traps smoke within the body, an anti-pollutant design.The Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) of early imperial China, divided between the eras of Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE, when the capital was at Chang'an), the Xin dynasty of Wang Mang (r. 9–23 CE), and Eastern Han (25–220 CE, when the capital was at Luoyang, and after 196 CE at Xuchang), witnessed some of the most significant advancements in premodern Chinese science and technology.
There were great innovations in metallurgy. In addition to Zhou-era China's (c. 1046 – 256 BCE) previous inventions of the blast furnace and cupola furnace to make pig iron and cast iron, respectively, the Han period saw the development of steel and wrought iron by use of the finery forge and puddling process. With the drilling of deep boreholes into the earth, the Chinese used not only derricks to lift brine up to the surface to be boiled into salt, but also set up bamboo-crafted pipeline transport systems which brought natural gas as fuel to the furnaces. Smelting techniques were enhanced with inventions such as the waterwheel-powered bellows; the resulting widespread distribution of iron tools facilitated the growth of agriculture. For tilling the soil and planting straight rows of crops, the improved heavy-moldboard plough with three iron plowshares and sturdy multiple-tube iron seed drill were invented in the Han, which greatly enhanced production yields and thus sustained population growth. The method of supplying irrigation ditches with water was improved with the invention of the mechanical chain pump powered by the rotation of a waterwheel or draft animals, which could transport irrigation water up elevated terrains. The waterwheel was also used for operating trip hammers in pounding grain and in rotating the metal rings of the mechanical-driven astronomical armillary sphere representing the celestial sphere around the Earth. (Full article...)
Yahballaha III (c. 1245–13 November 1317), known in earlier years as Rabban Marcos (or Markos) was Patriarch of the East from 1281 to 1317. As patriarch, Yahballaha headed the Church of the East during the severe persecutions under the reign of khans Ghazan and his successor Öljaitü. He acknowledged the primacy of the Pope and tried to form a church union, which was rejected by the traditionalist bishops of the Church of the East.
Sun Yang (Chinese: 孙杨; Mandarin pronunciation:[swə́n.jǎŋ]; born 1 December 1991) is a Chinese Olympic and former world-record-holding competitive swimmer. In 2012, Sun became the first Chinese athlete to win an Olympic gold medal in men's swimming. Sun is the first male swimmer in history to earn Olympic and World Championship gold medals at every freestyle distance from 200 to 1500 metres. A three-time Olympic gold medalist and eleven-time world champion, he is the most decorated Chinese swimmer in history. In 2017, NBC Sports described him as "very arguably the greatest freestyle swimmer of all time".
In September 2018, Sun was involved in a controversial incident during an out-of-competition doping test at his home. The doping control assistant (DCA) lacked proper accreditation and took photos of Sun without his permission, leading him to refuse the blood sample collection. A security guard broke open the container to prevent the testers from taking the vials. The DCA later admitted to unprofessional conduct. FINA ruled that Sun did not violate anti-doping rules due to the DCA's actions. However, on 28 February 2020, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned FINA's decision, banning Sun for eight years for tampering with the doping control process. Some analysts opined that the trial was marred by severe translation problems, conflict of interest, bias and an "absence of evidence" around doping activity. Despite this, CAS found no evidence of doping, so Sun retained his medals. On 22 June 2021, after a retrial, the CAS upheld the ban but reduced it to four years and three months. (Full article...)
Developed by Western missionaries working among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia in the 19th century and refined by missionaries working in Xiamen and Tainan, it uses a modified Latin alphabet and some diacritics to represent the spoken language. After initial success in Fujian, POJ became most widespread in Taiwan and, in the mid-20th century, there were over 100,000 people literate in POJ. A large amount of printed material, religious and secular, has been produced in the script, including Taiwan's first newspaper, the Taiwan Church News. (Full article...)
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Oei Hui-lan in 1922, with her son Yu-chang Wellington Koo Jr., photographed by Henry Walter Barnett
Both the parents of Oei Hui-lan hailed from the establishment: her father stemmed from one of the wealthiest families in Java, while her mother came from the 'Cabang Atas' aristocracy as a descendant of a Luitenant der Chinezen in Semarang's 18th-century Dutch bureaucracy. After an unsuccessful marriage with Caulfield-Stoker, she met Wellington Koo while in Paris in 1920. They married in Brussels the following year and first lived in Geneva in connection with the establishment of the League of Nations. In 1923, she moved with her husband to Beijing where he served as Acting Premier in the evolving republican Chinese state. During his second term (October 1926—June 1927), Wellington Koo also acted as President of the Republic of China for a brief period, making Oei Hui-lan the First Lady of China. The couple then spent time in Shanghai, Paris and London where Oei Hui-lan became a celebrated hostess. In 1941, she moved to New York where she died in 1992. (Full article...)
The following are images from various China-related articles on Wikipedia.
Image 1Photo showing serving chopsticks (gongkuai) on the far right, personal chopsticks (putongkuai) in the middle, and a spoon. Serving chopsticks are usually more ornate than the personal ones. (from Chinese culture)
Image 3Gilin with the head and scaly body of a dragon, tail of a lion and cloven hoofs like a deer. Its body enveloped in sacred flames. Detail from Entrance of General Zu Dashou Tomb (Ming Tomb). (from Chinese culture)
Image 6Relief of a fenghuang in Fuxi Temple (Tianshui). They are mythological birds of East Asia that reign over all other birds. (from Chinese culture)
Image 7Hair Ornament, China, c. 19th century (from Chinese culture)
Image 8Dragon Tea Pot, Republic of China (from Chinese culture)
Image 9Map showing the expansion of Han dynasty in the 2nd century BC (from History of China)
Image 18Red lanterns are hung from the trees during the Chinese New Year celebrations in Ditan Park (Temple of Earth) in Beijing. (from Chinese culture)
This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk·contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject China}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.
The President of the Republic of China is the head of state of the Republic of China (ROC).
The Constitution names the president as head of state and commander-in-chief of the Republic of China Armed Forces (formerly known as the National Revolutionary Army). The president is responsible for conducting foreign relations, such as concluding treaties, declaring war, and making peace. The president must promulgate all laws and has no right to veto. Other powers of the president include granting amnesty, pardon or clemency, declaring martial law, and conferring honors and decorations.
The current President is Lai Ching-te(pictured), since May 20, 2024. Lai is a Taiwanese politician and former physician, who is currently serving as the eighth president of the Republic of China under the 1947 Constitution and the third president from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).