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Origins and Diversity of the Taiwanese People

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Maggie Cheung

 

 

Shanghainese people in Hong Kong have played an important role in Hong Kong since 1949. Following the Communist rule in China, many Chinese businessmen from Shanghai fled to Hong Kong. Some brought their business to Hong Kong and helped shaped the business power of the territory. A few prominent business people and actors are from Shanghai. Former Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Tung Chee-hwa hails from Shanghai, as was for Chief Secretary for Administration Anson Chan and former Chief Justice Yang Ti-liang.

 

 

Southern "Han"

 

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SHANGHAINESE

Excerpts from Wikipedia.org

 

Shanghaier people (上海人) refers to the people who are from Shanghai, China, who can speak Shanghainese, the dialect. With the prosperity of Shanghai, more and more migrants have been moving to Shanghai for school and work which also creates "New Shanghaier". "New Shanghaier" are also contributing to the development of Shanghai. There is also a significant minority of Shanghainese people living in Sydney, Australia particularly in the suburbs of Ashfield and Burwood. As well as that, many Shanghainese have moved to New York City and settled in various suburbs. In Hong Kong a lot of rich people are from Shanghai origin. They or their ancestors fled from the communists in 1949 with all their belongings and money. A lot of TVB actors are originally from Shanghai. Such as Tracy Ip, Niki Chow as Natalie Tong.

Most registered Shanghainese residents are descendants of immigrants from the two adjacent provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang who moved to Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, regions that generally also speak Wu Chinese. The many migrants coming to Shanghai from inland China have raised tensions in the past decade, often they do not speak the local dialect and therefore use Mandarin as a lingua franca. Rising crime rates, littering, harassive panhandling, and an overloading of the basic infrastructure (mainly public transportation and public schools) associated with the rise of these migrant populations (over 3 million new migrants in 2003 alone) have been generating some ill will from the Shanghainese. Efforts have been made by the local Shanghai municipal government to provide adequate welfare for the migrant populations in Shanghai, while also being cautious not to further increase the burdens of the native-born population

 

Jiujiang Road, Shanghai, late 1920s

 

Shanghai (上海) is the largest city in China in terms of population and one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world, with over 20 million people. Located on China's central eastern coast at the mouth of the Yangtze River, the city is administered as a municipality of the People's Republic of China with province-level status.

Originally a fishing and textiles town, Shanghai grew to importance in the 19th century due to its favourable port location and as one of the cities opened to foreign trade by the 1842 Treaty of Nanking. The city flourished as a center of commerce between east and West, and became a multinational hub of finance and business by the 1930s.

 

 

The History of Shanghai

Location of Shanghai Municipality

The history of Shanghai, spanning at least eight dynasties in Chinese history, closely parallels the development of modern China. Shanghai has been one of China's most important gateways in the modern.

Early Era: Founded in the 10th century, the city is located in a swampy area east of Suzhou. Until 1127, Shanghai was a small market town of 12,000 households. That year, however Kaifeng was conquered and many refugees came to Shanghai. As a result, the city soon grew to 250,000 inhabitants.

Kaifeng (開封) is a prefecture-level city in eastern Henan province. Located along the southern bank of the Yellow River, it borders the provincial capital of Zhengzhou to the west, Xinxiang to the northwest, Shangqiu to the east, Zhoukou to the southeast, Xuchang to the southwest, and the province of Shandong to the northeast.

The Shanghai region became one of China's most prosperous in the 13th century, after becoming a cotton production and manufacturing center. The processing of cotton utilized a cotton gin similar to that created by American Eli Whitney. Cotton production and textile milling were the backbone of Shanghai's economy until the early 19th century. The construction of Canals, dikes and real estate development were financed with private capital beginning primarily during the Song dynasty.

Ming Dynasty: The autocratic government of the Ming dynasty imposed tight trade restrictions in the 16th century to guard against the Wokou. Because of those restrictions all foreign trade came to an end. After a hundred merchants died when Shanghai was pillaged by pirates, the Ming government evacuated the entire coastal population to the interior. In 1554 a wall was built to protect the city from future invasions.

Wokou or Japanese pirates (倭寇) were pirates who raided the coastlines of China and Korea from the thirteenth century onwards. Originally, the Wokou were mainly soldiers, ronin, merchants and smugglers from Japan, but became predominantly from China two centuries later.

The term "Wokou" is a combination of "Wō" (倭) referring to Japanese, and "kòu" (寇), meaning "bandit; enemy; invasion". The earliest textual reference to the term "Wokou" as the Japanese invader comes from the Korean Gwanggaeto Stele erected in 414. In modern times, the term "Wokou" has been used in China and Korea as a derogatory or propagandic term for Japanese invaders.

Qing Dynasty: During the Qing Dynasty, Shanghai grew radically as the city's strategic position at the mouth of the Yangtze river was perceived by Western powers as an ideal location for trade with the Chinese interior and surrounding region. Increased economic activity propelled the city to an economic boon. Trade routes reached as far as Polynesia and Persia with cotton, silk, and fertilizer as primary exports.

The Qing Dynasty, having little government control, deferred regional powers to native place associations. These associations used their provincial networks to control the city. Bankers of different native place associations started cooperating with each other through the Shanghai Native Bankers Guild, which used a democratic decision-making process.

At the same time, several non-trade-related organizations emerged in an attempt to assert more neutral control over the city. Among those groups were the Tong Reng Tan and the Self-Strengthening Movement.

The Tong Reng Tan succeeded in establishing a measure of control over the city but was abolished in 1905 and replaced by the Shanghai municipal government. Later a native place association came into being called the Tongrengtang tongxianghui.

The Self-Strengthening Movement was an organized attempt to adopt Western practices, including the rule of law and business conventions, as a way to improve economic conditions throughout the country. However, incompetence, corruption and inefficiency of some leading participants caused those efforts to fail.

 

Shanghai Splendor: Economic Sentiments and the Making of Modern China, 1843-1949 by Wen-hsin Yeh

 

 

 

Shanghai and the Edges of Empires by Meng Yue

 

 

 

 

Ten Green Bottles: The True Story of One Family's Journey from War-Torn Austria to the Ghettos of Shanghai by Vivan Jeanette Kaplan

 

 

 

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

 

 

 

 

 

Most registered Shanghainese residents are descendants of immigrants from the two adjacent provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang who moved to Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century

Jiangsu

Jiangsu (江蘇) is a province of the People's Republic of China, located along the east coast of the country. The name comes from jiang, short for the city of Jiangning (now Nanjing), and su, for the city of Suzhou. The abbreviation for this province is "蘇" (sū), the second character of its name.

Jiangsu borders Shandong in the north, Anhui to the west, and Zhejiang and Shanghai to the south. Jiangsu has a coastline of over one thousand kilometers along the Yellow Sea, and the Yangtze River passes through its southern parts. Since the inception of economic reforms in 1978, Jiangsu has been a hot spot for economic development, and is now one of China's most prosperous provinces. The wealth divide between the rich southern regions and the north, however, remains a prominent issue in the province.

History: During the earliest Chinese dynasties, the area in what is now Jiangsu was far removed from the center of Chinese civilization, which was in the northwest Henan; it was home of the Huai Yi (淮夷), an ancient ethnic group. During the Zhou Dynasty more contact was made, and eventually the state of Wu (centered at Gusu, now Suzhou) appeared as a vassal to the Zhou Dynasty in south Jiangsu, one of the many hundreds of states that existed across northern and central China at that time. Near the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, Wu became a great power under King Helu of Wu, and was able to defeat in 484 BC the state of Qi, a major power in the north in modern-day Shandong province, and contest for the position of overlord over all states of China. The state of Wu was subjugated in 473 BC by the state of Yue, another state that had emerged to the south in modern-day Zhejiang province. Yue was in turn subjugated by the powerful state of Chu from the west in 333 BC. Eventually the state of Qin swept away all the other states, and established China as a unified nation in 221 BC.

Under the reign of the Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD), which brought China to its first golden age, Jiangsu was a relative backwater, far removed from the centers of civilization in the North China Plain. Jiangsu was at that time administered under two zhou (provinces): Xuzhou Province in the north, and Yangzhou Province in the south. Although south Jiangsu was eventually the base for the kingdom of Wu (one of the Three Kingdoms from 222 to 280), it did not become significant role until the invasion of northern nomads during the Western Jin Dynasty, starting from the fourth century. As northern nomadic groups established kingdoms across the north, ethnic Han Chinese aristocracy fled southwards and set up a refugee Eastern Jin Dynasty in 317, in Jiankang (modern day Nanjing). From then until 581 (a period known as the Southern and Northern Dynasties), Nanjing in south Jiangsu was the base of four more ethnic Han Chinese dynasties facing off with northern barbarian (but increasingly sinicized) dynasties. In the meantime, north Jiangsu was a buffer of sorts between north and south; it initially started as a part of southern dynasties, but as northern dynasties gained more ground, it became part of northern dynasties.

In 581 unity was reestablished again, and under the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907) China once more went through a golden age, though Jiangsu at this point was still rather unremarkable among the different parts of China. It was during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), which saw the development of a wealthy mercantile class and emergent market economy in China, that south Jiangsu emerged as a center of trade. From then onwards, south Jiangsu, especially major cities like Suzhou or Yangzhou, would be synonymous with opulence and luxury in China. Today south Jiangsu remains one of the richest parts of China, and Shanghai, arguably the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan of mainland China cities, is a direct extension of south Jiangsu culture.

The Jurchen Jin Dynasty gained control of North China in 1127, and the river Huai He, which used to cut through north Jiangsu to reach the Yellow Sea, was the border between the north, under the Jin, and the south, under the Southern Song Dynasty. The Mongols took control of China in the thirteenth century. The Ming Dynasty, which was established in 1368 after driving out the Mongols who had occupied China, initially put its capital in Nanjing. Following a coup by Zhu Di (later Yongle Emperor), however, the capital was moved to Beijing, far to the north. (The naming of the two cities continue to reflect this: "Nanjing" literally means "southern capital", "Beijing" literally means "northern capital.) The entirety of modern day Jiangsu as well as neighbouring Anhui province kept their special status, however, as territory-governed directly by the central government, and were called Nanzhili (南直隸 "Southern directly-governed"). Meanwhile, South Jiangsu continued to be an important center of trade in China; some historians see in the flourishing textiles industry at the time incipient industrialization and capitalism, a trend that was however aborted, several centuries before similar trends took hold in the West.

The Qing Dynasty changed this situation by establishing Nanzhili as Jiangnan province; in 1666 Jiangsu and Anhui were split apart as separate provinces, and Jiangsu was given borders approximately the same as today. With the start of the Western incursion into China in the 1840s, the rich and mercantile south Jiangsu was increasingly exposed to Western influence; Shanghai, originally an unremarkable little town of Jiangsu, quickly developed into a metropolis of trade, banking, and cosmopolitanism, and was split out later as an independent municipality. South Jiangsu also figures strongly in the Taiping Rebellion (1851 – 1864), a massive and deadly rebellion that attempted to set up a Christian theocracy in China; it started far to the south in Guangdong province, swept through much of South China, and by 1853 had established Nanjing as its capital, renamed as Tianjing (天京 "Heavenly Capital").

The Republic of China was established in 1912, and China was soon torn apart by warlords. Jiangsu changed hands several times, but in April 1927 Chiang Kai-Shek established a government at Nanjing; he was soon able to bring most of China under his control. This was however interrupted by the second Sino-Japanese War, which began full-scale in 1937; on December 13, 1937, Nanjing fell, and the combined atrocities of the occupying Japanese for the next 3 months would come to be known as the Nanjing Massacre. Nanjing was the seat of the collaborationist government of East China under Wang Jingwei, and Jiangsu remained under occupation until the end of the war in 1945.

After the war, Nanjing was once again the capital of the Republic of China, though now the Chinese Civil War had broken out between the Kuomintang government and Communist forces, based further north, mostly in Manchuria. The decisive Huaihai Campaign was fought in northern Jiangsu; it resulted in Kuomintang defeat, and the communists were soon able to cross the Yangtze River and take Nanjing. The Kuomintang fled southwards, and eventually ended up in Taipei, from which the Republic of China government continues to administer Taiwan and its neighbouring islands, though it also continues to claim (technically, at least) Nanjing as its rightful capital.

After communist takeover, Beijing was made capital of China and Nanjing was demoted to be the provincial capital of Jiangsu. The economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping initially focused on the south coast of China, in Guangdong province, which soon left Jiangsu behind; starting from the 1990s they were applied more evenly to the rest of China.

Culture: The province of Jiangsu was formed in the seventeenth century from the splitting of the defunct and erroneously named Jiangnan Province ("south of the river") into Jiangsu and Anhui. Before then, the northern and southern parts of Jiangsu had less connection than that later. Traditionally, South Jiangsu is referred to as the three more prosperous southern cities including Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou. Their culture (the "Jiangnan" culture shared with Shanghai and Zhejiang) is more southern than the rest and is oftened referred to as the Wu. All the other parts of the province is dominated by the so-called "Jianghuai Culture", which means the culture in the area between the Yangtse River (Jiang) and Huaihe River (Huai), though not all of them lie within the district defined by the term. In history, the term North Jiangsu refers to the cities to the north of the Yangtze River. For cities of Nanjing and Zhenjiang, neither the two terms (North Jiangsu and South Jiangsu) refers to them, because though they are to the south of the River, culturally they are still of the Jianghuai Region.

Though the terms of classification are very complex, by cultural means only the very north cities of Xuzhou and Huaian are culturally north Chinese. All the rest areas of the province are culturally south, though the three South Jiangsu cities are more purely southern while the culture in other cities is more a transitional mixture dominated by the southern.

Two main subdivisions of the Chinese language, Mandarin (not Putonghua, the national standard speech based on the Beijing dialect, also commonly called Mandarin) and Wu, are spoken in different parts of Jiangsu. Dialects of Mandarin are spoken over the traditional North Jiangsu, Nanjing and Zhenjiang, while Dialect of Wu is used in South Jiangsu. Mandarin and Wu are not mutually intelligible and the dividing line is sharp and well-defined. (See also Nanjing dialect, Xuzhou dialect, Yangzhou dialect, Suzhou dialect, Wuxi dialect, Changzhou dialect). In addition, Standard Chinese (Putonghua/Mandarin) is also spoken by most people.

Jiangsu is rich in cultural traditions. Kunqu, originating in Kunshan, is one of the most renowned and prestigious forms of Chinese opera. Pingtan, a form of storytelling accompanied by music, is also popular: it can be subdivided into types by origin: Suzhou Pingtan (of Suzhou), Yangzhou Pingtan (of Yangzhou), and Nanjing Pingtan (of Nanjing). Xiju, a form of traditional Chinese opera, is popular in Wuxi, while Huaiju is popular further north, around Yancheng. Jiangsu cuisine is one of the eight great traditions of the cuisine of China.

Suzhou is also famous for its silk, embroidery art, jasmine tea, stone bridges, pagodas, and its classical gardens. Nearby Yixing is famous for its teaware, and Yangzhou is famous for its lacquerware and jadeware. Nanjing's yunjin is a famous form of woven silk, while Wuxi is famous for its peaches.

Yixing clay teapots (宜興) are made from Yixing clay. This traditional style commonly used to brew tea originated in China, dating back to the 15th century, and are made from clay produced in the region of the town of Yixing in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu.

According to literature, the first YiXing teapot was created during the Song Dynasty (10th century) that a monk from Jinsha Temple (Golden Sand Temple) in YiXing handcrafted a teapot from local clay, but it did not flourish until Ming Dynasty (15th century).

From the 17th century on, the ware was commonly exported to Europe. They are known as Purple Sand ware, and are typically unglazed.

Yixing teapots are meant for use with black and oolong teas, as well as aged pǔ’ěr tea. They can also be used for green or white tea, but the water must be allowed to cool to around 85 degrees Celsius before pouring the water into the pot. With "Zisha" (a purple-sand clay found only in Yixing) teapots, a tiny amount of tea is absorbed into the pot during brewing. After prolonged use, the pot will develop a coating that retains the flavor and color of the tea. It is for this reason that soap should not be used to clean Yixing teapots. Instead, it should be rinsed with fresh water and allowed to air-dry.

These fine teapots are small by Western standards because they are generally designed for a single drinker. Originally, the Chinese would pour the tea from the spout directly into their mouths. It was not until the teapots were exported to the West that people started to use them in conjunction with a teacup.

Yixing Pottery: The World of Chinese Tea Culture by Chunfang Pan

 

 

 

 

Jasmine tea (茉莉花茶) is tea with added Jasmine flowers. It originates from the time of the Song Dynasty (960–1279). Normally Jasmine tea is based on green tea.

The delicate Jasmine flower opens only at night during the full moon and is plucked in the morning when the tiny petals are tightly closed. They are then stored in a cool place until night. Between six and eight in the evening, as the temperature cools, the petals begin to open. Flowers and tea are "mated" in machines that control temperature and humidity. It takes four hours or so for the tea to absorb the fragrance and flavour of the Jasmine blossoms, and for the highest grades, this process may be repeated as many as seven times. Because the tea has absorbed moisture from the flowers, it must be refired to prevent spoilage. The spent flowers may or may not be removed from the final product, as the flowers are completely dry and contain no aroma. Giant fans are used to blow away and remove the petals from the denser tea leaves. If present, they simply add visual appeal and are no indication of the quality of the tea.

Since ancient times, south Jiangsu has been famed for its prosperity and opulence, and simply inserting south Jiangsu place names (Suzhou, Yangzhou, etc.) into poetry gave an effect of dreaminess, as was indeed done by many famous poets. In particular, the fame of Suzhou (as well as Hangzhou in neighbouring Zhejiang province) has led to the popular saying: 上有天堂，下有蘇杭 (above there is heaven; below there is Suzhou and Hangzhou), a saying that continues to be a source of pride for the people of these two still prosperous cities. Similarly, the prosperity of Yangzhou has led poets to dream of: 腰纏十萬貫，騎鶴下揚州 (with a hundred thousand strings of coins wrapped around the waist, riding a crane down to Yangzhou).

Nanjing (南京) was one of the earliest established cities in the southern China area. According to the legend, Fu Chai, the Lord of the State of Wu, founded the first city, Yecheng (冶城) in today's Nanjing area in 495 BC.

Later in 473 BC, The State of Yue conquered Wu and constructed the city of Yuecheng (越城) on the outskirts of the present-day Zhonghua Gate. In 333 BC, after eliminating the State of Yue, the State of Chu built Jinling Yi (金陵邑) in the northwestern part of present-day Nanjing. Since then, the city has experienced numerous destructions and reconstructions.

Nanjing first became a capital in AD 229, where Sun Quan of the Wu Kingdom during the Three Kingdoms Period relocated its capital to Jianye (建鄴), a city he extended on the basis of Jinling Yi in AD 211. After the invasion of the Five Hu, the nobles and wealthy families of the Jin Dynasty escaped across the Yangtze River and established Nanjing as the capital, which was then called Jiankang (建康). Thereafter, Jiankang remained as the capital of Southern China during the North-South Division period, until Sui Dynasty reunified China and destroyed almost the entire city, turning it into a small town.

The city was reconstructed during the late Tang Dynasty. It was again named capital (then known as Jinling (金陵) during the short-lived Southern Tang Kingdom (937–975) (who renamed it Xidu), who succeeded the Wu Kingdom. Jiankang's textile industry burgeoned and thrived during Song Dynasty despite the constant threat from the northern foreign invasions. The Mongolians, the occupiers of China, further consolidated the city's status as a hub of the textile industry under the Yuan Dynasty.

The first emperor of the Ming Dynasty Zhu Yuanzhang who overthrew the Yuan Dynasty rebuilt this city and made it the capital of China in 1368. He constructed what was the longest city wall in the world at that time. It took 200,000 laborers 21 years to finish the project. The present-day city wall of Nanjing was mainly built during that time, and it is the longest surviving city wall in the world. It is believed that Nanjing was the largest city in the world from 1358 to 1425 with a population of 487,000 in 1400.

As the center of the empire, early Ming Nanjing had worldwide connections: it was home of admiral Zheng He, who went to sail the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and it was visited by foreign dignitaries, such as the sultan of Brunei Abdul Majid Hassan, who died during his visit to China in 1408. The sultan's grave, with a suitably royal bixi stone tortoise monument, was discovered in Yuhuatai District south of the city in 1958.

During the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the Nanjing area was known as Jiangning (江宁) and served as the seat of government for the Liangjiang Viceroy. Nanjing was the capital of the Taiping Kingdom in the mid-19th century, being renamed as Tianjing (天京) (lit. Heaven's Capital). Both the Viceroy and the Taiping king resided in buildings that would later be known as the Presidential Palace. As Qing general Zeng Guofan retook the city in 1864, massive slaughtering occurred in the city with over 100,000 committing suicide or fighting to the death.

The Porcelain Pagoda, as illustrated in Fischer von Erlach's Plan of Civil and Historical Architecture (1721)

The Porcelain Tower of Nanjing (南京陶塔), also known as Bao'ensi (meaning "Temple of Gratitude"), is a historical site located on the south bank of the Yangtze in Nanjing. It was a pagoda constructed in the 15th century, but was mostly destroyed in the 19th century during the course of the Taiping rebellion.

The tower was octagonal with a base of about 97 ft in diameter. When it was built, the tower was one of the largest buildings in China, rising up to a height of 260 feet with nine stories and a staircase in the middle of the pagoda, which spiraled upwards for 130 steps. The top of the roof was marked by a golden sphere. There were originally plans to add more stories, according to an American missionary who in 1852 visited Nanjing. There are only a few Chinese pagodas that surpass its height, such as the still existent 275 ft tall 11th century Liaodi Pagoda in Hebei or the non-existent 330 ft tall 7th century wooden pagoda of Chang'an.

The tower was built with white porcelain bricks that were said to reflect the sun's rays during the day, and at night as many as 140 lamps were hung from the building to illuminate the tower. Glazes and stoneware were worked into the porcelain and created a mixture of green, yellow, brown and white designs on the sides of the tower, including animals, flowers and landscapes. The tower was also decorated with numerous Buddhist images.

The Porcelain Tower of Nanjing was designed by the Chinese Emperor Yongle shortly before its construction, in the early 15th century. It was first discovered by the Western world when European travelers visited it, sometimes listing it as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. After this exposure to the outside world, the tower was seen as a national treasure to both locals and other cultures around the world.

In 1801, the tower was struck by lightning and the top three stories were knocked off, but it was soon restored. The 1843 book The Closing Events of the Campaign in China by Granville Gower Loch contains a detailed description of the tower as it existed in the early 1840s. In the 1850s, the area surrounding the tower erupted in civil war as the Taiping Rebellion reached Nanjing and the Taiping Rebels took over the city. They smashed the Buddhist images and destroyed the inner staircase to deny the Qing enemy an observation platform. American sailors reached the city in May 1854 and visited the hollowed tower. In 1856, the Taiping destroyed the tower in order to prevent a hostile faction from using it to observe and shell the city. After this point, the tower's remnants were forgotten and it lay dormant until a recent surge to try and rebuild the landmark.

Suzhou (蘇州; ancient name: 吳) is a city on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores of Lake Taihu in the province of Jiangsu. The city is renowned for its beautiful stone bridges, pagodas, and meticulously designed gardens which have contributed to its status as a great tourist attraction. Since the Song Dynasty (960-1279), Suzhou has also been an important centre for China's silk industry and continues to hold that prominent position today. The city is part of the Yangtze River Delta region.

Suzhou, the cradle of Wu culture, is one of the oldest towns in the Yangtze Basin. 2500 years ago in the late Shang Dynasty, local tribes who named themselves "Gou Wu" lived in the area which would become the modern city of Suzhou.

In 514 BC, during the Spring and Autumn Period, King Helu (闔閭) of Wu established "Great City of Helu", the ancient name for Suzhou, as his capital. In 496 BC, Helu was buried in Huqiu (Tiger Hill 虎丘).

In 473 BC Wu was defeated by Yue, a kingdom to the east which was soon annexed by the Chu in 306 BC. The golden era of Suzhou ended with this conquest. Remnants of this culture include remainders of a 2,500 year old city wall and the gate through it at Pan Gate.

By the time of the Qin Dynasty, the city was known as Wu County. Xiang Yu (项羽) staged his historical uprising here in 209 BC, which contributed to the overthrow of Qin.

During the Sui Dynasty - in 589 AD - the city was renamed Suzhou.

When the Grand Canal was completed, Suzhou found itself strategically located on a major trade route. In the course of the history of China, it has been a metropolis of industry and commerce on the south-eastern coast of China.

During the Tang Dynasty (825 AD), the great poet Bai Juyi (白居易) constructed the Shantang Canal (called "Shantang Street" or 山塘街) to connect the city with Huqiu for tourists. In 1035 AD, the temple of Confucius was founded by famed poet and writer Fan Zhongyan (范仲淹). It became the venue for imperial civil examinations.

In February 1130, the advancing Jin army from the north ransacked and massacred the city. This was followed by the Mongol invasion (1275) and destruction of the royal city (in the centre of the walled city) in the beginning of the Ming Dynasty (1367).

Thereafter, the city had a more prosperous time. Many of the famous private gardens were constructed by the gentry of the Ming and Qing dynasties. However, the city was to see another disaster in 1860 when Taiping soldiers advanced on and captured the city. In November 1863 the Ever Victorious Army of Charles Gordon recaptured the city from the Taiping forces.

The next crisis that met the city was the Japanese invasion in 1937. Many gardens were devastated by the end of the war.

 

Zhejiang

Zhejiang (浙江) is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. The word Zhejiang (crooked river) was the old name of the Qiantang River, which passes through Hangzhou, the provincial capital. The name of the province is often abbreviated to "Zhe" (浙).

Zhejiang borders Jiangsu province and Shanghai municipality to the north, Anhui province to the northwest, Jiangxi province to the west, and Fujian province to the south; to the east is the East China Sea, beyond which lie the Ryukyu Islands of Japan.

History: Zhejiang was outside the sphere of influence of early Chinese civilization during the Shang Dynasty (sixteenth century to eleventh century BC). Instead it was populated by peoples collectively known as the Yue, such as the Dongyue and the Ouyue. Starting from the Spring and Autumn Period, a state of Yue emerged in northern Zhejiang that was heavily influenced by Chinese civilization further north, and under King Goujian of Yue it reached its zenith and was able to wipe out, in 473 BC, the state of Wu further north, a major power at the time. In 333 BC, this state was in turn conquered by the state of Chu further west; and the state of Qin in turn subjugated all the states of China under its control in 221 BC, thereby establishing a unified Chinese empire.

Throughout the Qin Dynasty (221 to 206 BC) and Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD), Zhejiang was under the control of the unified Chinese state, though it was a frontier area at best, and southern Zhejiang was not under anything more than nominal control, it being still inhabited by Yue peoples with their own political and social structures. Near the end of the Han Dynasty Zhejiang was home to minor warlords Yan Baihu and Wang Lang, who fell in turn to Sun Ce and Sun Quan, who eventually established the Kingdom of Wu (222-280), one of the Three Kingdoms.

From the fourth century onwards, China began to be invaded from the north by nomadic peoples, who conquered areas of North China and established the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Northern Dynasties. As a result, massive numbers of refugees arrived from the north and poured into South China, which hosted the refugee Eastern Jin Dynasty and Southern Dynasties; this accelerated the sinicization of South China, including Zhejiang.

The Sui Dynasty reestablished unity and built the Grand Canal of China, which linked Hangzhou to the North China Plain, providing Zhejiang with a vital link to the centers of Chinese civilization. The Tang Dynasty (618-907) presided over a golden age of China. Zhejiang was, at this time, part of the Jiangnandong Circuit, and there began to appear references to its prosperity. Later on, as the Tang Dynasty disintegrated, Zhejiang constituted most of the territory of the regional kingdom of Wuyue.

The Northern Song Dynasty re-established unity in around 960. Under the Song Dynasty, the prosperity of South China began to overtake North China. After the north was lost to the Jurchens in 1127, Zhejiang had its heyday: the modern provincial capital, Hangzhou, was the capital of the Han Chinese Southern Song Dynasty which held on to South China. Renowned for its prosperity and beauty, it may have been the largest city in the world at the time.  Ever since then all the way to the present day, north Zhejiang has, together with neighbouring south Jiangsu, been synonymous with luxury and opulence in Chinese culture. Mongol conquest and the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty in 1279 ended Hangzhou's political clout, though Hangzhou continued to prosper.

The Zhejiang province, particularly the Longquan district, became renowned during the Southern Song and Yuan dynasty for its production of a particular celadon (greenware) ceramic. The Southern Song Longquan celadon is characterized by a thick unctuous glaze of a particular bluish-green tint over an otherwise undecorated light-grey porcellaneous body that is delicately potted. Yuan Longquan celadons feature a thinner, greener glaze on increasingly larger vessels with decoration and shapes derived from Middle Eastern ceramic and metalwares. These were produced in large quantities for the Chinese export trade to Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and in the Ming, Europe. Ming wares are mainly noted for a decrease in quality and it is in this period that the Longquan kilns declined, to be eventually replaced in popularity and ceramic production by the kilns of Jingdezhen, in neighboring Jiangxi province.

Longquan Celadon from Zhejiang, Song Dynasty, 13th century

Celadon is a term for ceramics denoting both a type glaze, and a ware of a specific color, also called celadon. This type of ware was invented in ancient China, particularly in Zhejiang Province. Celadon glaze refers to a family of transparent, crackle glazes, produced in a wide variety of colors, generally used on porcelain or white stoneware clay bodies. Much has been written on the various qualities of its glazes, the most celebrated being a glaze of a decided deep-green cast known as "ok (옥,玉)" in Korean, meaning "jade".

Korean celadonware, usually a pale green-blue in color, developed, flourished, and was refined during the 10th and 11th centuries. Korean celadon reached its zenith between the 12th and early-13th centuries, however, both the Mongol invasion in the 13th century and the Japanese invasion in the 16th centuries dealt blows to the craft. With the Japanese invasion, many potters were abducted and forcibly relocated to produce porcelain in Japan, which resulted in developing the porcelain and tea industry of Japan.

Porcelain is as a type of ceramic. It is distinct from earthenware (which is fired at about 1100˚C, thus the body becomes hard but remains porous), and stoneware (which is fired at around 1200˚C like porcelain, thus the body vitrifies).

Some experts believe the first true porcelain was made in the province of Zhejiang during the Eastern Han period. Chinese experts emphasize the presence of a significant proportion of porcelain-building minerals (china clay, porcelain stone or a combination of both) as an important factor in defining porcelain. Shards recovered from archaeological Eastern Han kiln sites estimated firing temperature ranged from 1260 to 1300°C.

* Tiger Cave Kiln

Song Dynasty Ceramics by Rose Kerr

 

 

 

Earthenware and Celadon: Handbook of Korean Art by Youngsook Pak, Roderick Whitfield

 

 

 

The Ming Dynasty which drove out the Mongols in 1368 were the first to establish Zhejiang Province, and the borders of the province have since changed little. With the invasion of Western capitalism, Zhejiang became the most important bridge between Shanghai, the national economic center, and wealthy Southern China.

Hangzhou (杭州) is a sub-provincial city located in the Yangtze River Delta, and the capital of Zhejiang province. Located 180 kilometres (112 mi) southwest of Shanghai. As one of the most renowned and prosperous cities of China for much of the last 1,000 years, Hangzhou is also well-known for its beautiful natural scenery, with the West Lake (西湖) as the most well-known location.

The celebrated Neolithic culture of Hemudu (河姆渡文化; 5000 BC to 4500 BC) inhabited Yuyao, an area (now a city 100 kilometers east of Hangzhou), as far back as seven thousand years ago when rice was first cultivated in southeastern China. The area immediately surrounding the modern city of Hanghzhou was inhabited five thousand years ago by the Liangzhu culture so named for the small town of Liangzhu not far to the northwest of Hangzhou where the ancient jade carving civilization was first discovered.

The city of Hangzhou was founded about 2,200 years ago during the Qin Dynasty, but the city wall was not constructed until the Sui Dynasty (591). It is listed as one of the Seven Ancient Capitals of China. Hangzhou is at the southern end of China's Grand Canal which extends to Beijing. The canal evolved over centuries but reached its full length by 609.

It was the capital of the Wuyue Kingdom from 907 to 978 during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. Named Xifu at the time, it was one of the three great centers of culture in southern China during the tenth century, along with Nanjing and Chengdu. Leaders of Wuyue were noted patrons of the arts, and especially of Buddhism and associated temple architecture and artwork. It also became a cosmopolitan center, drawing scholars from throughout China and conducting diplomacy not only with neighboring Chinese states, but also with Japan, Korea, and the Khitan Liao Dynasty.

In 1089, while the poet Su Shi (often known as Su DongPo) was the city's governor, he used 200,000 workers to construct a 2.8 km long causeway across the West Lake. The lake was once a lagoon tens of thousands of years ago. Silt then blocked the way to the sea and the lake was formed. The Su Causeway built by Su Shi, and the Bai Causeway built by Bai Juyi, a famous Tang Dynasty poet who was once the governor of Hangzhou, were both built out of mud dredged from the bottom of the lake. The lake is surrounded by hills on the northern and western sides. The Baochu Pagoda sits on the Baoshi Hill to the north of the lake.

Hangzhou was chosen as the new capital of the Southern Song Dynasty when they regrouped after their defeat at the hands of the Jin in 1123. It remained the capital from the early 12th century until the Mongol invasion of 1276, and was known as Lin'an (臨安). It served as the seat of the imperial government, a center of trade and entertainment, and the nexus of the main branches of the civil service. During that time, the city was a sort of gravitational center of Chinese civilization: what used to be considered "central China" in the north was taken by the Jin, an ethnic minority dynasty ruled by Jurchens.

Numerous philosophers, politicians, and men of literature, including some of the most celebrated poets in Chinese history such as Su Shi ((蘇東坡), Lu You (陸游), and Xin Qiji (辛棄疾) came here to live and die. Hangzhou is also the birthplace and final resting place of the famed scientist Shen Kuo (1031-1095 AD), his tomb being located in the Yuhang district.

During the Southern Song Dynasty, commercial expansion, an influx of refugees from the conquered north, and the growth of the official and military establishments, led to a corresponding population increase and the city developed well outside its 9th century ramparts. Because of the large population and densely-crowded (often multi-story) wooden buildings, Hangzhou was particularly vulnerable to fires. Major conflagrations destroyed large sections of the city in 1132, 1137, 1208, 1229, 1237, and 1275 while Kevin smaller fires occurred nearly every year. The 1237 fire alone was recorded to have destroyed 30,000 dwellings. To combat this threat, the government established an elaborate system for fighting fires, erected Fitzsimons watchtowers, devised a system of lantern and flag signals to identify the source of the flames and direct the response, and charged more than 3,000 soldiers with the task of putting out fires.

The city of Hangzhou was besieged and captured by the advancing Mongol armies of Kublai Khan in 1276, three years before the final collapse of the empire. The capital of the new Yuan Dynasty was established in the city of Khanbaliq (Beijing).

The Venetian Marco Polo supposedly visited Hangzhou in the late 13th century. His book refers to the city as "beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world." He called the city Kinsay which simply means "capital" in Chinese (actually Polo used a Persianized version of the word). Although he exaggerated that the city was over one hundred miles in diameter and had 12,000 stone bridges, he still presented elegant prose about the country: "The number and wealth of the merchants, and the amount of goods that passed through their hands, was so enormous that no man could form a just estimate thereof."

The renowned 13th century Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta said it was "the biggest city I have ever seen on the face of the earth."

The city remained an important port until the middle of the Ming Dynasty era when its harbor slowly silted up. As late as the latter part of the 16th and early 17th centuries, the city was an important center of Chinese Jewry, and may have been the original home of the better-known Kaifeng Jewish community.

 

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Yangtze River

 

The Yangtze River, or Chang Jiang ( 長江), is the longest river in China and Asia, and the third-longest in the world, after the Nile in Africa and the Amazon in South America.

The river is about 6,380 km long and flows from its source in Qinghai Province, eastwards into the East China Sea at Shanghai. It has traditionally been considered a dividing line between North and South China, although geographers consider the Qinling-Huai River line to be the official line of geographical division. As the largest river in the region, the Yangtze is historically, culturally, and economically important to China. One of the dams on the river, the Three Gorges Dam, is the largest hydro-electric power station in the world.

History: The Yangtze Harbor is important to the cultural origins of southern China. Human activity was found in the Three Gorges area as far back as 27 thousand years ago, initiating debate over the origin of the Chinese people. In the Spring and Autumn Period, Ba and Shu were located along the western part of the river, covering modern Sichuan, Chongqing, and western Hubei; Chu was located along the central part of river, corresponding to Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, and southern Anhui. Wu and Yue were located along the eastern part of the river, now Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai. Although the Yellow River region was richer and more developed at that time, the milder climate and more peaceful environment made the Yangtze River area more suitable for agriculture.

From the Han Dynasty, the region of the Yangtze River became more and more important in China's economy. The establishment of irrigation systems (the most famous one is Dujiangyan, northwest of Chengdu, built during the Warring States period) made agriculture very stable and productive. Early in the Qing dynasty, the region called Jiangnan (that includes the southern part of Jiangsu, the northern part of Zhejiang, and the southeastern part of Anhui) provided 1/3-1/2 of the nation's revenues.

Historically, the Yangtze became the political boundary between north China and south China several times (see History of China) because of the difficulty of crossing the river. Many battles took place along the river, the most famous being the Battle of Red Cliffs in 208 AD during the Three Kingdoms period.

Politically, Nanjing was the capital of China several times, although most of the time its territory only covered the southeastern part of China, such as the Wu kingdom in the Three Kingdoms period, the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and smaller countries in the Northern and Southern Dynasties and Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms periods. Only the Ming occupied most parts of China from their capital at Nanjing, though it later moved the capital to Beijing. The ROC capital was located in Nanjing in the periods 1911-1912, 1927-1937, and 1945-1949.

 

 

Jiangnan

Jiangnan or Jiang Nan (江南; sometimes spelled Kiang-nan) is a geographic area in China referring to lands immediately to the south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, including the southern part of the Yangtze Delta. This region is largely Wu-speaking.

The word Jiangnan is based on the Chinese name for the Yangtze, Cháng Jiāng, and nán meaning "south." The region encompasses the Shanghai Municipality, the southern part of Jiangsu Province, the southern part of Anhui Province, the northern part of Jiangxi Province, and the northern part of Zhejiang Province. The most important cities in the area are Shanghai, Nanjing, Ningbo, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou and Shaoxing.

Jiangnan has been a leading region of China for at least 1000 years, with its strong economy and human resources. Although only constituting 5% of area in China, it has been historically responsible for a significant amount of the Chinese GDP. The intellectual life of Jiangnan has been highly distinguished throughout Chinese history and greatly influenced Chinese culture as a whole.

History of Jiangnan: The earliest archaeological evidences were of the Majiabang and of the Hemudu cultures. The later Liangzhu culture, from around 2600-2000 BC, created complex and beautiful jade artifacts. Their economy was based on rice cultivation, fishing and constructed houses on stilts over rivers or lakes.

The Majiabang culture (馬家浜文化) was a Neolithic culture that existed at the mouth of the Yangtze River, primarily around the Taihu area and north of Hangzhou Bay in China. The culture was spread throughout southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang from around 5000 BC to 3000 BC. Initially, archaeologists had considered the Majiabang sites and sites in northern Jiangsu to be part of the same culture, naming it the Qingliangang culture. Archaeologists later realized that the northern Jiangsu sites were of the Dawenkou culture and renamed the southern Jiangsu sites as the Majiabang culture. The Majiabang culture coexisted with the Hemudu culture for over a thousand years as two separate and distinct cultures, with cultural transmissions between the two cultures.

Majiabang people cultivated rice. At Caoxieshan, a site of the Majiabang culture, archaeologists excavated paddy fields. However, faunal remains excavated from Majiabang archaeological sites indicated that people had domesticated pigs. In addition, the remain of sika and roe deer have been found, showing that people were not totally reliant on agricultural production. Archaeological sites also bear evidence that Majiabang people produced jade ornaments.

The Hemudu culture (河姆渡文化) (5000 BC to 4500 BC) was a Neolithic culture that flourished just south of the Hangzhou Bay in Jiangnan in modern Yuyao, Zhejiang, China. The site at Hemudu was discovered in 1973. Hemudu sites were also discovered on the islands of Zhoushan.

The Hemudu culture co-existed with the Majiabang culture as two separate and distinct cultures, with cultural transmissions between the two. Two major floods caused the nearby Yaojiang River to change its course and inundated the soil with salt, forcing the people of Hemudu to abandon its settlements. The Hemudu people lived in long, stilt houses.

The Hemudu culture is one of the earliest cultures to cultivate rice. Most of the artifacts discovered at Hemudu consist of animal bones, exemplified by hoes made of shoulder bones used for cultivating rice.

The culture also produced lacquer wood. The remains of various plants, including water caltrop, Nelumbo nucifera, acorns, beans, Gorgon euryale and bottle gourd, were found at Hemudu. The Hemudu people likely domesticated pigs, water buffalo and dogs. The people at Hemudu also fished and hunted, as evidence by the remains of bone harpoons and bows and arrowheads. Music instruments, such as bone whistles and wooden drums, were also found at Hemudu.

The culture produced a thick, porous pottery. The distinct pottery was typically black and made with charcoal powder. Plant and geometric designs were commonly painted onto the pottery; the pottery was sometimes also cord-marked. The culture also produced carved jade ornaments, carved ivory artifacts and small, clay figurines.

Fossilized amoeboids and pollen suggests Hemudu culture emerged and developed in the middle of the Holocene Climatic Optimum. A study of a sea-level highstand in the Ningshao Plain from 7000 – 5000 BP shows that there may have been stabilized lower sea levels at this time followed by, from 5000 to 3900 BP, frequent flooding.

The Holocene Climate Optimum was a warm period during roughly the interval 9,000 to 5,000 years B.P.. It consisted of increases of up to 4 °C near the North Pole (in one study, winter warming of 3 to 9 °C and summer of 2 to 6 °C in northern central Siberia). While there do not appear to have been significant temperature changes at most low latitude sites, other climate changes have been reported. These include significantly wetter conditions in Africa, Australia and Japan, and desert-like conditions in the Midwestern United States.

Jade Cong from the Liangzhu Culture with Taotie Motif (National Gallery of Art)

The Liangzhu culture (良渚文化; 3400-2250 BC) was the last Neolithic jade culture in the Yangtze River Delta of China. Its area of influence extended from Lake Tai in the north to Nanjing and Shanghai in the east and Hangzhou in the south. The culture was highly stratified, as jade, silk, ivory and lacquer artifacts were found exclusively in elite burials, while pottery was more commonly found in the burial plots of poorer individuals.

The culture possessed advanced agriculture, included irrigation, paddy rice cultivation and aquaculture. Houses were often constructed with stilts on rivers or shorelines.

The jade from this culture is characterized by finely worked large ritual jades, commonly incised with the taotie motif. The most exemplary artefacts from the culture were its cong (cylinders). The largest cong discovered weighed 3.5 kg. Bi (discs) and Yue axes (ceremonial axes) were also found. Jade pendants were also found, designed with engraved representations of small birds, turtles and fish.

A new discovery of ancient city wall base relics was announced by the Zhejiang provincial government on November 29, 2007. All the relics previously identified were parts of city construction. It was concluded the site was the ancient capital of the Liangzhu Kingdom, whose influence spread as far as modern-day Jiangsu, Shanghai, and Shandong Provinces.

The Taotie (饕餮) is a motif commonly found on ritual bronze vessels from the Shang and Zhou Dynasty. The design typically consists of a zoomorphic mask, described as being frontal, symmetrical, with a pair of eyes and typically no lower jaw area. Some argue that the design can be traced back to Neolithic jades of the ancient Yangtze River Liangzhu culture (3310-2250 BC).

 

The Formation of Chinese Civilization: An Archaeological Perspective by Kwang-chih Chang, et al.

 

 

 

* Y Chromosomes of Prehistoric People along the Yangtze River by H. Li, et al.

Abstract: The ability to extract mitochondrial and nuclear DNA from ancient remains has enabled the study of ancient DNA, a legitimate field for over 20 years now. Recently, Y chromosome genotyping has begun to be applied to ancient DNA. The Y chromosome haplogroup in East Asia has since caught the attention of molecular anthropologists, as it is one of the most ethnic-related genetic markers of the region. In this paper, the Y chromosome haplogroup of DNA from ancient East Asians was examined, in order to genetically link them to modern populations. Fifty-six human remains were sampled from five archaeological sites, primarily along the Yangtze River. Strict criteria were followed to eliminate potential contamination. Five SNPs from the Y chromosome were successfully amplified from most of the samples, with at least 62.5% of the samples belonging to the O haplogroup, similar to the frequency for modern East Asian populations. A high frequency of O1 was found in Liangzhu Culture sites around the mouth of the Yangtze River, linking this culture to modern Austronesian and Daic populations. A rare haplogroup, O3d, was found at the Daxi site in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, indicating that the Daxi people might be the ancestors of modern Hmong-Mien populations, which show only small traces of O3d today. Noticeable genetic segregation was observed among the prehistoric cultures, demonstrating the genetic foundation of the multiple origins of the Chinese Civilization.

During the Zhou Dynasty, the Wu and Yue peoples inhabited the area and lived similarly to the Liangzhu, with heavy aquaculture and stilt houses, but became increasingly sinicized through contact with northern Chinese states. They adopted the Chinese writing system and created excellent bronze swords. The Chu state from the west (in Hubei) expanded into this area and defeated the Yue state. After Chu was conquered by Qin, China was unified. It was not until the fall of Western Jin during the early 4th century AD that northern Chinese moved to Jiangnan in significant numbers. The Yellow River valley was becoming barren due to flooding (lack of trees after intensive logging to create farmland) and constant harassment and invasion by the Wu Hu nomads.

Although Chinese civilization originated in the North China Plain around the Yellow River, natural climate change and continuous harassment from nomadic enemies damaged North China's agricultural productivity throughout the 1st millennium AD. Many people settled in South China, where the Jiangnan area's warm and wet climate were ideal for supporting agriculture and allowed highly sophisticated cities to arise. As early as the East Han period (circa 2nd century AD), Jiangnan areas became one of the more economically prominent areas of China. Other than rice, Jiangnan produced highly profitable trade products such as tea and silk. Convenient transportation - the Grand Canal to the north, the Yangtze River to the west, and seaports such as Yangzhou - contributed greatly to local trade and also trade between ancient China and other nations.

Several Chinese Dynasties were based in Jiangnan. During the Three Kingdoms period, Jianye (modern-day Nanjing) was the capital of the Kingdom of Wu. In the 3rd century, many northern Chinese moved here after Turkic nomads controlled the north. In the 12th century, nomadic tribes completely overran northern China and the exiled Song Dynasty government retreated south, establishing its capital at Hangzhou. The early Ming Dynasty was initially based at Nanjing before the second Ming Emperor, Yongle, moved the capital to Beijing. The Qing Dynasty Emperor Qianlong made many visits to Jiang Nan (乾隆下江南), which have been the popular subject of numerous Chinese operas and television dramas. After the fall of the Chinese monarchy in 1911, the Republic of China had its national capital at Nanjing. During the 19th century Taiping Rebellion, the rebel Taiping state occupied much of Jiangnan, which suffered much damage from the fighting.

 

 

Yangtze River Delta

The Yangtze River Delta or Yangtze Delta, also called Yangzi, or Chang Jiang Delta, Rive Chang Delta, Tai Lake Region or the Golden Triangle of the Yangtze (長江三角洲), generally comprises the triangular-shaped territory of Wu-speaking Shanghai, southern Jiangsu province and northern Zhejiang province of China. The area lies at the heart of the region traditionally called Jiangnan (literally, "south of the Yangtze River"). The Yangtze river drains into the East China Sea. In modern times the area is home to an economy the size of a medium-sized developed country, encompassing a GDP (when measured to purchasing power parity) of some $2 Trillion US, which is 21% of the national economy (about the size of that of France, 2,046,899 MM$ in 2007 according to the International Monetary Fund).

The area near the Southern Dynasties period, the Yangtze Delta has been a main cultural and economic center of China. Key cities of the region in pre-modern times include Suzhou (Wu), Nanjing, Hangzhou and Shaoxing.

Since the 9th century, the Yangtze Delta has been the most populous area in China, East Asia, and one of the most densely populated areas of the world. During the mid to late period of Tang Dynasty (618-907), the region emerged as an economic centre, and the Yangtze River Delta became the most important agricultural, handicraft industrial and economic center for the late Tang China.

In Song Dynasty, especially during the South Song Dynasty period (1127–1279), with its capital situated in Lin'an (Now Hangzhou), Hangzhou became the biggest city in the East Asia (and some claim, in the world) with a population more than 1.5 million, and the economic status of the Yangtze Delta became more enhanced. Ningbo became one of the two biggest seaports in East Asia along with Quanzhou (in Fujian Province)

During the mid-late Ming Dynasty period (1368–1644), the first capitalism bud of the East Asia was born and developed in this area, although it was disrupted by the Manchurian invasion and controlled strictly and carefully by the Confucian central government in Beijing, it continued its development slowly throughout the rest of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the delta became the a large financial centre for the country. And also played the most important role in Agriculture and handicraft industry.

During the Qianlong Era (1735-1796), Shanghai began developing rapidly and became the largest port in the Far East. From late 19th century to early 20th century, Shanghai was the biggest commercial center in the Far East. And the Yangtze River Delta became the first industrialized area in China. After the Chinese economic reform program, which began in 1978, Shanghai again became the most important economic center in mainland China, and is emerging to become one of Asia's centres for commerce. In modern times, the Yangtze Delta metropolitan areas are centred at Shanghai, and also flanked by the major metropolitan areas of Hangzhou, Suzhou, Ningbo, and Nanjing, home to nearly 90 million people (of which an estimated 80 million are urban residents), is the center of Chinese economic development, and surpasses other concentrations of metropolitan regions (including the Pearl River Delta) in the People's Republic of China in terms of economic growth, productivity and per capita income.

 

Domestication of Rice

Based on one chloroplast and two nuclear gene regions, Londo et al (2006) conclude that Oryza sativa rice was domesticated at least twice—indica in eastern India, Myanmar and Thailand; and japonica in southern China—though they concede that there is archaeological and genetic evidence for a single domestication of rice in the lowlands of China.

Because the functional allele for non-shattering—the critical indicator of domestication in grains—as well as five other single nucleotide polymorphisms, is identical in both indica and japonica, Vaughan et al (2008) determined that there was a single domestication event for Oryza sativa in the region of the Yangtze river valley.

Continental East Asia: Rice appears to have been used by the Early Neolithic populations of Lijiacun and Yunchanyan. Evidence of possible rice cultivation in China from ca. 11,500 BP has been found, however it is still questioned whether the rice was indeed being cultivated, or instead being gathered as wild rice. Bruce Smith, an archaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who has written on the origins of agriculture, says that evidence has been mounting that the Yangtze was probably the site of the earliest rice cultivation.

Zhao (1998) argues that collection of wild rice in the Late Pleistocene had, by 6400 BC, led to the use of primarily domesticated rice. Morphological studies of rice phytoliths from the Diaotonghuan archaeological site clearly show the transition from the collection of wild rice to the cultivation of domesticated rice. The large number of wild rice phytoliths at the Diaotonghuan level dating from 12,000-11,000 BP indicates that wild rice collection was part of the local means of subsistence. Changes in the morphology of Diaotonghuan phytoliths dating from 10,000-8,000 BP show that rice had by this time been domesticated. Analysis of Chinese rice residues from Pengtoushan which were C14(carbon dating) dated to 8200-7800 BC show that rice had been domesticated by this time.

In 1998, Crawford & Shen reported that the earliest of 14 AMS or radiocarbon dates on rice from at least nine Early to Middle Neolithic sides is no older than 7000 BC, that rice from the Hemudu and Luojiajiao sites indicates that rice domestication likely began before 5000 BC, but that most sites in China from which rice remains have been recovered are younger than 5000 BC.

 

Iron Age

The Iron Age was the stage in the development of any people in which tools and weapons whose main ingredient was iron were prominent. The adoption of this material coincided with other changes in some past societies often including differing agricultural practices, religious beliefs and artistic styles, although this was not always the case.

In history, the Iron Age is the last principal period in the three-age system for classifying prehistoric societies, preceded by the Bronze Age. Its date and context vary depending on the country or geographical region.

Ancient Near East: The Iron Age in the Ancient Near East is believed to have begun with the discovery of iron smelting and smithing techniques in Anatolia or the Caucasus in the late 2nd millennium BC (circa 1300 BC).

The use of iron weapons instead of bronze weapons spread rapidly throughout the Near East by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. Anatolians had begun forging weapons out of iron, which was a superior metal to bronze, by 1500 BC at the latest.

The use of iron weapons by the Hittites was believed to have been a major factor in the rapid rise of the Hittite Empire. Because the area in which iron technology first developed was near the Aegean, the technology expanded into both Asia and Europe simultaneously, aided by Hittite expansion. The Sea Peoples and the related Philistines are often associated with the introduction of iron technology into Asia.

Indian Subcontinent: Archaeological sites in India, such as Malhar, Dadupur, Raja Nala Ka Tila and Lahuradewa in present day Uttar Pradesh show iron implements in the period 1800 BC – 1200 BC. Some scholars believe that by the early 13th century BC, iron smelting was practiced on a bigger scale in India, suggesting that the date the technology's inception may be earlier.

The beginning of the 1st millennium BC saw extensive developments in iron metallurgy in India. Technological advancement and mastery of iron metallurgy was achieved during this period of peaceful settlements. An iron working centre in east India is dated to the first millennium BC.

In Southern India (present day Mysore) iron appeared as early as 11th to 12th centuries BC; these developments were too early for any significant close contact with the northwest of the country.

China: In 1972, near the city of Gaocheng (藁城) in Shijiazhuang (now Hebei province), an iron-bladed bronze tomahawk dating back to the 14th century BC was excavated. After a scientific examination, the iron was shown to be made from meteoric siderite. The Iron Age in East Asia began in earnest, however, when cast-iron objects appeared in Yangzi Valley toward the end of the 6th century BC. The few objects were found at Changsha and Nanjing. According to the mortuary evidence suggests that the initial use of iron in Lingnan belongs to the mid to late Warring States period (from about 350 BC).

The techniques used in Lingnan is a combination of bivalve moulds of distinct southern tradition and the incorporation of piece mould technology from the Zhongyuan The products of the combination of these two periods are bells, vessels, weapons and ornaments and the sophisticated cast.

An Iron Age culture of the Tibetan Plateau has tentatively been associated with the Zhang Zhung culture described in early Tibetan writings.

 

Dragon Boat

A dragon boat or "dragonboat" is a very long and narrow, canoe style human-powered boat now used in the team paddling sport of dragon boat racing which originated in China over 2000 years ago. While competition has taken place annually for more than 20 centuries as part of folk ritual, it emerged in modern times as an international "sport" in Hong Kong in 1976.

For competition events, dragon boats are generally rigged with decorative Chinese dragon heads and tails. At other times the decorative regalia is usually removed, although the drum often remains aboard for training purposes. Dragon boat races are traditionally held as part of the annual Duanwu Jie festival (端午節; Dragon Boat festival) observance in China.

History and Culture of Dragon Boat Racing: Similar to outrigger canoe racing but unlike competitive rowing and canoe racing, dragon boating has a rich fabric of ancient ceremonial, ritualistic and religious traditions. In other words, the modern competitive aspect is but one small part of this complex of watercraftsmanship.

The use of dragon boats for racing and dragons are believed by modern scholars, sinologists and anthropologists - for example Joseph Needham and George Worcester, author of Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze River -- to have originated in southern central China more than 2,500 years ago, along the banks of such iconic rivers as the Chang Jiang, also known as Yangtze (that is, during the same era when the games of ancient Greece were being established at Olympia). Dragon boat racing as the basis for annual water rituals and festival celebrations, and for the traditional veneration of the Asian dragon water deity, has been practiced continuously since this period. The celebration is an important part of ancient agricultural Chinese society, celebrating the summer rice harvest. Dragonboat racing activity historically was situated in the Chinese sub-continent's southern-central "rice bowl": where there were rice paddies, so were there dragonboats.

There are long paddled boats depicted on ancient Dong Son drums from the southern China (Yunnan Province) and Anam / Viet Nam region. Comparable watercraft are shown in bas relief carvings at the Angkor Wat a world heritage site in Cambodia.

Contemporary folk tradition commonly attributes dragon boating's origins to the saving of a drowning folk hero, Qu Yuan (屈原; ca. 340 BC - 278 BC). But dragon boats are raced in some parts of China where this legendary figure is not venerated and revered, and the competitions predate the Qu Yuan legend itself, a tale which emerged only in the Han Dynasty, as listed in Sima Qian's work, Record of the Grand Historian. Qu Yuan and his resurrection following his suicidal drowning in the Miluo River to protest political corruption can also be regarded on a sociological level as a kind of fertility god for ensuring good rice crop harvests, giving rise to annual re-enactments by the agrarian societies living in the rice-reaping regions of ancient China. Rice seedlings are annually 'drowned' underwater in the rice paddies, and this is annually symbolized by Qu Yuan's watery demise during the Duan Wu Jie.

 

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Shanghai Dialect

Shanghainese (上海話) is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai, and the surrounding region. It is classified as a Sino-Tibetan language. Shanghainese, like other Wu dialects, is largely not mutually intelligible with other Chinese dialects such as Standard Mandarin, or even other subbranches of the Wu language group.

Shanghainese is the representative dialect of Northern Wu; it contains vocabulary and expressions from the entire Northern Wu area (southern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang). With nearly 14 million speakers, Shanghainese is also the largest single coherent form of Wu Chinese. In Western sources, the term "Shanghainese" often refers to all Wu dialects and not specifically the particular Wu dialect spoken in Shanghai. The total number of Wu speakers is over 80 million, the second most widely spoken Chinese language after Mandarin.

Shanghainese is rich in consonants and pure vowels. Like other northern Wu dialects, the Shanghai dialect has voiced initials(although technically these are slack voiced, adding a slightly breathy quality to a following vowel). Neither Mandarin nor Cantonese has voiced initials. The Shanghainese tonal system is significantly different from other Chinese languages. Shanghainese is a language with two live tonal contrasts (high and low), while Mandarin and Cantonese are contour tonal languages.

Intelligibility and Variations: Shanghainese is not mutually intelligible with any dialect of Mandarin. It is around 50% intelligible (with 28.9% lexical similarity with the Mandarin heard in Beijing) with standard Mandarin. This roughly corresponds to the lexical similarity between German and French.

Shanghainese is part of the larger Wu subgroup of Chinese. It is similar, to a certain degree, to the language heard in neighbouring Kunshan, Suzhou, and Ningbo. People mingling between these areas do not need to code-switch to Mandarin when they speak to each other. However, there are noticeable tonal and phonological changes which do not impede intelligibility. As the dialect continuum of Wu continues to further distances, however, significant changes occur in phonology and lexicon to the point where it is no longer possible to converse intelligibly. The majority of Shanghainese speakers find that by Wuxi, differences become significant and the Wuxi dialect would take weeks to months for a Shanghainese speaker to fully "pick up". Similarly, Hangzhou dialect is understood by most Shanghainese speakers, but it is considered "rougher" and does not have as much flow in comparison. The language evolved in and around Taizhou, Zhejiang, by which point it becomes difficult for a Shanghainese speaker to comprehend. Wenzhou dialect, spoken in southern Zhejiang province, although considered part of the Wu subgroup of languages, is not at all intelligible with Shanghainese.

 

 

Wu Language

Map of Sinitic Languages by Gohu1er

Wú (吳方言; also吳語) is one of the major divisions of the Chinese language. It is spoken in most of Zhejiang province, the municipality of Shanghai, southern Jiangsu province, as well as smaller parts of Anhui, Jiangxi, and Fujian provinces. Major Wu dialects include those of Shanghai, Suzhou, Wenzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua, Yongkang, and Quzhou. The traditional prestige dialect of Wu is the Suzhou dialect, though due to its large population, the Shanghai dialect is today sometimes considered the prestige dialect.

As of 1991, there are at least 77 million speakers of Wu Chinese, making it the second most populous Chinese language after Mandarin, which has 800 million speakers, and the 10th most populous language in the world.

Among speakers of other Chinese languages, Wu is often subjectively judged to be soft, light, and flowing. There is even a special term used to describe these qualities of Wu speech (吳儂軟語). The actual source of this impression is harder to place. It is likely a combination of many factors. Among speakers of Wu, for example, Shanghainese is considered softer and mellower than the variant spoken in Ningbo, although some Wu speakers still insist that old standard Suzhou dialect is more pleasant and beautiful than the dialects of Shanghai and Ningbo.

Like other varieties of Chinese, there is debate as to whether Wu is a language or a dialect. By the standard of mutual intelligibility, Wu is a separate language; however, socially it is considered to be a regional form of the Chinese language. See Identification of the varieties of Chinese for the issues surrounding this dispute. In terms of written communication, there is a great but not complete degree of mutual intelligibility between Wu and Mandarin within the People's Republic of China.

History of the Wu Language: The modern Wu language can be traced back to the ancient Wu and Yue peoples centred around what is now southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang. The Japanese Go-on pronunciation of Chinese characters (obtained from the Wu Kingdom during the Three Kingdoms period) is from the same region of China where Wu is spoken today.

"Go-on" (呉音) are one of the different readings of Japanese kanji. They are old pronunciations of Chinese characters, believed to be taken from China to Japan prior to the importation (by the Kenzuishi envoy to the Sui dynasty and monks studying abroad) of "kan-on" (漢音, lit. "Han sound") readings from Chang'an during the Nara period. Like kan-on readings, they are said to display the characteristics of Middle Chinese.

Introduced to Japan during the 5th and 6th centuries, when China was divided into separate Northern and Southern Dynasties, it is thought that go-on readings were imported either directly from the Southern dynasty, or through the Korean peninsula. This explanation is based mainly on historical reasoning: there was an influx of other foreign thought from China and Korea to Japan at that time, including both Buddhist and Confucianist thought.

Go-on readings are used particularly often in Buddhist terms and legal terms, especially those of the Nara and Heian periods. When kan-on readings were introduced to Japan, their go-on equivalents did not disappear, and even today, go-on and kan-on readings continue to be used together. Go-on readings were also used for the Chinese characters of the ancient Japanese syllabary used in the Kojiki.

Like most other branches of Chinese, Wu descends from Middle Chinese. Although Wu represents the earliest split from the rest of these branches, and thus keeps many ancient characteristics, it was influenced by northern Chinese (Mandarin) throughout its development. This was due to its geographical closeness to north China and also to the high rate of education in this region. During the time between Ming Dynasty and early Republican era, the main characteristics of modern Wu were formed. The Suzhou dialect became the most influential, and many dialectologists use it in citing examples of Wu.

After the Taiping Revolution at the end of Qing dynasty, in which the Wu-speaking region was devasated by war, Shanghai was inundated with migrants from other parts of the Wu-speaking. This greately affected the dialect of Shanghai, bringing, for example, influence from the Ningbo dialect to a dialect which, at least within the walled city of Shanghai, was almost identical to the Suzhou dialect. As a result of the population boom, in the first half of the 20th century, Shanghainese became almost a regional lingua franca within the region, to some extent eclipsing the status of the Suzhou dialect.

After the founding of People's Republic of China, the strong promotion of Mandarin in the Wu-speaking region influenced the development of the language. Wu was gradually excluded from most modern media and schools. Public organisations are required to use Mandarin. With the influx of a migrant non Wu-speaking population and the near total conversion of public media and organizations to exclusive use of Mandarin, as well as the radical Mandarin promotion measures, the development of the Wu dialects was greatly hampered. It became common in the region to encounter children who grew up with Mandarin as their mother tongue, with little or no fluency in Wu at all.

Many people have noticed this trend and thus call for the protection of this language. More and more TV programs in Wu appear although they are mostly comedies rather than formal programs.

Roughly speaking, modern Wu is a leftover of the Chinese dialects – see language tree starting from 1500 BC with Wu's position relative to other dialects.

 

Zhou -- Chu (楚國) -- Wu (吳國) -- Wu -- Wu -- Wu --Wu -- Wu (Shanghai)

Zhou -- Chu -- Wu -- Wu -- Wu -- Wu -- Hui -- Hui (Anjui)

 

Huizhou (徽州話 or Hui (徽語), also known as Huainan (淮南話), is a division of Chinese. Its status is disputed among linguists, with some classifying it as Wu, others as Gan, and still others setting it apart as a primary branch of Chinese.

Hui is spoken over a small area compared to other Chinese varieties: in and around the historical region of Huizhou (for which it is named), in about ten or so mountainous counties in southern Anhui, plus a few more in neighbouring Zhejiang and Jiangxi. Despite its small size, Hui displays a very high degree of internal variation. Nearly every county has its own distinct dialect unintelligible to a speaker a few counties away. It is for this reason that bilingualism and multilingualism are common among speakers of Hui.

Like all other varieties of Chinese, there is plenty of dispute as to whether Hui is a language or a dialect. See Identification of the varieties of Chinese for the issues surrounding this dispute.

Huizhou (徽州) is a historical region in southeastern China. It corresponds to the southernmost part of Anhui province (Huangshan Shi and Jixi County) plus Wuyuan County in northeastern Jiangxi province.

Huizhou is a mountainous region, with its own distinct culture as well as spoken Chinese form, known as Huizhou and recognized as one of the main subdivisions of spoken Chinese. Huizhou is also well-known for the scenic Huangshan Mountains.

Since the Ming dynasty, the merchants of Huizhou, collectively known in Chinese as Huishang (徽商) were renowned for their economic prowess. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, they formed a formidable political force both regionally and nationally.

 

Wu (吳) or Wuyueh (吳越) is a region in the Jiangnan area (the south of Yangtze River), surrounding Suzhou, in Jiangsu province and Zhejiang province of China. It is also the abbreviation of several kingdoms based in Wu. The two largest cities in the Wu region today are Shanghai and Hangzhou. Most of the region speaks the Wu language.

The first Wu nation was established in late Zhou Dynasty. Once considered as a foreign kingdom to Kingdom Zhou, it emerged to be a power overlord at the end of Spring and Autumn Period.

The most influential Wu nation was the Kingdom of Wu during the period of Three Kingdoms.

The city of Suzhou (also called Wu) has traditionally been the capital of the Wu nations. The dialect spoken in Suzhou is usually regarded as the standard Wu language.

Go-on (呉音), which is one of the sources of Japanese pronunciation for kanji (the others being kan-on, tō-on and kan'yō-on), is sometimes said to have originated from this region. The Go- component in the name Go-on is cognate to the Chinese word Wu (Wu is the pronunciation for the Chinese character 呉 in Mandarin. However, in Wu language 呉 is usually pronounced as Ho, Oh, Ng, or Nguu).

 

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Chu State

Chǔ (楚) was a kingdom in what is now central and southern China during the Spring and Autumn period (722-481 BC) and Warring States Period (481-221 BC). Its ruling house had the surname mi (芈), and clan name xiong (熊), and originally was of the noble rank of zi, roughly comparable to a viscount.

It was originally known as Jing (荆) and then as Jingchu (荆楚). At the height of its power, the Chu kingdom occupied vast areas of land, including the present-day provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing, Henan, Shanghai, and parts of Jiangsu. The Chu capital was at Ying (郢), around modern-day Jingzhou, which is located in what is today Hubei province.

History: The land of Jing was inhabited by the native Chu people, who was ethnically and linguistically akin to today's Miao and Yao peoples, and are still in many ways claimed by some modern Mien-Hmong groups as distant ancestors. The land of Hunan and Hubei, which was the core region of the Chu Kingdom, was for many years after the absorption of this kingdom into Imperial China, the homeland of indigenous non-Chinese-speaking tribes called the Man. The core ethnic group of Chu was most likely the earliest Man tribe to adopt the Chinese, or Huaxia form of state, social organization and high culture, and to replace their Hmong-Mien indigenous tongue with a Sinitic creole or dialect. Many Man tribes of Hunan and Hubei remained Hmong-Mien-speaking long after the core population of Chu became a Sinitic-speaking "Regional Chinese" population. Eventually, when the majority of Man tribes were gradually absorbed into what is today the Han Chinese population of Hunan and Hubei, there still remain today small enclaves of Hmong-Mien groups in the region including the She People. However, southward migration of most Hmong-Mien groups that did not linguistically Sinicize, gave us the largest concentration of this linguistic family in Sichuan, Guizhou, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. Whether the Chu people were direct ancestors of modern Miao, Yao and She groups, or merely co-linguist relatives, remains to be discovered from the folklores of these modern tribal societies.

The early Chu state was ruled by an aristocracy with close affinity to the Zhou kings, with its capital at Danyang. Prior to the dissolution of Zhou's power, the territory was transferred by authority of the King Cheng of Zhou (1042-1021 BC) of Western Zhou to Xiong Yi.

In its early years, Chu was a successful expansionist and militaristic state. Chu developed a reputation for coercing and absorbing its allies. Chu grew from a small, dependent state into a large empire worthy of contention, even attaining the traditional title of one of "The Five Overlord States of the Spring and Autumn Period" (春秋五霸). Chu first consolidated its power by absorbing the lesser states within its immediate vicinity in Hubei; then, it expanded into the north towards the North China Plain. The threat from Chu resulted in multiple northern alliances against Chu and its allies; these alliances successfully kept Chu in check, with its first major victory at the Battle of Chengpu. During Chu Wenwang's reign (689-677 BC), the Chu capital transferred to Ying (郢), near Jingzhou in modern Hubei Province.

The kingdom's power continued even after the end of the Spring and Autumn period in 481 BC. Chu overran Cai to the north in 447 BC. However, by the end of the 5th century BC, the Chu government had become very corrupt and inefficient with much of the state's treasury to pay for a large official retinue. Many officials had no meaningful task to the state except taking money. Thus, Chu's large army was of low quality due to poor funding.

In the late 390s BC, King Dao of Chu (楚悼王) made Wu Qi his prime minister. Wu Qi's reforms began in 389 BCE to transform Chu into an efficient and powerful state, lowering the salaries of officials and removing useless ones. He also enacted building codes to make the capital, Ying seem less barbaric. Despite Wu Qi's massive unpopularity with the Chu government (except the King), his reforms made Chu very powerful until the late 4th century BC, when Zhao and Qin were ascendant. Chu's powerful army annexed Chen and Cai states, defeating the states of Wei and Yue. However, Wu Qi was assassinated by the Chu officials at the funeral of King Dao in 381 BC.

During the late Warring States Period, Chu was increasingly pressured by Qin to its west, especially after Qin enacted and preserved the legalistic reforms of Shang Yang. Chu's size and power made it the key state in alliances against Qin. As Qin expanded into Chu territory, Chu was forced to expand southwards and eastwards, absorbing local cultural influences along the way. In 333 BC, Chu and Qi partitioned and annexed the coastal state of Yue.

By the late Warring States period (about the late 4th century BC), however, Chu's prominent status had fallen into decay. As a result of several invasions headed by Zhao and Qin, Chu was eventually subjugated by Qin.

According to the Zhan Guo Ce, a debate between Zonghengjia strategist Zhang Yi and the Qin general Sima Cuo on unifying China led to two conclusions. Zhang Yi believed conquering Han (state) and seizing the Mandate of Heaven from the figurehead resident Zhou Dynasty would be wise. Sima Cuo considered Chu as its main rival in the struggle to unite the Warring States. Sima Cuo decided it was essential to control the fertile Sichuan Basin to increase agricultural output and most importantly, to control the upper reaches of the Yangzi River that led to the Chu heartland.

Sima Cuo, according to the Zhan Guo Ce, remarked, "得蜀则得楚。楚亡则天下并。"

To obtain Shu is to obtain Chu. Once Chu is eliminated, the country will be united.

King Huiwen of Qin decided to support Sima Cuo. In 316 BC, the Qin army conquered the Shu (state) and Ba (state) and successively expanded to the east in the following decades. In 278 BC, Qin general Bai Qi conquered Yingdu. Following the fall of Yingdu, the Chu government moved to various locations in the east until settling in Shouchun (in today's Anhui province) in 241 BC.

At this critical moment when Chu was nearing annihilation, Qin set its strategic aims to Central China, especially the powerful Zhao (state). After a massive two year struggle, Bai Qi lured out, surrounded, isolated, forced the surrender of and massacred the main Zhao force of 400,000 men at Changping. After 260 BC, all major obstacles to Qin dominance ended and it was a matter of time until China's unification.

Qin's Conquest of Chu 225-223 BC: In 225 BC, only three kingdoms (states) remained independent: Chu, Yan and Qi. Chu had recovered significantly enough to mount serious resistance after their disastrous defeats to Qin in 278 BC and losing their centuries-old capital of Ying (Jingzhou). Despite its territorial size, resources and manpower, Chu's fatal flaw was its largely corrupt government that mostly overturned the legalistic-style reforms of Wu Qi 150 years ago, when Wu Qi transformed Chu into the most powerful state with an area of almost half of all the states combined. Ironically, Wu Qi was from the same state (Wei) as Shang Yang, whose legalistic reforms turned Qin into an invincible war machine at this stage.

The King of Qin, Ying Zheng, decided to finally defeat the remnants of the Chu state located in Huaiyang. According to Shiji, Ying Zheng had first asked his great general Wang Jian how many men he needed, but Wang Jian requested 600,000 men. Li Xing, ancestor to Han Dynasty general Li Guang, said 200,000 men would suffice. The first invasion was a disaster when 200,000 Qin troops were defeated by a counterattack and ambush of 500,000 Chu troops under Xiang Yan, who is related to Xiang Yu. Xiang Yan lured the Qin troops into a trap by allowing them a few initial victories. During the counterattack, Chu troops burned two large Qin camps. The Qin generals were Li Xing and Meng Wu, father of Meng Tian. Wang Jian was recalled and finally accepted to lead the second invasion force, requesting and receiving a force of 600,000 men. Wang Jian even asked for a lake, house and land for his descendants, responding to the Qin king's laughter that his extra requests will eventually pale once the empire is secured. The general continued to request luxury items and other commodities during the campaign. Wang Jian said to his dumbfounded officers that only by requesting more from the king, will the king have confidence in his general.

In 224 BC, the famed conqueror of the state of Zhao, Wang Jian, was recalled to lead a second invasion with 600,000 men. Chu's morale increased after their success in defeating a powerful Qin army the previous year. The Chu forces were content to await a siege. However, Wang Jian tricked the Chu army by appearing inactive in his fortifications but secretly training his troops to fight in Chu territory. After a year, Chu decided to disband due to inaction. Wang Jian then invaded and overran Huaiyang and the remaining Chu forces. Chu was finally conquered in 223 BC. During their peak sizes, both armies of Chu and Qin combined numbered over 1,000,000 troops, more than the massive battle of Changping between Qin and Zhao 35 years before. The excavated personal letters of two Qin regular soldiers, Hei Fu {黑夫} and Jin {惊}, tell of a protracted campaign in Huaiyang under general Wang Jian. Both soldiers wrote letters requesting supplies (clothing) and money from home to sustain the long waiting campaign.

The Chu realm at its most powerful was vast with many ethnicities and various customs. Despite the diversity, the Chu people were united by a common respect for nature, the supernatural, their heritage and loyalty to their ruling house and nobility, epitomized by the famed Chu statesman-poet Qu Yuan and the Chu Ci. The Chu populace in areas conquered by Qin openly ignored the stringent Qin laws and governance, which was recorded in the excavated bamboo slips of a Qin administrator in Hubei, Xi{喜}. Chu was one of the last states to fall, only 11 years before the death of Qin Shihuang, and its people aspired of overthrowing the painful yoke of Qin rule and reestablishing the Chu state.

After Qin Shihuang's very short reign, peasants, soldiers and relatives of nobles and the ruling house of Chu quickly organized into violent insurrections against the repressive Qin governance, initializing the anti-Qin rebellion that spread to the rest of China. The people of Chu, whose culture was a naturalistic and Daoist one, were resentful of the forced labor under Qin, and folk poems recorded the mournful sadness of the Chu families of men who worked in the frigid north to construct the Great Wall of China. Eventually, two men from the Chu land, Liu Bang and Xiang Yu led the anti-Qin revolution and fought each other in the Chu-Han Contention to reunite and rule China. Liu Bang prevailed and created the Han Dynasty, ushering in an era of almost 400 years of unified rule with more than 200 years of great internal peace and prosperity.

The Chu people and customs were major influences in the new era of Western Han. Liu Bang immediately initialized the Daoist Wu wei governance, made peace with the Xiongnu through Heqin intermarriages, quickly rewarding his allies and giving them pseudo-fiefdoms, and allowing the population to rest from centuries of warfare. Eventually, by the time of Han Wudi, Chu folk culture in everyday lifestyles and Chu aesthetics were gradually amalgamated with state-sponsored Confucian ideals and Qin-styled centralized governance to create a distinct and unified "Chinese" culture, visible during the Eastern Han period.

Culture: Based on archaeological finds, Chu's culture was initially quite similar to that of other Zhou states. Later on, Chu culture absorbed indigenous elements as the state expanded to the south and east, developing a distinct culture from the traditional Northern Zhou states.

Early Chu burial offerings consisted primarily of bronze vessels in the Zhou style. Later Chu burials, especially during the Warring States Period, featured distinct Chu burial objects, such as colorful lacquerware, iron and silk, accompanied by a reduction in bronze vessel offerings.

A common Chu motif was the vivid depiction of wildlife, mystical animals and natural imagery, such as snakes, mystical dragons, phoenixes, tigers and free-flowing clouds and serpent-like beings. Some archaeologists speculate that Chu may have had cultural connections to the vanished Shang dynasty, since many motifs used by Chu appeared earlier at Shang sites, such as motifs depicting serpent-tailed gods.

In terms of philosophy, the Chu culture and government strongly supported Daoism and native shaman folk beliefs supplemented with some Confucian ideals. The naturalistic and flowing art, the Chu Ci, historical records (Shiji), excavated bamboo documents (Guodian bamboo slips) and other artifacts reveal heavy Daoist and native folk influence in Chu culture. The disposition to a spiritual, often pleasurable and decadent lifestyle and the confidence in the size of the Chu realm led to the inefficiency and eventual destruction of the Chu state to the ruthless legalist state of Qin. Even though the Qin realm lacked the vast natural resources and waterways of Chu, the Qin government maximized its output and created a system of ruthless efficiency under the minister Shang Yang, installing a meritocracy focused solely on agricultural and military might.

Later Chu culture was known for its affinity for employing shamanistic rituals. Chu was also known for its distinct music; archaeological evidence shows that Chu music was annotated differently from Zhou music; Chu music also showed an inclination for using different performance ensembles, as well as unique instruments; In Chu, the se was preferred over the qin, while both instruments were equally preferred in the northern Zhou states.

Chu came into frequent contact with other peoples in the south, most notably the Ba, Yue and the Hundred Yue. Numerous burials and burial objects in the Ba and Yue styles were discovered throughout the territory of Chu, co-existing with Chu-style burials and burial objects.

The early rulers of the Han Dynasty romanticized the culture of Chu, sparking a renewed interest in Chu cultural elements such as the Chu Ci (楚辭). Evidence of heavy Chu cultural influence during the early years of Han Dynasty appears in Mawangdui. After the Han dynasty, Chu developed an undeserved reputation for being a barbarian state; Confucian scholars considered Chu culture with distaste, criticizing the "lewd" music and shamanistic rituals associated with Chu culture.

Chu artisanship shows a mastery of form and color, especially the lacquer woodworks. Red and black pigmented lacquer were most used. Silk-weaving also attained a high level of craftsmanship, creating lightweight robes with flowing designs. These examples were preserved in waterlogged tombs (this preserved lacquerware, which is vulnerable to peel off in dry conditions) and coal/white clay sealed tombs (this preserved everything extremely well, since fine white clay is extremely tight-packed). Mawangdui is the prefect example of well-sealed tomb.

As a southern state, Chu was close to the Wu-Yue influences. Chu produced broad bronze swords that were similar to Wuyue swords, but not as intricate. Chu also used the difficult to read script called "Birds and Worms (鸟虫文}" style, which was common in the Wu and Yue states.

Chu was in the region of many rivers, so it created an efficient riverine boat transport system augmented by wagons. These are detailed in bronze tallies with gold inlay regarding trade regulations around the capital, Ying.

Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient China by Constance A. Cook, John S. Major

 

 

 

 

 

Wu State

Wu (吳) was a state during the Spring and Autumn Period in China. The state of Wu straddled the mouth of the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) east of the State of Chu. Considered a semi-barbarian state by ancient Chinese historians, its capital was Suzhou.

According to Sima Qian, the rulers of Wu claimed to be descended from Taibo, the elder uncle of King Wen of Zhou. Realising that his younger brother, Jili, was wiser than him, and deserved to inherit the throne, Taibo would have fled to Wu and settled there. Three generations later, King Wu of Zhou defeated the last Yin emperor, and enfeoffed the descendents of Taibo in Wu.

The State of Jin aided Wu's rise to power as a useful ally against the State of Chu. In 584 BC, Wu rebelled against the State of Chu; the action occurred after being persuaded by Wuchen, a minister of the State of Jin who defected from Chu.

Afterwards, Wu would be a constant threat to the state of Chu on its southeastern flank until its demise. Wu curried relationships with Chu's vassals in the Yangtze river region to weaken support for Chu. In 506 BC, Wu launched a surprise attack and occupied the capital of Chu. Afterwards, Wu was briefly the most powerful nation, and turned to other campaigns, defeating the State of Qi in 484 BC.

Ironically, Wu was later threatened by an upstart state to its south, the State of Yue; the State of Chu aided Yue's rise to power as a counter to Wu. Although Wu won a major victory against Yue in 494 BC, it failed to completely subjugate Yue, helped in part by Yue's bribing of an important Wu minister. While Wu was engaged in a military campaign in the north, Yue launched a surprise attack on Wu in 482 BC and conquered the capital. Eventually, the State of Yue conquered Wu in 473 BC.

The leaders of Yue and Wu, similar to Chu, proclaimed themselves kings in the 6th century BCE, showing the drastic weakening of the Zhou court's authority during the Spring and Autumn Period.

Wu and Yue were masters of metallurgy, fabricating excellent swords, with incised messages, geometric patterns and inlaid gold or silver. Wu-Yue swords tend to use much more tin than copper compared to other states. Wu often sent swords as gifts to northern states, such as Qi and Cai states. Examples include the spearhead of King Fuchai, the sword of Prince Guang (the name of King Helu before he became King) or King Helu of Wu.

Possible Connection with Ancient Japan: The first Wu Kingdom was united by Taibo during the Spring and Autumn Period. Originally considered a barbarian state, the people of the Wu Kingdom became Sinicized during the Warring States Period. Ambassadoral visits to Japan by the later Northern Chinese dynasties Wei and Jin Dynasty (265-420) recorded that the Wō people of Japan claimed to be descendants of the Grand Count (Tàibó) of the Kingdom of Wu. Historical records also show that the ancient Japanese had similar lifestyles and customs as pre-Sinicized inhabitants of the Wu Kingdom, including tattooing, ritual teeth-pulling, and baby-carrying on backs. The Japanese tradition of eating raw fish is common in the Wu area of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Tattooing examples are found on Haniwa statues with red paint on hands and faces. Additionally, linguists point out possible similarities and links between the Japanese language and Wu dialect. In Onyomi readings of Japanese Kanji, Go-on is recognized and classified as the pronunciation derived from Wu region of China.

King Helü of wu (闔閭) of the state of Wu (r. 514 BC-496 BC) was initially known as Prince Guang Zung Fu (光). He reigned towards the end of the Spring and Autumn Period.

As Prince Guang wanted to kill King Liao of Wu and take the throne himself, Zhuan Zhu was recommended to Prince Guang by Wu Zixu. After Zhuan Zhu accomplished his mission in 515 BC the prince ascended the throne of Wu and became King Helü. The king assigned Wu Zixu to lead the design and building of the "great city," which evolved into the Suzhou of today.

In 506 BC Helü with the help of Wu Zixu and Sun-tzu, the author of The Art of War, launched major offensives against the state of Chu. They prevailed in five battles, one of which was the Battle of Baiju, and conquered the capital of Ying (郢).

His son, King Fuchai of Wu, succeeded him in 495 BC.

King Fuchai of Wu (吳王夫差) (reigned 495 BC - 473 BC), was the last king of Wu, a state in ancient China; he reigned towards the end of the Spring and Autumn Period. Son of King Helü of Wu, he became king in 495 BC. At the beginning of his reign, he defeated the troops of Yue in Fujiao (now Wu County, Jiangsu) and captured the capital city of Yue. Instead of annexing his enemy state thoroughly, as suggested by his Prime Minister Wu Zixu, he made peace with King Goujian of Yue. After this battle, he built the Canal Han and pushed his army northward. In Ailing, his army defeated the state of Qi. In 482 BC, as he attempted to get the hegemony in the dukes' meeting in Huangchi, his capital was taken by surprise by King Goujian of Yue.

However, during the later part of his reign, his extravagance and obsession with a Yue beauty, Xi Shi, lead to the weakening of his state. King Goujian of Yue took advantage of this situation to invade Wu. He was successful and Wu was destroyed in 473. King Fuchai was forced to commit suicide.

Fuchai was the first king from southern China to become hegemon. After and during his reign, southern China was gradually integrated into the northern states centered around the yellow river.

 

State of Yue

Yue (越國) was a state in China which existed during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, in the modern province of Zhejiang. During the Spring and Autumn Period, its capital was in Guiji (会稽), near the modern city of Shaoxing. After the conquest of Wu, the kings of Yue moved their capital north, to Wu (modern Suzhou).

According to Sima Qian, its rulers claimed to be descended from Yu the Great, and the annotation to the Guoyu mention that their surname was Mi (the same as the kings of Chu).

Yue in History: Ancient Chinese texts do not mention Yue until the wars which opposed it to its northern neighbour, the state of Wu, in the late 6th century BC. After several decades of conflict, King Goujian of Yue managed to destroy and annex Wu in 473 BC, and Yue became one of the powerful states in the early Warring States Period.

In 334 BC, the State of Yue, under the rule of Wu Jiang, the sixth generation descendant of Goujian, was eventually defeated and annexed by Chu. The second son of Wu Jiang, Ming Di, was appointed by the ruler of Chu to administer a place called Wu Cheng (present day Wu Xing county of Zhejiang province), which was situated south of Ou Yang Ting (pavilion), so named because it was built on the south and yang (sunny) side of the Ou Yu Mountain, and hence was given the title of Ou Yang Ting Hou (the equivalent of Marquis). After Chu was subjugated by Qin during the period of the Warring States in 223 BC, the title was abolished by the Qin Emperor Ying Zheng. The descendants took up the surname Ou, Ouyang or Ou Hou (since disappeared) in remembrance of his official title.

The state was famous for the quality of its metalworking, in particular its swords. Examples include the extremely-well preserved Sword of Goujian and sword of King Zhou Gou (州勾). The beauty Xi Shi was a native of the state.

Exile Government and Absorption into Han Dynasty: After the fall of Yue, the ruling family moved south to what is now northern Fujian and set up the Minyue kingdom. This successor state lasted until ~150 BC, when it miscalculated an alliance with the Han Dynasty.

Minyue cities, neatly constructed from stone, have been excavated in Wuyishan City (武夷山市), which already contains a UNESCO natural and cultural heritage site. Minyue tombs showing the Yue burial customs have recently been discovered.

 

King Goujian of Yue

King Goujian of Yue (越王勾踐) (reigned 496 BC - 465 BC) was the king of the Kingdom of Yue (present-day Shanghai, northern Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu) near the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, named Si Goujian (姒勾踐). Goujian was the son of Marquess Yunchang of Yue.

King Goujian's reign coincided with arguably the last major conflict of the Spring and Autumn Period, the struggle between Wu and Yue, wherein he eventually led his state to victory, annexing the rival. As such King Goujian is sometimes considered the last of the Five Hegemons (Spring and Autumn Period).

War between Wu and Yue: The war between Wu and Yue comprised several separate phases. It was started when a Yue princess, who was married to one of the princes of the neighbouring State of Wu, left her husband and fled back to the country of Yue. This became the spark for the war to come.

Upon the death of Yunchang and the accession of Goujian, King Helu of Wu seized the opportunity and launched an attack on Yue. At the Battle of Zuì Lǐ (槜李之战), however, Yue defeated Wu, and King Helu was mortally wounded; before his death he instructed his son, King Fuchai of Wu, "Never forget Yue!" Yue would be defeated three years later by a resurgent Wu, and Goujian captured, to serve as Fuchai's servant for three years until he was eventually allowed to return to his native state.

Upon resuming his rule King Goujian quickly appointed skilled politicians as advisors, such as Wen Zhong and Fan Li, to help build up the kingdom. During this time, his ministers also worked to weaken the State of Wu internally through bribes and diplomatic intrigue.

All the time, whilst ruling his kingdom, Goujian never relished in riches as a king, but instead slept on sticks and eating food suited for peasants, as well as forcing himself to taste bile. This way, he could remember his humiliations while serving under the State of Wu. There is a Chinese idiom, "Wo Xin Chang Dan" (literally meaning "sleeping on sticks and tasting gall"), which came about because of this and his perseverance.

After ten years of economic and political reforms the last phase of the war began, by which time the State of Yue had come a long way from its previous defeat; as described in the Shiji, Ten years of reforms; the state is rich, the warriors well-rewarded. The soldiers charge in the face of arrows like thirsty men heading for drink... making use of Fuchai's expedition to struggle with Jin for hegemony Goujian led his army and successfully attacked the Wu capital, killing the crown prince. In the 24th year of his reign (473 BC), Goujian led another expedition, laying siege to the capital for three years before it fell; when a surrender from Fuchai was refused he committed suicide, and Wu was annexed by Yue.

King Goujian's army was known for forcing their front line, composed of criminals sentenced to death, to commit suicide by decapitation to scare their enemy before battle.

The Sword of Goujian (越王勾踐劍) is an archaeological artifact of the Spring and Autumn Period found in 1965 in Hubei, China. Renowned for its sharpness and resilience to tarnish, it is a historical artifact of the People's Republic of China currently in the possession of Hubei Museum.

In 1965, while an archaeological survey was being performed along the second main aqueduct of the Zhang River Reservoir in Jingzhou, Hubei, more than fifty ancient tombs of the Chu State were found in Jiangling County. The dig started in the middle of October 1965 and ended in January 1966. More than 2000 artifacts were recovered from the sites, the most interesting of which was a bronze sword.

In December, 1965, 7 km away from the ruins of Jinan, an ancient capital of Chu, a casket was discovered in Wangshan site #1. Inside, an ornate sword was found on the left of a human skeleton.

The sword was found sheathed in a wooden black lacquer scabbard. The scabbard had an almost air-tight fit with the sword body. Unsheathing the sword revealed an untarnished blade, despite the tomb being soaked in underground water for over two thousand years. A simple test conducted by the archaeologists showed that the blade could still easily cut a stack of twenty pieces of paper.

On one side of the blade, two columns of text were visible. In total there are eight characters written in an ancient script. The script was found to be the one called "鸟虫文" (literally "'birds and worms'-characters" owing to the intricate decorations to the defining strokes), a variant of zhuan that is very difficult to read. Initial analysis of the text deciphered six of the characters, "越王" (King of Yue) and "自作用剑" ("made this sword for (his) personal use").

The 'birds and worms script', was used in the Kingdoms of Wu, Chu, and Yue. It was found on several artifacts including the Spear of Fuchai, and Sword of Goujian.

 

Xi Shi

Xi Shi (西施, c. 506 BC – ?) was one of the renowned Four Beauties of ancient China. She was said to have lived during the end of Spring and Autumn Period in Zhuji, the capital of the ancient State of Yue.

Xi Shi's beauty was said to be so extreme that while leaning over a balcony to look at the fish in the pond, the fish would be so dazzled that they forgot to swim and gradually sunk away from the surface, birds would forget to fly and fall from the sky, the moon would fade, and flowers would close their petals in shame in comparison to her. (Thus the idiom 沉魚落雁, 閉月羞花 which is used to compliment someone's beauty.)

King Goujian of Yue, king of Yue, was once imprisoned after a defeat in a war by King Fuchai of Wu, king of the State of Wu. The state of Yue later became a tribulatory to Wu. Secretly planning his revenge, Goujian's minister Wen Zhong suggested training beautiful women and offering them to Fuchai as a tribute. His other minister, Fan Li, found Xi Shi and Zheng Dan, and gifted them to Fuchai in 490 BC.

Bewitched by the beauty of Xi Shi and Zheng Dan, Fuchai forgot all about his state affairs and on their instigation, killed his best advisor, the great general Wu Zixu. Fuchai even built Guanwa Palace (Palace of Beautiful Women) in an imperial park on the slope of Lingyan Hill, about 15 kilometers west of Suzhou. The strength of Wu dwindled, and in 473 BC Goujian launched his strike and put the Wu army to full rout. King Fuchai lamented that he should have listened to Wu Zixu, and then committed suicide.

In one disputed account of her fate, it was written that Goujian ordered Xi Shi to be drowned by being thrown into a lake, to avoid being tempted by her as Fuchai was.

In legends, after the fall of Wu, Fan Li retired from his minister post and lived with Xi Shi on a fishing boat, roaming like fairies in the misty wilderness of Tai Ho Lake, and no one has seen them ever since.

She is remembered by the Xi Shi Temple, which lies at the foot of the Zhu Lou Hill in the southern part of the city, on the banks of the Huansha River.

The West Lake in Hangzhou is said to be the incarnation of Xi Shi, hence it is also called Xizi Lake, Xizi being another name for Xi Shi, meaning Lady Xi.

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Yue Peoples

Yue (traditional: 越 or 鉞; also seen as Yueh or Yuet) refers to ancient semi-Sinicized or non-Sinicized peoples of southern China, originally those along the eastern coastline of present-day Zhejiang province. In archaic Chinese, a number of characters (越,粵,鉞) were often used interchangeably to represent the same meaning.

 

Origins and Ancient Usage

In ancient times, the northern Han Chinese referred to the peoples to their south collectively as the Yue. Historian Luo Xianglin has suggested that these peoples shared a common ancestry with the Xia Dynasty. There is little evidence, however, that the Yue peoples held any common identity. Historical texts often refer to the Hundred Yue tribes (百越. There is little evidence, however, that the Yue peoples held any common identity. The "Treatise of Geography" in Han Shu notes: "In the seven or eight thousand li from Jiaozhi to Kuaiji (modern southern Jiangsu or northern Zhejiang) the Hundred Yue are everywhere, each with their own clans." Just as the term Celt was used by the Greeks to describe what they perceived to be a broad cultural group, so the term Yue was a culturally relative term for the ancient Chinese. Also like "Celt", Yue is now used in a number of different ways.

Ethnolinguists have suggested that the pronunciaton of Yue may be related to a type of hemp produced in what is now Zhejiang. The character itself is related to the character for "ceremonial axe" (鉞), usually considered a symbol of royal or imperial authority. A number of stone axes have been found in the area of Hangzhou, and there is evidence that the ceremonial axe was a southern invention.

 

Ancient texts mention a number of Yue peoples. Most of these names survived into early imperial times and can be roughly construed as cultural groupings:

Chinese	Hanyu Pinyin	Cantonese Yale	Vietnamese	Notes
雒越	Luòyuè	Lokyuht	Lạc Việt	Sea Bird Yue
閩越	Mǐnyuè	Mànyuht	Mân Việt	River Yue
西甌	Xī'ōu	Sāi'āu	Tây Âu	West Valley Yue
甌越	Ōuyuè	Āuyuht	Âu Việt	(East) Valley Yue
滇越,盔越	Diānyuè, Kuīyuè	Dīnyuht, Kwaīyuht	Điền Việt, Khôi Việt	Heavenly Yue, Basin Yue
東越	Dōngyuè	Dōngyuht	Đông Việt	Eastern Yue
於越	Yūyuè	Yūyuht	Ư Việt	Major Yue
揚越	Yángyuè	Yèungyuht	Dương Việt	Ocean Yue
幹越	Gānyuè	Gonyuht	Cán Việt	Main Yue
山越	Shānyuè	Saānyuht	Sơn Việt	Mountain Yue
夜郎	Yèláng	Yehlòng	Dạ Lang	Night Yue
句吳	Gōuwú	Geui'ngh	Câu Ngô
南越	Nányuè	Naàhmyuht	Nam Việt	Southern Yue

 

Sinification and Displacement

From the Ninth century BC, two northern Yue peoples, the Gou-Wu and Yu-Yue, were increasingly influenced by their Chinese neighbours to their north. These two states were based in the areas of what is now southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang respectively. Their aristocratic elite learned the written Chinese language and adopted Chinese political institutions and military technology. Traditional accounts attribute the cultural change to the Grand Earl of Wu (吳太伯), a Zhou prince who had fled to the south. The marshy lands of the south gave Gou-Wu and Yu-Yue unique characteristics. They did not engage in extensive agrarian agriculture, relying instead more heavily on aquaculture. Water transport was paramount in the south, so the two states became advanced in shipbuilding and developed riverine warfare technology. They were also known for their fine swords.

In the Spring and Autumn Period, the two states, now called Wu and Yue, were becoming increasingly involved in Chinese politics. In 512 BC, Wu launched a large expedition against the large state of Chu, based in the Middle Yangtze River. A similar campaign in 506 succeeded in sacking the Chu capital Ying. Also in that year, war broke out between Wu and Yue and continued with breaks for the next three decades. In 473 BC, the Yue king Goujian finally conquered Wu and was acknowledged by the northern states of Qi and Jin. In 333 BC, Yue was in turn conquered by Chu. The Kings of the state of Yue, and therefore its succesor state Minyue also claimed to be descended from Yu the Great of the chinese Xia dynasty. According to Sima Qian, Wu was founded by Wu Taibo, a brother of zhou wu wang, the King of the chinese Zhou dynasty.

After the unification of China by Qin Shi Huang, it became incorporated into the Chinese empire. The Qin armies also advanced south along the Xiang River to modern Guangdong and set up commanderies along the main communication routes. Throughout the Han Dynasty period two groups of Yue were identified, that of the Nan-Yue in the far south, who lived mainly in the area of what is now Guangdong, Guangxi, and Vietnam; and that of the Min-Yue who lay to the southeast, centred on the Min River in modern Fujian. The Kings of Minyue claimed to be descended from Yu the Great of the chinese Xia dynasty.

Sinification of these peoples was brought about by a combination of imperial military power, regular settlement and Chinese refugees. The difficulty of logistics and the malarial climate in the south made the displacement and eventual sinification of the Yue peoples a slow process. When the Chinese came into contact with local Yue peoples, they often wrested control of territory from them or subjugated them by force. When a serious rebellion broke out in 40 AD by the Trung Sisters in what is now modern Vietnam, a force of some 10,000 imperial troops was dispatched under General Ma Yuan. Between 100 and 184 no less than seven outbreaks of violence took place, often calling for strong defensive action by the Chinese.

As Chinese migrants gradually increased, the Yue were gradually forced into poorer land on the hills and in the mountains. Unlike the nomadic peoples of Central Asia, such as the Xiongnu or the Xianbei, however, the Yue peoples never posed any serious threat to Chinese expansion or control. Sometimes they staged small scale raids or attacks on Chinese settlements - termed "rebellions" by traditional historians. The Chinese for their part regarded them as being highly uncivilised and prone to fight one another.

While most Yue peoples were eventually sinicized, the Kam-Tai (Daic): Zhuang, Buyi, Dai, Sui (Shui), Kam (Dong), Hlai (Li), Mulam, Maonan, Ong-Be (Lingao), Thai, Lao, Shan, and Vietnamese peoples retained their ethnic identities. Some of these peoples also have their own nation-states today. In particular, the Vietnamese people broke free from Chinese rule in the 10th century and have their own state to this day.

The Kradai or Kra-Dai languages, also known as Kadai, Daic, or Tai-Kadai, are a language family of highly tonal languages found in southern China and Southeast Asia. The Kradai languages were formerly considered to be part of the Sino–Tibetan family, but outside of China they are now classified as an independent family.

Several Western scholars believe that Kradai is related to or a branch of the Austronesian language family, in a family called Austro-Tai. There is a substantial but limited number of cognates in the core vocabulary. There is yet no agreement as to whether they are mainland Austronesian languages which remained on the mainland, a backmigration from Taiwan to the mainland, or a later migration from the Philippines to Hainan during the Austronesian expansion.

In southern China, people speaking Kam–Tai (Zhuang-Dong) languages are mainly found in Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, Hunan, Guangdong, and Hainan.

The study of over 100 East Asian populations including 30 Daic speaking ones had reached the following conclusions. First, the Daic-speaking populations show a great deal of genetic similarity although admixture with local populations did occur after its expansion. Secondly, a significant proportion of southern Chinese populations carry a signature of Daic-speaking populations. Thirdly, Taiwanese aborigines are more similar to Daic-speaking populations than they are to the other Austronesian populations, that is, the Malayo-Polynesians. Fourthly, the clustering of subfamilies of Daic-speaking populations correlates well with that based on their genetic similarity indicating limited gene flow between them after their separation. Daic-speaking populations originated in the southern part of East Asia and then migrated northwards and eastwards with Kam-Sui probably being the oldest (The better known Kam-Sui languages are Dong (Kam), with over a million speakers, Mulam, Maonan, and Sui. Others are Ai-Cham, Kang, Mak, and T’en).

 

The Tai ethnicity refers collectively to the ethnic groups of southern China and Southeast Asia, stretching from Hainan to eastern India and from southern Sichuan to Laos, Thailand, and parts of Vietnam, which speak languages in the Tai family and share similar traditions and festivals, including Songkran. Despite never having a unified nation-state of their own, the peoples also have historically shared a vague idea of a "Siam" nation, corrupted to Shan or Assam in some places, and most self-identify as "Tai".

Comparative linguistic research seems to indicate that the Tai people were a proto-Kradai-speaking culture of southern China, and that they may have originally been of Austronesian descent. Prior to inhabiting mainland China, the Tai are suspected to have migrated from a homeland on the island of Taiwan where they spoke a dialect of Proto-Austronesian or one of its descendant languages. After the arrival of Sino-Tibetan speaking ethnic groups from mainland China to the island of Taiwan, the Tai would have then migrated into mainland China, perhaps along the Pearl River, where their language greatly changed in character from the other Austronesian languages under influence of Sino-Tibetan and Hmong-Mien language infusion. The coming of the Han Chinese to this region of southern China may have prompted the Tai to migrate in mass once again, this time southward over the mountains into Southeast Asia. While this theory of the origin of the Tai is currently the leading theory, there is insufficient archaeological evidence to prove or disprove the proposition at this time, and the linguistic evidence alone is not conclusive. However, in further support of the theory, it is believed that the O1 Y-DNA haplogroup is associated with both the Austronesian people and the Tai. The prevalence of Y-DNA Haplogroup O1 among Austronesian and Tai peoples also suggests a common ancestry with the Sino-Tibetan, Austro-Asiatic and Hmong-Mien peoples some 35,000 years ago in China. Y-DNA Haplogroup O2a is also found at high frequency among most Tai peoples, which is a trait that they share with the neighboring Austroasiatic peoples. Y-DNA Haplogroups O1 and O2a are subclades of O Y-DNA haplogroup, which itself is a subclade of Y-DNA Haplogroup K, a genetic mutation that is believed to have originated 40,000 yeas ago, somewhere between Iran and Central China. In addition to the ethnicities previously mentioned, the progenitor of Haplogroup K was probably the ancestor of nearly all modern Melanesian people, as well as the Mongols and the Native Americans. Haplogroup K, in turn, is a subclade of Y-DNA Haplogroup F, which is believed to have originated in Northern Africa or Southwest Asia some 45,000 years ago. Haplogroup F is believed to be associated with the second major wave of migration out of the African continent. In addition to the ethnicities previously mentioned, the progenitor of Haplogroup F was probably the ancestor of all Indo-Europeans.

 

East Asia Population Map

Historical documentation indicates that the Han were descended from the ancient Huaxia tribes of northern China. During the past two millennia, the Han culture (that is, the language and its associated culture) extended into southern China, a region inhabited by the southern natives, including those speaking Dai, Austro-Asiatic, Hmong-Mien and Tibeto-Burman languages. As Huaxia culture spread from its heartland in the Yellow River basin, it absorbed many distinct ethnic groups which then came to be identified as Han Chinese, as these groups adopted Han language (or variations of it) and customs.

 

Legacy of the Yue Peoples

The fall of the Han Dynasty and the succeeding period of division sped up the process of sinification. Periods of instability and war in northern China, such as the Northern and Southern Dynasties and during the Song Dynasty led to mass migrations of Chinese. Intermarriage and cross-cultural dialogue has led to a mixture of Chinese and non-Chinese peoples in the south. By the Tang Dynasty, the term "Yue" had largely become a regional designation rather than a cultural one A state in modern Zhejiang province during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period, for example, called itself "Wu-Yue". Likewise, the "Viet" in "Vietnam" (literally, "Viet South") is a cognate of the "Yue".

The impact of Yue culture on Chinese culture has not been determined authoritatively but it is clear that it is significant. The languages of the ancient states of Wu and Yue form the basis the modern Wu language and to some extent the Min languages of Fujian. Linguistic anthropologists have also determined that a number of Chinese words can be traced to ancient Yue words. An example is the word "jiang" (江), meaning river. To some extent, some remnants of the Yue peoples and their culture can also be seen in some minority groups of China and the Vietnamese people retain the identity.

 

Modern Usage

In modern Chinese, the characters of "越" and "粵" (both yuè) are differentiated. The former is used to refer to the original territory of the Yue Kingdom, the area of what is now northern Zhejiang, southern Jiangsu, and Shanghai, especially the areas around Shaoxing and Ningbo. The opera of Zhejiang, for example, is called "Yue Opera" (yueju, 越劇). The first character "越" is also associated with Vietnam. The second character "粵" (yuè) is associated with the southern province of Guangdong. Popularly called "Cantonese", both the standard form and regional dialects of the Cantonese language(Yue language) are spoken in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macau and in many Cantonese communities around the world.

 

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Eastern Wu

Eastern Wu (東吳), also known as Sun Wu (孫吳), was one of the Three Kingdoms competing for control of China after the fall of the Han Dynasty in the Jiangnan (Yangtze Delta) region of China. During its existence, its capital was largely at Jianye (建業, modern Nanjing), but at times was at Wuchang (武昌, in modern Ezhou, Hubei).

During the decline of the Han dynasty, the region of Wu - a region in the south of the Yangtze River surrounding Nanjing - was under the control of the warlord Sun Quan. Sun Quan succeeded his brother Sun Ce as the lord over the Wu region paying nominal allegiance to Emperor Xian of Han (who was, at that point, under the control of Cao Cao). Unlike his competitors, he did not really have the ambition to be Emperor of China. However, after Cao Pi of Cao Wei and Liu Bei of the Shu Han each declared themselves to be the Emperor, Sun Quan decided to follow suit in 229, claiming to have founded the Wu Dynasty.

Eastern Wu was finally conquered by the first Jin emperor, Sima Yan, in 280. It was the longest-lived of the three kingdoms.

Under the rule of Eastern Wu, southern China, regarded in early history as a barbaric "jungle" developed into one of the commercial, cultural, and political centers of China. Within five centuries, during the Five Dynasties and Ten States, the development of Southern China had surpassed that of the north. The achievements of Wu marked the beginning of the cultural and political division between Northern and Southern China that would repeatedly appear in Chinese history well into modernity.

The island of Taiwan may have been first reached by the Chinese during the Three Kingdoms period. Contacts with the native population and the dispatch of officials to an island named "Yizhou" (夷州) by the Eastern Wu navy might have been to Taiwan, but what Yizhou was is open to dispute; some historians believe it was Taiwan, while others believe it was the Ryūkyū Islands.

 

 

Kingdom of Wuyue

Kingdom of Wuyue (吳越國), 907-978, was a small independent coastal kingdom founded during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907-960) of Chinese history. It was ruled by the Qian family, which remains widespread in the kingdom's former territory.

Founding: The Qian (錢) family had been providing military leaders to the Tang Dynasty beginning in 887. Qian Liu was named Prince of Yue in 902, with the title of Prince of Wu added two years later. In 907, when the Tang Dynasty fell and was replaced in the north by the Later Liang Dynasty, military leaders in the south formed their own kingdoms. Qian Liu used his position to proclaim himself the King of Wuyue. This signaled the beginning of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period which would last until the founding of the Song Dynasty in 960.

Origin of Name: The name Wuyue comes from the combination of Wu Kingdom and Yue Kingdom, two ancient kingdoms during the Spring and Autumn Period from 770 to 476 BC.

Territorial Extent: With its capital in Xifu, now known as Hangzhou, the kingdom included present-day Zhejiang, Shanghai, along with the southern portion of Jiangsu Province. It would also later absorb some of the northern part of Fujian in the Min Kingdom fell in 945. The territorial extant of Wuyue roughly corresponded to the territories of the ancient Yue, but not the ancient Wu -- which led to charges by the neighboring Wu (also known as Southern Wu) that Wuyue had designs on its territory, and the name was a source of tension for years between the two states.

In the early decades of its existence, Wuyue bordered the Min Kingdom on its south and the Southern Tang Kingdom on its west and north. With the rebellion of Yin from the Min from 943 to 945, it briefly gave Wuyue a third border. However, before long, Wuyue would be completely encircled (except for the East China Sea) as both Yin and Min were absorbed by the Southern Tang.

economically and freely developed its own regional culture that continues to this day. He developed the coastal kingdom's agriculture, built seawalls, expanded Hangzhou, dredged rivers and lakes, and encouraged sea transport and trade. On his death-bed he urged a benign administration of state affairs and his words were strictly followed by four succeeding kings.

Foreign Diplomacy: In 935, Wuyue established official diplomatic relations with Japan. The kingdom also took advantage of its maritime location to maintain diplomatic contacts with north China, the Khitans, and Korea.

Fall of the Kingdom: In 978, in the face of certain annihilation from northern imperial Chinese troops, the last king of Wuyue, Qian Chu, pledged allegiance to the Northern Song Dynasty, saving his people from war and economic destruction. While Qian Chu nominally remained king, Wuyue was absorbed into the Song Dynasty, effectively ending the kingdom. The last king died in 988.

Legacy: The Wuyue Kingdom cemented the cultural and economic dominance of the Wuyue region in China for centuries to come, as well as creating a lasting regional cultural tradition distinctive from the rest of China. The leaders of the kingdom were noted patrons of Buddhism, and architecture, temple decoration, and religious sculptures related to Buddhism. The cultural distinctiveness that began developing over this period persists to this day as the Wuyue region speaks a dialect called Wu (the most famous variant of which is Shanghainese), has distinctive cuisine and other cultural traits.

The physical legacy of the Wuyue Kingdom was the creation of the system of canals and dikes which allowed the region to become the most agriculturally rich region of China for many centuries. As a result, shrines to Qian Liu sprang up all across the region, and many can still be found today.

Qian Liu was often known as the "Dragon King" or the "Sea Dragon King" because of his extensive hydro-engineering schemes which "tamed" the seas. The kings of Wuyue continue to enjoy positive treatment in orthodox history. They were popularly revered because of the hydro-engineering works, ensuring the economic prosperity of the region, and for finally surrendering to the Song Dynasty, which ensured both a unified Chinese nation and that the region would not be ravaged by war.

During the early Song Dynasty, the Qian royal family were treated as second only to the ruling Zhao imperial family, as reflected in the Hundred Family Surnames. Subsequently, many shrines were erected across the Wuyue region where the kings of Wuyue were memorialised, and sometimes, worshipped as dictating weather and agriculture. Many of these shrines, known as "Shrine of the Qian King" or "Temple to the Qian King", remain today, the most popularly visited example being that near West Lake in Hangzhou.

Qian Liu reputedly had more than a hundred sons born to many different wives and concubines. His proginy were posted to various parts of the kingdom. The Qian family remains very widely spread throughout the region. Several branches are considered "prominent families" (望族) in their local areas.

 

Sovereigns in Kingdom of Wuyue 907-978

Temple Names	Posthumous Names	Personal Names	Period of Reigns	Era Names and respective range of years
太祖 Tài Zǔ	武肅王 Wǔ Sù Wáng	錢鏐 Qián Liú	907-932	Tianbao (天寶 Tiān Bǎo) 908-923 Baoda (寶大 Bǎo Dà) 923-925 Baozheng (寶正 Bǎo Zhèng) 925-932
世宗 Shì Zōng	文穆王 Wén Mù Wáng	錢元瓘 Qián Yuán Guàn	932-941	Did not exist
成宗 Chéng Zōng	忠獻王 Zhōng Xiàn Wáng	錢佐 Qián Zuě	941-947	Did not exist
Did not exist	忠遜王 Zhōng Xùn Wáng	錢倧 Qián Zōng	947	Did not exist
Did not exist	忠懿王 Zhōng Yì Wáng	錢俶 Qián Chù	947-978	Did not exist

Qian Chu submitted to the Song Dynasty in 978 and continued to reign nominally as King of Wuyue until his death in 988.

 

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PC Map of the mtDNA Data (with respect to the basal haplogroup profiles) of 13 Regional Han Samples from Phylogeographic Differentiation of Mitochondrial DNA in Han Chinese by Yong-Gang Yao, et al.

(Taiwan-2 clusters with Xinjiang, Shanghai and Wuhan)

 

Abstract: To characterize the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation in Han Chinese from several provinces of China, we have sequenced the two hypervariable segments of the control region and the segment spanning nucleotide positions 10171–10659 of the coding region, and we have identified a number of specific coding-region mutations by direct sequencing or restriction-fragment–length–polymorphism tests. This allows us to define new haplogroups (clades of the mtDNA phylogeny) and to dissect the Han mtDNA pool on a phylogenetic basis, which is a prerequisite for any fine-grained phylogeographic analysis, the interpretation of ancient mtDNA, or future complete mtDNA sequencing efforts. Some of the haplogroups under study differ considerably in frequencies across different provinces. The southernmost provinces show more pronounced contrasts in their regional Han mtDNA pools than the central and northern provinces. These and other features of the geographical distribution of the mtDNA haplogroups observed in the Han Chinese make an initial Paleolithic colonization from south to north plausible but would suggest subsequent migration events in China that mainly proceeded from north to south and east to west. Lumping together all regional Han mtDNA pools into one fictive general mtDNA pool or choosing one or two regional Han populations to represent all Han Chinese is inappropriate for prehistoric considerations as well as for forensic purposes or medical disease studies.

 

Xinjiang or "Ice Jecen" in Manchu, literally means "New Frontier", a name given during the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China. It is home to several distinct ethnic groups of various religious traditions, however, the majority of the region's total population are adherents of Islam. Among ethnic groups who are of the Muslim faith, most notable are Muslim Turkic peoples including the Uyghurs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tatars, Salars, and the Kazakhs; there are also Muslim Iranian peoples including Tajiks and the Sarikolis/Wakhis (often conflated as Tajiks); and Muslim Sino-Tibetan peoples such as the Hui. Other PRC ethnic groups in the region include Han Chinese, Mongols, Russians, Xibes, and Manchus.

According to JP Mallory, the Chinese sources describe the existence of "white people with long hair" or the Bai people in the Shan Hai Jing, who lived beyond their northwestern border.

The very well preserved Tarim mummies with Caucasoid features, often with reddish or blond hair, today displayed at the Ürümqi Museum and dated to the 3rd century BC, have been found in precisely the same area of the Tarim Basin. Various nomadic tribes, such as the Yuezhi were part of the large migration of Indo-European speaking peoples who were settled in eastern Central Asia (possibly as far as Gansu) at that time. The Ordos culture situated at northern China east of the Yuezhi, are another example.

Nomadic cultures such as the Yuezhi are documented in the area of Xinjiang where the first known reference to the Yuezhi was made in 645 BC by the Chinese Guan Zhong in his Guanzi 管子(Guanzi Essays: 73: 78: 80: 81) . He described the Yuzhi 禺氏, or Niuzhi 牛氏, as a people from the north-west who supplied jade to the Chinese from the nearby mountains of Yuzhi 禺氏 at Gansu. The supply of jade from the Tarim Basin from ancient times is indeed well documented archaeologically: "It is well known that ancient Chinese rulers had a strong attachment to jade. All of the jade items excavated from the tomb of Fuhao of the Shang dynasty, more than 750 pieces, were from Khotan in modern Xinjiang. As early as the mid-first millennium BC the Yuezhi engaged in the jade trade, of which the major consumers were the rulers of agricultural China." (Liu (2001), pp. 267-268).

The nomadic tribes of the Yuezhi are also documented in detail in Chinese historical accounts, in particular the 2nd-1st century BC "Records of the Great Historian", or Shiji, by Sima Qian, which state that they "were flourishing" but regularly in conflict with the neighbouring tribe of the Xiongnu to the northeast. According to these accounts:

The Yuezhi originally lived in the area between the Qilian or Heavenly Mountains (Tian Shan) and Dunhuang, but after they were defeated by the Xiongnu they moved far away to the west, beyond Dayuan, where they attacked and conquered the people of Daxia (Bactria) and set up the court of their king on the northern bank of the Gui [= Oxus] River. A small number of their people who were unable to make the journey west sought refuge among the Qiang (羌族; an old, once strong and populous people whose offspring include the Tibetans and many minorities in southwestern China) barbarians in the Southern Mountains, where they are known as the Lesser Yuezhi.

The Qiang people (羌族) are an ethnic group. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China, with a population of approximately 200,000 living in northwestern Sichuan province. Nowadays, the Qiang are only a small segment of the population, but they are commonly believed to be an old, once strong and populous people whose history can be traced to the Shang Dynasty and whose offspring include the modern Tibetans, some portion of the Han Chinese and many minority ethnic groups in southwestern China.

In ancient China, Qiang was usually used as a generic term for the non-Huaxia peoples in the northwest. These peoples were frequently at war with the inhabitants of the Yellow River valley, the ancestors of ethnic Hans. Not until the rise of the state of Qin under Duke Mu was the Qiang expansion effectively checked.

The structure of the graph 羌 also reflects this view. It was composed of two elements: 人 (man) and 羊 (sheep), suggesting a sheep-herding people. During the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD) and Wei-Jin periods (221-419), Qiang were widely distributed along the mountainous fringes of the northern and eastern Tibetan Plateau, from the Kunlun Mountains (崑崙山) in Xinjiang province, and eastern Qinghai area, to southern Gansu, western Sichuan, and northern Yunnan.

Later, the Chinese restricted the term Qiang min 羌民 (Qiang people registered with the Chinese government) to refer to sinicized non-Han living in the Min River valley in Sichuan and used the term Fan Qiang 番羌 (barbarian Qiang) to refer to less sinicized non-Han tribes living in the vicinity.

From the linguistic point of view, all modern Qiang people speak one of two Qiang languages, which are members of the Qiangic sub-family of Tibeto-Burman. However, dialects are so different that communication between different Qiang groups is often in Chinese. Lacking a script of their own, the Qiangs also use Chinese characters.

At the legendary time when the Qiang people moved into Sichuan from Tibet, they placed white stones on every hilltop and crossroads , for they did not want to forget the route leading back to their original homeland. These piles of white stones also acts as a token of their affection for their homeland and the people they left behind at the same time.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

 

* HLA-DR and -DQ Genotyping by PCR-SSO in Shanghai Chinese by Fu Qing Wang, et al.

Abstract: This study is to investigate HLA haplotypes in Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai Han population based on 166 families by serological and molecular biological HLA typing methods and to analyze the distribution characteristic of HLA haplotypes. The results showed that allele frequencies of more than 10% for HLA antigens were A2, A11, A24, B13, B46, B60, DRB1 *04, DRB1 *08, DRB1* 09, DRB1 * 12 and DRB1 * 15. In the analysis of HLA haplotypes, 128 kinds of A-B haplotypes and 182 kinds of B-DRB1 haplotypes were found, comprising 19.28% (128/664) and 27.41%(182/664) of total theoretical haplotypes, respectively. 18 kinds of A-B haplotypes and 23 kinds of B-DRB1 haplotypes occurred at frequencies of more than 0.5% (linkage disequilibrium value, delta > 0) .351 kinds of A-B-DRB1 haplotypes were found, comprising 52.86% (351/664) of total theoretical haplotypes, and 8 kinds of A-B-DRB1 haplotypes occurred at frequencies of more than 0.5% (delta > 0). The common A-B-DRB1 haplotypes were A30-B13-DRB1 * 07 (4.22%), A2-B46-DRB1 * 09 (3.77%), A33-B58-DRB1 * 17 (3.01%), A33-B58-DRB1 * 13.1 (1.81%) and A11-B75-DRB1 * 12 (1.51%). The HLA haplotype distribution of Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai Han population has its own genetic characteristics, so it suggests this population is between southern and northern Han population. The HLA polymorphism of Chinese Han population is more abundant in East Asian populations.

 

 

A2-Cw11(1)-B46

A2-Cw11(1)-B46: This haplotype is unique in several regards, first and most importantly the B46 serotype is not from Africa, this distinguishes it from every other known B serotype. It is the result of a recombination event between B62(B*1501) and an HLA-C allele within Asia. This event happened recently as there is only one major allele and minor alleles are at trace frequencies. There has been some recombination between this haplotype, A24 and A11 bearing alleles, probably in a local (or tribal population). B46 is found wherever Asian wet-rice farming peoples have traveled and is found at low frequencies in non-farming indigenous groups. The one exception is the Ninhvet of Siberia and the Eastern Tlinglet of Alaska. This B46 contribution appears to have been recent. Because of the numbers of people represented by the sample groups, and its relative high frequency in those group A2-B46 is one of the most frequent, if not the most frequent A-B haplotype in the world, even though it is absent from the indigenous populations of most peoples in the world.

The most common haplotype, and probably the ancestral haplotype given its distribution from the Ninhivet to Indonesia is:

A*0207 : C*0102 : B*4601 : DRB1*0901 : DQA1*0302 : DQB1*0303

A different haplotype that is more common in Korea and Japan is

A*0207 : C*0102 : B*4601 : DRB1*0803 : DQA1*0103 : DQB1*0601

B46, or a closely linked allele may have been under positive selection in rice farmers of Asia.

HLA-B*4601 Abundance

Dark Red = 7% or greater,
Red = 3 to 7%
Orange = 1 to 3%
Green = O to 1%
Black = regions not typed

 

HLA B*4601 Frequencies

Population	Freq (%)
Buyei (China)	21.6
Miao (China)	18.4
Han (2) (Yunnan, China)	17.9
Thai (in Singapore)	17.2
Southern Chinese (in Taiwan)	17.2
Chinese (in Hong Kong)	16.3
Hakka (2) (Taiwan)	15.6
Guangzhou (China)	15.5
Northeastern Thailand	15.1
Minnan (Avg 1 & 2) (Taiwan)	15.0
Middle' Chinese (in Taiwan)	15.0
Hakka (Taiwan)	13.6
Wuhan (China)	13.5
Maonan (Guangxi , China)	13.4
Chinese (in Singapore)	13.4
Vietnamese	13.2
Southern Han (China)	11.5
Shanghai (China)	11.2
Meizhou Han (Guangdong, China)	10.0
Shijiazhuang Tianjian Han (Beijing)	9.6
Guangzhou Han (China)	9.4
Nu (Yunnan, China)	9.0
Northern Chinese (in Taiwan)	8.6
Pazeh (Taiwan)	8.2
Aichi (Japan)	7.6
Lisu (Yunnan, China)	7.2
Beijing (China)	6.8
Naxi (Yunnan, China)	6.1
Hui (Qinghai, China)	5.9
Northern Han (China)	5.7
Japan (3)	5.0
Hyogo (Japan)	4.7
South Korea (3)	4.4
Man (Harbin City, China)	4.1
Siraya (Taiwan)	3.9
Central Japan	3.6
Timorese	2.6
Inner Mongolia (China)	2.0
Javanese (in Singapore)	2.0
Oold (Mongolia)	1.9
Nivkhi (Sakhalin I, Russia) sland	1.9
Thao (Taiwan)	1.7
Riau Malay (in Singapore)	1.5
Tuva (2) (Russia)	1.4
Tibetan (China)	1.3
Khalkh (Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia)	1.2
Ainu (Hokkaidō, Japan)	1.0
Okinawa (in Hawaii, USA)	1.0
Indigenous (Taiwan)	0.9
Khalkha (Mongolia)	0.5
Brahui (Pakistan)	0.5
Linqu County (Shandong, China)	3.3

 

 

A33-Cw7-B58-DR13-DQ6

Within eastern Asia A*3303 is in linkage dissiquilbrium with on haplotype in particular, the specific genetic makeup is:

A*3303 : C*0701 : B*5801 : DRB1*1302 : DQA1*0102 : DQB1*0609

This haplotype is composed of genes most frequent in parts of western Africa. This includes the A*3303, B*5801, DRB1*1302, and DQB1*0609. The DRB1*0609 haplotype in nodal in east/central Africa in the Ugandan, Rwanda, Congo, Cameroon whereas the allele is at low frequencies in Western Europe, and its distribution is also consistent with a migration from east Africa direct to the Lower Indus River.

A33 shows two different distributions that can be discriminated by subtyping capability of SSP-PCR: A*3301 and A*3303.

Certain alleles confound population histories. At the top of that list is A*3303. This allele appears to jump, literally, out of West Africa into South Asia. The point of origin is Africa, most likely central or western Africa given the low levels in East Africa (although much of East Africa is undersampled). In certain tested populations of the Middle East the level of A*3303 is either very low, or non-existent. Within East Africa Sudan appears to be the highest at around 2%. The frequency of A*3303 begins to rise in eastern Arabia (Oman, UAE) and then markedly rise in the Brahui and Balochi of Pakistan.

 

Indus River

.

HLA A*33-B58 Frequencies

Population	Freq (%)
Chinese (Thailand)	12.6
Baloch (Pakistan)	11.1
Chaoshan (China)	8.1
Chinese (Singapore)	5.5
Burusho (Pakistan)	4.6
Hui	4.0
Mongolian	3.7
Kalash (Pakistan)	3.6
Korea	3.5
Yaku	3.2
Panthan (Pakistan)	3.0
Tribals (India)	3.0
Baloch (SE Iran)	2.9
Brahui (Pakistan)	2.9
Southern Han	2.8
Thais	2.5
Vietnamese	2.3
Inner Mongolian	2.2
Miao	2.1
Oman	1.6
Sindhi (Pakistan)	1.5
Manchu	1.2

 

 

History of Domestication and Cultivation of Rice

Based on one chloroplast and two nuclear gene regions, Londo et al. (2006) conclude that Oryza sativa rice was domesticated at least twice—indica in eastern India, Myanmar and Thailand; and japonica in southern China—though they concede that there is archaeological and genetic evidence for a single domestication of rice in the lowlands of China.

Because the functional allele for non-shattering—the critical indicator of domestication in grains—as well as five other single nucleotide polymorphisms, is identical in both indica and japonica, Vaughan et al. (2008) determined that there was a single domestication event for Oryza sativa in the region of the Yangtze river valley.

Yangtze River

Continental East Asia: Rice appears to have been used by the Early Neolithic populations of Lijiacun and Yunchanyan. Evidence of possible rice cultivation in China from ca. 11,500 BP has been found, however it is still questioned whether the rice was indeed being cultivated, or instead being gathered as wild rice. Bruce Smith, an archaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who has written on the origins of agriculture, says that evidence has been mounting that the Yangtze was probably the site of the earliest rice cultivation.

Zhao (1998) argues that collection of wild rice in the Late Pleistocene had, by 6400 BC, led to the use of primarily domesticated rice. Morphological studies of rice phytoliths from the Diaotonghuan archaeological site clearly show the transition from the collection of wild rice to the cultivation of domesticated rice. The large number of wild rice phytoliths at the Diaotonghuan level dating from 12,000-11,000 BP indicates that wild rice collection was part of the local means of subsistence. Changes in the morphology of Diaotonghuan phytoliths dating from 10,000-8,000 BP show that rice had by this time been domesticated. Analysis of Chinese rice residues from Pengtoushan (彭頭山文化) which were C14 (carbon dating) dated to 8200-7800 BC show that rice had been domesticated by this time.

In 1998, Crawford & Shen reported that the earliest of 14 AMS or radiocarbon dates on rice from at least nine Early to Middle Neolithic sides is no older than 7000 BC, that rice from the Hemudu (河姆渡文化) and Luojiajiao sites indicates that rice domestication likely began before 5000 BC, but that most sites in China from which rice remains have been recovered are younger than 5000 BC.

Map of the Ganges River

South Asia: Wild Oryza rice appeared in the Belan and Ganges valley regions of northern India as early as 4530 BC and 5440 BC respectively, although many believe it may have appeared earlier.

Denis J. Murphy (2007) further details the spread of cultivated rice from India into South-east Asia:

Several wild cereals, including rice, grew in the Vindhyan Hills, and rice cultivation, at sites such as Chopani-Mando and Mahagara, may have been underway as early as 7000 BP. The relative isolation of this area and the early development of rice farming imply that it was developed indigenously.

Chopani-Mando and Mahagara are located on the upper reaches of the Ganges drainage system and it is likely that migrants from this area spread rice farming down the Ganges valley into the fertile plains of Bengal, and beyond into south-east Asia.

Rice was cultivated in the Indus Valley Civilization. Agricultural activity during the second millennium BC included rice cultivation in the Kashmir and Harrappan regions. Mixed farming was the basis of Indus valley economy.

Punjab is the largest producer and consumer of rice in India.

Korean Peninsula and Japanese Archipelago: Mainstream archaeological evidence derived from palaeoethnobotanical investigations indicate that dry-land rice was introduced to Korea and Japan some time between 3500 and 1200 BC. The cultivation of rice in Korea and Japan during that time occurred on a small-scale, fields were impermanent plots, and evidence shows that in some cases domesticated and wild grains were planted together. The technological, subsistence, and social impact of rice and grain cultivation is not evident in archaeological data until after 1500 BC. For example, intensive wet-paddy rice agriculture was introduced into Korea shortly before or during the Middle Mumun Pottery Period (c. 850–550 BC) and reached Japan by the Final Jōmon or Initial Yayoi circa 300 BC.

In 2003, Korean archaeologists alleged that they discovered burnt grains of domesticated rice in Soro-ri, Korea, which dated to 13,000 BC. These predate the oldest grains in China, which were dated to 10,000 BC, and potentially challenge the mainstream explanation that domesticated rice originated in China. The findings were received by academia with strong skepticism, and the results and their publicizing has been cited as being driven by a combination of nationalist and regional interests.

Southeast Asia: Rice is the staple for all classes in contemporary South East Asia, from Myanmar to Indonesia. In Indonesia, evidence of wild Oryza rice on the island of Sulawesi dates from 3000 BC. The evidence for the earliest cultivation, however, comes from eighth century stone inscriptions from Java, which show kings levied taxes in rice. Divisions of labor between men, women, and animals that are still in place in Indonesian rice cultivation, can be seen carved into the ninth-century Prambanan temples in Central Java. In the sixteenth century, Europeans visiting the Indonesian islands saw rice as a new prestige food served to the aristocracy during ceremonies and feasts. Rice production in Indonesian history is linked to the development of iron tools and the domestication of water buffalo for cultivation of fields and manure for fertilizer. Once covered in dense forest, much of the Indonesian landscape has been gradually cleared for permanent fields and settlements as rice cultivation developed over the last fifteen hundred years

In the Philippines, the greatest evidence of rice cultivation since ancient times can be found in the Cordillera Mountain Range of Luzon in the provinces of Apayao, Benguet, Mountain Province and Ifugao. The Banaue Rice Terraces (Tagalog: Hagdan-hagdang Palayan ng Banaue) are 2,000 to 3,000-year old terraces that were carved into the mountains by ancestors of the Batad indigenous people. It is commonly thought that the terraces were built with minimal equipment, largely by hand. The terraces are located approximately 1,500 meters (5000 ft) above sea level and cover 10,360 square kilometers (about 4,000 square miles) of mountainside. They are fed by an ancient irrigation system from the rainforests above the terraces. It is said that if the steps are put end to end it would encircle half the globe. The Rice Terraces (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) are commonly referred to by Filipinos as the "Eighth Wonder of the World".

Evidence of wet rice cultivation as early as 2200 BC has been discovered at both Ban Chiang and Ban Prasat in Thailand.

Ban Chiang pottery

Ban Chiang (Thai: แหล่งโบราณคดีบ้านเชียง) is an archeological site located in Nong Han district, Udon Thani Province, Thailand. It has been on the UNESCO world heritage list since 1992.

During the first formal scientific excavation in 1967, several skeletons, together with bronze grave gifts, were unearthed. Rice fragments have also been found, leading to the belief that the Bronze Age settlers were probably farmers. The site's oldest graves do not include bronze artifacts and are therefore from a Neolithic culture; the most recent graves date to the Iron Age.

The first datings of the artifacts using the thermoluminescence technique resulted in a range from 4420 BC to 3400 BC, which would have made the site the earliest Bronze Age culture in the world. However, with the 1974/75 excavation, sufficient material became available for radiocarbon dating, which resulted in more recent dates—the earliest grave was about 2100 BC, the latest about AD 200. Bronze making began circa 2000 BC, as evidenced by crucibles and bronze fragments. Bronze objects include bracelets, rings, anklets, wires and rods, spearheads, axes and adzes, hooks, blades, and little bells.

* Specialised Vocabularies, Genes and Homelands: The new linguistic palaeontology by George van Driem

 

First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies by Peter Bellwood

 

 

 

 

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* Intergenic DNA Sequences from the Human X Chromosome Reveal High Rates of Global Gene Flow by Murray P Cox, et al.

Geographic Representation of Population Migration Rates Nm

 

 

HLA-A1

HLA-A1 (A1) is a human leukocyte antigen serotype within HLA-A "A" serotype group. This group currently is dominated by A*0101. A1 and A*01 are almost synonymous in meaning. A1 is more common in Europe than elsewhere, it is part of a long haplotype that appears to have been frequent in the ancient peoples of Northwestern Europe. A1 is a frequent component of the AH8.1 haplotype.

A1 serotype positivity is roughly linked to a large number of inflammatory diseases and conditions believed to have immune system involvement. Because of its linkage within the AH8.1 haplotype many studies showed association with A1 or A1, B8 only later to show the association drift toward the class II region gene alleles, DR3 and DQ2.5. While it is not clear what role A1 has in infectious disease, some linkage with infection rates in HIV remain associated within the A1 region of the haplotype.

A1-B Haplotypes

• A1-B8 Western Irish, N. Irish, Scottish, Wales, NW England, Scandinavia, Yugoslavia, Russia,....
• A1-B7 Armenia, Austria, NW Europe (regional recombinant between A1-B8 and A2/A3-B7)
• A1-B13 Uralic
• A1-B35 (Albania, Belgium, Italy, Greece, France - Eastern mediterranian in origin)
• A1-B37 Yakuts, Tribal-India, Iyers-India, Mongolian, Indian, Orochon, Romanian, Yugoslavia, Korean, Albania, French, German, Manchu
• A1-B51 Yugoslavia, Germany, Iberia, Italy
• A1-B52 Bharghavas-India, Tribal-India, Italy, Iberia, France
• A1-B57
• A1-B58

 

HLA A*0101 Frequencies

Study population	Freq.  (%)
Ireland South	25.0
England Lancaster	21.5
Wales	21.1
Spain Basque Arratia Vall…	19.2
Scotland Orkney	17.0
Belgium	15.5
Italy North (1)	15.4
Israeli Jews	15.2
France South East	15.0
German Essen	14.4
Russia Arkhangelsk Pomors	14.0
Nador Metalsa (Berber)	13.7
Sweden Stockholm	13.6
Spain Basque Gipuzkoa Pro…	13.5
Pakistan Sindhi	13.3
Serbia	13.2
Portugal Centre	13.0
Czech Republic	12.7
India Andhra Pradesh Goll…	12.5
Israel Gaza Palestinians	12.4
India Mumbai Marathas	12.3
Tunisia	12.3
Romanian	12.2
Russia Northwest	11.9
Spain Eastern Andalusia	11.4
Macedonia (4)	11.3
Turkey (I)	10.9
Spain North Cantabrian	10.8
Greece North	10.0
Croatia	9.7
Finland	8.9
Saudi Arabia	8.7
Spain Catalonia Girona	8.6
Pakistan Karachi Parsi	8.3
Mongolia Khalkha	8.0
Jordan Amman	7.9
Spain North Cabuernigo	7.6
Bulgaria	7.3
Russia Chuvash	7.3
Oman	7.2
Singapore Javanese Indone…	7.0
Georgia Tibilisi Kurds	6.7
Georgia Tibilisi Georgian…	5.7
Georgia Svaneti Svans	5.6
China Qinghai Hui	5.5
Australian Aborigine Cape…	5.3
Russia Murmansk Saomi	4.0
Spain Pas Valley	3.8
Singapore Riau Malay	3.2
Russia Nenets	3.1
Thailand	2.8
India Jalpaiguri Toto	2.5
China Shanghai	2.4

 

 

HLA-B59

HLA-B59 (B59) is a hybrid between B*55 and B*51. B59 is more common in Japan, Korea, N. China and Mongolia.

 

HLA B*5901 Frequencies

Population	Freq (%)
Okinawan (USA Hawaii)	6.3
Japan (2)	2.7
Tarialan Khoton (Mongolia)	2.4
South Korea (3)	2.1
Gipuscoa Basque (Spain)	2.0
Japan Central	1.8
Casablanca (Morocco)	1.8
Hyogo (Japan)	1.6
N. Korean (Harbin,China)	1.0
Manchu (Harbin, China)	0.6
Naxi (Yunnan, China)	0.6
Girona (Catalonia,Spain)	0.6
Inner Mongolia (China)	0.5
Khalkha (Mongolia)	0.5
Shanghai (China)	0.3
Essen (German )	0.3
Southern Han (China)	0.2
Shij. Tian. (Beijing, China)	0.1
Hakka (Taiwan)	0.1

 

 

HLA-B67

HLA-B67 (B67) is an HLA-B serotype. The serotype identifies the more common HLA-B*67 gene products. B67 is region specific recombinant haplotype formed by the gene conversion of B*39, an allele common along the Northwest Pacific Rim (Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Coastal Siberia), and B7, B22, or B27.

 

HLA B*6701 Frequencies

Population	Freq (%)
Osaka Region (Japan)	2.6
Hakka (Taiwan)	1.8
Japan (5)	1.7
Harbin Man (China)	1.7
Beijing (China)	1.5
Linqu (Shandong, China)	1.1
Siraya (Taiwan)	1.0
Portugal South	1.0
Oold (Mongolia)	1.0
American Samoa	1.0
Pazeh (Taiwan)	0.9
South Korea (3)	0.9
N. Korean (Harbin,China)	0.8
Arratia Basque (Spain)	0.6
Tarialan Khoton (Mongolia)	0.6
Shanghai (China)	0.6
Yunnan Han (China)	0.5
Turkey	0.4
Southern Han (China)	0.4
Tuva (Russia)	0.3
Chinese (Hong Kong, China)	0.1

 

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HLA-A69

HLA-A69 (A69) is a human leukocyte antigen serotype within HLA-A serotype group. This group currently is dominated by A*6901. A69 and A*69 are almost synonymous in meaning. A69 is a split antigen of the broad antigen serotype A28. A69 is a sister serotype of A68.

A69 is more common in Levant. A69 (A*6901) is a derivative of the A*6801 allele that has undergone gene conversion with A*02. The recombination took place no more than 330,000 years ago.

Levant

Distribution of A69 places nodal center in the Levant, but high levels in West Africa. The model of human genetic origin places first migrations from Eastern Africa. However in many east African populations the frequency of A69 is zero. A more consistent model of A69 distribution is either a subsequent migration from West Africa, supported by A36 and HLA DR3-DQ2. The higher levels in the Gaza Palestinians supports this hypothesis.

A69 may be associated with sarcoidosis.

 

HLA A*6901 Frequencies

Population	Freq (%)
Palestinian (Gaza)	4.8
Druse-Arab (Israel)	3.0
Bulgaria	1.8
Jew (Israel)	1.2
Tunis (Tunisia)	1.1
Bergamo (Italy)	1.1
N. Delhi (India)	1.1
Amman (Jordon)	1.0
Sardinia (Italy)	1.0
Central Portugal	1.0
Shanghai (China)	0.7
Girona (Catalon, Spain)	0.6
Baloch (Iran)	0.6
Greece	0.6
Czech	0.5
SE France	0.4
N. Greece	0.3
Romania	0.3
U. Arab Emerates	0.25

 

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Shanghaiing

The 19th century clipper ships in the China trade required a great deal of labor to operate.

The American term shanghaied refers to the practice of conscripting men as sailors by coercive techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence. Those engaged in this form of kidnapping were known as crimps. Until 1915 unfree labor was widely used aboard American merchant ships. The related term press gang refers specifically to impressment practices in Great Britain's Royal Navy.

Shanghaing predominantly took place in the Northwest United States

The verb "to shanghai" joined the lexicon with "crimping" and "sailor thieves" in the 1850s. The most widely accepted theory of the word's origin is that it comes from the Chinese city of Shanghai, a common destination of the ships with abducted crews. The term has since expanded to mean "kidnapped" or "induced to do something by means of fraud."

The Shanghai Tunnels, less commonly known as the Portland Underground, are a group of passages running underneath Old Town/Chinatown down to the central downtown section of Portland, Oregon, United States. The tunnels connected the basements of many downtown hotels and bars, to the waterfront of the Willamette River. They were built to move goods from the ships docked on the Willamette to the basement storage areas.

In 1990, Bill Naito was quoted in The Oregonian that the tunnels are underneath "Northwest Couch, Davis and Everett streets."

According to a popular legend, from the 1850s to the early 20th century, they were used to kidnap or "shanghai" unsuspecting laborers and sell them as slaves to waiting ships at the waterfront. According to folklore/oral history, as many as 1500 people per year were shanghaied out of Portland through the tunnels. Victims were drugged or knocked out, taken through one of the trap doors (or deadfalls), and held in a prison cell while they waited to be shipped off. According to the legend this is what earned Portland the reputation as the most dangerous port on the American West Coast, in the early 1900s, and gave it the nicknames "Unheavenly City" and "Forbidden City." Later, during Prohibition, the tunnels were inhabited by bars that literally went underground to sell alcohol.

Historians have stated that although the tunnels exist and the practice of "Shanghaiing" was sometimes practiced in Portland and elsewhere, there is no evidence that the tunnels were used for this (and no evidence for Portland being a center for this kind of practice).

Today tours of the tunnels are available through the local tourist vendors.

 

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Notable Shanghainese People

 

Wong Kar-wai

Wong Kar-wai (王家衛) is an award winning Hong Kong filmmaker, internationally renowned as an auteur for his visually unique, highly stylized films.

Born in Shanghai, he moved to Hong Kong with his parents at the age of five. Coming from the Mainland and speaking only Mandarin and Shanghainese, he had a difficult period of adjustment to Cantonese speaking Hong Kong, spending hours in movie theatres with his mother.

He made his directing debut in 1988 with As Tears Go By, also produced by Alan Tang. A crime melodrama of the kind then hugely popular, it heavily borrowed from Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1974), but already displayed one of Wong's principal trademarks in its atmospheric and sometimes expressionistic color palette. It is his only box office hit to date.

His next film, Days of Being Wild (1991), produced by Alan Tang, a drama about aimless youth set in the early 1960s, established his trademark form: elliptically plotted mood pieces, with lush visuals and music, about the burden of memory on melancholy, misfit characters. Days was a box office failure but now regularly tops Hong Kong critics' polls of the best local films ever made. It has been described as a sort of Cantonese Rebel Without a Cause.

He also established his own independent production company, called Jet Tone Films Ltd. in English. His partner in the company is Jeffrey Lau, a director and producer who tends to work closer to the populist vein of mainstream Hong Kong film.

Wong went on to direct several more feature films in the 1990s produced by Jet Tone, which allowed him to work at his own pace. Among these were Chungking Express (1994), which follows the lives of two love-struck cops in Hong Kong and the mysterious women they meet and fall in love with. Originally intended to be a distraction piece for him to get his mind off of the heavily delayed Ashes of Time, it ended up being one of his most popular films, if not the most popular. Fallen Angels (1995), was originally intended to be the third act of Chungking Express, but when the tone didn't fit with the other two parts, he cut it out and made it a standalone movie instead; it is seen as a semi-sequel to Chungking Express as is a neo-noir film about on a disillusioned killer trying to overcome the affections of his partner, a strange drifter looking for her ex-boyfriend, and a mute trying to get the world's attention in his own ways, all set against a sordid and surreal urban nightscape.

Wong's fourth movie, Ashes of Time (1994), released between Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, applied his approach to a star-studded wuxia (martial arts swordplay) story; the desert shoot in Mainland China dragged on for over a year and resulted in one of contemporary Hong Kong cinema's most notorious commercial disasters.

His first major international recognition was at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival where he won the Best Director prize for Happy Together (1997). A film that "uses gorgeous, saturated images set to an eclectic soundtrack of tango by Argentinian maestro Astor Piazolla, Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso and Frank Zappa instrumentals to chronicle the stormy affair of a gay couple living as expatriates in Buenos Aires."

Despite his background as a scriptwriter, one of Wong's trademarks as a director is that he works largely through improvisation and experimentation involving the actors and crew rather than adhering to a fixed screenplay. This has been a frequent source of trouble for his actors, his financial backers and many other people connected with his films, including sometimes himself.

The filming of In the Mood for Love (2000) had to be shifted from Beijing to Macau after the China Film Bureau demanded to see the completed script. This was all in all a minor setback in the "very complicated evolution" of the project which goes as far back as 1997. It was Wong's intention to make two films, one of which would be titled Beijing Summer, the plot unclear at the time, but eventually taking form in Macau. Here Wong planned to call it Three Stories About Food, but saw it better to settle for only one story, A Story About Food, that centers on a writer. Together with scenes shot in Bangkok and Angkor Wat, the filming took as long as 15 months. This was an especially arduous time for lead actress Maggie Cheung whose hair and makeup reportedly took a daily five hours, and who appeared in a different cheongsam in each scene. She famously compared the lengthy shoot to a cold she couldn't get rid of. Working without deadlines, the film's upcoming premier at Cannes nonetheless put some pressure on Wong to finish editing. Intending to name the film Secrets he was dissuaded by Cannes, and finally named it In the Mood for Love after Bryan Ferry's cover of the song "I'm in the Mood for Love" he was listening to.

Wong's 2046 (2004), a film about capturing lost memories, was the third chapter of a shared story that began with Days of Being Wild and continued with In the Mood for Love. Infamous for long drawn out shoots without any real regards to deadlines, a running joke amongst the crew was that he would finish in the year 2046.

In 2006, he became the first Chinese director to preside the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

Wong Kar-wai's first full English-language film, My Blueberry Nights, opened the 2007 Cannes Film Festival as one of 22 films in competition. The lead, American singer-songwriter Norah Jones, made her acting debut in the film.

Wong Kar-wai was the jury president of the 2008 Shanghai International Film Festival which was held from June 14-22, 2008.

 

As Tears Go By (旺角卡門) is a 1988 Hong Kong film that was the directorial debut of Wong Kar-wai. Critics have compared the film to Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, as the central plot revolves around a small time gangster trying to keep his smaller-time gangster friend out of trouble (trailer).

 

 

Chungking Express (重慶森林) is a 1994 Hong Kong film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai. The film consists of two stories told in sequence, each about a Hong Kong cop and his relationship with a woman. The first story stars Takeshi Kaneshiro and Brigitte Lin and the second stars Tony Leung, Faye Wong and Valerie Chow. The Chinese title translates to "Chungking Jungle", referring to the metaphoric concrete jungle of the city, as well as to Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui, where much of the first part of the movie is set (trailer).

 

Happy Together (春光乍洩) is a 1997 Hong Kong movie directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Leslie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, that depicts a turbulent romance between two men (trailer).

 

 

 

In the Mood for Love (花樣年華, literally "Our Glorious Years Have Passed Like Flowers") is a 2000 Hong Kong film directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung (trailer).