The book. Scholars are reasonably certain regarding the date of composition for the Huainanzi.Both the Book of Han and Records of the Grand Historian record that when Liu An paid a state visit to his nephew the Emperor Wu of Han in 139 BC, he presented a copy of his "recently completed" book in twenty-one chapters. Recent research shows that Chapters 1, 2, …

Woodblock printing: The earliest specimen of woodblock printing is a single-sheet dharani sutra in Sanskrit that was printed on hemp paper between 650 and 670 AD; it was unearthed in 1974 from a Tang tomb near Xi'an. A Korean miniature dharani Buddhist sutra discovered in 1966, bearing extinct Chinese writing characters used only during the reign of China's only self-ruling …

Records of the Grand Historian, also known by its Chinese name Shiji, is a monumental history of ancient China that is the first of China's 24 dynastic histories.The Records was written in the early 1st century BC by the ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian, whose father Sima Tan had begun it several decades earlier. The work covers a 2,500-year period from the age of the …

The Yellow Turban Rebellion, also translated as the Yellow Scarves Rebellion, was a peasant revolt in China against the Eastern Han dynasty.The uprising broke out in 184 AD during the reign of Emperor Ling.Although the main rebellion was suppressed by 185 AD, pockets of resistance continued and smaller rebellions emerged in later years.

The Han dynasty (UK: / ˈ h æ n /, US: / ˈ h ɑː n /; Chinese: 漢朝; pinyin: Hàncháo) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu.The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warring interregnum known as the Chu–Han contention (206–202 BC), and it was …

Emperor Wen of Han (Chinese: 漢 文 帝; 203/202 – 6 July 157 BCE), born Liu Heng (Chinese: 劉 恆), was the fifth emperor of the Western Han dynasty in China from 180 to his death in 157 BCE. The son of Emperor Gao and Consort Bo, his reign provided a much needed stability after the unstable and violent regency of Empress Lü.The prosperous reigns of Wen and his son …

Naming In English. Among linguists, Standard Chinese is known as Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin. Colloquially, it is imprecisely referred simply as Mandarin, even though that name may refer also to the Mandarin dialect group as a whole or its historic standard such as Imperial Mandarin. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is used to distinguish it from …

The Silk Road (Chinese: 絲綢之路) was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the East and West. The name "Silk Road", first coined in the late 19th century, has fallen into …

The Han–Xiongnu War, also known as the Sino–Xiongnu War, was a series of military battles fought between the Han Empire and the nomadic Xiongnu confederation from 133 BC to 89 AD.. Starting from Emperor Wu's reign (r. 141–87 BC), the Han Empire changed from a relatively passive foreign policy to an offensive strategy to deal with the increasing Xiongnu incursions …

Terminology. The general term císhū (辭書, "lexicographic books") semantically encompasses "dictionary; lexicon; encyclopedia; glossary". The Chinese language has two words for dictionary: zidian (character/logograph dictionary) for written forms, that is, Chinese characters, and cidian (word/phrase dictionary), for spoken forms.. For character dictionaries, zidian (Chinese: 字典; …