The Kingdom of Women (女儿国) is a chapter in the classic Chinese fantasy novel Flowers in the Mirror (镜花缘) by Li Ruzhen (李汝珍). The novel was published in the early 19th century. A World in the Mirror The story is set in the prosperous era of Tang Dynasty during woman emperor Wu Zetian’s reign. A disgruntled scholar Tang Ao in […]
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About a thousand years ago, there was an itinerant Buddhist monk named Qici (契此) wandering around in the area on China’s east coast. He forever carried a cotton bag over his shoulder containing inexhaustible supplies of candies and toys for kids.
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This arm protection brocade was unearthed in 1995 from a tomb in Xinjiang Province dating back to the East Han (25–220). It has eight Chinese characters embroidered on it, which read as follows: 五星出東方利中國 (It will be a good time for China when five stars congregate in the east) Interestingly, the first name of the archaeologist who discovered the “five […]
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There was no donkey in this mountain until a boat shipped one from afar across the waterway to the region. A tiger from the mountain spotted the donkey and tried to communicate with the guest, but the donkey only traded with a loud and aggressive shriek. The tiger was shocked and dodged aside. After a while, the tiger tentatively returned […]
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I Ching (Yi Jing 易经) is the very foundation of Daoism and Chinese culture. But I Ching that we normally refer to is just one-third of all I Ching that was created by the ancient Chinese. This one-third of I Ching we know today is actually called “Zhou Yi (Change in Heaven 周易)”, meaning: “the I Ching compiled during the […]
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The 24 solar terms in the Chinese calendar are determined by, not a human ruler’s will, but the pulse of Nature – the change of season. Of the 24, winter solstice, the 22nd on the roll, is evidently the first solar term to be established during the Spring and Autumn period about 2,500 years ago.
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For thousands of years, Chinese people speak in hundreds of different dialects but use only one script, Han Characters, which makes the written communication and culture inheritance possible.
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In ancient China, mirrors, which are normally made of bronze, were often viewed as more than just instruments for reflection; they were also artworks, and sometimes sacred objects with supernatural dispositions, and for that, they often used as sacrifice articles to detect other worlds.
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Odes of the Warrior States era, rhymed essays of the Han Dynasty, couplet-style essays of the Wei-Jin age, poems of the Tang Dynasty, verses of the Song Dynasty, lyrics of the Yuan time, and novels of the Ming Dynasty represent the highest literary achievements of the corresponding period respectively.
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Encountering a white bone demon is one of the 81 trials Buddhist monk Xuanzang, of Tang Dynasty, and his disciples would have to face before arriving in the land of enlightenment. Of course, the enlightened land in the west is not India. It is a state of consciousness. After all, a thousand years ago, there was no such a country […]
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In Chinese mythology, epidemics are caused by Five Epidemic Demons with five pairs of evil eyes, all having a human body but the head of a man, a tiger, a horse, a bird or a rooster. According to the Encyclopedia on The Origin of the Mysterious Figures from Confucius, Buddhism and Daoist (三教源流搜神大全), a work compiled during the Ming Dynasty, […]
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About 3,000 years ago during the Shang Dynasty (商朝), there was a military commander named Li Jin (李靖). Li Jing had a son called Nezha (哪吒) and oddly had no bathroom in his big mansion. When Nezha was seven, on an unseasonably hot day in May, the boy told his mother he was going to take a bath in a […]
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