Chinese bronzes | Bronze ritual vessel ( You ( vessel ) | You ), Western Zhou Dynasty

These were replicas in bronze of earlier Chinese money, cowry shells, so they were named Bronze Shell.

The first universally accepted true Chinese dynasty was the Bronze Age Shang Dynasty, 1766-1050 BC.

Thus the concrete existence of the Xia is yet to be proven, despite efforts by Chinese archaeologists to link Xia with Bronze Age Erlitou archaeological sites.

Bronze Chinese charioteer from the Warring States Period ( 403 – 221 BC )

Chinese jade was attributed with magical powers, and was used in the Stone and Bronze Ages for large and impractical versions of everyday weapons and tools, as well as the bi disks and cong vessels.

Bronze, gold and silver, rhinoceros horn, Chinese silk, ivory, lacquer, cloisonne enamel and many other materials had specialist artists working in them.

Left: Bronze 方樽 fāngzūn Chinese ritual bronzes | ritual wine container dated about 1000 BC.

Although the archaeological record shows clearly that multiple cultures and kingdoms existed in the area that was to become China, Chinese archaeologists continue to date all Bronze Age sites to the Xia, Shang or Zhou, implying that the territory controlled today belonged to the ancestors of the current Chinese state.

While it was long thought that the Chinese had developed the blast furnace and cast iron as their first method of iron production, Donald Wagner ( the author of the above referenced study ) has published a more recent paper that supersedes some of the statements in the earlier work ; the newer paper still places the date of the first cast-iron artifacts at the 4th and 5th centuries BC, but also provides evidence of earlier bloomery furnace use, which migrated in from the West during the beginning of the Chinese Bronze Age of the late Longshan culture ( 2000 BC ).

Bronze holds an important place in Chinese culture, and was always an important part of state ceremony.

* Gallery of Ancient Chinese Bronze

Oracle bone script () refers to incised ( or, rarely, brush-written ) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which were animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in Bronze Age China.

Chinese bronze inscriptions, also commonly referred to as Bronze script or Bronzeware script are writing in a variety of Chinese scripts on Chinese ritual bronzes such as zhōng bells and dǐng tripodal cauldrons from the Shang dynasty to the Zhou dynasty and even later.

The arrival into Britain of thousands of Chinese in the 1970s introduced Traditional Chinese Medicine – a system dating back to the Bronze Age or earlier that used acupuncture, herbs, diet and exercise.

Many archeological sites dating to the neolithic and Bronze ages have been found along the river, as well as relics and ruins from a settlement believed to be the Chinese Lelang Commandery which was eventually conquered by Koguryo.

Chen ( 陳, Bronze script: 敶 ) was a minor Zhou Dynasty vassal state during the Spring and Autumn Period of Chinese History.

While most automobile producers limited themselves to a single color combination, and Ford relied exclusively on the fast-drying Japan Black lacquer which cured in a matter of hours, Jordan automobiles were available in no less than three colors of red-" Apache Red ", " Mercedes Red ", and " Savage Red "- as well as " Ocean Sand Gray ", " Venetian Green ", " Briarcliff Green ", " Egyptian Bronze ", " Liberty Blue ", and " Chinese Blue ".

Star names later categorized in the twenty-eight mansions have been found on oracle bones unearthed at Anyang, dating back to the middle Shang Dynasty ( Chinese Bronze Age ), and the mansion ( xiù: 宿 ) system's nucleus seems to have taken shape by the time of the ruler Wu Ding ( 1339-1281 BC ).

The Chinese characters in the original versions were probably written in zhuànshū ( seal script ), while later versions were written in lìshū ( clerical script ) and kǎishū ( regular script ) styles.

Japanese writing had long depended on Chinese ideograms ( kanji ), but these were now supplemented by kana, two types of phonetic Japanese script: katakana, a mnemonic device using parts of Chinese ideograms ; and hiragana, a cursive form of kanji writing and an art form in itself.

The character set is broadly broken into the following categories ( though these are by no means the only etymological roots of the characters we see in modern Chinese script ):

The different script systems resulting from the preservation or simplication of original pre-Republic Chinese characters are used by Chinese people living under different jurisdictions: " Simplified Chinese " in Mainland China ( the People's Republic of China ), " Traditional Chinese " in the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau, and " Proper Chinese " ( which is the same script as " Traditional Chinese ") in Taiwan ( the Republic of China ).

The native terms ( Chinese hanzi, Japanese kanji, Korean hanja ) are also fairly widespread in the contexts of the individual languages, but they are not generally considered suitable for discussion of the script as a whole.

Further sources are the ' Phags-pa script based on the Tibetan alphabet, which was used to write several of the languages of the Mongol empire, including Chinese, and the Menggu Ziyun, a rhyme dictionary based on ' Phags-pa.

Asides from derivation from tamgas, an alternate possibility of derivation from the Chinese script have been suggested by V. Thomsen in 1893, in which Chinese script itself is possibly derived from the Neolithic-era Banpo symbols and Jiahu script found at locations less than a thousand miles south of the Orkhon Valley.

And, after becoming the right-hand man of Enver Pasha, he is sent by the latter to pave the way for a new Turkish Empire embracing `` the union of all Turks throughout Central Asia from Adrianople to the Chinese oases on the Silk Trade Route ''.

At Geneva in 1954, to get the war in Indo-China settled, the British and French gave in to Russian and Communist Chinese demands and agreed to the setting up of a Communist state, North Viet Nam -- which then, predictably, became a base for Communist operations against neighboring South Viet Nam and Laos.

Although modern scholars have expressed surprise that `` the simple magic square of three '', a mere `` mathematical puzzle '', was able to exert a considerable influence on the minds and imaginations of the cultured Chinese for so many centuries, they could have found most of the answers right within the square itself.

Such an analysis speedily reveals why the middle number of the Lo Shu, 5, was so vitally significant for the Chinese ever since the earliest hints that they had a knowledge of this diagram.

The tremendous emphasis on the 5 in the Lo Shu square -- for purely mathematical reasons -- and the fact that this number so neatly symbolized the heart and center of the universe, could well explain why the Old Chinese seem to have so revered the number 5, and why they put so much stress on the concept of Centrality.

Although the primary mathematical properties of the middle number at the center of the Lo Shu, and the interrelation of all the other numbers to it, might seem enough to account for the deep fascination which the Lo Shu held for the Old Chinese philosophers, this was actually only a beginning of wonders.

but in this respect it was merely following the accepted Chinese convention for all maps.

); its design was planned by the government of the day ; and it places individual letters in syllable clusters with equal dimensions, in the same way as Chinese characters, to allow for mixed-script writing ( one syllable always takes up one type-space no matter how many letters get stacked into building that one sound-block ).

While Zhuyin is not used as a mainstream writing system, it is still often used in ways similar to a romanization system — that is, for aiding in pronunciation and as an input method for Chinese characters on computers and cellphones.

From the 2000s many Chinese have settled and started up small businesses, while at least as many have come as workforce for large ( construction or other ) enterprises.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited Angola in June 2006, offering a US $ 9 billion loan for infrastructure improvements in return for petroleum.

The first known references to mouth rinsing is in Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, about 2700 BC, for treatment of gingivitis.

As of early 2011, trade with China is dominated by imports of Chinese goods and accounts for about 10 percent of Armenia's foreign trade.

Chinese měiguórén for example, is derived from a word for the United States, měiguó, where měi is an abbreviation for Yàměilìjiā " America " and guó is " country ".

There is, however, speculation that local criminal gangs barter abalone illegally with Chinese nationals in exchange for chemicals used in the production of drugs, reducing the need for the use of money and hence avoiding money laundering difficulties.

* 1951 – Tibetan delegates to the Central People's Government arrive in Beijing and draft a Seventeen Point Agreement for Chinese sovereignty and Tibetan autonomy.

It was also widely used by the Chinese for its healing chemicals, curing illnesses such as infections, rashes, and migraines.

Restaurants ( along with Chinese laundries ) provided an ethnic niche for small businesses at a time when the Chinese people were excluded from most jobs in the wage economy by ethnic discrimination or lack of language fluency.