A Chinese abacus

The earliest known written documentation of the Chinese abacus dates to the 2nd century BC.

The Chinese abacus, known as the suànpán ( 算盤, lit.

The similarity of the Roman abacus to the Chinese one suggests that one could have inspired the other, as there is some evidence of a trade relationship between the Roman Empire and China.

The Chinese abacus uses two upper beads to represent the 5s and 5 lower beads to represent the 1s, the 7 beads can represent from a hexadecimal digit from 0 to 15 in each column.

The Chinese also invented a more sophisticated abacus from around the 2nd century BC known as the Chinese abacus ).

In each place value, the Chinese abacus uses four or five beads to represent units, which are subitized, and one or two separate beads, which symbolize fives.

Both the Roman abacus and the Chinese suanpan have been used since ancient times.

The suanpan () is an abacus of Chinese origin first described in a 190 CE book of the Eastern Han Dynasty, namely Supplementary Notes on the Art of Figures written by Xu Yue.

The similarity of the Roman abacus to the Chinese one suggests that one could have inspired the other, as there is some evidence of a trade relationship between the Roman Empire and China.

There were the letter writers of Sago Street — the Chinese called this street Gu Chia Chwi Hi Hng Cheng ( front of Kreta Ayer Theatre ), but it was mainly associated with death — the sandalwood idols of Club Street and the complicated and simple food of Mosque Street ; all rang to the sound of the abacus.

Although this switch from counting rods to the abacus allowed for reduced computation times, it may have also led to the stagnation and decline of Chinese mathematics.

Speech and Drama classes were initiated in both English and Chinese, computer classes were organised for the pupils during the school holidays and abacus classes were introduced.

Teaching techniques included reading from various textbooks, memorizing, abacus, and repeatedly copying Chinese characters and Japanese script.

The Chinese, who make up 29 % of the population of Sarawak and 17 % of total population in West Kalimantan, originally migrated from southeastern China.

In the 1870s and 1880s, several thousand Chinese men, mostly from Guangdong province, migrated to New Zealand to work on the South Island goldfields.

Some groups of non-Xiongnu herdsmen even settled permanently within the Chinese borders, first of which was the Wuhuan ( 烏桓 ), who migrated to the area of today's Province of Liaoning during the era of Jiangwu ( 25 – 56 ).

In the 1860s, several thousand Chinese men, mostly from the Guangdong province, migrated to New Zealand to work on the South Island goldfields.

Later they migrated south and westward into areas of the modern Chinese provinces of Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, and Liaoning.

Gansu has a population of 26 million ( 2009 ) and has a large concentration of Hui Chinese, and the historical home, along with Shaanxi of the dialect of the Dungans, who are Hui who migrated to Central Asia.

Descendants of Uyghurs who migrated to Taoyuan County, Hunan have largely assimilated into the Han Chinese and Hui population and practice Chinese customs, speaking Chinese as their language.

People of Chinese ancestry make up an even larger populace, many of whom having descended from tin miners who migrated to Phuket during the 19th century.

Hui people who have also migrated to the south such as this Darunaman Mosque, locating in Chiang Rai province, Thailand shows a great mixture between Chinese and Islamic architecture.

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 ).

As property values increased in downtown Chinatown, many Chinese Canadians migrated to Toronto's east end in Riverdale.

The most likely homeland of the Hmong – Mien languages ( aka Miao – Yao languages ) is in Southern China between the Yangtze and Mekong rivers, but speakers of these languages may have migrated from Central China either as part of the Han Chinese expansion or as a result of exile from an original homeland by Han Chinese.

Although its precursors probably lie in the musical traditions of the historical Tai tribes that migrated south from China and northern Vietnam, much cross-pollination with indigenous music of the region as well as importation of Chinese, Mon-Khmer, Indian and Malay influences has also had a pronounced affect on the dances, instrumentation and melodies of morlam.

An elementary school in Taicang-Zhu Diwen Xiaoxue-is named after Steven Chu .. Chu, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics, is the son of Chinese scholars who migrated to the US in the early 1940s from Taicang in Jiangsu province.

This mestizo culture includes influences from Spanish Extremadura and Andalucia, African influence due to the arrival of slaves from Madagascar ( Malgache slaves ), the Chinese coolies that migrated from Canton to work the rice fields and replace the slaves ; and also Roma Gypsies who came as pirates looking for pearls or incognito as Spanish horsemen.

The current area of greatest agreement is that the languages appeared in the region between the Yangtze and Mekong rivers, but there is reason to believe that speakers migrated there from further north with the expansion of the Han Chinese.

This group later migrated north to the Wei River valley, and gradually were absorbed by Han Chinese.

Over the last two centuries, more than 600, 000 people from Xinhui have migrated overseas ( mostly to the Americas, Indonesia and Hong Kong ), making it one of the largest representative Chinese districts of overseas Chinese.

Large numbers of Surinamese Chinese have migrated to the Netherlands after Suriname gained independence in 1975.

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 ''.

Bursting from the lips of a charging cavalry trooper was the last sound heard on this earth by untold numbers of Cheyennes, Sioux and Apaches, Mexican banditos under Pancho Villa, Japanese in the South Pacific, and Chinese and North Korean Communists in Korea.

however the President, who would like to woo the former Chinese province away from both Peking and Moscow, would promise Chen nothing more than an abstention by the U.S. if Outer Mongolia's admission comes to a vote.

Thus, while it remains possible that the Babylonians and/or the Pythagoreans may perhaps have had the magic square of three before the Chinese did, more definite evidence will have to turn up from the Middle East or the Classical World before China can lose her claim to the earliest known magic square by more than a thousand years.

But the `` marvelous person '' that is supposed to result from Zen exhibits more Chinese practicality than Indian speculation -- he possesses magical powers, and can use them to order nature and to redeem souls.

They range in size from the Chinese giant salamander ( Andrias davidianus ), which can grow to a length of, to the diminutive Thorius pennatulus from Mexico which seldom exceeds.

A number of fossil cryptobranchids have been found but there are only three living species, the Chinese giant salamander ( Andrias davidianus ), the Japanese giant salamander ( Andrias japonicus ) and the hellbender ( Cryptobranchus alleganiensis ) from North America.

The zero was probably introduced to the Chinese in the Tang Dynasty ( 618-907 AD ) when travel in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East would have provided direct contact with India, allowing them to acquire the concept of zero and the decimal point from Indian merchants and mathematicians.

Two binary abaci constructed by Dr. Robert C. Good, Jr., made from two Chinese abaci

In Chinese astronomy, the stream of water flowing from the Water Jar was depicted as the " Army of Yu-Lin " ( Yu-lin-kiun ).

Mahayana Buddhism was far more successful in China than its rival Hinayana, and both Indian schools and local Chinese sects arose from the 5th century.

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 ".

This type of cooking typically caters to American styles and differs significantly from traditional Chinese cuisine.

In the 19th century, Chinese in San Francisco operated sophisticated and sometimes luxurious restaurants patronized mainly by Chinese, while restaurants in smaller towns served what their customers requested, ranging from pork chop sandwiches and apple pie to beans and eggs.

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.

Even more divergent are American stir-fry dishes inspired by Chinese food, that may contain brown rice instead of white, or those with grated cheese ; milk products are almost always absent from traditional Chinese food.

Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, Homeopathy and Naturopathy are cited as examples The term appears to have entered into usage through the National Institute of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine ( NCCAM ), which began to employ it as a substitute for alternative medical systems as a way of differentiating widely comprehensive systems of medicine, such as Ayurvedic medicine, from specialized alternative approaches.

Chinese astronomers were able to view what is modern Antlia from their latitudes, and incorporated its stars into two different constellations.

Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and the Indians, Chinese, and Mayans developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations.

Since 1998, Harvard University wraps some of the valuable statues on its campus, such as this " Harvard Bixi | Chinese stele ", with waterproof covers every winter, in order to protect them from erosion caused by acid rain.