The ledger was full of most precise information: date of laying, length of incubation period, number of chick reaching the first week, second week, fifth week, weight of hen, size of rooster's wattles and so on, all scrawled out in a hand that looked more Chinese than English, the most jagged and sprawling Alex had ever seen.

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.

The concept of the Middle Kingdom at peace, strong and united under a forceful ruler, which had been only a longed-for ideal in the time of the Warring States, was finally realized by the establishment of a Chinese Empire under the Ch'in dynasty ( 221-207 B.C. ).

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.

In fact, the neat balance of these pairs, and their subtle equilibrium, would have had special meaning in the minds of the Old Chinese.

This whole tendency had an unfortunate effect on Chinese thinking.

The Agrarians believed that Chinese society should be modeled around that of the early sage king Shen Nong, a folk hero which was portrayed in Chinese literature as " working in the fields, along with everyone else, and consulting with everyone else when any decision had to be reached.

Russian archaeologist L. A. Evtyukhova surmised, based on circumstantial evidence, that the palace may have been the residence of Li Ling, a Chinese general who had been defeated by the Xiongnu in 99 BC, and defected to them as a result.

According to ancient Chinese, Indian and Javanese manuscripts, western coastal cities of Borneo had become trading ports, part of their trade routes, since the first millennium.

The Government had apparently given preferential treatment to Chinese companies, and was again criticised for the apparent preferential treatment to the BOCHK.

The USSR had signed a Treaty of Friendship with the Kuomintang in 1945 and disavowed support for the Chinese Communists.

After a Chinese invasion to assist the North Koreans, fighting stabilized along the 38th parallel, which had separated the Koreas.

In 1991 there were 2, 000 foreign learners taking China's official Chinese Proficiency Test ( comparable to the English Cambridge Certificate ), while in 2005, the number of candidates had risen sharply to 117, 660 .< ref > " 汉语水平考试中心 ： 2005年外国考生总人数近12万 ",< sup > Gov. cn </ sup > Xinhua News Agency, January 16, 2006 .</ ref >

By the mid-to-late 13th century, the Chinese had adopted the dogma of Neo-Confucian philosophy formulated by Zhu Xi.

Before the Mongol invasion, Chinese dynasties reportedly had approximately 120 million inhabitants ; after the conquest was completed in 1279, the 1300 census reported roughly 60 million people.

By 1949, the CPC had established control over most of the country ( see Chinese Civil War ).

The idea of Filial piety influenced the Chinese legal system: a criminal would be punished more harshly if the culprit had committed the crime against a parent, while fathers often exercised enormous power over their children.

Lu Xun also criticised Confucianism heavily for shaping Chinese people into the condition they had reached by the late Qing Dynasty: his criticism are well portrayed in two of his works, A Madman's Diary and The True Story of Ah Q.

The Six Dynasties era saw the rise of the Xuanxue philosophical school and the maturation of Chinese Buddhism, which had entered China from India during the Late Han Dynasties.

By the time of the Tang Dynasty five-hundred years after Buddhisms arrival into China, it had transformed into a thoroughly Chinese religious philosophy dominated by the school of Zen Buddhism.

It is a system of moral, social, political, and religious thought that has had tremendous influence on Chinese history, thought, and culture down to the 21st century.

In this period also started the penetration of Western culture, but most Chinese thought that the Westerners were maybe more advanced in technology and warfare, but that China had primacy in moral and intellectual fields.

During the Industrial and Modern Ages, Chinese philosophy had also begun to integrate concepts of Western philosophy, as steps toward modernization.

Martin had to invent the word quanli to translate the Western concept of " rights " in the process of translating Henry Wheaton's Elements of International Law into classical Chinese.

The game changed somewhat in the translation from Chinese to the European culture.

An alternative Chinese term is ketou, however the meaning is somewhat altered: kòu has the general meaning of ' knock ', whereas kē has the general meaning of " touch upon ( a surface )", tóu meaning head.

In those days, the Chinese relied upon command signals and carefully timed calculation of enemy movements into the minefield, since a long fuse had to be ignited by hand from the ambushers in a somewhat far-off location lying in wait.

This is somewhat similar to the approach some previous systems have taken, using simple engine systems with " low-tech " fuels, as the Russian and Chinese space programs still do.

:" The Son of Heaven on hearing all this reasoned thus: Ferghana ( Dayuan ) and the possessions of Bactria ( Daxia ) and Parthia ( Anxi ) are large countries, full of rare things, with a population living in fixed abodes and given to occupations somewhat identical with those of the Chinese people, but with weak armies, and placing great value on the rich produce of China " ( Hanshu, Former Han History ).

Some say that the Chinese Emperor Wu became interested in developing commercial relationships with the sophisticated urban civilizations of Ferghana, Bactria and Parthian Empire: " The Son of Heaven on hearing all this reasoned thus: Ferghana ( Dayuan ) and the possessions of Bactria ( Ta-Hsia ) and Parthian Empire ( Anxi ) are large countries, full of rare things, with a population living in fixed abodes and given to occupations somewhat identical with those of the Chinese people, but with weak armies, and placing great value on the rich produce of China " ( Hou Hanshu, Later Han History ).

The name does appear somewhat further east than the Achaemenid Empire, as the Chinese knew the Asian Scythians as Sai ( Chinese character: 塞, Old Sinitic * sək ).

In Chinese versions, the joke is somewhat muted by the common practice of including subtitles to make the story easier to follow for speakers of Chinese's many dialects.

Chinese feudal rulers with power over their particular fiefdoms were called Wang ( 王 ), roughly translated as King, but in fact somewhat amorphous and also readily maps to " duke " in English.

Subsequent generations of Chinese have since re-assessed Chen's contributions to Chinese Communism as being somewhat more positive.

Until the 1990s, the main commercial block of the town along highway 178 was a somewhat picturesque street of older buildings constructed of fitted local rocks and bricks, including a vintage post office, and cafe, 3 bars, and a small Chinese restaurant.

By vilifying them and depicting them as somewhat less than human, the Chinese could justify their conduct and still any qualms of conscience.

It applies especially to the ethnic Chinese populations of the British Straits Settlements of Malaya and the Dutch-controlled island of Java and other locations, who have adopted to Nusantara customs -- partially or in full -- to be somewhat assimilated into the local communities.

The Chinese Seagull TLR and medium-format cameras from the former Soviet Union such as the Russian Lubitel and somewhat better made Ukrainian Kiev-Arsenal 60 and 88 are also available at moderate prices.

Partly because of the Cultural Revolution, in today's mainland China less than one-third of the population believe in feng shui, and the proportion of believers among young urban Chinese is said to be much lower Learning feng shui is still somewhat considered taboo in today's China.

The US Census Bureau's 2000 census lists French as the fourth most-spoken language in the nation after English, Spanish and Chinese, although this is somewhat misleading because the census groups together the various languages of China.

Nosaka attempted to keep the JCP neutral during the Sino-Soviet Split of the 1960s, though the CIA interpreted that Sanzo's party remained somewhat more friendly with the Chinese.

The Shanghainese name was somewhat in contrast with usage in Mandarin and other Chinese dialects, where chángshān ( the Mandarin pronunciation of 長衫 ) refers to an exclusively male dress ( see changshan ) and the female version is known as a qipao.

The Dayuan were identified by the Chinese as unusual in features, with a sophisticated urban civilization, similar to that of the Bactrians and Parthians: " The Son of Heaven on hearing all this reasoned thus: Ferghana ( Dayuan ) and the possessions of Bactria and Parthia are large countries, full of rare things, with a population living in fixed abodes and given to occupations somewhat identical with those of the Chinese people, but with weak armies, and placing great value on the rich produce of China " ( Hou Han Shu ).

However, this translation is somewhat misleading, since the Chinese name is derived from the much longer phrase " receiving the mandate from heaven, and stabilizing the dynasty.