Chi hsiang nicosia betting
3
Small Methods 3, 4 Habisreutinger, S. ACS Energy Lett. However, this device has low power-conversion-efficiency, which is a barrier to their use in the photovoltaic market. The metal-organic frameworks MOFs have receive considerable attention in photovoltaic applications due to their properties as: tunable porosity and long-distance internal energy migration pathways. MOFs are hybrid materials constructed by the combination of organic binders and inorganic nodes.
Currently, ZnO has been used as an alternative material for the manufacture of photoanode, it exhibits electron mobility and electron diffusion coefficient. Considering these facts, the expected advantages of the combination ZnO and Zr-MOF have encouraged us to exploit them in the development of a photoanode for possible application in DSSC devices. The characterizations technics confirmed the composite material formation. The BET analysis shows a significant increase in the surface area and of the pore volume in the composite material in comparision of the pure ZnO.
Kovendhan, Jean Maria Fernandes, K. Sowri Babu, D. Resume : Charge transport in inverted polymer solar cell incorporating Ta2O5 cathode buffer layer CBL is investigated in this work. Scanning electron microscopy images of the films show small island-like features. X-ray diffraction measurements confirm the films to be polycrystalline with orthorhombic structure. It is observed from optical measurements such as UV-Vis spectroscopy and photoluminescence that the Ta2O5 films show absorbance around nm and the emission to be blue-shifted.
The results indicating improvement in charge transport behavior in the device due to Ta2O5 deposited at higher substrate temperature will be discussed in detail. Perovskite Solar Cells PSCs have already gathered considerable attention, showing a tremendous hike in efficiency from 3. A lot of research has been done on the efficiency improvement of PSCs by optimization of the film morphology at the interfaces by various characterization techniques including electrochemical impedance spectroscopy EIS in a solid-state active device geometry.
Li et. Here, we have studied the kinetics of charge transfer and diffusion at the hybrid organic-inorganic perovskite-liquid electrolyte interface under the effect of applied bias. By applying the different dc bias from 0 to 1V and 0 to -1V, it was found that the ion diffusion at the low-frequency regime gets modulated due to charge accumulation.
The charge transport resistance is initially increased to a maximum at around 0. The projecting eaves are supported by the ingenious system of bracket sets found in some of the earliest surviving Chinese buildings and which became a characteristic feature of Chinese architecture.
Controversial Confucius In China today, the ancient philosopher's works are a source of lively debate by Pang Pu The Master said, "When there is a preponderance of native substance over acquired refinement, the result will be churlishness. When there is a preponderance of acquired refinement over native substance, the result will be pedantry. Only a well-balanced admixture of these two will result in gentlemanliness. That a man who dupes others survives is because he has been fortunate enough to be spared.
When I have pointed out one corner ofa square to anyone and he does not come back with the other three, I will not point it out to him a second time. Book 11 The Master said, "To fail to speak to a man who is capable of benefiting is to let a man go to waste.
To speak to a man who is incapable of benefiting is to let one's words go to waste. Translated by D. Penguin Books, Lau Confucius c. He liked to say that he was a direct descendant of the Song rulers of China, which in his time was enmeshed in social and political strife. His efforts met with little success, but after his death his more lowly-born disciples, the most important of whom was Mencius Meng zi , set down his doctrines in the Four Books and the Five Classics, and some of them obtained prominent government positions.
Gradually, a body of high officials, the mandarinate, came into being, notably during the Han dynasty and the Tang period. Its scholastic nature was an obstacle to any reinvigoration of Chinese life, especially during the nineteenth century.
Consequently, Confucius and his teachings were at first totally rejected in socialist China. The article by Pang Pu on this page outlines the main points at issue. The philosopher lived towards the end of the so-called Spring and Autumn period BC which was marked by violent social upheavals. Some historians maintain that this was the time when Chinese society based on slave- ownership was transformed into a feudal society. If this was so, then Confucius may have represented the interests of the emerged landowner class in opposition to the entrenched slaveholding class.
His political role would in this case have been positive and progressive. In their opinion, Confucius represented the interests of the declining slaveholding class and consequently his political position was reactionary. As he travelled from State to State, his principal objective was to restore the old order based on slavery. What Confucius wished to restore was not an order based on slavery but the unity of an empire which, at the beginning of the Zhou dynasty had broken up into powerful vassal States.
The unification advocated by Confucius would have speeded up social development, so the argument runs. Lastly, some Chinese historians believe that the feudal era began at a much later date, during the period of the Wei kingdom and the Jin dynasty from to AD.
The snake slithering up the back of the head of the mask not visible in photo may well be a primitive precursor of the Chinese dragon. Page 24 4 Green jade amulet depicting a dignified elder dates from the Han dynasty. Page 25 7 Jade and gold funerary vestments of prince Liu Sheng, son of the fourth Han emperor Jingdi, was one of the treasures found in two royal tombs discovered in at Man-cheng in the province of Hebei. These jade mailcoats were believed to prevent the decomposition of the body.
Buddhism came to China from India during the first centuries AD. In Dunhuang, an oasis town in Gansu province on the pilgrim road to India, are the Mogao "caves of a thousand Buddhas", grotto-temples hewn out between AD and the 10th century. With their 2, sculptures and 45, square metres of frescoes, the Mogao caves constitute one of the largest treasuries of Buddhist art.
In Indian mythology apsaras were feminine attendants who sang and danced for the delight of gods and men. The fresco dates from the Western Wei dynasty: Page 26 10 Detail from a Tang dynasty mural at Dunhuang shows the great Chinese traveller Zhang Qian dismounted and kneeling in front of the emperor Wudi not seen in photo before his departure on a mission to the Western Lands. Here he is seen in his incarnation as Sudhana the young son of a rich merchant noted for his generosity.
Page 27 12 Birds and weeping-willow branch. The circular format favoured by Song dynasty artists, which derives from the shape of the fan, symbolizes the world without beginning and without end. Ink painting on silk by an unknown Song dynasty artist. The theme, a traditional one, is the external world reduced to its simplest expression; the observer is drawn into an endless, dreamlike contemplation of the unseen.
Page 28 1 4 Detail from one of the huge frescoes in the main hall of the Yuan dynasty Taoist temple of Yongle depicts heavenly and terrestrial divinities attending an audience given by the three supreme Taoist divinities. Formerly sited on the bank of the Yellow River, the temple was moved to the district of Ruicheng, Shenxi province, to make way for the hydroelectric complex of Sanmexia.
The transfer, which began in , took seven years to complete. It was here that the emperor received his ministers in audience. Building of the Imperial City was begun under the Yuan dynasty, but was not completed until years later during the 1 5th century.
Page 29 16 Detail of one of the many statues that line the avenue leading to the tomb of Yongle, third emperor of the Ming dynasty. The Beijing Opera offers a popular form of theatre; plays draw their material chiefly from traditional tales. The music is provided mainly by percussion instruments and two-string fiddles. A vigorous acrobatic style of presentation was introduced during the 19th century and has remained a feature of the Beijing Opera ever since. Page 30 18 Street scene in Beijing.
She is seen here during a visit to a farm co-operative in In this way I came to know the world and its contradictions, but at the cost of many trials and tribulations. Today, at seventy-seven, one hope remainsto be able to serve my fellow countrymen until I die. I was born in , at a time when the Manchu Empire was in its death throes, into a family of notables, a breeding- ground of mandarins such as described in those great classic Chinese novels Dream of the Red Chamber, by Cao Xueqin, and The Scholars, by Wu Jingzi.
My family was a replica in miniature of feudal society in decline and its history was a chequered one. The branch of the family to which my father belonged was impoverished and going rapidly downhill, and when I was four years old my father died completely ruined. My lonely childhood gave me an insight into the miserable lot of the people in the Chinese society of the beginning of the twentieth century and opened my eyes to the selfish attitudes which governed relationships between one man and another.
European renaissance literature and foreign literature of the nineteenth century was also grist to my mill. And it was this reading that sowed in me the seed of my vocation as a writer. I had the good fortune to have an enlightened mother. She had adopted Western democratic ideas and nourished a vague hope of a socialist revolution. She often told me stories of great historical figures, Chinese and foreign, from both remote and recent times, who had distinguished themselves by their heroism, generosity of spirit and loyalty.
I was fourteen years old at the time of the events of May and my mother and I plunged into this current of patriotic, reformist protest which was later to be known as the May Fourth Movement. Suddenly I discovered new and nobler aims: to take part in the struggle to lift the people out of their wretched state, to break the centuries old feudal system and to free China from its colonial status. Leaving my provincial school at Changsa, in Hunan, I went to Shanghai where I enrolled in the first school for girls established by the Communist Party.
The Chinese Communist Party had only recently been founded and was still feeling its way forward, seeking to elaborate a doctrine in which would merge the Chinese revolutionary tendency and the Marxism-Leninism the Party was propagating in China.
I was too inexperienced to play a useful part in the Party's work and action. With my petty bourgeois illusions I was eager to soar directly towards the extremes of liberty. But everywhere I came up against the harsh realities of the day and I soon sank back into a mood of deep depression. I felt isolated and demoralized, but I was still young and vital enough to feel the urge to cry out, to express myself.
The only outlet available to me was to pour out on paper my feelings of revolt against the society of which I was a prisoner. After the failure of the 1 revolution and the massacre of militants by the Guomindang, I felt obliged to reflect more 32 deeply on political matters. I had already acquired a certain reputation in literary circles and could have mixed with the uppercrust, found a good job and then climbed gradually up the social ladder.
Indeed, this was what some of my friends chose to do. But this option was not for me. During the s, while the Guomindang reactionaries were stepping up their ' 'white terror' ' , I became a member of the China League of Left-wing Writers, in Shanghai, which was headed by Lu Xun and directed by the Communist Party. Subsequently, I joined the Chinese Communist Party since I wanted to give myself up totally to the cause of the people, to share their destiny, their cares and their sufferings, to live and die with them.
During the s my female characters had been petty bourgeois intellectuals in revolt; from the s onwards they were based on working women and peasants. This the Guomindang government could not tolerate and a' single article of this nature published at that time could lead to imprisonment.
Then, just half a century ago, five members of the League, including my husband Hu Yepin, and ten revolutionaries were assassinated by the Guomindang police in the sinister Longhua prison in Shanghai. Although the world has witnessed many other horrors since then, it is hard to imagine how young writers could have thus been so cruelly gunnedA Chinese strip cartoon shows how the ancient village of Banpo became the model brigade of Fenghuo.
In fact, mere possession of a book with a red cover was considered ground for arrest. Many writers were summarily executed in prison or on pieces of waste ground, with no pretence at atrial. They are counted among the martyrs of the revolution. All my books were banned and I became the object of scurrilous political and personal attacks in the press. During the Sino-Japanese War, I followed the communist eighth army to the front, working as a propagandist.
Thereafter I continued my literary work in Yenan, the focal point of the struggle against the occupying forces. After the war against the Japanese imperialists was won, the struggle for liberation went on against the Guomindang forces. I also took part in the agrarian reform which abolished the feudal land system and redistributed the land.
In the new China that had just been established I was given the task of helping in the reorganization of literary life. So absorbed was I in this task that I almost forgot that I too was a writer. It was only when this practical work was completed that I began once again to be haunted by the characters buried deep within my soul. I became eager to reveal their existence by writing them into my novels, stories and essays.
When I write, I do not allow myself to become entangled in problems of style or form or to impose on myself the strait- jacket of any literary school whatever. Once my work is published, the only thing that matters to me is what my readers think. My pen follows the thread of my imagination and I stick to my first impulses, not trying to refashion the characters I have known and loved in my life and who become the heroes and heroines of my books.
In this way, and only in this way, will our country be able to contribute largely to human progress and world peace. In this way too, Chinese literature, with its own special attributes, will play its part in enriching the universal artistic heritage of mankind. New China has embarked on a far-reaching programme for the modernization ofscience and technology as a key to development. Chief engineer Zhi Bingyi left has invented a new method for adapting Chinese characters to the computer.
Farm kitchen equipped with methane produced from fermented organic wastes. This system is widely used for cooking and lighting in the countryside. On 20 September , for the first time, China launched three space research satellites from a single rocket. China has launched 1 1 satellites since Plants are more sensitive to air pollution than people. Here, staff of the Botanical Institute of southern China use smoke to select pollution- sensitive plants.
Normal tissue of the rose-laurel leaf 3. Section of a rose-laurel leaf. Tissue cells show signs of being affected by toxic gases. Hibiscus rose-sinensis is a detector of chlorine. The influence of Chinese ceramics in other world regions has also been profound for in the development of pottery glazes and porcelain as in other fields China can claim a long priority over the rest of the world.
Neolithic origins. The Yangshao culture, so named after a site discovered in 1 , developed in the Yellow River Valley during neolithic times. The earliest earthenware was somewhat loose-textured and porous, but. Next Chinese potters stumbled upon the secret of glaze.
A specialist in ancient Chinese ceramics, he has written o ver a dozen s tudies on such themes as the earthenware of the gijia culture and porcelain in the reign of the emperor Kangxi. Glaze smoothed the coarse surface of the pottery, made it easier to wash, and added greatly to its beauty. Thus came into being the earliest kaolinic porcelain, covered with a yellowish lead glaze produced by high- temperature firing. Celadon ware is decorated with glazes ranging from various shades of green to blue and grey.
The Three Kingdoms Period and the Southern and Northern dynasties witnessed the rapid development of celadon wares. Potters began to apply a thick and even dark green wash to the body before glazing. The Tang dynasty 6 1 was a great period in the development of Chinese pottery. Famed for its refine- Red pottery tripod jug dating from the 3rd or early 2nd millennium BC.
Works shown here were unearthed at Xi'an Chang-an China's ancient capital and the starting point of the Silk Road. Photos '5l China. The transparent glaze of Yuezhou ware won the admiration of many poets, who praised its glossy smoothness as "the emerald green of a thousand peaks" and described its transparency as "autumn water".
They created forms and motifs that vividly illustrate the life and culture of feudal society in China. The Song dynasty marks a high point in the history of Chinese pottery. Each of the five famous wares for which this period is This vase with two tubular handles is an example of the exquisite guang ware produced during the Song dynasty height 10 cm.
The exquisitely beautiful Ding ware was noted for its smooth, cream-coloured glaze, with underglaze decorative designs made by transfer printing, painting or engraving in the paste. Ru ware was covered with a thick glaze mixed with powdered agate to produce a dark green colour. The goods produced by the elder brother sold far and wide, to the dismay of the younger brother who could not sell his own wares. One day when the elder brother was about to open the door of his kiln, the younger brother, spurred by envy and hatred, splashed cold water on the wares inside.
The Ming dynasty and the Qing dynasty were the golden age of painted white pottery. Jingdezhen, perhaps the Ming three-colour vase dating from the late 1 6th-century. Its basic product was underglaze blue and white porcelain, the emergence of which, together with that of red porcelain, marked the beginning of the painted pottery period. The development of famille rose porcelain also opened up new avenues of creativity. Famille rose is the name given in nineteenth-century France to enamelled porcelain in which rose pink, made from gold chloride, predominates.
Modern China. New glazes have also been developed on the basis of traditional wares. A veteran practitioner of the Chinese martial arts wushu who won fame in his youth when he killed a buffalo with a blow from the side of his hand, he twirls the weapon, over a metre long, with great force.
Fu Maokun's performance is followed attentively by a young boy, Huang Mingjian, who in his turn manipulates a three-metre-long rod, making it whizz noisily as it hurtles, through the air. No less than adepts took part, showing their skill with sword, spear and rod, as well as the various forms of Chinese boxing.
In addition to these exhibitions of the traditional martial arts, some of the participants also displayed such rarely seen exercises as the "devil's foot" and the "Buddhist sword". Wushu often called gongfu outside China is one of the country's most popular sports.
There are several forms of wushu boxing, each adapted to different conditions. Changquan boxing, which demands astonishing rapidity and great suppleness, is practised above all by children and adolescents. Xingyi boxing calls for energy and great self-control, and is practised both by young people and adults. Nanquan southern boxing which is popular in some of China's southern provinces, consists largely of arm movements, precise leg movements, and shouts through which the fighters express their force.
Shaolin boxing is very popular in northern China. Its neat figures and brisk movements are extremely impressive. There are also the "imitative" forms of boxing, so-called because they imitate the movements of, for example, the praying mantis or the drunkard, and are based on meticulous observation of living creatures and human nature.
Execution of these movements calls for harmony between manual gestures and movements of the eyes and legs; the action should take place at headlong speed, the fighter should be steadfast as a rock, the movements as fluent as running water and as swift as an attacking snake.
When watching a contest it is always astonishing to see the rapidity with which blow follows blow. Wushu is a sport which is suitable for young and old alike. It can be practised at any time of the year, and no complicated equipment is required.
In China it has been popular for centuries. Morning and evening wushu adepts of all ages can be seen in the streets enjoying their favourite sport. In the big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai there are over , amateurs of wushu.
Some towns have created martial arts schools and clubs for teenagers, as well as organizing training courses in taiji. Of the villages in Yongfeng district, over have a wushu organization. In the village of Diquan in Boye district, two-thirds of the families practise the sport, part of a tradition which goes back hundreds of years.
The massive popularity of wushu has led to the emergence of many gifted young practitioners, and the great enthusiasm for the sport has encouraged constantrefinements in movements and style. From the time of the Western Zhou dynasty 11th century BC wushu was considered, like shooting and riding, as a military sport. The existence of xiangpu, a kind of wrestling which is popular in modern Japan, is already mentioned during the Han dynasty BC AD.
Towards the end of the Ming dynasty a boxer of the monastery of Shaolin named Chen Yuanfu popularized his art in Japan. Combined with Japanese jujitsu, it was eventually transformed into judo, today an Olympic sport. Many Japanese, Korean, Thai and Philippine schools of boxing have also been influenced, to a greater or lesser degree, by Chinese wushu.
In recent years wushu has attracted a wide following outside China. National competitions, tournaments and demonstrations are regularly organized in these countries of southeast Asia, and five regional competitions have been held since Wushu has a growing number of followers in the United States and Canada.
Several demonstrations have been organized according to the Chinese method, i. A wave of enthusiasm for wushu has also swept through Europe. In the United Kingdom, , people practise the Chinese martial arts, and in France a Chinese martial arts association groups forty clubs and 4, members.
Since then it appears that other countries have expressed a wish to join the Federation. It seems highly probable that wushu will soon be an Olympic sport. When he was only two years old, his father, a soldier in the Manchu army, was killed during the defence of Beijing at the time of the Boxer uprising and from then on his early life was one of great poverty. He is said to have been inspired to write his first novel by reading the works of Charles Dickens to improve his English. By the time he returned to China, in , his early novels had established his reputation as a humorous writer.
He portrayed the comic side of the life of the poor, a life he knew so well from personal experience; but it was a humour that was always close to tears. A prolific writer, he produced in rapid succession three volumes of short stories and two novels: The Life ofZhang Tian-Zi 1 and Xian-zi the Camel , better known under the title of its English translation as Rickshaw Boy.
During the last twenty-seven years of his life Lao She wrote some forty plays, operettas and musicals as well as a number of historical and literary essays. Lao She's death was as tragic as it was unexpected. In August 1 he became one of the first victims of the long period of disorders that ravaged China for some ten years. He will be remembered as a man of the people who made the people laugh, and through their laughter understand the deeper meaning of the world around them.
The changes which are taking place in its structure are an integral part of the far- reaching social transformation that China has experienced in the last thirty years. The small nuclear family of husband, wife and children is an increasingly common pattern in China's cities. It is true that in old China the rules of "family piety and fraternal duty" acted as a check on the disintegration of the family and the independence of its members.
Feudal morality required that sons and daughters should unconditionally obey parents and brothers, and a family in which five generations lived together constituted a social ideal. But in reality "big families" were far from being the majority in China. In my book Peasant Life in China, published in , I noted that the average Chinese family then consisted of from four to six members. The same fact emerged from a study of a village near Lake Tai, carried out at a forty-five-year interval, in 1 and 1 Although they were influenced by traditional morality, the peasants had to break up the family unit for economic reasons such as the division of the land into smallholdings, as well as for internal family reasons.
Thus a father would often divide the family property and live with his elder son. When the elder son married and a new member joined the family, a clash between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law would often cause the family to split up permanently. Elderly peasants still remember the times when many families were broken up by poverty and discord. Before the Liberation, even in the Suzhou-Hangzhou region which was considered an "earthly paradise", peasant families included many widowers, widows, orphans, and men and women abandoned by their wives and sons, who lived in extreme destitution.
Although the data are incomplete, it seems clear that the number of "associated families" was relatively higher among the richer city-dwellers and landed proprietors. Among the working people of the towns and cities, as among the peasants, the proportion of nuclear families was growing. Although its structure is changing, the family is still the basic social unit in modern China. Help from elderly parents or parents-in- law enables the couple to work outside the home.
Right, three generations of the Tscheng family on a commune near Shanghai. In most cases the associated family consists of two overlapping generations, but a variant exists in the form of nuclear families created by brothers and sisters living under the same roof. The table above shows that in nuclear families predominated, accounting for nearly 40 per cent of the total, whereas the number of extended families had dropped to little more than 20 per cent.
In a society in which the means of production have become the property of the community, the head of the family no longer has the power to con trol the distribution of wealth by virtue of his exclusive possession of land and other means of production, as he did under the old patriarchal system. But one of the major reasons for this change is the big increase in the number of elderly people.
In the village studied, there were ninety-four persons over the age of sixty in In there were Thus the improvement in health care and living conditions has produced a situation in which the elderly are far more numerous than before. Today children are legally obliged to support their parents who can no longer work.
It is thus not surprising that the number of nuclear families has risen. Thus, although the percentage of incomplete families decreased by a third between and , 78 out of men in were single. Young men looking for a wife, widowers or divorcees, these single men found it very difficult to marry, notably because of the housing shortage. In extended families or large associated families, there are tensions quite different from those caused by the aggressive authoritarianism of the head of the clan.
Almost half the families in the village studied have tried to cushion the impact of these difficulties by the practice of fen zao, cooking apart: mother-in-law and daughter-in-law live together but cook separately. Other tensions may arise from certain changes in the status of women. Women who work in the production brigades or in the factories which have been set up in the village are paid their wages directly.
Many young village women deduct the cost of a permanent wave from their earnings before handing them over to the head of the family, even if this practice is frowned on by their elders. These are the Chinese peasant woman's first steps towards economic independence. It sometimes happens, for example, that the mother-in-law prefers to live alone, aided by her son who makes her a monthly allowance. On the other hand, especially in the towns, when the two members of the basic couple work, the presence of the parents-in-law, or at least that of the mother-in-law, in the home is often warmly welcomed for although many kindergartens and creches have been set up near the factories, society's needs in this sphere are still far from being fully met.
By looking after the small children, the parents-in-law allow the couple to work outside the home. In this respect the extended family, far from breaking up, tightens its links and becomes a solid nucleus. Above, the ruins of an extraordinary Sino-Rococo edifice in the Yuanmingyuan, a vast garden in the northwest suburbs of Beijing.
It was designed by the Italian Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione 1 who was a painter and functionary at the Qing imperial court where he was known as Lang Shi-ning. The white marble building is carved with European motifs but the tiled roof and other features were typically Chinese. Chinese civilization and the West by Zhang Kai IN the ancient world economic and cultural contacts between Europe and Asia reached their zenith during the second century AD. At that time the Silk Road and its western connexions, the vital trade link between East and West, stretched some 12, kilometres across the known world from Xian to Gades modern Cadiz on the Atlantic Ocean.
Along it, from East to West, travelled Chinese silk, Arabian incense, precious stones, muslin and spices from India. Heis the author of a number of studies, notably on themes connected with relations between China and Latin America. He has translated works of Latin American history into Chinese, and is currently writing a history of Chinese emigrants in America. Virgil, the great Roman epic poet, who was born in 70 BC, wrote a poem in praise of silk which he imagined as being combed from the leaves of trees.
While the camels were plodding heavy laden along the Silk Road, a new marine route was being developed. In about BC a Greek ship's captain named Hippalos discovered that use could be made of the monsoon winds to make rapid direct sea voyages from the Red Sea to the Indian ports of Barbaricum, Barygaza and Muziris, where Chinese goods could be obtained from Indian merchants. The seven missions to the "Western Oceans" undertaken by the famous admiral Zheng He, between and AD undoubtedly gave a further fillip to Chinese sea-borne trade.
The period of the Tang dynasty also saw the spectacular rise of Islam, the great new power that was to affect EastWest relations so profoundly. Arabs began to play an extremely important role as a medium of cultural and commercial exchange between East and West. Chinese porcelain predominated in trade by the "Marine Silk Road. Chinese painting, handicraft, sculpture and architecture may all be said to have made a decisive contribution to the development of the eighteenth century European style which came to be known as rococo.
Chinese-style garden layouts were also highly popular in the West. The Chinese influence is still strongly evident at Kew Gardens, near London, one of the most famous gardens in England. Another Chinese export which was to have a profound influence on European, especially English, social life was tea. Originating in the China of antiquity, tea cultivation and the tea-drinking habit spread first to Japan and Korea and then throughout Asia.
Today in England tea is an indispensable adjunct of daily life in all social classes and the English now consume about a fifth of the world's total tea production. Material goods were not, however, the only Chinese exports to travel the trade routes. Unseen among the bales of silk, crates of tea and porcelain came a wealth of spiritual, philosophical, economic and educational ideas whose impact on the West was to be profound.
But it was not until the turn of the sixteenth century that a clear picture of Chinese thought began to emerge. It was immediately translated in several European languages and widely circulated, arousing enormous interest in things Chinese. Scholars im- i0yr. Left Kublai Khan leads the expeditionary army in putting down Nayan's armed rebellion. Beyond the confines is the Extreme, and then the Great Void, and then what lies beyond? Later, other works on Confucianism and the Confucian school of idealist philosophy of the Song dynasty were introduced to Europe and Confucius came to be revered as a learned prophet and a master of ethics and political philosophy.
Gottfried Leibniz, the eminent German philosopher, was one of the first in Europe to recognize the significance of Chinese thought for Western culture. For some time he devoted himself to the study of Chinese philosophical ideology and he had a wide interest in all things Chinese. He maintained that if China could send people to Europe to give guidance in "the p. The French writer Voltaire, a leading figure of the Age of Enlightenment, also had a high respect for Chinese philosophy.
He maintained that the Chinese people had all the virtues and were in advance in many branches of learning. The great Russian writer and thinker Leo Tolstoy found that he had many ideas in common with the philosophy of Laozi and at one time he even planned to translate the Daode jing The Supreme Way of Life into Russian. During the eighteenth century, Chinese influence was also felt in the field of economics. In his book On China's Autocracy, he wrote that the "natural law" was the "legislative foundation of mankind" and the "supreme norm of human behaviour.
His advocacy of Confucianism and Chinese thought earned for him the sobriquet of "the Confucius of Europe. He maintained that this system coincided with the natural law of the human spirit. In military affairs the Chinese classic Bing-fa The Art of War , written by Sunzi in the fourth century BC and a book with which Napoleon Bonaparte was familiar, had a considerable effect on the forma tion of military ideology in Europe and on the application of military strategy and tactics in war.
In the literature and art of the West the influence of Chinese civilization can similarly be seen. Some experts maintain that the well-known Western fairy tale Cinderella is a variation of a legendary story in You Yang Za Zu, written by Duan Chengshi in the time of the Tang dynasty.
Some scholars maintain that the great Goethe's unfinished play Elpenor was inspired by An Orphan of Zhaos. It should not, however, be forgotten that the interplay between China and the West was a two-way affair. Contemporary scholars have confirmed that Liqian was none other than Alexandria, in Egypt. The largest metropolis in the Western world, it enjoyed great commercial prosperity. The reign of Emperor Wudi also saw the establishment of a flourishing sea-borne trade between China and India and a sea route was opened up between India and the Roman Empire.
Chinese silk and other commodities were carried via India to Alexandria and thence across the Mediterranean to Rome. The Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties saw an uprecedented development of sea-borne trade between East and West. Under the Tang dynasty, China's merchant ships, some reputed to have five- storey forecastles, sailed as far as the Gulf.
Zhou Qufei, a twelfth-century Chinese scholar, described the Chinese ocean-going merchant ships of his day as "capable of carrying several hundred people, with food supplies that could last a year and even with pigs kept and wine made on board".
Exceptionally well rigged and navigated by compass, these ships were particularly suitable for long, ocean-going voyages. In , on the last of his seven famous missions to the West during the Ming dynasty, Admiral Zheng He led a huge fleet with as many as 27, men aboard, reaching as far as the mouth of the Red Sea and the coast of East Africa. The Admiral's voyages raised China's overseas trade to a new high.
Chinese porcelain became popular in East Africa. In his book The Rediscovery ofAncient Africa Basil Davidson notes that some princes and merchants in East Africa had Chinese porcelain ornaments in their homes and drank tea from porcelain cups. Chinese paper-making techniques were introduced to Egypt in and to Morocco in In the tenth century Chinese printing techniques became known in Egypt and were used in printing the Qur'an. The great ancient trade route linking China and the West was a highway for ideas and cultural contacts as well as material goods.
Left, scene from 77»e Legend of the Silk Road, a ballet in six acts. Moxa consists of the burning of Artemisia tinder, ai, either in the form of incense-like cones, whether or not laid directly on the skin, or a cigar-shaped stick held just above it. The points chosen for application are in general identical with those of the acupuncture system. Depending upon the degree of heat there can beeither a mild thermal stimulus, like a fomentation, or alternatively a powerful counter-irritant cautery.
Today the needles are very thin, much thinner than the familiar hypodermic needles. Implantation into the body was made at different places at precisely specified points according to a charted scheme, based on ancient physiological ideas. The theory and the practice were, one finds, well established already, well systematized, in fact, in the 2nd century BC, though much development followed.
The tech nique remains in universal use in China and in all Chinese communities at the present day. This was the jingluo system, an arrangement of what we call acu-tracts and acujunc- tions, twelve main tracts, and eight auxiliary tracts, the famous qijing ba mo. Each of these tracts contains anything from ten to fifty acu-points as we call them , the shu xue, at which the needles are implanted or over which the moxa is burnt.
For example, you can find in various countries in East Asia modern-trained physicians, both Chinese and Occidental, who are sceptical about its value, but on the whole in China they are rather few, and the vast majority of medical men there, according to our experience, both modern-trained and traditional, do believe in its capacity to cure, or at least to alleviate, many pathological conditions.
The whole subject took a rather dramatic turn during the past fifteen years on account of the successes achieved in China in the application of acupuncture for analgesia in major surgery. One view commonly expressed mainly by Westerners is that acupuncture has acted primarily by suggestion, like many other things in what they often call "fringe medicine," and some do not hesitate to equate surgical acupuncture analgesia with hypno-anaesthesia.
It is quite clear that in terms of neurophysiology the acupuncture needles stimulate various receptors at different depths, which send their afferent impulses up the spinal cord and into the brain. Both these effects would be of great importance from the therapeutic point of view, and in fact they are among the leading theories used at the present day to explain the therapeutic effects of acupuncture. On the other hand, in another situation, the needles may monopolize afferent input junctions in the thalamus, medulla, or spinal cord, in such a way as to prevent all pain impulses getting through to the cortex regions of the brain, thereby successfully inducing analgesia.
Left, anaesthesia being carried out by acupuncture at a Nanjing hospital. It was one of the most exciting and fascinating discoveries of the last five years, that our own brains manufacture substances known as enkephalins and endorphins. In both Western medicine and Chinese medicine these two concepts are to be found.
That was a very old conception in China. The other one, the vis medicatrix naturae was surely largely what the Taoists meant in China by yang sheng, the nourishment of life and the strengthening of it against disease. In addition, there was a third idea, which sprang from the idea of balance or krasis. The idea was as much Chinese as it was Greek. It viewed disease as essentially a malfunction or imbalance, one or the other component entity in the body having unnaturally gained the lead over the others.
Acupuncture was the first court of appeal here again. The universal reproach directed against therapeutic acupuncture by modern scientific medicine is the lack of statistical evidence. The term moxa is derived from the name of the wormwood plant most frequently used, Artemisia moxa. A doctor at Wuxi near Nanjing applies a moxa stick to a patient's skin.
Each stick burns for four or five minutes. It was a kind of system of the ideal government organization. At the end of the year he uses the records of each physician to decide on his rank and salary. When one looks back, one sees how great was the medical literature concerning acupuncture and moxa which grew up in China through the centuries. Many matters of absorbing interest arise as one looks through it.
Then there was the discovery of the viscero-cutaneous reflexes, the con nexions of many parts of the body's surface with events occurring in the internal organs. There have been a number of misunderstandings in the West about acupuncture and moxa. They do not depend entirely on suggestion, nor on hypnotic phenomena at all, and they are not contradictory of modern scientific medicine. Today the explanations of its actions are being sought in terms of modern physiology and pathology.
Great advances have been made already in this direction though the end is not yet in sight. Another problem of great interest is the exact nature of the acu-points in terms of histology and biophysics. Exactly how far this will be so, it is too early tO Say. Neodham 49Unesco translations of Chinese literature Unesco has for many years promoted the translation and publication of major works of Chinese literature.
Comp, and ed. Associate editor Donald Keene. New York, Grove Press, Extracts, trans, by Burton Watson. Trans, by David Hawkes. Chuang Tzu. Basic Writings. Extracts trans, by Burton Watson. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. Trans, by Burton Watson. Fifty Songs from the Yuan. Yang and Charles R. Trans, with Introduction, notes and index by W. London, Arthur Probsthain, II, pp. A classic of Chinese political 'Legalist' science.
Burton Watson. London, Jonathan Cape, The Book of Lord Shang. Trans, with Introduction and notes by J.
DAYHOLE MINING BITCOINS
There are 17 items on the soup and appetizer menu and apart from the soup we choose the fried egg-plants and the deep fried ribs. The main dishes offer beef, chicken, duck, pork, prawns and fish; I even spot a sea-cucumber but was told it was out of season; so all forms of the traditional dishes are presented as sweet and sour, shredded, with various sauces, ginger and otherwise.
I select the three types of sea-food and the companion wants the sweet and sour prawns with a side dish of spinach in garlic sauce. We order drinks and settle down in pleasant contemplation of what is to come. The only jarring note at this stage is that the jasmine tea I have ordered to accompany the main course is served at the same time as the gin and tonic.
A full 30 minutes elapses before anything arrives, a plate containing what resembles fried bandaged fingers and another loaded with battered discs, but no soup. The batter is so dense it resists the knife; tempura it is not: it reminds me of those boy-scout campfire delights: the damper. My soup arrives, hot certainly, sour slightly, with uncertain vegetable contents, could be carrots.
It seems that the digits conceal the ribs which we abandon after two attempts. I explain to the companion who is no longer in congratulatory mood that the aubergines are best tackled without the cutlery, finger style, and they are quite good. The main courses are served onto a turn-table; dishes brimming with interest. The prawns are bathed in a startling red sauce, they are large, shelled and for some reason, battered, which renders them glutinous.
My seafood is also submerged but again battered, the fillet was quite pleasant. The only jarring note at this stage is that the jasmine tea I have ordered to accompany the main course is served at the same time as the gin and tonic.
A full 30 minutes elapses before anything arrives, a plate containing what resembles fried bandaged fingers and another loaded with battered discs, but no soup. The batter is so dense it resists the knife; tempura it is not: it reminds me of those boy-scout campfire delights: the damper. My soup arrives, hot certainly, sour slightly, with uncertain vegetable contents, could be carrots.
It seems that the digits conceal the ribs which we abandon after two attempts. I explain to the companion who is no longer in congratulatory mood that the aubergines are best tackled without the cutlery, finger style, and they are quite good. The main courses are served onto a turn-table; dishes brimming with interest.
The prawns are bathed in a startling red sauce, they are large, shelled and for some reason, battered, which renders them glutinous. My seafood is also submerged but again battered, the fillet was quite pleasant. The portions are massive and gloopy. We resist the sweet menu. The staff are very pleasant and the ambience attractive, clearly a favourite venue for our countrymen, who it must be declared all seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely.
bip definition investopedia forex
500 forex
cbs corp investing businessweek