Chinese Religion and Philosophical System

A number of religious and philosophical system where practiced in China. Before any philosophical system arise, the Chinese worshipped gods of nature – sky god, river god -- and they call their higher god who ruled over other gods as Shang-Ti (this was during the Shang dynasty). Later, under the Chou dynasty, they worship a natural god called T’ien usually translated as Heaven. Like Shang-Ti he is also the god of all Gods. It is during this time that people believed in mandate of heaven when choosing the next emperor or empress. They also practice ancestor worship. They believe that when their parents or grandparent die, they became like gods and they wanted to be worshipped too.

For the next two hundred years wise men introduced their philosophies, which affects the lives of Chinese people. Here are the important philosophical system introduced in China:

TAOISM - The word “Tao” means the way. It emphasize that people should not try to get their way by force, but through cooperation and using natural forces in their favor.

• Lao Tzu (may be a mythical man), who lived presumably about 500 BC, introduced Taoism.
• Chuang-tzu (4th century BC) a philosopher, author, classical teacher who interpreted Taoism different from Lao Tzu.

CONFUCIANISM – another philosophical system that disagrees with Taoism. It holds that people must do what ought to do. If they just follow their duty, their leaders and the gods faithfully, then there wont be any fighting and nobody will be upset.

• Confucius created Confucianism. He was honored as the greatest of sages throughout most of China's history.
• Mencius was second to Confucius in shaping Confucianism. His three main tenets were the basic good nature of human beings, the notion of society with a distinct distribution of functions, and the ruler's obligation to the people.

BUDDHISM– Buddhism came from India, which was founded by Siddhartha Gautama. Buddhism split into two major trends during its early stage of development. The Mahayana and Hinayana. Chinese Buddhism stems from Mahayana, which contains more popular elements, such as belief in repetitive prayers, heaven and deities. It was actually present during the Han dynasty but it became popular during the period of three kingdoms.

For more information follow these links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_China

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_philosophy

Chinese Dynasty

There is no clear study about the true origin of Chinese civilization. Yet, it is considered that the earliest group of Chinese where written records were found was the Shang. These records are usually an oracle written in the bones of the animals. It is also the first dynasty established in China.

Chinese believed that a new dynasty must be established according to the mandate of heaven or the right to rule. This belief was used by the Chou dynasty when it was about to replace the existing Shang dynasty. The existence of Chinese dynasties is following a cycle. These dynastic cycle starts when a new dynasty is established by a powerful leader. It is then followed by a period of prosperity, wherein the empire is able to gain much power, able restore peace and is able to give prosperous life to its people. After that, there comes a time when that certain dynasty will loose the capacity to provide its people their needs. The leader starts corrupting its people, imposing high taxes, treating them unfairly and may not be able to protect them properly. This is the indicator of the people that such dynasty had already lost the mandate of heaven and therefore, it has to fall.

Here is a timeline of Chinese Dynasties:

Ancient China	Neolithic ca. 12000 - 2000 B.C.
	Xia ca. 2100-1800 B.C.
	Shang 1700-1027 B.C.
	Western Zhou 1027-771 B.C.
	Eastern Zhou 770-221 B.C.	770-476 B.C. -- Spring and Autumn period 475-221 B.C. -- Warring States period
Early Imperial China
	Qin 221-207 B.C.
	Western Han 206 B.C.- 9 A.D.
	Hsing (Wang Mang interregnum) 9-25 A.D.
	Eastern Han 25-220 A.D.
	Three Kingdoms220-265 A.D.
	Western Chin 265-316 A.D.
	Eastern Chin 317-420 A.D.
	Southern and Northern Dynasties 420-588 A.D.	Southern Dynasties 420-478 -- Song 479-501 -- Qi 502-556 -- Liang 557-588 -- Chen
		Northern Dynasties 386-533 -- Northern Wei 534-549 -- Eastern Wei 535-557 -- Western Wei 550-577 -- Northern Qi 557-588 -- Northern Zhou
Classical Imperial China
	Sui 580-618 A.D.
	T'ang 618-907 A.D.
	Five Dynasties 907-960 A.D.	907-923 -- Later Liang 923-936 -- Later Tang 936-946 -- Later Jin 947-950 -- Later Han 951-960 -- Later Zhou
	Ten Kingdoms A.D. 907-979
	Song A.D. 960-1279	960-1125 -- Northern Song 1127-1279 -- Southern Song
	Liao A.D. 916-1125
	Western Xia A.D. 1038-1227
	Jin A.D. 1115-1234
Later Imperial China
	Yuan A.D. 1279-1368
	Ming A.D. 1368-1644
	Qing A.D. 1644-1911

Source: http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/china/timeline.html

SEA group comment to the film "HERO"

          

         The film "HERO” was created uniquely by the makers of the movie. At first you will not clearly understand what the movie really wants to tell to the viewers, but as soon as you get through to the film you will more appreciate it. The flow of the story was craft by a series of flashbacks recounted by Jet Li (nameless) and the King.

          The cinematography was beautifully done and each scene in the movie was just right and faultless. In the flashbacks the makers uses different colors, and I think this colors represents to the different emotion and passion of the characters. My two favorite scene there is, first was when Jet Li and Sky fighting, while the old men was playing the guitar (I don’t know the exact term for that guitar). The place for that scene was like in the game (mortal combat). Second, when Moon and Flying Snow was fighting in the place where there are trees with a color yellow leaves. That view was great. The costume used really fits in the movie. They tired to make the film exactly look like in the time of that dynasty.

          Of all the Chinese movies I've watch, the martial arts used in the film was amazing. The moves were clean, fine and perfectly executed. The fighting was consistent, from the first fighting scene up to the end part of it. Each characters of the movie give justice to their role and they really give their best in the movie.

China Group's comment on the movie "Hero"

The movie entitled “Hero” depicts China 2000 years ago; the time when wars between 7 kingdoms battle for the ultimate power of becoming the first emperor of China.
Apparently, the Kingdom of Qin, led by Qin Shihuangdi, defeated the 6 kingdoms and became the first emperor of China.

Jet Li, a fearless, loyal warrior with no name, is the only survivor among his people. His mission is to destroy the powerful emperor and his three faithful assassins, Sky, Broken Sword and Flying Snow; and avenge the destruction of all that was meaningful to him.

Besides the fact that I’m a great fan of martial arts movies, the movie was indeed plausible. With all those sword fights, screenplays, scenes and colorful shirts; Hero did gave us some glimpse of how China came about. Here’s a sneak preview of the movie. However, just like India's group comments, the movie was quite confusing becuase of its numerous flashbacks. Plus the actors were repeatedly killed yet apparantly they appeared on succeding scenes.

Sir de los Reyes also added that upon the victory of the first Dynasty, was the construction of the Great Wall of China. This is to establish a defensive system by connecting separate walls from Qin, Yan and Zhao kingdoms. Click here To see more of 7th wonder of the world.

India Group's comment on the movie "Hero"

The movie Hero starring Jet Li portrays about the events that happened in China even before Jesus Christ was born. Click here to know more about the movie.

While watching the movie, it seem so boring at first, maybe because of the language used, and you still need to go through the subtitles just to understand the conversation of the characters. But as we go along, fight scenes between Nameless (Jet Li) and Broken Sword (Tony Leung) caught our attention which made us focus more on the film. Amazing utilization of swords and other fighting weapons are really remarkable on these kind of movies. Characters uses these weapons gracefully that makes us wonder, "How did they do that? They seem like dancing while fighting!"

Just like Mr. Delos Reyes said after we played the film, flashbacks of the stories with its different colors signifies something. For color connotations, click this link to know the symbols and psychology of colors.

Even though the movie made us so confused because of so many flashbacks, somehow it gave us the idea on how does the Chinese live their lives at early times. The movie may not be able to portray the whole history of China, still we had a glimpse of it that gave us the curiosity to know more about China's uniqueness , not only in Asia, but also in the whole world.

Initial rating of your blog: 10 to 11 out of 20

I already placed a pdf file of the blog rubric in the sharebox of The Bamboo Grove. Here's an initial blog rating for your blog:

Content 2 to 3

There's no clear statement as to what your blog is for. But a lot of your content is about asia so i'm guessing it's about asia.

Interest 3

Your posts are more concise except for a few that are very long. There is an effort to make the information more interesting by giving your own thoughts and leaving a lot of the information as links to other pages.

Navigation 2

The first few times i visited your blog i got lost.

Layout 3

You have an attractive layout, it's just that its difficult to navigate it. In some cases, i think the width of the yellow notepad background is shorter than a line of the post.

The same as the other class blogs, using different fonts, font sizes, font colors, makes it difficult sometimes (i think someone made a comment in one of your posts about this too). It makes your blog appear cluttered.

japan etiquette

In Japan, the main purpose of taking a bath besides cleaning your body, is relaxation at the end of the day.

The typical Japanese bathroom consists of two rooms, an entrance room where you undress and which is equipped with a sink, and the actual bathroom which is equipped with a shower and a deep bath tub. The

toilet is almost always located in a completely separate room.

When bathing Japanese style, you are supposed to first rinse your body outside the bath tub with some water from the tub, using a washbowl. Afterwards, you enter the tub, which is used for soaking only. The bath water tends to be relatively hot for Western bathing standards. If you can barely enter, try not to move much, since moving around makes the water appear even hotter.

After soaking for a while, leave the tub and clean your body with soap. Make sure that no soap gets into the bathing water. Once you finished cleaning yourself and rinsed all the soap off your body, enter the bath tub once more for some more soaking. After leaving the tub, do not drain the water, since all household members will use the same water.

Modern bath tubs can be programmed to be automatically filled with water of a given temperature at a given time, or to heat up the water to a preferred temperature.

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2002.html

Introduction--A piece of China

Our group did not include about the study of China's geography in our learning goal..Why? simply ponder on the lines below..

"mere names of places...are not geography... know by heart a whole gazetteer full of them would not, in itself, constitute anyone a geographer. Geography has higher aims than this: it seeks to classify phenomena (alike of the natural and of the political world, in so far as it treats of the latter), to compare, to generalize, to ascend from effects to causes, and, in doing so, to trace out the great laws of nature and to mark their influences upon man. This is 'a description of the world'—that is Geography. In a word Geography is a Science—a thing not of mere names but of argument and reason, of cause and effect." - William Hughes 1863

(Nosebleed!!)

Geography is a very broad topic to discuss, our group wants to focus on what is really important in our subject which is Asian civilization...yet, we know its important to know the description of the topic (China) that we want to learn. So to begin with a more detailed discussions about China (Soon), take alook at the map below:

China is one of the world's oldest continous civilization. It located in East Asia and it is the third largest country in the world with a total land area of about 9.6 million square kilometers. These are the countries sorrounding China that serves as its boundry:

• Mongolia in the North
• Russia in the northeast and northwest
• Korea in the east
• Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar in the east
• Nepal in the southwestIndia and Pakistan in the west

Here is another map of China. This is the same as what Sir Patrick have shown us in his discussion, only that it is specifically, China. So, the more red color you see, the more population there is in the area.

Why is it that not all area is occupied by people? Still, most people in China are farmers and herders and they need enough rainfall for thier living. Fishing is also a major industry along the coast. If you can still remeber the map about Asia's rainfall distribution, It showed us that the most occupied area in the map is also the one receiving enough rainfall throughout the year. That is one BIG reason why these people are staying at one portion in the map.

Well, China is a huge country. It has many regional climate, including the monsoon season. The Northern part of china can have severe winter that may reach below 0 degrees Farenheit , while it's western part which is a desert can have a temperature of about 100 degrees. In fact, due to these differences in climate, China is divided into two region, the Northern China which covers the desert and coldest part in the country and the South China which covers the monsoon part. Historically, these differences led in warfare during pre-modern era. How did it all begun?? Find out sOon..hehe!

Now, still wondering why we did not include everything about the geography of China? It's hard familiarizing all those numeric values of the continents and its provinces land area as well as those other less known landmarks. If you only read once, you'll forget it immediately.I bet, even Chinese people couldn't memorize all these things. ANyway, i hope you learn something from it.

• If there is something you want to learn more about the geography of china, just click this link.It will lead you to a site with a numerous discussion about China's geography..
• And if you want to have an advance reading about the Northern and Southern China, just follow this link.

feel free to comment if there are errors in the information...It will help a lot..

asia...asia...asia...asia...

>>In early Classical times, the term "Asia" referred only to the small region known today as Anatolia (a part of Turkey). Eventually however, the name came to denote the much larger land area with which we associate it today.
The etymology of Asia can only be guessed at. The strongest possibility is that it derives from a borrowed Semitic root "Asu", which means varyingly 'rising' or 'light', of course a directional referring to the sunrise, Asia thus meaning 'Eastern Land'.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Asia

>>from L., from Gk. Asia, speculated to be from Akkad. asu "to go out, to rise," in reference to the sun, thus "the land of the sunrise."

http://en.freepedia.org/Placename_etymology.html

just want to share something bout japan

Japan is a leading nation in the fields of scientific research, technology, machinery and medical research. Nearly 700,000 researchers share a US$130 billion research and development budget, the third largest in the world.[59]
Some of Japan's more important technological contributions are found in the fields of electronics, machinery, industrial robotics, optics, chemicals, semiconductors and metals. Japan leads the world in robotics, possessing more than half (402,200 of 742,500) of the world's industrial robots used for manufacturing.[60] It also produced QRIO, ASIMO and Aibo. Japan is also home to six of the world's fifteen largest automobile manufacturers and seven of the world's twenty largest semiconductor sales leaders.
Japan has significant plans in space exploration, including building a moonbase by 2030.[61] The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) conducts space and planetary research, aviation research, and development of rockets and satellites. It also built the Japanese Experiment Module, which is slated to be launched and added to the International Space Station during Space Shuttle assembly flights in 2007 and 2008.[62]