Calliope articles from December 2004

Calliope archives from December 2004

Musings.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... "Keep an open mind, and you'll learn thing; you will miss other people's good qualities if you just concentrate on your own abilities." --the Kangxi emperor THE QING (PRONOUNCED CHING) DYNASTY WAS CHINA'S LAST IMPERIAL DYNASTY. ...

Time line.(Brief Article)(Calendar)
December 1, 2004... Time Line All dates are A.D. 1644 Qing troops conquer China, 1644-1690. The Qing dynasty begins. 1661 The Kangxi emperor, whose personal name is Xuanye, begins his rule. His reign ends in 1722. 1703 Kangxi...

Map: the world of the Qing.
December 1, 2004... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Clothed to rule the universe.
December 1, 2004... As horse-riding and herding people who lived in the forests and grasslands north of the Great Wall, the Manchus arrived in China with a limited wardrobe. They had, basically, two types of clothes: functional daily wear, which was tailored for...

Bats & Chinese rebuses.(Fun With Words)
December 1, 2004... Chinese decorative motifs are used to convey good omens or wishes. Such good wishes are often represented by groups of seemingly unrelated objects known as rebuses or pictorial puns. These are combinations of well-known symbols and objects that...

Building on the past.
December 1, 2004... Hongli was only 24 years old when he became the Qianlong emperor in 1736, but he already felt like an old man. He had disagreed with many of the policies of his father, the Yongzheng emperor, and was eager to leave his own mark on the history...

'Peace-bearing Son of Heaven'.
December 1, 2004... The Kangxi emperor was a Manchu, a mostly nomadic people from the north of China whose hunting lifestyle sharpened their military skills. The Kangxi emperor loved hunting and once said, "Everything I know about hunting was taught to me when I...

Design a dragon robe.(Activity)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... The dragon robe was designed to show the majesty of the emperor. Its many decorations symbolized the emperor's position as the son of heaven and ruler over the earth. It is said that the Qianlong emperor never wore the same robe twice, which...

The Manchus in China.
December 1, 2004... Ancestors of the Manchus were distantly related to the Inuit people of North America. They lived in the extreme cold of northeastern Asia, used dog sleds (and sometimes rode reindeer) for land jouneys, and had kayaks for travel on the rivers....

Life under the Manchus.
December 1, 2004... Before capturing north China in 1644, the Qing imperial family had already conquered or come to dominate Korea, Manchuria, parts of Mongolia, and parts of what is now Russia. By 1690, they had control of all of what is now China-including...

The Forbidden City.
December 1, 2004... The Forbidden City of Beijing is the ultimate achievement of Chinese architecture. Its individual buildings and its plan are the final stages in an architectural tradition that began more than 3,000 years ago. The history of Beijing as the...

Qianlong as curator.
December 1, 2004... An emperor who has everything might not feel the need to count what he has. But Qianlong did. He seems to have been obsessed with records and checklists. He made his servants inventory everything, including everyday tablewares. Many items had...

Building a cultural Great Wall.
December 1, 2004... One late autumn morning in 1774, Gao Jin, the viceroy of Jiangsu and Jiangxi provinces and cousin of consort Gao Guifei, was busy examining tombstones in a Nanjing cemetery. He and his assistants brushed, cataloged, and even made rubbings of...

'Dragon' and 'longevity' in Chinese.(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Writing Chinese employs the use of characters, rather than letters in an alphabet. Many characters are ideograms, representing a specific idea, and different tones can change their meaning. Chinese characters trace their history back...

The Story of the Stone.
December 1, 2004... Generally regarded as the greatest of all Chinese novels, The Story of the Stone was written in the 1750s by a man named Cao Xueqin. Both magical and realistic, the novel is, all at once, an autobiography, a love story, a Buddhist allegory, a...

On the road.
December 1, 2004... Unlike the rulers of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), who mostly stayed within the confines of the imperial palace, the Manchu emperors of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) tended to travel around the vast empire they created. At first, it had been to...

Yin Yu Tang: the Huizhou area in southeastern China is especially known for the beautiful houses built there several hundred years ago. Yin Yu Tang is one of these houses.
December 1, 2004... Built around 1800, during the Qing dynasty, by a Huang family living in Huang Cun Village, Yin Yu Tang is a typical Huizhou house with tall, white walls that surround a wooden structure. All the rooms are built around the central inner...

Did the Chinese wear yoroi?(Ask Calliope)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Did the Chinese wear yoroi? --Adrienne, 12, Web post No, yoroi was the traditional armor of the samurai, a class of warriors who dominated military life in Japan for seven centuries. This suit, made of rows of lacquered armor plates...

What happened to Hannibal after he lost to the Romans in 202 B.C.?(Ask Calliope)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... What happened to Hannibal after he lost to the Romans in 202 B.C.? --Jed, 10, Web post After his defeat, Hannibal remained in Carthage and tried to curb corruption in government. When he learned that his rivals were trying to discredit...

What's a "coat of arms"?(Ask Calliope)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... What's a "coat of arms"? --Alyssa, Web Post In the 12th century, European knights adopted a new kind of helmet that completely covered the face. Since all armed knights now looked alike, each one started wearing a distinctive badge to...

Off the shelf.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
December 1, 2004... Books Cultural Atlas of China, by Caroline Blunden and Mark Elvin (Facts On File, revised edition 1998, www.factsonfile.com), accompanies a detailed, yet easy-to-understand, overview of the country's history from ancient times to the...

Cobblestone resources.(Off the Shelf)
December 1, 2004... Materials that complement this theme's topic, "The Qing Dynasty," and are available from Cobblestone Publishing, include: Lost Cities (CAL9105)--"Loyang: The Emperor's City in China," pages 26-32 Buddhism (CAL9503) The Ming...

On the net.(Off the Shelf)
December 1, 2004... For an overview of Qing dynasty history and culture, with links to related sites, go to: www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/ china/later_imperial_china/qing.html For new on-line teaching module, produced by the Asia for Educators Program in...

Macartney's mission.
December 1, 2004... In 1792, there was an enormously expensive and massively attended encounter between the two greatest empires of the time--the seemingly ubiquitous British and the little-known Chinese. Why the Qianlong emperor agreed to the British request for...

Legacy of the Qing.(Cover Story)
December 1, 2004... After surviving foreign threats and popular rebellions, the Qing dynasty heaved a final sigh and collapsed in 1911. Almost overnight, the emperor's subjects became modern citizens of a new republic. They cut their queues and weathered the...