Calliope articles from November 2003

Calliope archives from November 2003

Musings.(poet Wang Wei)
November 1, 2003... DAY AFTER DAY WE CANNOT HELP GROWING OLDER, YEAR AFTER YEAR SPRING CANNOT HELP SEEMING YOUNGER; COME, LET US ENJOY OUR TIME TODAY, NOT PITY THE FLOWERS FALLEN. --Wang Wei, Chinese poet and painter (699-761)

The World of the Tang.(China's Tang dynasty)
November 1, 2003... WHERE CAN YOU FIND A CAPITAL CITY LARGER THAN ANY OTHER IN THE WORLD, A RULER KNOWN AS THE "BRILLIANT EMPEROR," AND WOMEN WHO PLAYED POLO? ANSWER: TANG DYNASTY CHINA. The leaders during the 300 years of Tang rule brought a unity, stability, and...

Chang'an--the capital city.(of China's Tang dynasty)
November 1, 2003... Chang'an, the capital of the Tang dynasty, was the largest, best-planned, and most international city in the world in the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries A.D. Every language spoken in Asia could be heard on its streets. Merchants from every Asian...

March to the Chang'an Imperial Palace.
November 1, 2003... You Need: * piece of heavy cardboard to make a game board * pencil * coin to flip * small shirt button or other marker per player Directions 1. Make a copy of the game board shown on page 9. 2. Choose one of the...

China's only ruling empress.(Wu Zhao)
November 1, 2003... THE TANG DYNASTY WITNESSED A UNIQUE EVENT IN CHINA'S 5,000-YEAR HISTORY--a ruling empress. Her name was Wu Zhao. Born in A.D. 624 to a well-to-do family, Wu Zhao had been trained in reading, arts, and music. At age 14, she was sent to the court...

The founding of the Tang dynasty.
November 1, 2003... Although the Tang was one of China's most illustrious dynasties, its founding was without glory. The first Tang emperor, Li Yuan (known after his death as Gaozu), had served the Sui dynasty rulers as a general. When the second Sui emperor died,...

Time line.(Tang dynasty emperors)(Illustration)
November 1, 2003... Time Line Principal Tang Emperors Note: A Chinese emperor had many names, including a personal (family) name and a temple name, by which the ruler was known after death. PERSONAL (FAMILY) NAME REIGN DATES POSTHUMOUS (TEMPLE)...

Polo.(Word Origins)
November 1, 2003... The name for the sport of polo is believed to derive from pulu, the word for "ball" in Manipur, an area in northeastern India. The British encountered the game there in the 1800s. A similar term is associated with the game in Tibet. According...

"For all the tea in China".(Expressions)
November 1, 2003... Have you ever heard a person refuse to do something even "for all the tea in China"? The reference to China is appropriate as China has hundreds of thousands of tons of tea. So, regardless of how much anyone offers to give that person, his or...

Tea.(Word Stories)
November 1, 2003... "Tea"--both the word and the plant whose leaves are used to make the drink--traces its roots to East Asia. The first-known mention of the term "tea" was around A.D. 350. The formal Mandarin Chinese name for the plant was cha. Sailors and...

This world and the next: a princely tomb.(Crown Prince Yide of China's Tang dynasty)
November 1, 2003... In A.D.706, China's Crown Prince Yide was finally buried with ceremonial splendor. Five years had passed since his grandmother, the powerful Empress Wu, had ordered him killed at age 19. What befell this unfortunate heir apparent to the Tang...

The brilliant emperor.(Xuanzong of China's Tang Dynasty)
November 1, 2003... No ruler of the Tang Dynasty has captured the historical imagination more than Xuanzong. Also known as the Brilliant Emperor (Ming huang) because the Tang civilization reached the height of its splendors during his rule, Xuanzong was the...

When exams defined success.
November 1, 2003... THE TANG DYNASTY IS CONSIDERED A GOLDEN AGE OF LITERATURE. LITERARY SKILLS were not only widely admired by Tang society, but they were also considered key to anyone wishing to advance his political career. Proof of the importance of these...

Life in cities along the Grand Canal.(China's Tang dynasty)
November 1, 2003... IMAGINE YOU ARE A TANG DYNASTY TRAVELER AND WANT TO GO FROM THE SOUTHERN CITY of Yangzhou north to Luoyang--a distance of about 580 miles. If you wished to continue to the area where Beijing, China's present-day capital, is located, it would be...

The Everlasting Sorrow.(work by Chinese poet Bai Juyi)
November 1, 2003... Tang emperors had large harems with many wives. These included an empress (the chief wife), various "consorts" (secondary wives), and thousands of other women arranged in an elaborate ranking system that mirrored the male world of officials...

Try writing Tang-style.(Activity)(China's Tang dynasty)
November 1, 2003... In the Tang dynasty, there were no poets as we think of them in the European and American sense. Everyone composed poems that related to personal experiences and social occasions, such as parties, visits to friends, or seeing a person off on a...

The legacy of the Tang.(From Past to Present)
November 1, 2003... IN 618, THE YEAR THE TANG DYNASTY WAS FOUNDED, THE DIFFERENT REGIONS of East Asia had little in common. The people of China could read and write, but their neighbors in present-day Korea, Japan, and Vietnam had no written language. By 907,...

Buried treasure at Hejia.(Chinese art)
November 1, 2003... Imagine that your family has to leave your home because of a disaster, and you do not know when you will return. You must travel lightly, your parents tell you, so you and your family bury their favorite belongings in the ground for when you...

Art on the cutting edge.(Activity)(papercuttings)
November 1, 2003... Flowers, fish, dragons, butterflies, and cranes are some of the traditional subjects of the ancient art of Chinese papercutting. As early as the 6th century A.D., artists produced elaborate designs that reproduced patterns for embroidery, much...

How art reflects a woman's role.(art created during the Tang dynasty)
November 1, 2003... Recent excavations in and around the ancient capital of Chang'an have uncovered an extraordinary number of Tang tombs with murals and figurines that depict women. In other surviving pictorial art from the period, women are also, for the first...

The tea ceremony in Tang China.
November 1, 2003... According to Chinese legend, the ancestors of the Chinese people discovered the medicinal properties of tea. As early as the fifth century A.D., Buddhists used tea leaves to keep themselves awake during meditation. By the eighth century, tea...

In pursuit of 'the divine bead'.(history of polo)
November 1, 2003... Polo was a favorite sport during the Tang dynasty. Historical and literary records, excavated artifacts, and artworks all attest to the game's popularity during this period. Polo was also considered excellent practice for mounted combat....

Ask Calliope.
November 1, 2003... [?] Why is your magazine named for Calliope, and not Clio? --Asha, Athens, Georgia [!] Good question! In Greek and Roman mythology, Calliope was the leader of the Muses, nine goddesses who were the daughters of the chief god Zeus...

Books.(Off the Shelf)(Bibliography)
November 1, 2003... China, C.J. Shane, book editor (Greenhaven Press/The Gale Group, 2003, www.gale.com) clearly and in an easy-to-understand style follows the history of China from its earliest dynasties through to the 21st century. A concise, brief overview...

On the net.(Off the Shelf)
November 1, 2003... For an overview of Tang dynasty history and culture, with links to related sites, go to: www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Tang/tang.htm www.campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/China /Tang.html For a great resource on China, click on the...

Resources.(Off the Shelf)
November 1, 2003... Shen's Books (40951 Fremont Blvd., San Francisco, California 94110, www.shens.com) offers a great variety of materials about ancient and contemporary China.

Cobblestone resources.(Off the Shelf)(Bibliography)
November 1, 2003... Cobblestone materials that complement this theme's topic, "The Tang Dynasty" include: APPLESEEDS: Beijing (April 2000) CALLIOPE: Lost Cities (May/June 1991) Buddhism (March/April 1995) The Ming Dynasty: the World of the Yongle...

Treasures of Mogao.(Buddhist art)
November 1, 2003... Sometime around 1900, a Daoist monk named Wang Yuanlu made an astonishing discovery in the remote desert of northwest China. Wang was the self-appointed guardian of the ancient Buddhist cave temples of Mogao, a site that lies close to the oasis...