Thoughts on Cord Knotting as an Early Record-Keeping System in Ancient China

Background. Umbilical cord knots may represent a hazard to the fetus, particularly as regards intrauterine death and fetal distress or asphyxia in labor. The object of this study was to analyze the impact of associated umbilical cord encirclements and cord length on fetal outcome and fetal weight deviation.Methods. Among 22,012 births occurring in Akershus Central Hospital, there were 216 instances of umbilical cord knots. Fetal outcome, fetal weight deviation, associated umbilical cord encirclements and cord length were assessed.Results. Neonates with a knotted cord are more often large‐for‐gestational age compared to other babies, and have longer umbilical cords. There is a 10 times higher chance of intrauterine fetal death with a knotted cord, but if this does not occur then there is no increased risk of obstetrical intervention and Apgar scores are the same as in other babies and other fetuses.Conclusion. There is an association between umbilical cord knots and umbilical cord encirclements. Knotting of the cord is not by itself lethal. Pregnancies with knotted cords have characteristics different from those with ordinary umbilical cord encirclements.

Umbilical cord knots may represent a hazard to the fetus, particularly as regards intrauterine death and fetal distress or asphyxia in labor. The object of this study was to analyze the impact of associated umbilical cord encirclements and cord length on fetal outcome and fetal weight deviation. Among 22,012 births occurring in Akershus Central Hospital, there were 216 instances of umbilical cord knots. Fetal outcome, fetal weight deviation, associated umbilical cord encirclements and cord length were assessed. Neonates with a knotted cord are more often large-for-gestational age compared to other babies, and have longer umbilical cords. There is a 10 times higher chance of intrauterine fetal death with a knotted cord, but if this does not occur then there is no increased risk of obstetrical intervention and Apgar scores are the same as in other babies and other fetuses. There is an association between umbilical cord knots and umbilical cord encirclements. Knotting of the cord is not by itself lethal. Pregnancies with knotted cords have characteristics different from those with ordinary umbilical cord encirclements.

Wen Xin Diao Long is a classical literary commentary in ancient China, which has both Chinese traditional literary thoughts and educational values. Based on the vigorous development of Chinese traditional literature translation study and the present situation of English translation research on Wen Xin Diao Long, this paper aims to study the commonality and differences between the three translators Shi Youzhong[Vincent Yu-chung Shih], Huang Zhaojie and Yang Guobin in dealing with the phenomenon of creative treason and cultural imagery transmission in the English translation of Cheng Qi in Wen Xin Diao Long from the perspective of Medio-translatology, explores the different ways of dealing with the original text and the translation of traditional cultural elements in the three translators’ translation, and discusses the role and influence of translators’ subjectivity and cultural factors, with a view to promoting its overseas translation and English translation studies.

This article takes as its point of departure western theories of memory, which started with Aristotle’s De Memoria et Reminiscentia. The appearance of alphabetic writing, immortalized in Plato’s Phaedrus as an ‘aid not to memory, but to reminiscence,’ rendered the question of memory more complex. This study examines how these European reflections on memory later unfolded in a European/Jesuit expansionism in the early modern period, encouraging descriptions of different indigenous forms of literacy, and how they revolved around the connection between memory and (alphabetic) writing. Knotted string devices known as quipus in the Andean region, also used in ancient China (jiesheng 結繩), and by foreign populations described by the Chinese – that is Tibetans – are the focus of analysis. This article aimed to show how European descriptions of knotted cords in these parts of the world could either stress or omit their attributed ‘mnemonic element’, depending on the potential readership of works containing this information.

The Chinese and Japanese languages share Chinese characters. Since the Chinese characters in Japanese originated from ancient China, many common Chinese characters exist between these two languages. Since Chinese characters contain significant semantic information and common Chinese characters share the same meaning in the two languages, they can be quite useful in Chinese-Japanese machine translation (MT). We therefore propose a method for creating a Chinese character mapping table for Japanese, traditional Chinese, and simplified Chinese, with the aim of constructing a complete resource of common Chinese characters. Furthermore, we point out two main problems in Chinese word segmentation for Chinese-Japanese MT, namely, unknown words and word segmentation granularity, and propose an approach exploiting common Chinese characters to solve these problems. We also propose a statistical method for detecting other semantically equivalent Chinese characters other than the common ones and a method for exploiting shared Chinese characters in phrase alignment. Results of the experiments carried out on a state-of-the-art phrase-based statistical MT system and an example-based MT system show that our proposed approaches can improve MT performance significantly, thereby verifying the effectiveness of shared Chinese characters for Chinese-Japanese MT.

Located in the southwest hinterland of China, southwest China has a diversity landform consists of plains, mountains, intermountain basins, plateaus. Since the late Neolithic, people living in southwest China have created diverse cultures. As for the basic subsistence strategies, agriculture facilitated the long-term occupation of settlements. While compared to central China, the ecological environment and geomorgraphy in southwest China seem more tough. According to the archaeological evidence, the Chenopodium has been used in most of the archaeological sites. Chenopodium has been cultivated and domesticated in northeast America since Neolithic until nowadays, it is still used in most areas of the world. Wheather it was domesticated in ancient China is still not clear, the archaeobotanical evidence indicates that since the late Neolithic period, the genus of Chenopodium has been exploited by ancestors in southwest China, which provides the most direct evidence for the utilization of Chenopodium. The utilization of weeds such as Chenopodium in ancient southwest China suggests the diversity acquirement methods for ecological resources, which is of great significance to understand the early civilization process in ancient southwest China.

The origin of clothing has always been one of the most important topics in the field of apparel culture research. However, academics have different opinions on this issue. Based on the dilemma analysis of the three research routes which include philology, archaeology, anthropology, we can study the essence of the origin of clothing by analysing ancient Chinese character and philosophy. The relative methods of characters etymology in ancient China, archaeology, anthropology and philosophy are adopted in this study in order to further study the origin of clothing. The research shows that: from etymology research on characters in ancient China, Chinese characters associated with clothing can reflect the objective needs of clothing-the carrying tools whose material are cortex. From the perspective of philosophical researches, clothing prototype originated in the cortical belt for carrying in the process of human evolution during the Palaeolithic. It is an important tool for primitive humans to increase their survival rate. And formed clothing is necessary for them to get out of the Africa and expand their living space. First of all, this paper systematically demonstrates the idea that clothing originated from tools based on the analysis of ancient Chinese characters. Secondly, from the perspective of philosophy, this paper demonstrates the great historical role of clothing as a survival tool, based on the viewpoint that the generation of clothing precedes the consciousness of clothing.

Reviewed by: Women in Ancient China by Bret Hinsch Sheri A. Lullo Women in Ancient China. Bret Hinsch. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. 226 pp., 20 figures, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. Hardback US $79, ISBN 978-1-5381-1540-4. Bret Hinsch has made a number of contributions to the history of gender and sexuality in China, primarily for the ancient and premodern eras. His latest book, Women in Ancient China, "details the process of growing sexual inequality as it unfolded" across the Neolithic, Shang, and Western and Eastern Zhou periods (seventh millennium to third century b.c.) (p. x). This work greatly expands upon Hinsch's summary of these periods in a chapter in his other recent book, Women in Imperial China (Hinsch 2016:1–32). It also serves as a welcome and long-awaited companion to his Women in Early Imperial China (2002), which covers the Qin and Han periods (third century b.c.–a.d. third century). Like many of his books, Women in Ancient China takes a chronological approach, which allows Hinsch to examine the various ways that a woman's identity and status were affected by the shifting social, political, and institutional structures of each ruling power. Thus, each chapter is a comparative study that looks both back in time and anticipates future developments or changes. Drawing from multiple disciplinary perspectives, this useful and comprehensive study synthesizes the growing body of secondary scholarship on women's lives in ancient China. Hinsch's central thesis is that "growing institutional complexity affected female rights and privileges" (p. xii). The study details the various ways that gendered hierarchy became standardized with the expansion of a patriarchal governing system, relegating women to roles in which they invariably served to aid or help legitimize men. Interwoven within this narrative, however, are stimulating accounts of instances where women occupied positions of political, moral, and maternal authority. Hinsch's chronological study is framed by chapters that take up two prominent and influential "myths" in the study of gender in early China, including theories of matriarchy and a rhetoric of females causing the downfalls of major dynasties. Following the "Introduction," chapter 1, "The Myth of Matriarchy," addresses the "vexing methodological problem" with early and in some cases current scholarship that views early society in China as matriarchal (p. xiv). Such theories developed in the mid-nineteenth century under the influence of Marxism; to a certain extent, they remain part of state orthodoxy (though they are quietly disregarded by most scholars today) (p. 5). As Hinsch demonstrates, evidence of matriarchy and matrilinealism in Neolithic China and into the succeeding periods has been disproven. These approaches, however, must be acknowledged in an historical survey of women in ancient China since for decades they have been an underlying assumption of many scholars from numerous disciplinary perspectives, including archaeology, religion, social history, and linguistics. By including this "critical discussion" at the opening of his book, Hinsch positions his research as separate from this outdated body of scholarship (p. xiv). It should be noted, however, that a rather crucial part of the historiography of the "matriarchy myth" is missing from Hinsch's summary. Quite relevant to the purposes of his book are some of the positive outcomes that came with the quest to uncover China's matriarchal beginnings, as explained very clearly in an article by Gideon Shelach (2004) titled "Marxist and Post-Marxist Paradigms for the Neolithic." According to Shelach, misguided as they were, theories of matriarchy were foundational to the study of gender in the archaeological record of China: The Marxist paradigm fostered in China a coherent discussion on issues such as the family structure during the Neolithic period and forced Chinese archaeologists to think of archaeological methods that could flesh out these abstract social norms. Contrary to commonly held views in the West, Chinese archaeologists vividly debated theoretical and methodological issues related to concepts such as [End Page 413] matriarchy, matrilineality, patriarchy, and patrilineality. (Shelach 2004:14) These are some of the very issues that are central to Hinsch's book and as such should have been properly acknowledged. In chapter 2, Hinsch surveys the Early, Middle, and Late Neolithic periods of China, with dates provided...

Chinese character structure analysis based on complex networks

This paper discusses the corpus-based English education and translation of ancient Chinese terminology. An English education is an very important tool for academic translation. Only the researchers who are good at a particular academic subject and at conveying a variety of meaning in English can influence their international readers mostly.China has a long history of language and culture. The recorded history of Chinese ancient characters dates back to Banpo Times about 6000 years ago[ Guo, Mo’ruo(郭沫若). The Dialectical Development of Chinese Ancient Characters(古代文字之辩证的发展)[J],Archeology(考古),1972(03):3-14.(http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5e5e1e1a0102z3nt.html）]. The experiment of isotope carbon 14 confirms the age of the remains of Banpo Village ruins by Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1972[ Zuo, Min’an(左民安). A Detailed Study of Chinese Ancient Characters(细说汉字)[M]，CITIC Press Group(中信出版社)，2015. ]. With the development of characters, China began its language studies. A special academic subject, XIAOXUE, comes into being[ Li, Cheng’Yan(李成燕). The Evolution of the Meaning of "Xiao Xue" in Ancient China(中国古代"小学"含义的演变)[J].Journal of Guangxi Normal University( 广西师范大学学报), 2011,47(1):5.]. This subject focuses on studies of the characters’ YIN （phonological system）, XING (morphological system), YI (lexical semantic system). The language systems of Chinese are very different from those of English. The researchers who try to convey Chinese traditional messages into English expressively have to identify the difference between Chinese systems and English ones. Based on statistical data for the largest academic corpus in China (CNKI), we analyze the English translation of eight typical ancient Chinese terminologies in academic articles. The corpus-based results show that, except for the rough English translation of these traditional terminologies by researchers, there is no further mention of the potential meaning for these special words to avoid confusion. This undoubtedly prevents the greater spread of education of Chinese ancient terminologies. The present paper tries to answer the following questions: (1) What are the real obstacle to overcome when ancient Chinese terminologies are translated into English? (2)How are ancient Chinese terminologies translated into English when they function as keywords in academic articles? (3) What should be to done for English education to standardize the translation of ancient Chinese terminologies? The conclusion suggests that the ancient Chinese character has independent phonological, morphological, lexical semantic systems; a substantial corpus is effective to overcome the language barriers of translation; and it is necessary for researchers to receive English education for translation of ancient Chinese terminologies.

French Missionary Dallet (1874) wrote in his book that ‘the thousand character essay’ had been used as a textbook for Chinese character for the children in the ancient China. ‘The thousand character essay’ is in Korea called as ‘Tcheonzamun (千字文)’, and the Korean people deeply believe that Chinese people has created this famous book (Tcheonzamun) (Han, 1583). However, recently Park et al., (2021a) and Park et al., (2021b) suggested that Tcheonzamun possibly has been created by Korean-speaking people. There are two translating methods. The first method is through Korean pronunciation of Chinese character, and the second one is through the meaning of Chinese character in Tcheonzamun. Both the pronunciation of Chinese character in Korean language and the Chinese character itself is dependent on somewhat old book of Tcheonzamun (Han, 1583). Additionally, the method of deletion was used in this work. The same part of Chinese character was deleted in the range of same line. In this work, a line means the 4 Chinese characters. For example, (653-656 務(Mu) 玆(Za) 稼(Ga) 穡(Saeg)) is a line. And the translation through the meaning of Chinese character will be done with the remained part after the deletion. The thousand character essay is in Korea called as ‘Tcheonzamun’ (Han, 1583). This is the work of translation of Tcheonzamun poem. The title of this study is ‘My husband! If you were the good husband, you would be able (曲) to give (扌) me the most precious thing, even the star in the heaven (辰) (Tcheonzamun 641st-656th)’. This is the first method of this translating work. It is through Korean pronunciation of Chinese characters in this Tcheonzamun poem (Tcheonzamun 641st-656th). The theme of this Tcheonzamun poem is as follows. My husband! I(your wife) am smaller (幺) and smaller (幺) than you! Do you want me to work (務) well for you? My husband! Can you hear my hope? Here, this is my desire! I want to say (口) to you freely at our home (家), and I want to express to you my opinion (口) freely in our life (土)! And the miserable wife says her secret in her mind. “My husband! If you do not accept my sincere hope”, “My husband! From now on, I shall come (Ga_se!) to another man! (Mut_hyeo)”.

Intuitive thinking is a creative way of thinking that abstracts people's life experiences and talents into expressive symbols or forms, enabling people to have an immediate knowledge of something before thinking and studying it logically. In product design, if designers can use the intuitive thinking in design activities, making products associated with the user's experience, then it will greatly reduce the user's learning difficulties, resulting in a more pleasant experience. Chinese characters is a rational product with intuitive thinking that created in ancient China. It not only has a high degree of simplicity and abstraction, but also reflects people's lives with a strong cognitive. From the pictographic in very beginning, people have created varied Chinese characters by six basic formations, which is an outstanding example of intuitive thinking. The creation of Chinese characters provides practical guidance and reference for the modern creation. This paper analyzed the corresponding relationship between the “Six Categories of Chinese Characters” and the modern design technique, and we also analyzed the common function of intuitive thinking in the creation of words and products with designing cases. At last we organized the Intuitive Thinking Schema. By using the Intuitive Thinking Schema, designers can associate the user experience with product design semantics, which can provide users with a more intuitive product experience and provide a reference for later design practice.

Reviewed by: Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Man's Journey Mark Berkson (bio) Constance A. Cook . Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Man's Journey. China Studies 8. Leiden: Brill, 2006. viii, 296 pp. Hardcover $125.00, ISBN 90–04–15312–8. The resting places of the dead are revealing windows into ancient cultures. The ways that a particular culture understands death, treats the dying person, and handles the corpse tell us a great deal about its values. For those of us whose understanding of ancient civilizations comes primarily through their transmitted religious and philosophical literature, a book like Constance Cook's Death in China: The Tale of One Man's Journey serves as a valuable guide to the material culture that constitutes a treasure trove of information regarding those cultures' understandings of death. The focal point of Cook's study is the tomb of Shao Tuo, an official in the Chu court who was buried in 316 B.C.E. The book is an exhaustive inventory, analysis, and interpretation of the content and layout of this tomb, with close attention paid to the texts and art found in the tomb and the arrangement of the tomb itself. Scholars must often think in generalities, and there are many books written about "the ancient Chinese." Over time, however, the people from a culture so far removed from us can begin to feel like an abstraction. One virtue of a book like this is that it focuses on a particular individual, and throughout the book we get a glimpse of the life, work, illness, and untimely death of a man in fourth century B.C.E. China through Cook's reconstruction. Through comparative reflection on other tombs and texts and by drawing on the work of sinologists and scholars of numerous aspects of ancient China (for example, philosophy, art, philology, and poetry), the book expands out from the concrete particularities of Shao Tuo's life to broader claims about the development of Chinese cosmology, conceptions and treatments of illness, and understandings of the afterlife. The book is not for the casual nonacademic reader; it is a resource for scholars of Chinese culture and history, as well as for those interested in tomb archaeology and comparative studies of death and dying. It is informative, densely packed and well organized, and it provides readers with extensive inventories, illustrations, diagrams, and charts, as well as appendixes consisting of translations of two texts found in the tomb. These appendixes contain images of the bamboo strips found in the tomb, and for those of us who do not get our hands dirty in archaeological digs, looking at these strips, with their early but usually recognizable forms of Chinese characters, brings us into contact with the power that such artifacts possess. The appendixes also provide the modern Chinese characters from the strips along with copious notes that discuss the meanings of characters and the reasons for certain translation choices. [End Page 411] One of the characteristics of Chinese tombs is the frequency with which texts were included within them. Shao Tuo's tomb contained records of his administrative duties, as well as both an inventory text detailing the contents of the tomb and a divination text, the latter detailing the many attempts by shaman-diviners to diagnose and cure the ailing official. The Chinese have a long history of keeping divination records, dating back to the Shang dynasty oracle bone inscriptions (their discovery has provided one of the most significant sources of insight into Shang culture). The divination text in Shao Tuo's tomb reveals a great deal about the religio-medical practices of the period, but the reason for the inclusion of this text, as well as the inventory text, in the tomb is unclear. Cook reviews the theories, including that the texts might have been for Shao Tuo's use in the afterlife, for use by other spirits, for the purpose of providing testimony to his merit and rank (for example, through the length of the inventory texts), and so that the texts could be separated from the world of the living and preserved. The texts could serve as talismans that...

I read the Letter “Scrapie in ancient China?” by R. B. Wickner (5 Aug. 2005, p. [874][1]) with interest. Wickner proposes that scrapie, the transmissible spongiform encephalopathy found in sheep, was known in ancient China, and as evidence he offers that the Chinese character “itchy” (![

Reviews 197© 1998 by University ofHawai'i Press its arguments should be seriously considered by all scholars ofliterary and cultural studies. Gregory Lee University ofHong Kong Gregory Lee is an associateprofessor in comparative literature and cultural studies. John Lust. Chinese Popular Prints. Handbuch der Orientalistik, vierte abteilung, China, band 11 (Handbook oforiental studies, part 4, China, vol. 11). Leiden, New York, Köln: E. J. Brill, 1996. xiv, 352 pp. Hardcover, U.S. $149.50, isbn 90-04-10472-0. This is an expensive book on a fascinating topic, published by the venerable house ofBrill in its prestigious Handbook ofOriental Studies series. Unfortunately it is a grievous disappointment on every level, from editing to analysis. The book does not appear to have undergone even rudimentary editing. There are incomplete sentences, singular verbs with plural subjects, orphan parentheses (page 82, line 2), mismatches between note reference numbers and footnote texts (notes 34 to 37 of chapter 3), specific references to books that are not identified (page 81, third paragraph, and note 14), abbreviated references in notes to works that are not in the Bibliography (page 249 note 11 cites "Hou Ching-Ian [sic], 1975," which cannot be found in the Bibliography; the reference is probably to Hou Jinglan, Monnaies d'offrande et la notion de trésorerie dans la religion chinoise, which is not in the Bibliography either), and so on and on. Beyond these technical matters, the writing is often extremely unclear. One example among many is this, on page 82: "Mianzhu or Chengdu do not on the surface have taken on the specific art and intellectual drive ofHebei and the provinces ofthe Yangtze Delta region, but it participated in the general traditions of popular art." Careless writing combined with poor organization, even within paragraphs, make the book very difficult to read. The book's six chapters—"Introduction ," "History," "Printmakers and Printshops," "Society, Symbolism and Visual Pun," "Categories of Popular Prints and Their Display," and "Technical Terms"—do not present a coherent, ordered survey of the subject, either historical or topical. There is no discernible argument or conceptual structure. Instead, there is a mass ofill-digested information and unsubstantiated opinion that only the most determined researcher will be able to sort through successfully. 198 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1998 Three other very serious technical problems must be mentioned. First, the footnoting is scandalously weak, especially for a work presented to an unsuspecting public as a "handbook." There are mistakes (for example, "no. 76" in note 16 on page 30 should be "p. 7"), incomplete references (for example, note 124 on page 89 does not give page numbers), and above all, lack of any documentation whatsoever in passage after passage. Second, the visual documentation—twentysix reproductions in one section at the beginning of the book—is entirely inadequate . To assess the author's statements about specific prints, or even understand them, die reader must have at his elbow seven or eight illustrated volumes ofwoodblock prints that only the largest sinological libraries are likely to have. This is a crippling shortcoming, and inexcusable in a book this expensive. Third, there are no Chinese characters anywhere in the book, an unbelievable lapse for a sinological handbook and one that is especially damaging in this case, since Lust devotes a great deal of space to terminology. Problems of conceptualization and interpretation are also severe. To begin with, there is no careful definition of what is meant by "popular print." We are eventually told in passing on page 242 that "in this book popular prints covers all prints of an illustrative sort," which suggests that a Chinese woodblock print is "popular" by definition. But were elegant and expensive productions of Yangliuqing and Suzhou, to which the author so frequently turns, "popular"? If so, what definition of "popular" is being used? Lust recognizes that there were different audiences for different kinds of prints—an important point—but makes no serious effort to show what effect this had on their style and content. All he has to offer on this matter is the brief section on "The Publics" (pages 129-133), which reviews late imperial social stratification but leaves the connection between social...