Ancient Chinese Characters Research Articles

The New Discussion on Struggle of the Studies of Confucian Classics of Current and Ancient Chinese Character in Han Dynasty

The New Discussion on Struggle of the Studies of Confucian Classics of Current and Ancient Chinese Character in Han Dynasty

An overview of ancient Chinese character inscriptions of national minorities

In the past, many national minorities once established ancient characters of their own. A large amount of ancient Chinese character inscriptions were made using stone materials, which are significant for the study of national histories, national cultures and national languages. This paper summarizes the historical background of ancient Chinese character inscriptions and the current situation regarding character interpretation; it exemplifies 12 types of Chinese character inscriptions of national minorities in the hopes of providing suggestions for the collation of ancient Chinese character inscription documents and providing references for study into languages, histories and cultures.

Research on color and dyeing culture from ancient Chinese characters Chinese - In the ≪ShuoWenJieZi≫ by 糸radical based on -

Research on color and dyeing culture from ancient Chinese characters Chinese - In the ≪ShuoWenJieZi≫ by 糸radical based on -

《叻報》字詞初步考察

We study on the overall situation about Characters and words from south Asian first Chinese daily "Lebao(叻报)" with sampling survey on some whole copies and some part of the newspaper. We conclude the none-general characters is 343,which includes 1 southern dialect character, 49 sets variants,8 sets old and new Character Patterns,8 special ones,1 set ancient and modern Chinese character, 287 traditional-simplified-relation characters. We also find 3 recombination characters. Generation modes of Words from “Lebao(叻报)" are inheriting ,borrowing and special using. The relevant data can serve the Chinese monitoring and the diachronic development study with the help of attention to the foreign language life.

Correlations of Electrophysiological Measurements with Identification Levels of Ancient Chinese Characters.

Studies of event-related potential (ERP) in the human brain have shown that the N170 component can reliably distinguish among different object categories. However, it is unclear whether this is true for different identifiable levels within a single category. In the present study, we used ERP recording to examine the neural response to different identification levels and orientations (upright vs. inverted) of Chinese characters. The results showed that P1, N170, and P250 were modulated by different identification levels of Chinese characters. Moreover, time frequency analysis showed similar results, indicating that identification levels were associated with object recognition, particularly during processing of a single categorical stimulus.

古文字数字化研究之得失与展望

Digital research in ancient Chinese characters reflects the adjustment and development of the traditional research model under the new condition of information transmission. Through this new research model, more innovative research areas can be opened up. Moreover, the operating criterion of empirical study will be elevated. Currently there are several problems in this research model: overburdened work in the technical area; weak support of existing research and the absence of necessary Chinese information technology. The further realms we can expect are: digital means and platforms will bring a new vision of paleographic research; the development of the digital platform on the basis of resource sharing and cooperation; the development of the function of supervision on digital platform over criterion of the paleographic research.

A Discussion of Chinese Swaddling Culture

Every culture has its own swaddling culture. As for China, this swaddling culture can be dated from Shang Dynasty. It is widely employed in not only royal families but also normal families in ancient times, and even till now is still a vital part of Chinese minorities nurturing custom. Swaddle, a long historical nursing product, itself owns a high practical value as well as presenting humanism. Base on ancient literatures and Chinese archaic characters (襁褓), this manuscript will display the unique and profound aspect of Chinese nurturing culture, dispel the misunderstanding of this traditional culture.

Exploring the Secret of the Ancient Chinese Character’s Development: A Hindsight After Reading The Development of Ancient Chinese Character

With regard to analyzing the form of the ancient Chinese character, The Development of Ancient Chinese Character puts forward dynamic analysis and static analysis. It makes attempt to study the history of ancient Chinese character from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, and combine the dynamic analysis of the character’s form with the static analysis. Besides, according to The Development of Ancient Chinese Character, “the change of Chinese character’s form into lines”, “symbolization”, and “uniformity” are the general direction that the form of ancient Chinese character develops towards. Besides, the development of ancient Chinese character also shows the features of the times. Moreover, the book compares the structures of the characters in the periods from the Shang dynasty to Qin dynasty, revealing the formation mode of ancient Chinese character which is in a dynamic transformation. Furthermore, the usage of ancient Chinese character is also included in the book, which encompasses many aspects, such as the total number of the different characters in different periods, the frequency of characters, commonly-used characters and rarely-used characters, and so on. Through detailed numbers, the book makes its argumentation convincing and vivid. In addition, the book is also filled with creative ideas in the interpretation of individual characters and in the establishment of new theories.

Ancient Chinese Thought of Character Formation & Modern Logo Design

The pictograph is the core of ancient Chinese characters. In recent years, Chinese characters, especially the ancient oracle-bone inscriptions and seal characters, are often adopted in logo design in China. This article analyzes the concise thought adopted in ancient character-creating, such as “highlighting characteristics”, “simplifying”, and “less for more”, and probes into the application of such ancient thought with modern design cases, in an attempt to establish evaluation standards for the integration of culture and art.

A Retrieval Method of Ancient Chinese Character Images

Global and local image retrieval of ancient Chinese characters is a helpful means for character research work. Because of the characteristics of ancient Chinese characters such as complex structures and variant shapes, there exist many theoretical and technical problems in feature extraction, clustering and retrieval of these images. A retrieval method was established with the strategy of “clustering before matching” for the ancient Chinese character images by integrating the structural features of them. Firstly, preprocessed character image area was divided into elastic meshes and the directional elements were extracted to form the feature vectors. Then, K-means algorithm was employed to cluster the character images within global and local areas. Finally, the similar images within selected areas were searched in corresponding cluster and the obtained images were provided to users. The experimental results show that this method is helpful for the improvement of the efficiency of ancient Chinese character study.

Ancient Chinese People’s Knowledge of Macrofungi during the Period from 220 to 589

To explore the knowledge of macrofungi in ancient China from 220 to 589, several aspects are studied in detail, including the meanings of ancient Chinese characters or words for macrofungi, naturalistic descrip­tions of macrofungi, the earliest record of the cultivation of macrofungi, the earliest record of the custom of eating macrofungi in Taiwan Island, methods of cooking macrofungi dishes, macrofungi in literature, and macrofungi in Taoist texts. More kinds of macrofungi are mentioned in the various works of this period than in earlier works, including the earliest record of the cultivation of fuling 茯苓 ( Wolfiporia cocos ), as well as the earliest record of the custom of eating monkey head mushroom ( houtou gu 猴頭菇; Hericium erinaceus ). There are two intriguing Taoist monographs of great significance for the history of zhi 芝 in Taoist literature. Moreover, the stories about lingzhi 靈芝 ( Ganoderma lucidum ) in Chinese literature indicate that macrofungi were not only lauded by poets, but also used by them to represent virtues.

Neural correlates of familiarity and conceptual fluency in a recognition test with ancient pictographic characters

Familiarity and conceptual priming refer to distinct memory expressions and are subtypes of explicit memory and implicit memory, respectively. Given that the neural events that produce conceptual priming may in some cases promote familiarity, distinguishing between neural signals of these two types of memory may further our understanding of recognition memory mechanisms. Although FN400 event-related potentials observed during recognition tests have often been ascribed to familiarity, much evidence suggests that they should instead be ascribed to conceptual fluency. To help resolve this controversy, we studied potentials elicited by unrecognizable ancient Chinese characters. These stimuli were categorized as high or low in meaningfulness based on subjective ratings. Conceptual priming was produced exclusively by repetition of characters high in meaningfulness. During a recognition test in which recollection was discouraged, FN400 old–new effects were observed, and amplitudes of the FN400 potentials varied inversely with familiarity confidence. However, these effects were absent for old items given low meaningfulness ratings. For both high and low meaningfulness, late positive (LPC) potentials were found in old–new comparisons, and LPC amplitudes were greater when higher familiarity confidence was registered during the recognition test. These findings linked familiarity and conceptual fluency with different brain potentials – LPC and FN400, respectively – and provide additional evidence that explicit memory and implicit memory have distinct neural substrates.

Anatomical Roots of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine

The earliest historic reference to a dissection of a human cadaver is found in the biography of Emperor Wang Mang 王莾who in 16 C.E. ordered the medical dismembering of the body of a rebel named Wang Sun-Ching (occidental anatomy began only 1,500 years later). Measurements were made of his internal organs, and bamboo rods were inserted into his blood vessels in order to discover where they begin and where they end for the purpose of a better understanding of how to cure diseases. Similar anatomical dissections are mentioned in chapter 12 of the Huang-Di Nei-Jing Ling-Shu 黃帝內經靈樞, entitled Jing-Shui 經水 The ancient Chinese characters for body dissections given here are the same as in modern Chinese anatomy, namely Jie-Pou 解剖. The courses of the pathways as laid out in chapter 10 of the Ling-Shu Jing could well be the result of such dissections; they are elementary for acupuncture and Chinese medicine. Otherwise it cannot be explained why ancient Chinese physicians were able to denominate the respective viscera properly with names still in use today and how they could locate them topographically in their correct position as well as linking them to the vessel pathways leading to the periphery of the human body. The majority of Western acupuncturists adhere to far-fetched assumptions about ‘meridians', ‘channels', ‘points', and ‘energy' which have never existed in China. Western acupuncture thus relies on a basic logical error, a so-called Wrong Beginning (Proton pseudos πρῶτον ψεῶδος). That is why modern acupuncture finally needs an anatomical nomenclature for daily practice and scientific research including all the structures involved, which are still the same as 2,000 years ago.

Translation in Japan: The Cassette Effect

Japan has always exhibited a serious attitude towards the translation of foreign languages. Any discussion of this issue must take into account the fact that ancient Japan borrowed Chinese characters, called kanji, from China. In this paper, I will focus on the use of kanji in translation, which has rarely been discussed in Western Translation Studies. Since ancient times, the Japanese have read imported books written in kanji according to a method called kundoku, which is still used for reading Western languages in modern Japan. Kanji was also used for writing the Japanese language. This article deals primarily with examples of kanji used to translate Western words. Cultures that use kanji, including Japan, have long trusted its expressive ability, which is why Japanese translators used this so‑called ideogram. In modern times, Japanese translators have used kanji to express the meanings of Western words. Of course, this type of usage has its limits when trying to express meanings from other cultures. On the other hand, this method of translation is fairly efficient: although people reading a kanji may not at first understand its full meaning, they perhaps feel that it has a serious meaning that can be roughly understood from its context. I call the assumption of meaning triggered by kanji the “cassette effect.”

Ancient Books Chinese Characters Segmentation Based on Connected Domain and Chinese Characters Feature

During the processing of handwritten Chinese characters recognition, pretreatment and segmentation has great effect to the recognition. On the base of review upon the often-used algorithm, the article proposes the methods which get the connected domain of binary image use the non-recursion Marking algorithm, and design the algorithm to coherent noise and delete image frame line and segment the character. The article segment the character in the whole scope with the connected domain merging algorithm to overcame the difficult about the tilt; and segment the Chinese character in the part scope with the projection to overcome the difficult about conglutination. The fact proved that this algorithm solves the problem by using single method.

The Baima Tibetans and the Di People of Chinese Historical Records: Challenging the Link

This paper addresses a long-standing controversy surrounding the ethnicity of the Baima Tibetans, a Tibeto-Burman people in Western Sichuan Province whose ethnic and linguistic origins are yet to be satisfactorily ascertained. It focuses on one popular view, which attempts to link the present-day Baima Tibetans with the Di, an ancient Tibeto-Burman group documented in the Chinese historical records who inhabited roughly the same area until their gradual assimilation into the Han and the Tibetans during the Tang Dynasty. The paper examines and refutes all three types of evidence proffered in the literature in support of making such a link: geographical distribution, cultures and customs, and language. Focusing on the linguistic evidence, including autonyms and certain names of the Di contained in the historical texts, and two alleged Di loan words recorded in the ancient Chinese character dictionary 《說文解字》 , the paper makes use of first-hand fieldwork material to bear on the issue. It concludes that it is immature to say anything definite about the identity of the mysterious Di language or languages, let alone to directly link them with the speech of the modern Baima people, which is predominantly a Bodic language.

The coding principle and method for automatic recognition of Jia Gu Wen characters

Jia Gu Wen characters carved on turtle backs or animal bones with the features of drawings are the most ancient Chinese characters used about 3000 years ago. This paper proposes a theory and technique for Jia Gu Wen character recognition based on coding. The key idea is to treat a Jia Hu Wen character as a non-directed graph. Its topological features are extracted to be the basis of recognition. The approach proposed in this paper is also applicable to character recognition of other languages such as Japanese, Korean, Mongolian or Tibetan.

Computer recognition of Jia Gu Wen characters

Jia Gu Wen characters, which have the features of drawings, were the most ancient graphlike Chinese characters used about 4,000 years ago. Thus, the currently available methods for Chinese character recognition are not applicable. This article proposes a two-level classification recognition method. The characters to be recognized are first abstracted to be a kind of graph, upon which the first-level classification is exercised based on their topological properties. Then the definition for generalized strokes is given. The second-level classification is exercised based on the features of these strokes. Experimental results demonstrate a recognition rate of about 94%. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol 10, 363–367, 1999

The Relations of Silk and Ancient Chinese Characters

The Relations of Silk and Ancient Chinese Characters

THE PRESENT STATUS OF MALARIA CONTROL IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Malaria has been endemic in China for a long time. The presence of the ancient Chinese character “Nuk” (Malaria) among inscriptions on oracle-bone and bronzes of the Shang dynasty (about 16th century-11 th century B.C.) indicates that malaria was recognized as a disease entity in China more than 3, 000 years ago. However, albeit all the sufferings it had brought to the Chinese people, practically no attempt was made to contain it prior to the founding of the people's Republic. This paper is a brief report on the present status of malaria and its control in China.