CHINA TRIP

I am going to talk about history, geography, language, values and the way of life in China.

The history of China, as a chronology of one of the oldest civilizations in the world and continues to the present day, has its origins in the Yellow River basin, where the first Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties emerged. The existence of the first written documents date from about 3500 years ago.

The vast geographical extension of the People’s Republic of China inevitably makes the history of this whole territory comprehensively encompass a large number of people and civilizations.

Over time the territory of the country has been changing over time until it is configured how it is currently.

Being inhabited by more than one billion people.

The official language of China is Mandarin, although most Chinese living in northern China, Sichuan and the area from the northeast (Manchuria) to the southeast (Yunnan), speak several Mandarin dialects as own language. The predominance of the Mandarin in the north of China is a purely geographical reason, especially when we speak of the plains of northern China. On the other hand, the mountains and rivers of the south have fostered linguistic diversity. The presence of the Mandarin in Sichuan is due to a plague in the 12th century. This plague, which may have been related to the black plague, depopulated the area, which led to a late repopulation of northern China.
Until the mid-twentieth century, most Chinese living in southern China did not speak Mandarin. However, and despite the mix of officers and people who spoke different Chinese dialects, Nanjing Mandarin was the dominant dialect during the Qing Empire. Since the seventeenth century, the Empire established a series of orthographic academies (zhengyin shuyuan) in an attempt to create a pronunciation conforming to standard beijing (Beijing was the capital of Qing), but these attempts were not very successful. During the last 50 years of the Qing Dynasty, in the late nineteenth century, standard nanjing mandarin was replaced by beijing mandarin in court. For the plain people there was no standard single mandarin and different varieties of Mandarin were spoken. The Chinese of the South continued to speak their regional dialects in their day to day. All this made the standard beijing mandarin very limited.
This situation changed with the creation of the primary education system prepared to teach Mandarin. The result of this system is that Mandarin is fluently spoken in the Chinese mainland and in Taiwan. In Hong Kong the Mandarin is taking a lot of strength, although the formal language and education is still Cantonese.

One of the most distinctive features of Chinese culture is its writing system, of logographic origin, similar in this sense to the Maya and Egyptian systems. Chinese writing consists of thousands of symbols, called characters, that have been used for at least three thousand years as a written form of the Chinese language.
When talking about Chinese society in the first place it is necessary to take into account that we are referring to a population of more than one billion people in which there are marked differences depending on their economic, geographical or social characteristics. A Chinese Mongolian peasant living near the Gobi will have nothing in common with the circumstances surrounding a Shanghai businessman engaged in foreign trade.
It is true that this is an extreme example and despite the great diversity that the Asian country presents, it is possible to define certain common historical and cultural characteristics that affect a certain majority of the population. The Chinese are people of traditions and customs with great roots, perhaps not so expressive in showing their feelings and physical contact is not as present as in the Latin culture.
Although traditions are clearly present, the facilities of modern life have also exploded in areas such as technology or the way of relating to young people, especially in urban areas. And finally, although they are reserved in certain aspects, they are generally open and hospitable people, who also always show a healthy curiosity towards foreign visitors, at times making them feel like attractions, not stopping to take photos to the visitors; and their lifestyle.

No hay comentarios / 17 Mar 2017 por nmenendez
MERME /

Comentarios cerrados.