China is a country of festivities. Each particular occasion demands its own corresponding celebration. There are at least six “Great Festivals” to break the monotony of the Chinese everyday life: New Year or Spring Festival (1st day of 1st month), the Lantern Festival (15th of the 1st month), Festival for the Dead (5th of the […]
First published in Tulay Monthly, Chinese-Filipino Digest 1, no. 4 (September 11, 1988): 10. Part II As a result of higher education and closer contact with Filipino and Western values, younger generations of ethnic Chinese women have rising expectations of sexual equality. Unlike their mothers, they complain today of sexual discrimination outside of the home […]
First published in Tulay, Chinese-Filipino Digest 1, no. 3 (August 1988): 10. The history of Chinese women in Southeast Asia has been a recent one. Most of the early Chinese who came to the Philippines were traders or laborers who left their wives and families in China. Thus, even as late as 1903, there were […]
Editor’s note: In the Mid-Autumn Festival dice game, the prize categories are named after these examination titles. The first to sixth prize categories are named as zhuang yuan, bangyan, tanhua, jinshi, juren and xiucai, respectively. To select capable people to help govern the country, Emperor Wen Di of the Sui Dynasty (581-618) established an imperial […]
For the past couple years, car companies give big discounts or special promos during the month of August. Should you buy? Not if you believe in the Chinese ghost month. In Chinese culture, the 15th day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day or Hungry Ghost Festival (七月半 in Hokkien) […]
First published in Tulay Fortnightly, Chinese-Filipino Digest 28, no. 5 (August 4-17, 2015): 8-9. Prior to the arrival of Buddhism in China in the first century of the Common Era, the seventh lunar month was already the customary time for praying for the dead. Taoist rituals already existed for this purpose. As Buddhism inculturated and […]
During the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), the book A Hundred Chinese Clan Names became popular. In it are collected all the Chinese surnames in use at that time, arranged in four-character lines of which all even-numbered ones are rhymed. Although there is no coherence in subject and no apparent connection between one line and the […]
There was once a temple in Deng Feng County named Zhu Lin Si (Bamboo Forest Temple) at the base of Wu Ru Peak of Shao Shi Hills in the foothills of Mount Song in central China. In the temple lived an old monk named Dao Ji, who wanted very much to become an immortal but […]
The last few years of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220) was a period of unbridled fighting among powerful military commanders and widespread political corruption. It was in such turbulent times that Zhuge Liang was born. Hoping that he would be a bright child, his father gave him the literary name “Kongming,” meaning “intelligent.” A few […]
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