#WingedWordsWindsday: 2023/01/18 -- Happy Lunar New Year!

 WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 2, No. 12: January 18, 2023

 

 

Happy Lunar New Year on Sunday, January 22, 2023!

(Traditional Chinese Calendar: 4721 – The Year of the Rabbit)

 

“Light from the East: The Genius of Ancient China”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

Adapted & Condensed from Cursus Honorum IX: 6 (January 2009)

                In 2023, the Chinese (Lunar) New Year is being celebrated on Sunday, January 22, which will usher in the year 4721 of the traditional Chinese calendar, which is the “Year of the Rabbit” in the twelve-year zodiacal cycle. The celebration of the Lunar New Year provides us with an excellent opportunity to consider some of the myriad contributions that China has made to scientific progress over the past five millennia – all of which constitute a very remarkable legacy indeed!

                Dr. Joseph Needham (1900-1995), a British biochemist and historian, brought the history of Chinese scientific achievements to the attention of Western scholars through his carefully researched multivolume compendium, Science and Civilization in China (published 1954-present). The Needham Research Institute at Cambridge University carries on his work of disseminating discoveries about the history of science in China. Dr. Needham’s research encompassed all the major branches of scientific study and how developments in those fields were applied to China’s advancements in the STEM-related disciplines.

                Joseph Edkins (1823-1905), a pioneering researcher in the field of sinology (Chinese studies), was the first Western scholar to coin the phrase “the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China.” These technological breakthroughs included:

·         The compass (invented sometime during the first millennium CE)

·         Gunpowder (formulated in the ninth century CE)

·         Paper (first used for wrapping in the second century BCE and for writing shortly thereafter)

·         Woodblock printing (devised in the ninth century CE)

Dr. Needham noted in his writings that while the “Four Great Inventions” were indeed impressive achievements – and eventually made an immense impact on human civilization as a whole – they are certainly not the only noteworthy discoveries that were first made in China and then shared with the rest of the world.

                Perhaps the earliest discovery in recorded Chinese literature is the formulation of tea. According to traditional accounts, the Emperor Shennong (reigned 2737-2699 BCE) discovered the medicinal benefits of steeping leaves from the Camellia sinensis (tea) plant and taught his people how to cultivate it and use its leaves to promote long life and good health. The use of tea as a medicinal beverage is attested in Chinese literature as far back as the tenth century BCE. From China, tea cultivation and consumption have spread around the world – from East Asia to India and throughout the British Commonwealth. Tea is now the second most popular beverage on Earth (after water).

                The Chinese calendar is lunisolar (based on the motions of both the Sun and the Moon), and its invention (traditionally dated to 2697 BCE) is attributed to Emperor Gongsun (reigned 2699-2588 BCE). Archaeological evidence indicates that the Chinese lunisolar calendar has been in use since the late second millennium BCE, and contemporary Chinese calendars are based on reforms carried out under the Han Dynasty some 2000 years ago. The Chinese New Year almost always takes place on the second New Moon after the Winter Solstice; this causes the New Year festival to “wander” among various dates in the Gregorian calendar from year to year. Seven times in nineteen years, an extra (thirteenth) month is added to keep the Chinese calendar in step with the seasons of the solar year. There is also a twelve-year cycle built into the Chinese calendar, in which each year bears the name of an animal from the traditional East Asian zodiac. The Chinese calendar is still used to set the dates of traditional festivals throughout the year, and it forms the basis for many other calendar systems used in East Asia and Southeast Asia today.

                Yet another well-known Chinese innovation is the massive fortification system known as the Great Wall of China. Begun as several separate forts and walls on China’s northern frontier as far back as the fifth century BCE, it was greatly expanded by Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di (reigned 221-210 BCE). Emperors of later dynasties rebuilt and repaired the Great Wall, but it was greatly expanded under the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 CE) after the expulsion of the Mongols. This latest “version” of the Great Wall can still be seen today across northern China. Originally designed to protect China from northern invaders (such as the Huns in the legend of Mulan), the Great Wall is now a major tourist attraction and a lasting memorial to the ingenuity of ancient Chinese engineers.

                Many other scientific advances in diverse fields of study were made in ancient China (e.g., astronomy, botany, geology, rocketry, etc.), but they are too numerous to mention here. Today, China continues to push back the frontiers of human exploration, forging ahead with scientific and technological achievements that could soon propel “taikonauts” (Chinese astronauts) to the Moon and beyond. Looking with gratitude to the past, and with hope to the future, people around the world continue to celebrate China’s contributions to the scientific enterprise as the 48th century of the Chinese calendar continues to unfold.

 

Recommended Reading

·         The Art of War & Other Classics of Eastern Philosophy by Sun-Tzu, Lao-Tzu, Confucius, and Mencius (Canterbury Classics, 2016)

·         The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us about the Good Life by Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh (Simon & Schuster, 2016)

·         The Art of Living: Chinese Proverbs and Wisdom: A Modern Reader of the Vegetable Roots Discourse by Hong Yingming (Better Link Press, 2020)

 

The Venetian traveler Marco Polo (1254-1324, at left) meets Kublai Khan (1215-1294, at right), the Mongol Emperor of China, in 1275. (Image Credit: Medieval Manuscript Illumination – Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

“Kubla Khan” a/k/a “Xanadu”

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

 

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

 

But O, that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As ever beneath a waning Moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her daemon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this Earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced;

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

 

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

 

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me,

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honeydew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

 

“Ring Out, Wild Bells”

By Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

 

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

 

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

 

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

 

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

 

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

 

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

 

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

 

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.