The Style and Characteristics of Flower-and-Bird Painting in The Western Fujian Province in Modern Times

The 20th century was a period of change in the development of Chinese flower-and-bird painting. Traditional brush and ink painting blended with Western painting colors and concepts to present new forms of painting. Following the peak of Ming and Qing Dynasties’ development in Minxi (the western of Fujian) painting, a group of freehand flower-and-bird painters represented by the “four Masters of Shanghang” Li Shaoqi, Luo Xiaofan, Qiu Tian, and Song Shengyu, who inherited the Minxi painting style of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, learned the new painting language combines the styles of Paintings of Shanghai school, Lingnanism, and Lingdongism. The unique new style of painting highlights the posture of Minxi flower-and-bird paintings, thus influencing the modern times changes of flower-and-bird paintings of Fujian.

Spatiotemporal characteristic of Biantun toponymical landscape for the evolution of Biantun culture in Yunnan, China

The geographical environment of Yunnan Province in China and Han migration during the Ming Dynasty contributed to the development of the Biantun culture. Biantun toponyms (BTT) record the integration process between the Central Plains and native Yunnan cultures. The GIS analysis method of toponyms was used in this study to reproduce the settlement characteristics of BTT and the spatial development of the Biantun culture in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In addition, we have developed a toponymical landscape index to represent the degree of spatial integration between the BTT and ethnic minority toponyms in Yunnan and explore the spatial characteristics of the integration of Han immigrants and local ethnic minorities. The results show that the spatial distribution of the BTT is consistent with the sites selection of the Tuntian (屯田) in Yunnan during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the centroids of BTT spread to outskirts and intermontane area from central towns. In the Dali, Kunming, Qujing and other regions, the distribution characteristics of the integrated of BTT and ethnic minority toponyms reflect a higher degree of Sinicization in the central urban areas. Exploring the evolution of Biantun cultural development through the spatial characteristics of toponymical landscapes can help adjust policies for the development and protection of Biantun cultural resources.

Morphological Bias of Ancient Artifacts: A Case Study of Incense Burners in Ming and Qing Dynasties

This study verifies the relevance of the combination of traditional Chinese artifacts and perceptual semantic research. It provides new research ideas to study the Chinese artifact culture. Moreover, it helps people to understand the cultural spirit better and design crystallization of traditional artifacts. This study considered Chinese traditional incense burners in Ming and Qing dynasties to adopt morphological analysis and affinity diagram to select representative experimental samples. Furthermore, this research applied the perceptual engineering theory to explore the relation between design group’s description of perceptual semantics and the shape of incense burners. The focuses were the design group on the shape and style of ancient artifacts in aesthetic consideration. According to the results of semantic principal component analysis, the perceptual semantic bias of the design group towards incense burners was concentrated, which is related to the style acceptance of incense burners. Among these related incense burner styles, the design group paid more attention to the proportional design of “incense burner foot” in the perceptual bias of incense burner shape and preferred the proportional incense burner shape of “long foot.”

Study the Ways of Dealing with the Family Rules and Family Teachings of the Ming and Qing Dynasties

The genealogy of the Ming and Qing Dynasties pays great attention to teaching some methods of dealing with affairs to descendants, in order to pursue the harmony of the family. Through the analysis of the family rules of the Ming and Qing Dynasties related to the way of doing things, such as being kind, safe life, cautious words and deeds, generous and humble, to explore the way of doing things at that time, to give some enlightenment to people in today's society.

On ceramic Dao Guan Hu (Bottom-filled Ewer)

The so-called Dao Guan Hu (bottom-filled ewer), also referred to as Dao Liu Hu (reverse-flow ewer), and Dao Zhu Hu (reverse-filled ewer), is a type of pouring vessel designed with Stevin’s Law, a formula in physics which employs a communicating tube to balance out the equilibrium of the liquid levels via a vacuum lock. The structure has a small hole at the bottom of a ewer, a jar, or a trompe-l'œil figure connected to a hollow tube inside the vessel. The liquid will not leak out when turning the vessel upright after it is filled. The current evidence attests that China started producing such wares in the ninth century during the late Tang dynasty. The production continued throughout the Song, Liao, Jin, Ming, and Qing dynasties, and the products were traded to Europe as export ceramics in the seventeenth century. They were also found on the Korean peninsula as Goryeo celadon in the twelfth century and in addition as Buncheong ware during the Joseon dynasty in the fifteenth century. The blue and white teapots with overglaze decoration retrieved from a shipwreck assemblage near Hội An in Vietnam also testify the production of this type of vessels with the same structure in Vietnam in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In the early eighteenth century, the Meissen porcelain manufactory in Germany copied peach-shaped white porcelain pots with overglaze polychrome enamels from imported Chinese bottom-filled prototypes. Dutch potters also decorated imported white porcelain Dao Guan Hu from China with overglaze polychrome enamels.

Using ISO and Semantic Web standard for building a multilingual terminology e-Dictionary: A use case of Chinese ceramic vases

Cultural heritage is the legacy of physical artefacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Terminology is a tool for the dissemination and communication of cultural heritage. The lack of clearly identified terminologies is an obstacle to communication and knowledge sharing. Especially, for experts with different languages, it is difficult to understand what the term refers to only through terms. Our work aims to respond to this issue by implementing practices drawn from the Semantic Web and ISO Terminology standards (ISO 704 and ISO 1087-1) and more particularly, by building in a W3C format ontology as knowledge infrastructure to construct a multilingual terminology e-Dictionary. The Chinese ceramic vases of the Ming and Qing dynasties are the application cases of our work. The method of building ontology is the ‘term-and-characteristic guided method’, which follows the ISO principles of Terminology. The main result of this work is an online terminology e-Dictionary. The terminology e-Dictionary could help archaeologists communicate and understand the concepts denoted by terms in different languages and provide a new perspective based on ontology for the digital protection of cultural heritage. The e-Dictionary was published at http://www.dh.ketrc.com/e-dictionary.html .

Spatiotemporal Characteristic of Biantun Toponymical Landscape: Evolution of Biantun Culture in Yunnan,China

The unique geographical environment of Yunnan Province in China and large-scale waves of Han migration during the Ming Dynasty contributed to the emergence and development of the Biantun culture. The toponym is the carrier of the Biantun culture: it records the integration process between the Central Plains and native Yunnan cultures. Based on the GIS spatiotemporal analysis of toponyms in Yunnan, this study reproduced the settlement characteristics of Biantun toponyms (BTT) and the spatial development of the Biantun culture in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In addition, we’ve developed toponymical landscape index to represent the degree of spatial integration between the BTT and ethnic minority toponyms in Yunnan and explore the spatial characteristics of the integration of Han immigrants and local ethnic minorities. The results show that the spatial distribution of the BTT is consistent with the site selection of the central plains immigrants station troops to open up wasteland in Yunnan during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the centroids of BTT spread to outskirts and intermontane area from central towns. In Dali, Kunming, Qujing regions, etc present the distribution characteristics of the mixed of BTT and ethnic minority toponyms, and a higher degree of Sinicization in the central urban areas. This study used GIS applications for historical and cultural research and established the connection among Biantun culture and spatiotemporal data. Exploring evolution of Biantun cultural development through the spatial characteristics of toponymical landscape can help adjust policies for he development and protection of the Biantun cultural resources.