The Cultural Database seeks to define cultural terms, expressions, ideas, events and other cultural strata that form the living, breathing nature of Chinese society.

Entries are arranged alphabetically by proper name in English, and pinyin romanization for Chinese names. Older translations are present next to the pinyin translation.

Look for a link to images in some entries.

An index to all terms in this database is located after the database entries.

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INDEX

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Cāngjié or Cāng Jié, (B5: 倉頡; GB: 仓颉) also known as Chongkit (the Cantonese pronunciation of his name)- A legendary figure in ancient China, claimed to be an official historian of the Yellow Emperor and the inventor of the Chinese characters. Legend has it that he had four eyes and when he invented the character, the deities and ghosts cried and the sky rained corns. He is not considered to be a historical figure, or at least, not considered to be sole inventor of Chinese characters. The Cangjie method, a Chinese character input method with computer keyboards, is named after him.

chéngyǔ; four-character idioms, (成語 B5 成语 GB, literally "to become (part of) the language")- Widely used in 文言 Classical Chinese, a literary form used in the Chinese written language from antiquity to until 1919, and are still commonly used in Vernacular writing today. Classical Chinese can be compared to the way Latin was used in the Western world in science until recently. According to the most stringent definition, there are about 5,000 chéngyǔ in Chinese, though some dictionaries list over 20,000.
Chéngyǔ are mostly derived from ancient literature. The meaning of a chéngyǔ usually surpasses the sum of the meanings carried by the four characters, as chéngyǔ are often intimately linked with the myth, story or historical fact from which they were derived. As such, chéngyǔ do not follow the usual grammatical structure and syntax of the modern Chinese spoken language, and are instead highly compact and synthetic.
Chéngyǔ in isolation are often unintelligible to modern Chinese, and when students in China learn chéngyǔ in school as part of the Classical curriculum, they also need to study the context from which the chéngyǔ was born. Often the four characters reflect the moral behind the story rather than the story itself. For example, the phrase "破釜沉舟" (pò fǔ chén zhōu) literally means "crack the woks and sink the boats." It was based on a historical account where General Xiang Yu ordered his troop to destroy all cooking utensils and boats after crossing a river into the enemy's territory. He won the battle because of this "no-retreat" policy. The phrase is used when one succeeds by burning the bridge. This particular idiom cannot be used in a losing scenario because the story behind it does not describe a failure.
Another example is 瓜田李下 (guātián lǐxià) which literally means melon field, under the plums. It is an idiom that has a deeper meaning that implies suspicious situations. It is derived from an excerpt from a poem (樂府詩《君子行》) from the Han Dynasty. The poem contains two phrases 瓜田不納履,李下不整冠 which describe a code of conduct that says "Don't adjust your shoes in a melon field and don't tidy your hat under the plum trees" in order to avoid suspicion of stealing. The literal meaning of the idiom is impossible to understand without the background knowledge of the origin of the phrase. However, some idioms are so widely misunderstood that their literal meaning are used despite of their original meaning.
However, that is not to say that all chéngyǔ are born of an oft-told fable; indeed, chéngyǔ which are free of metaphorical nuances pervade amidst the otherwise contextually-driven aspect of vernacular Chinese. An example of this is 言而无信 (yán ér wú xìn, literally "speaks yet (is) without trust"), which refers to an individual who cannot be trusted despite what he says, or essentially a deceitful person. The idiom itself is not derived from a specific occurrence from which a moral may be explicitly drawn; instead, it is succinct in its original meaning and would likely be intelligible to an individual learned in formal written Chinese. Note that the only classical-vernacular discrepancy present in this chéngyǔ lies in the fact that 言 is no longer used as a verb in modern Chinese.

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INDEX

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