Central Plain
English
Etymology
Calque of Mandarin 中原 (Zhōngyuán).
Proper noun
Central Plain
- The area on the lower reaches of the Yellow River which formed the cradle of Chinese civilization.
- 1952, Grousset, René, “Chinese Earth”, in The Rise and Splendour of the Chinese Empire, University of California Press, published 1970, →ISBN, OCLC 924881466, page 9:
- ASIATIC civilization is the product of “Mesopotamias”, of great alluvial plains where the natural fertility of the soil stimulated man’s agricultural vocation. Such was the case of Babylon in western Asia; such is the case of the “Central Plain” of China in eastern Asia.[...]In the same way that Egypt, according to Herodotus, is a “gift of the Nile”, the Central Plain is a gift of the Yellow River and its tributaries.
- 1961, William Watson, “Introduction”, in China Before the Han Dynasty (Ancient Peoples and Places), New York: Frederick A. Praeger, LCCN 61-14105, OCLC 973445772, OL 17345263M, page 11:
- Within the larger sphere of eastern Asia the Chinese people as we know it today is better defined by language and culture than in anthropological terms. In general a distinction of the physical type may be observed north and south of the Yangtze river, a boundary which corresponded in early times to a cultural division between the relatively advanced civilisation of the Central Plain and the more primitive south.
- 1964, Lee, Sherman E., “Urban Civilization and the Indus Valley; Neolithic and Pre-Shang China”, in A History of Far Eastern Art, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, LCCN 64-11575, OCLC 327329, page 23, columns 1, 2:
- The meeting point of the plateau and the plains is just east of the first great bend of the Yellow River. Significantly, it is at the central meeting point that we have the coalescence of the three cultures which produced the developed Shang culture. This area, known to the Chinese as Chung Yuan, or central plain, has always been the heartland of the “Middle Kingdom.”
- 1980, Li Xueqin, The Wonder of Chinese Bronzes (中国青铜器的奥秘), Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, OCLC 642424772, page 77:
- The bronzes from a tomb of the Western Zhou at Yiqi, Tunxi, also have some of their own peculiar designs, such as a gui with a weaving pattern commonly seen on bamboo-woven articles of south China, but rarely encountered in the Central Plain.
- 2014 October 17, Rogers, John, “Rare ancient Chinese bronzes go on display in US”, in AP News, archived from the original on 14 June 2022:
- “Wow, 1200 B.C. people are doing stuff like that and we think we’re so technically evolved,” she said. “It’s kind of humbling, actually.”
Although there is evidence of bronze works at that time in China’s Central Plain, some 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) away, none come close to being this elaborate.
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Central Plain.
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Translations
area
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See also
- Zhongyuan