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Skype chat?

I've been thinking for a while that it might be interesting to organize a Skype (or some other protocol) chat for WPCHINA members (or just people working on China related things). We could talk about the articles that we're writing, whatever cleanup/administration tasks we're doing, and any controversies that need to be addressed. Does anyone else think that this would be a good idea?--Danaman5 (talk) 10:46, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Some WikiProjects have set up IRC channels... you could do that. It'd save on people not understanding other people's accents... 76.66.197.30 (talk) 05:23, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
That's true, though it would be nice to attach voices to names.--Danaman5 (talk) 07:52, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Vase painting

Does this type of painting ([1]) have a specific name, and/or do we have an article about it? ed g2s • talk 09:32, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Industry of China

Is this talking about Mainland China only? Or is this the whole PRC? WhisperToMe (talk) 22:08, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

What is the reading? (2)

What is the reading of the calligraphy in this image? File:Mao-calligraphy1.jpg WhisperToMe (talk) 07:51, 8 October 2009 (UTC)


中(zhōng)华(huá)人(rén)民(mín)共(gòng)和(hé)国(guó)各(gè)族(zú)人(rén)民(mín)团(tuán)结(jié)起(qǐ)来(lái) Raintwoto 18:06, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much! WhisperToMe (talk) 23:03, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

起來!起來! Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 14:15, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Help finding if "Jacob's ladder (toy)" is really of Chinese origin

Hello, I wanted to ask if someone could help me find out if the Jacob's ladder (toy) was truly of Chinese origin. The difficulty is that if it was of Chinese origin, I'd need to know what it's name in Chinese script would be, but "Falling blocks" and other things I've tried in Chinese have not helped me find any information on it. Thank You for any help that you can offer. (Floppydog66 (talk) 06:03, 12 October 2009 (UTC))

Article Rquested

I will be away from Wiki for several days, so I am unable to do this myself, but interested parties can think about creating an article on the 2009 Chongqing Trials for gangsters and municipal officials. This campaign is believed to be the single largest campaign against organized crime and corruption in the history of the PRC. Over 3000 people have been arrested, many of the city's top officials implicated. Colipon+(Talk) 12:50, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Chongqing gang trials. There we go. Colipon+(Talk) 11:00, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Hong Kong action cinema

Hello crew! The Hong Kong action cinema article related to this project has been nominated for Feartured Article removal. If you have comments regarding the FA review, discuss it on the review page. Cheers! Andrzejbanas (talk) 02:59, 29 October 2009 (UTC)


Translation request

(I originally posted this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan, but Oda Mari says it is in Chinese, despite being in Seattle's Nihon Go Gakko.)

Could someone please translate the text on the sign at the top of Commons:File:Seattle Nihon Go Gakko interior 12.jpg? Oda Mari says "It's a Chinese phrase. Probably by Han Yu. 一視同仁 means 'treat everybody equally'. But I cannot understand the rest."

Please feel free either to edit the description directly or to use the "add a note" feature. - Jmabel | Talk 19:58, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Done. It took a while to find that, because it uses a somewhat uncommon variant of a character.--Danaman5 (talk) 02:40, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Chinese calendar

Hi. :) I am in need of assistance with article Run Run Shaw. The Wikimedia Foundation received a letter today (Ticket:2009110410044908, viewable only to OTRS volunteers), which suggests that information within it is inaccurate. The information is sourced, but I cannot access the source. This is specifically what is in dispute:

In 2007, Markus Shaw, Run Run's nephew, said his birthday was November 23, which corresponds with the 14th day of the 10th month of the Chinese calendar.(Zoe Mak (2007-10-05). "Sir Run Run's century clouded in confusion". SCMP. SCMP Group. pp. City1.)

According to our letter writer, the correspondence is wrong. He says that the 14th day of the 10th month would have been Tuesday, 19 November 1907.

Since the source is not linked, I don't know if this is what Markus Shaw said or if Markus Shaw simply said that Run Run Shaw was born on the 14th day of the 10th month and the IP contributor who added the information derived at the correspondence himself. I have no familiarity with the Chinese calendar and would greatly appreciate assistance with this. If contributors here are not able to help, I will add a {{dubious}} tag to the sentence in the article and note the dispute on the talk page, but I'm very hopeful it won't come to that. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:57, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

According to this online Chinese calendar, the 14th day of the 10th month in 1907 would indeed have been November 19th, as your letter writer states. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to access the South China Morning Post article that the article references, as it is trapped behind a paywall. Working on it.--Danaman5 (talk) 14:01, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Thank you very much! If you aren't able to access the article, we may at least be able to note the discrepancy at Run Run Shaw and to remove his birthdate from the article's lead. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:14, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Ok, found the article. The article simply makes the point that "coincidentally", November 23rd THIS YEAR (2007) corresponds to the 14th day of the 10th month of the lunar calendar. It says nothing about 1907 (since the Chinese calendar is a lunar calendar, its correspondence with the Western calendar changes every year). Markus Shaw simply said that Sir Run Run's birthday is on November 23rd, and he intended to celebrate it with him on that date. That shouldn't be taken as an accurate birth date, though. Apparently, Sir Run Run celebrates it in October or November depending on when family members can make it. I have the full text of the SCMP article, but I'm afraid it might be a copyright violation even to email it to you.--Danaman5 (talk) 02:45, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
It might, though such cases are much more defensible as fair use. But it's not really necessary. Can you correct the article? I am truly appreciative of the time you put into investigating this. :) (If you don't want to change it yourself, I'll do it and just point to this conversation at the article's talk.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:39, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
OK, I changed the article. Let me know if it is acceptable.--Danaman5 (talk) 11:48, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
Looks great! Again, I thank you very much for your help with this. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:51, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Infoboxes of Historical Figures

I've noticed that there seems to be an unspoken convention to indicate the place of birth and death with a political entity that was ruling at the time. For example, a figure like Li Hongzhang is said to be born in "Hefei, Anhui, Qing Dynasty" in his infobox, and a figure like Hu Jintao is said to be born in the Republic of China. "Anhui, Qing Dynasty" just does not make sense. It does not make sense in Chinese, nor does it make sense in English. Is it really necessary to reflect what was the ruling state, or is it better to just indicate the geographical location? I, for one, do not see the sense in obsessing over which political entity a historical figure was born in. Perhaps in European states where states constantly evolved, but "China" has been a relatively static concept. We should exercise some common sense and simply write that these people were born in China, and died in China. Colipon+(Talk) 20:36, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with just using "China". The dynasties are generally used to refer to time periods, not political entities. It's only those editors that want to stand on a political soapbox on cross-straits relations that would use ROC and Qing dynasty as if they were geographical locations. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 22:06, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
I suggest against applying this to areas outside of China Proper, where historical state/empire boundaries are not so clear. It would not, for example, make sense to say that the Yarlung kings were born and died in China when they ruled their own empire, the area of which was only later incorporated into China. --Danger (talk) 23:18, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes. Obviously we would hold reservations about saying Nurhaci was born in "China", but for figures who were unambiguously born in an area that is unambiguously "China", we should avoid referencing any political entity period, be it "Republic of China" or "Qing Dynasty". We could, however, choose to pipe-link "China" to the political entity at the time, such as "Anhui, [[Qing Dynasty|China]]" for Li Hongzhang. Colipon+(Talk) 03:57, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
That seems reasonable. I just wanted to forestall the notion that any person born in what is now the PRC should have "China" as their place of birth, even when they are unambiguously not Chinese in a modern sense. Danger (talk) 07:13, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Chengguan

Hi, the article on City Urban Administrative and Law Enforcement Bureau currently contains the sentence "[In 2001/02] "城管出马，所向无敌！牛B" becomes common idiom of chinese.", added in July. I don't know what exactly it means (translations of 所向无敌/explanations welcome!), but it certainly looks strange. If it's not vandalism, it should at least get a source. Yaan (talk) 14:33, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the concern. It was nonsense vandalism probably added by some high school student somewhere. It's been removed. Colipon+(Talk) 16:05, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

"Prefecture-level city"

This is another reflection of somewhat pedantic attitudes that seem to prevail all over Wikipedia. Editors somehow have the obsession of describing Chinese cities by their administrative strata and in the process forgo common sense. When a lead section describes a city, it should simply state that "X is a city located in this province of this country", and maybe give a few ordinal specifications. I have serious issues with seeing a description like "X is a prefecture-level city in [province], People's Republic of China." The average person frankly could care less whether something is "prefecture-level" or "sub-provincial". If we argue that a city's status on the administrative strata is encyclopedic and therefore rightfully belongs, we can easily relegate it to later parts of the article (or introduction) and discuss it in detail there. But it does not belong in the first sentence. I have cleaned up some articles for easier reading but it would be nice to get some help from other editors as well. Colipon+(Talk) 16:30, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I think there is a problem that a lot of administrative units in China are called "city" although in fact they are something completely different. Like, Hulunbuir. Almost as big as Italy, has about as many inhabitants as Rome.
Of course Hulunbuir is an extreme example and there are a lot of Chinese cities that actually are cities, but even then most Chinese "cities" seem to include significant rural areas and populations, and this should be reflected from the beginning. Guess a lot of strange words are not the best way to achieve this, though. Yaan (talk) 16:55, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
I understand why some editors feel that it is important to reflect that these "cities" are in fact large administrative areas. However, we have to keep in mind that aside from the "Administrative divisions" section of the article, the content focus of the article is the city itself (i.e. the urban area). I have edited the Hulunbuir article's lead in the past to reflect its status, and believe the current revision is easy-to-understand but also doesn't leave out the details. For most other Chinese cities I think it is good to take a different approach. Mention in the lead that it is "governed as a prefecture-level city administratively", but we do not have to subscribe to any rule to write this in the first sentence. Take a look at my approach at Chaozhou. Thoughts? Colipon+(Talk) 17:05, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
Stating X is a prefecture-level city it is taking the same approach as for, say, United States municipalities. In the US, depending on the state, municipalities may be classified as city, town, township, village, etc. In addition there are census-designated places defined by the U.S. government, and those are stated as such too. The only reason why it sounds pedantic is because we are dealing with names translated from Chinese. WhisperToMe (talk) 00:27, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
Could you take a look at the article on Chaozhou and see if you agree with the way the lead is currently presented? If so, then we are on the same page. Colipon+(Talk) 00:32, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm in favor of stating in the first sentence of the lead X is a pref-level city... - American municipalities in their leads state their classifications i.e. X is a town, Y is a census-designated place, etc. But when it is stated in the lead, it refers to a specific type of municipality recognized by the particular state. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:04, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't know if I agree. Most American cities I've come by just says it's a "city" somewhere. But in any case it's not a terribly urgent issue, just wanted to gauge some opinion. Colipon+(Talk) 02:09, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
That's because all of those places would be defined "city" according to the state's local laws. Some incorporated cities are very small in size and are often informally described as "towns." WhisperToMe (talk) 03:35, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

What is the reading

In this image: File:RanchesterStorefrontHoustonTX.JPG there is a sign for the Houston Police Department Ranchester Storefront in Chinese. How are the characters typed, and what is the reading of the characters? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 00:22, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

It says 中國城警察局, which is roughly translated as "Chinatown Police Station". It's strange because generally 'Chinatown' is translated as 唐人街, not 中國城. Colipon+(Talk) 00:31, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
Thank you very much! WhisperToMe (talk) 01:02, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Not necessarily relevant, but Chinatown can be translated as both 中國城 and 唐人街. The former is often used in more official and formal context, while the latter is more often used in the vernacular. Hong Qi Gong (Talk - Contribs) 17:50, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Lang Qi Dao

A Village Voice Media article referred to a "Lang Qi Dao" island in Fujian Province. Where is Wikipedia's article on the island? WhisperToMe (talk) 01:09, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

The closest I can find is "Liang Dao", one of the Matsu Islands.--Danaman5 (talk) 13:51, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Update rating

Hi together,
Is that the right place to ask for updates in ratig? I am wondering whether the article on "Suzhou Subway" might receive an increase in rating. I'd hope I could push it to "start" class. —Preceding unsigned comment added by YYK (talk • contribs) 17:17, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Done.--Danaman5 (talk) 04:29, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Wu Sien

Can anyone help me with this? I can find no sources for such a person, is there a spelling problem in the translation of his name, or? It's creator, Kungkang (talk · contribs) has created several similar stubs with no sources. He has also edited Zheng He today - and I think added some copyvio -- see my diff [2] where I revert him, I found the material here [3] where it seems to have been taken from two Chinese language newspaper articles. If anyone can assist this editor I'd be grateful. Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 09:49, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Shanghai Yangtze River Crossing Project

It's complete, according to the Chinese Wikipedia, and needs to be updated. It also needs to be renamed because it is no longer a 'project'. Colipon+(Talk) 18:32, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Keep the Chinabounder page

Some sock puppet are trying to delete this page.--Ksyrie(Talkie talkie) 01:40, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Topical articles

The following two topical articles have been created:

The latter has been nominated for WP:DYK. Ohconfucius (talk) 07:31, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Eurasian Land Bridge- New article

I just posted a new article on the Eurasian Land Bridge. It appears that there may be more sources of information in Chinese than there is in English. Request that a link be added to the Chinese equivalent Wiki article (which may be called something along the lines of the "New Eurasian Land or Continental Bridge"), Chinese characters added to the intro, and, if anyone is interested, please see this section of the talk page for a list of information that the article is lacking but may be available in Chinese language sources. Thanks in advance. Cla68 (talk) 12:41, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Cantonese

Cantonese is up for renaming again. This time, the request is to move Canton dialect to Cantonese and move the dab page that is sitting there now to Cantonese (disambiguation). (A few months ago, the issue was the unrequested move of Cantonese to Yue, which now sits at Cantonese (Yue)... so this move would replace one kind of Cantonese (moved away earlier this year) with another kind of Cantonese (the current request), both linguistically based, and not the same concept).

The discussion is occurring at Talk:Canton dialect

76.66.197.2 (talk) 06:15, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

This is obviously an issue of some interest to many involved in Chinese issues. The question is, why hasn't user 76.66.197.2 been contributing to the extensive debate at that talk page? Posting "alerts" on this page are fine, but not if the purpose is to sit back until the discussion is virtually over and then go in and disrupt the final vote. Editors, even anonymous editors, should be expected to contribute a bit more to the formation of Wikipedia articles than sudden opposing votes. Bathrobe (talk) 10:25, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
I have been contributing, to Cantonese (Yue), which is what the title Cantonese used to contain. I paritcipated in various debates, the recent RfC, several of the renaming debates over SEVERAL YEARS on the issue. You should remember that most IP users have rotating IP addresses. 76.66.197.2 (talk) 04:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
So you have contributed in the past and are using rotating IP addresses. Your most recent comment at Canton dialect indicates that you have come in without reading recent discussions. Perhaps you should consider getting a handle. Discussion is a reciprocal process and becomes rather difficult if one participant is a shifting shape. Bathrobe (talk) 05:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary redux

Hello, since a couple of editors perceive the discussion in May is not as a firm consensus on usage of Wiktionary, I'm bringing in with the issue again. Please give your input on this, so let's reconfirm or settle this issue to prevent the silly long-term edit warring between GraYoshi2x (talk · contribs) and Badagnani (talk · contribs).--Caspian blue 17:31, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Review of edits by User:24.199.92.29 needed

Special:Contributions/24.199.92.29

Could someone please review the recent edits made by User:24.199.92.29 to China-related articles? Content and references have been moved around and deleted, and a lot of unsourced (and possibly POV) content has been added. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 10:24, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

坪

There is an article on the "坪" (ping) at pyeong. Going by the decision at talk:Shaku, these multinational traditional units should sit at the most common one found in English literature, regardless of which language/country that pronounciation is based on. This article is currently mostly about Korean usage, usage in China would be nice to add.

76.66.194.23 (talk) 09:55, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


Translation/interpretation help

Is there an editor who has a reasonable skill in reading chinese who could help out for a short while with an article? I want to clean up the China Dragon article, but since the ownership changed hands, they haven't made an english website again. So I'm kind of stuck with awful google translations and its getting me nowhere. I'm just hoping someone might be able to help me with the Chinese ice hockey association [4] website and give it a quick skim and tell me if there is anything there that looks remotely useful (like say a subsection of the site dedicated to the team) or anything else before I go much further.--Crossmr (talk) 07:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Empress Chun - AfD?

If the information in this article - well, this one sentence stub -- is not verifiable (and I can't find it), I plan to take it to AfD as it doesn't look like a plausible redirect. Anyone want to rescue it? Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 20:51, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorted, another editor found a source. Dougweller (talk) 06:57, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Huawei

Hello. I've made several reverts to the Huawei article over the last two days, and really don't want to continue to revert Trainfirst's edits without some 'backup'. It's not really a big enough deal to take to ANI so I was hoping some one else would help me keep an eye on the article. Thanks! Beach drifter (talk) 04:19, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

2009 In China

I've been reviewing some articles from the category 2009 in China. While I think some of the articles give great insight into the events which garnered much media attention over the past year, there are others that are very much non-notable - such as the Yunnan hide-and-seek incident and the 2009 Chonqing mine blast. I apologize for which ever users may have put in the time and effort to create these articles, but they are really products of recentism and lack long-term encyclopedic utility. As a result, I would like to list some of these for AfD, if there is no opposition. Wanted to make note of it here. Colipon+(Talk) 19:55, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Ok you guys could have just pointed this out in my talk page instead of asking strangers to agree with your deletions. Anyhow the problem is NOT the recentism or these articles. The problem is the ratio of recent-event-articles versus non-recent events article. There is a concern that this is becoming the focus of wikipedia. And you want to stop that trend. Benjwong (talk) 04:44, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
No one was pointing fingers at any one editor. I honestly didn't even look at the histories, so I didn't know that you had a hand in these articles. And nothing has been deleted or even put up for deletion yet, we're just discussing. I'm not quite sure I understand your argument. Are you saying Wikipedia should have articles on all events, recent or not?--Danaman5 (talk) 05:02, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Let me point out that Yunnan hide-and-seek incident have its own sina website. The tianamen square incident doesn't even have that. The 2009 Chonqing mine blast has a noticible death toll. When did mine blasts in China become so regular that we shouldn't even bother with it? Benjwong (talk) 06:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I have noticed this problem frequently with China-related articles. Another article I wanted to ask the WikiProject about is 2009 Barack Obama visit to China. At first blush, this seems like a notable topic. However, what precedent is set by this? Are we going to have articles for all of Obama's visits to China? All of his visits to every foreign country? Honestly, nothing particularly notable occurred on this trip. The US President went to a foreign country, saw some sights, and talked to that country's leaders, same as a million other trips before it. To me, this smacks of recentism and non-notability. What do others think?--Danaman5 (talk) 08:18, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Talk to people who follow politics in the 70s. That trip was considered just another recentism trip up until 1978 when China truely opened the doors. Had China not opened the door, that trip would be meaningless. Benjwong (talk) 04:58, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Indeed, but Wikipedia policy is not "make an article in case an event becomes notable later", but rather "make articles for notable events". If this were 1972, I would oppose an article on the Nixon trip to China if it did not yet appear to be notable.--Danaman5 (talk) 05:02, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia does not have a policy to "put recent events in a queue and wait until they become notable 10 years later." So you have to find a balance. Do I think previous presidential trips are equally as important? Yes. Perhaps more so. The lack of those articles do make this one stand out too much. Benjwong (talk) 06:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
I can see your point. I suppose with a trip that was as reported on as this one, it makes sense to have an article. We will just have to be vigilant in finding the balance.--Danaman5 (talk) 17:24, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Ben, I'm really sorry that these articles that I pointed out happened to be your creations. I read your past work and really like it! Please do not see it as anything personal against you. I agree with the notability of the Obama trip. As for some of these other 'incidents', I am only concerned about long-term notability. Will someone really care about the hide-and-seek incident in twenty years? This is also not just bias against China. If similar events happened in the United States, I would think twice about their inclusion as well. Colipon+(Talk) 19:54, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

In 2009 some event or incident happened in the PRC EVERYDAY. Less than 10% of these incidents show up as actual articles. There is really no bias. More like there is a shortage on wikipedia. Also if a dynasty way back had a hide-and-seek incident, and it was recorded.... then it has huge historical academic value. In 20 years someone will care. In 200 years someone will care even more. In 1000 years someone might pay alot of money for this info. Benjwong (talk) 05:59, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Tai Seng / 泰盛

We don't seem to have an article on the Tai Seng (泰盛) entertainment group, but many HK movie, director, actor articles refer to the entity. 76.66.192.35 (talk) 09:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Economic history of China (pre-1911) FAC

I believe this is of interest to Wikiproject China Assessment division.Teeninvestor (talk) 16:32, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Comparison between Roman and Han Empires AFD

I believe this is of interest to the wikiproject.Teeninvestor (talk) 23:42, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Question on regarding inclusion of multiple non-Arabic script names

There is currently a discussion involving, so far, a limited number of editors regarding whether to include multiple names in non-English script in articles about locations in areas where more than one script is in use. Any individuals interested in commenting are encouraged to do so at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Inclusion of names in alternate scripts. Thank you for your attention. John Carter (talk) 17:06, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Image:Statue of Zheng He with great great grandnephew.jpg

File:Statue of Zheng He with great great grandnephew.jpg has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.201.20 (talk) 06:10, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Subcategorizing People from Shanghai and People from Beijing

The categories are getting too big, I think. Thoughts about what might be useful subcategories? --Nlu (talk) 19:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we could subcategorize by people's occupations, i.e. Artists from Beijing, Writers from Beijing, etc.--Danaman5 (talk) 10:42, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
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