Talk:Spring and Autumn period

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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Tonyaddiaz.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:04, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Initial talk

Lauren OK, what is the Spring and Autumn Period? Context is needed. --mav

Com'on, this is a HUGH topic and has been researched worldwide for centuries. It takes time to just write a good prose and I am searching on web at the meantime. You can contribute something too. BTW sometimes you need to give people space of freedom. I am very sure your intention is good because you care about this project so much (otherwise you won't be a Wikipediholic). Have fun !!! User:kt2

I'm just asking for at least a one sentence definition. I know very little about this area of history but you could come-up wInsert non-formatted text hereith a one sentence definition in less than 30 seconds I suppose. --mav

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Strike-through text888

Echo Mav Mintguy

Ok, I'll start something from scratch as I can't find anything in public domain (at least for now). You could have mentioned it before if you are just asking for a brief intro. I thought you want something detail because of your serious intention on articles. User:kt2

Opps! Sorry about that. I don't expect complete articles on the first version - like Athena springing forth fully grown and clad in armor from Zeus's head. :) --mav

Hope you don't have a hard feeling. Maybe I'm just too defensive on my subject of interest. -- kt2

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I'm reverting this to save the discussion. At the worst, what we have is a case of a valuable contributor making a minor lapse. (As if I haven't made the same mistake.) At best, we have a reminder to everyone to write articles as if readers don't know anything about the topic. -- llywrch 04:53 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

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It is doubtful that Han Chinese or even Chinese exist during this period. But I don't know if we have a better English term to use! -- Wshun

What are Chinese if they are not Han? The idea of Chineseness is disputed and of a political order. However, it is really important? I reckon that some determinism is necessary to allow the reader some knowlegde on the Spring and Autumn Period - debating the truth of being Chinese or not, is therefore perhaps not relevant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marenqo01 (talk • contribs) 19:38, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

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The slow crumbling of nobility resulted in widespread literacy; increasing literacy encouraged freedom of thought and technological advancement. This era is followed by the Warring States Period.

I think this article needs more info in this direction; currently, its mostly about politics and war.--Confuzion 13:52, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

capitalization

Is it "Spring...Period" or "Spring...period"? Isn't this a parallel of the dynasty capitalization in "the Han Dynasty"? --Menchi 03:48, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've moved the page back pending a reason for moving it. This is really sitting-on-the fence and could probably go either way. Since we've had it here for so long I think we should stay put. --Jiang 04:29, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The number of Chinese states

I've noticed the following addition to the article:

This period was filled with battles and annexation of some 170 smaller states.

At best I can only come up with the names of a dozen states that existed during this period; I'm a little surprised that there were that many which left a clear record of their existence. Is this a hard & fast fact? Is there a source for this figure? -- llywrch 17:57, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

'sacked'

I think someone should find a better word than 'sacked', no?

If 'sacked' is used in the context of a military action, it is perfectly acceptable. If the meaning is 'fired', then it is too casual.--Baoluo 08:28, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Clarification please

Doesn't seem like any work is being done on this topic any more, but if anyone is listening, could you please clarify this sentence for me: "The newly powerful states were more eager to maintain aristocratic privileges over the traditional ideology of supporting the weak ruling entity during times of unrest (匡扶社稷 kuāng fú shè jì), which was to be widely propagated during imperial China to consolidate power into the ruling family."

I don't know if it is the punctuation or if someone lost the handle of what they were saying, but it makes no sense to me at all.

Tre.fire (talk) 10:23, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

End of China's Feudal Period

The second sentence of the second paragraph states that the Qin dynasty brought the end of China's feudal period. This statement needs clarification or correction; feudalism is characterised by hierarchical social structure, loyalty to a lord, fealty, and a particular economic structure in which land is privately held but rented to laborers. By this definition, China's feudal period did not end until at least the later years of the Qing Dynasty, or perhaps even the end of the civil war in 1949.--Baoluo 08:36, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Sure, fair enough point. The end of feudalism is a much disputed concept in China and I very much agree with your argument that in the present context it is most likely to be incorrect. However, as I said before, it is a much disputed idea (ie. end of feudalim) for the reason of its linkage to modernity. There is not a clear moment when modernity started and when feudalism ended in China. You could argue that China is in contemporary terms modern, postmodern, traditional and barbarious all at once. Moreover, besides the eurocentric bias embedded in concepts such as modernity and feudalism, the idea of modernity seems to be integral to the changing concept of confucianism - see eg. Wang Hui's "THE RISE OF MODERN CHINESE THOUGHT" (forthcoming Harvard Press).

Taking this all in consideration I would suggest to take the whole argument of 'end of feudalism' out. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.205.101.243 (talk) 19:29, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Map of Spring and Autumn Period

I don't think this map is good for spring and Autumn period. Look the list of state, from east to west, from south to north, how this map could be on this page? It should be deleted. 216.48.171.235 03:55, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

The years of the period itself & correction on the chronicle's period

1st: According to "Britanica" website, the chronicle describes the years of 722 BC-479 BC (& not 481 BC), so I corrected this.
2nd: This information only indicates the years described at the chronicle, which are the vast majority of this period, but not all of it. So I added the information that the entire period lasted from 770 BC-476 BC. אומנות (talk) 14:33, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Help over editing

i am raw to the usage of the wikipedia article edit, but i wish to know the way to create a new article page of another language version to link to this page. can someone be kind to help by show me how?

Xmlv (talk) 17:23, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

First of all, create the page in the new language of your choice. Then, at the bottom of this article page, find the section at the very bottom that looks like this:

[[ca:Primaveres i Tardors]] [[cs:Období Jara a Podzimu]] [[de:Zeit der Frühlings- und Herbstannalen]] [[es:Primaveras y Otoños]] [[fr:Période des Printemps et des Automnes]] [[zh-classical:春秋時代]] [[ko:춘추 시대]] [[id:Zaman Musim Semi dan Gugur]] [[it:Periodo delle primavere e degli autunni]] [[he:תקופת האביב והסתיו]] [[nl:Periode van Lente en Herfst]] [[ja:春秋時代]] [[no:Vår- og høstannalenes tid]] [[pl:Okres Wiosen i Jesieni]] [[pt:Período das Primaveras e Outonos]] [[ru:Период Чуньцю]] [[sk:Obdobie jari a jesene]] [[sh:Period Proljeća i Jeseni]] [[fi:Kevättä ja syksyä]] [[sv:Vår- och höstperioden]] [[th:ยุคชุนชิว]] [[vi:Xuân Thu]] [[tr:İlkbahar ve Sonbahar Dönemi]] [[zh-yue:春秋]] [[zh:春秋时期]]

Now find the two digit language code for the language of your new page (look at the address at the top of your browser window - the first two digits are your native language code). Then add an entry to the above list on the article page (use English alphabetical order) that looks like this XX:Title of your new article in your language where XX is the language code of your new page.

When you've done that, preview the edited page and your language should show up in the left hand panel.

Finally, copy the whole langauge block that you just added to and paste it at the bottom of your new page.

Hope this helps.

[[User:|Philg88|Philg88]] (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:29, 21 March 2010 (UTC).

Table of States

The table of states section is already quite long and I have material on at least a further 50 states which, if added, would make the list huge and detract from the overall quality of the article. At the same time, many of the states included do not relate specifically to the Spring & Autumn period and were extant before, during and/or after it. What does anybody think about the best way to handle this? My suggested options would be:

Replace the current section with an linked overview and move the table to either:

The State (Ancient China) article

OR

A new article tentatively entitled List of Ancient Chinese States

All input welcome. Philg88 (talk) 22:35, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Maby add a new column for location+id, like/ Ba:Sichuan;non-Zhou state annexed by Qin[a bit too long?]/ Wu: near Shanghai/ Lu: southwest of Qi; Confucius' state / Yan: near Beijing. Benjamin Trovato (talk) 01:12, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

A new column is no problrm. The point here is where do we put this huge table? Philg88 (talk) 12:53, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

References

I see references pointing to Hsu (1999), however, that is not in the bibliography, but Hsu (1990) is. Is this a typo? --Cold Season (talk) 00:30, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

correct date for Camb hist of Anc China is 1999 and a few checked page numbers match. I will wait about 2 weeks. If no one else steps in I will change. Benjamin Trovato (talk) 10:50, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Pinyin ≠ English

I was hoping this was over after the discussions in WP talk:MOS-ZH and Talk:Zhou Dynasty, but guess there's some old articles to clean up.

Don't use tone marks in the running text.

The English common name is not Zhōu any more than it's 周: It's Zhou. Likewise Qin, Jin, Chu, etc. The over-riding policies for the English Wikipedia are WP:USEENGLISH and WP:COMMONNAME; the English common name in every instance will be the atonal version. That'd defeat WP:LOCALCONSENSUS even if there were one, which there isn't. A few terms are appropriately set off in Italics and infoboxes are helpful, but in the running text of the article, appeals to italics run afoul of proper names.

As such, even within the Chinese Manuals of Style, WP:MOS-ZH and WP:NC-ZH discount this practice. Any lost information is available right at the top of the page on click-through. Any terms lacking entries can have the tonal pinyin included here, but set off in italics in the translation parentheses beside the characters, not in the running text. — LlywelynII 13:13, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress which affects this page. Please participate at Talk:Warring States Period - Requested move and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RM bot 22:59, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

James legge's translation of spring and autumn period history

http://books.google.com/books?id=wb0TAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA177#v=onepage&q&f=false

Rajmaan (talk) 04:32, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Hundred Schools type article

Appreciate assistance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Thought_in_Ancient_China

Please fix

Why does this article mention in the opening paragraph that this period ended in 476 BC, then the date of 476 BC is mentioned nowhere else in the current version of this article? That seems ridiculous and unencyclopedic. What happened in 476 BC to bring this period to an end, and why isn't it mentioned in the current version of the article? 173.88.246.138 (talk) 18:09, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

Honestly, IP editor from last April, this is a pretty good question! We had 481 BCE as the end of the period from the initial recension of the article in 2003 until this edit thirteen years ago by @אומנות:, who cited Brittanica (above, on this talk page). The source we use to discuss the differences in periodization in a footnote (Kiser & Cai, 2003) selects 481 BCE as the endpoint (the assassination of Duke Jian of Qi), and doesn't list 476 BCE as a commonly agreed-upon end date (they have 481, 475, 468, and 403: p 512). The Cambridge History of Ancient China, a reasonably well regarded source for information on the topic, lists 481, 479, 475, and 403 BCE. They also select 481 (pp 450 & 587). Given this information, and having looked for a pertinent event datable to 476 BCE without success, I'm going to change it back to 481 BCE. Folly Mox (talk) 09:17, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Maybe take a look at this first: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%98%A5%E7%A7%8B%E6%97%B6%E6%9C%9F 173.88.246.138 (talk) 00:10, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Also: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%98%A5%E7%A7%8B/982807 173.88.246.138 (talk) 00:11, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

From what I've been able to glean from available information, the 476 BCE date comes ultimately from Sima Qian. All his historical sources listed events as happening in some year of some ruler, so it's natural for him to have followed this regime. He demarcated the boundary between the Springs and Autumns period and the Warring States period as the accession of King Yuan of Zhou, but his calculations were off by one year because the records of the state of Qin on which he was forced to rely due to Qin Shi Huang's biblioclasm were insufficiently precise in their datekeeping. Then somehow the absolute date propagated even when the calendrical calculations were corrected, decoupling King Yuan from the boundary. At least, this is the only answer I've been able to find. The baidu article uses a Chinese government source, so it's the official date on some level.

It's not a super clean boundary in any case: in the political sense, we're trying to capture the dominance of the ministerial class over the old aristocracy, best exemplified by the partition of Jin and on a smaller scale the usurpation of Qi by Tian, neither of which are confined to a single year. The Chunqiu itself, which gives its name to the period, does have a final entry, in 481 BCE, but periodizing history based on what sources are available is not a methodology that lends itself particularly well to deeper historical understanding. Folly Mox (talk) 15:13, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Ok so I'm still not sure we have the options of 476 and 475, and also not sure why 475 seems more correct and 476 more preferred, but I expanded the note on periodisation to reflect best info I have at hand. Folly Mox (talk) 21:47, 9 April 2023 (UTC)