Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Nanjing nănˈkĭngˈ [key] [southern capital], city (1994 est. pop. 2,224,200), capital of Jiangsu prov., E central China, in a bend of the Chang (Yangtze) River. It has served at times in the past a...

(Encyclopedia) Ts'ai Yüan-p'ei tsī yüän-pā [key], 1867–1940, Chinese educator and intellectual leader. He achieved distinction as a classical scholar but later joined (1904) the anti-Manchu revolutionary move...

(Encyclopedia) Yüan Shih-kai yüänˈ shēˈ-kīˈ [key], 1859–1916, president of China (1912–16). From 1885 to 1894 he was the Chinese resident in Korea, then under Chinese suzerainty. He supported the dowager...

(Encyclopedia) Kuomintang gwōˈmĭnˈdängˈ, kwōˈmĭntăngˈ [key] [Chin.,=national people's party] (KMT), Chinese and Taiwanese political party. Sung Chiao-jen organized the party in 1912, under the nominal lea...

(Encyclopedia) sun worship. Deification and adoration of the sun occurred primarily in agrarian societies. When man became a farmer, and thus dependent upon daily and seasonal changes of weather, he often turned to ...

(Encyclopedia) midnight sun, phenomenon in which the sun remains visible in the sky continuously for 24 hr or longer, occurring only in the polar regions. The midnight sun is due to the fact that the plane of the ea...

(Encyclopedia) sun grebe, common name for a tropical, mainly aquatic bird of the family Heliornithidae. Sun grebes, also called finfoots, are remarkable for their colorful, puffy-toed, webbed feet, which may serve a...

(Encyclopedia) Sun Belt or Sunbelt, southern tier of the United States, focused on Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California, and extending as far north as Virginia. The term gained wide use in the 1970s, when the eco...

(Encyclopedia) Liang Ch'i-ch'ao lyäng chē-chou [key], 1873–1929, Chinese reform leader. Liang was a disciple of K'ang Yu-wei. Stunned by China's disastrous defeat by Japan (see Sino-Japanese War, First), K'ang a...

(Encyclopedia)  Sun Ra, 1914-1993, African-American jazz composer, bandleader, and keyboard player, b. Birmingham, Al., as Herman Poole Blount. Sun Ra was a leading c...