Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Beijing University or Peking University, at Beijing, China; founded as Metropolitan Univ. 1898, renamed Peking Univ. 1911, absorbed nontechnical departments of Tsinghua Univ. and merged with and moved...

(Encyclopedia) Gejiu or Kokiu both: gô-jēo͞o [key], town (1994 est. pop. 216,400), S Yunnan prov., China. Site of the country's largest tin reserves, it is the great tin-mining center of China, with smelters and ...

(Encyclopedia) tea, tree or bush, its leaves, and the beverage made from these leaves. The plant (Camellia sinensis, Thea sinensis, or C. thea) is an evergreen related to the camellia and indigenous to Assam (India)...

(Encyclopedia) Guangzhou kănˌtŏnˈ, kănˈtŏnˌ [key], city (1994 est. pop. 3,113,800), capital of Guangdong prov., S China, a major deepwater port on the Pearl River delta. Guangzhou became a part of China in...

(Encyclopedia) chalk, mineral of calcium carbonate, similar in composition to limestone, but softer. It is characteristically a marine formation and sometimes occurs in great thickness; the chief constituents of the...

(Encyclopedia) Linear Scripts, forms of Minoan writing. The earliest Minoan writing consisted of pictographs, called Cretan hieroglyphs, which date from about 2000 b.c. The first linear script, Linear A, dates from ...

(Encyclopedia) Nadal, Rafael (Rafael Nadal Parera), 1986–, Spanish tennis player, b. Majorca. Widely regarded as the greatest clay-court player ever, “Rafa” turned professional at 15. In 2005 he won his first ...

(Encyclopedia) Abakanowicz, Magdalena, 1930–2017, Polish sculptor, studied Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw (1950–54). She won notice with her Abakan series, begun in 1967; these monumental woven abstract sculptures...

(Encyclopedia) ocher ōˈkər [key], mixture of varying proportions of iron oxide and clay, used as a pigment. It occurs naturally as yellow ocher (yellow or yellow-brown in color), the iron oxide being limonite, or...

(Encyclopedia) Ohr, George Edgar, 1857–1918, American ceramist, often considered the first art potter in the United States, b. Biloxi, Miss. He apprenticed in New Orleans, traveled to potteries in 16 states to obs...