Talk:Changsha Kingdom

About 番 Fan and 鄱 Po

@LlywelynII:: Amazing that you made so much improvement so soon. The history section now reads much better, thanks for your edits!

About the two characters, I was also a bit confused about them when I wrote about that part. The sources I cited actually all use 番 instead of 鄱 -- but none of them included the pronunciation. I'm certain that Fanyang County (番阳县) is the same as Poyang County (the Chinese Wikipedia says that the name was changed during Eastern Han). But I don't know whether Wu Rui's nickname "Fanjun" is also like this, or the "Fan" here just means "foreign". Anyway I assumed the 番's were all alternate form of 鄱, so I used the translteration "Po" for all of them. Hope I got that right. Esiymbro (talk) 11:27, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

First, you're very welcome. Thanks for the friendly attitude, and thanks for contributing such interesting and well-researched stuff.

Second, per Wiktionary and the Chinese Wikipedia, it seems like it. The character was used for the county by the Qin; it did lead to the pronunciation of the 鄱 character (which is just 番 with a city radical to show the proper sense and pronunciation); and there still is an uncommon surname 番 being pronounced Pó.

We're talking about the best modern reading for a very ancient usage... at which point almost none of the characters had their current pronunciation and probably all lacked tones. It'd probably be best to force Wiki to use reconstructed Old Chinese pronunciations for anything this old instead of the modern ones. In any case, the guys who wrote the main books seem to think the old Chinese pronunciation of 番 would've been something pʰaːlish but 鄱 they reconstruct as baːl. Looks like there was a dialectical problem with the Chinese/locals voicing the name that caused the words to develop differently over time. By the Han, it was annoying enough they distinguished the dialectical pronunciation with a distinct character.

I think most present-day Chinese just looking at the name would read it "pan" or "fan", but the character really did always represent something closer to the pronunciation later transcribed by 鄱 that they know is "Po". Sucks your sources didn't explicitly say that, though. Maybe some local scholar wrote a history of Poyang County somewhere... — LlywelynII 11:53, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

This is really inevitable as long as we still use modern pronunciation for Old Chinese words. They most likely sounded similar back then but then the language changed way too much. Hopefully someone can come up with an Old Chinese romanization system in the future. That will make writing about these topics in English so much easier.

There definitely is some sort of 鄱阳县志 lying in the corner of some local library, though I'm not sure if anyone ever reads those... Esiymbro (talk) 12:17, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

WP:ENGVAR

@Esiymbro: You used meter instead of metre but cauterise instead of cauterize. I don't know if you care, but since you're here and already put so much work into this page, did you wanna pick whether it's going to end up using UK or US English? Are you more used to one than the other? — LlywelynII 03:19, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Translations

Is "cauterisation canon" the translation used by the sources? At least to me, instead of mài jiǔjīng, it looks like the titles should be màijiǔ jīng and mean something like "meridian-&-moxibustion canon". Further, cauterization might figuratively apply to moxibustion if the heat were understood as sealing off the meridians but my understanding is that's the exact opposite of the case: the heat is supposed to relax and open the channels, which is the opposite of cauterizing them. Similarly, "formations of materia vitalis" seems like a very unhelpful way to translate what is simply "Weather Features" or "Atmospheric Phenomena" in the Chinese; even if you wanted to point out the special associations of qi (the description of the content doesn't seem to warrant it), it'd be better to just use qi than bring medieval European pseudoscience into it.

Of course, if that's what the sources used, we don't have much choice until some other scholar publishes work correcting their mistake. — LlywelynII 03:41, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, its from the source [1]. I know little about TCM so I left it as it is (should have changed the "-isation" to "-ization", though). I just did some search and "Cauterization canon" does seem to be a common way to translate these titles [2][3], but it is entirely possible that all of them ultimately came from the same translator.

About the qixiang, I though the same. They should just use a simple translation such as "Weather Features". Esiymbro (talk) 04:20, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Changsha Kingdom/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Jens Lallensack (talk · contribs) 16:27, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Reading now … --Jens Lallensack (talk) 16:27, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

• The kingdom was founded when Emperor Gaozu granted the territory to Wu Rui, one of his main followers, around the same time as the establishment of the Han dynasty. – I would add here the date (e.g., "around 203/202 BC") as this is a central information for the lead.

 Done.

• most notably Mawangdui, the tomb of Changsha's chancellor Li Cang and his family – this information of the lead is not repeated in the body of the article. I suggest to add a sentence introducing this important site to the main text.

 Done. It may be a little difficult go too much into the details about the site since information from Mawangdui covers all the aspects. I've added a sentence at the culture section as Mawangdui is mentioned multiple times there.

• His army then followed the Han leader Liu Bang – it is unclear to whom "His" is referring to. Xiang Yu or Wu Rui?

 Done, changed it to "Rui".

• In 178 BC, the kingdom passed to his son Wu Zhu – to whom is "his" referring to? Zhao Tuo?

 Done, changed it to "Wu You".

• Wu Zhu reigned for 21 years, dying in 157 BC without male issue. – this sentence needs a citation

 Done.

• Western Han dynasty – does that mean that the empire was splitted in a western and eastern half? I suggest to add brief background information in the appropriate place in the "History" section, as this would help readers not familiar with the history of the Han dynasty.

 Done, briefly explained the situation in the late Western Han – Eastern Han period.

• provide us important evidence about the concept of meridian channels in its infancy – I suggest to remove the "us", to follow Wikipedia writing style.

 Done.

• @Esiymbro: This is a fine article, I only have some minor quibbles. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:33, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@Jens Lallensack:. Thank you for the review.:) I've worked on all the problems here. Esiymbro (talk) 14:40, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

@Esiymbro: Thanks for the fixes. Looks good. Promoting now. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:57, 17 January 2020 (UTC)