Origins.

The poem contains elements thought to be autobiographical, as Byron generated some of the storyline from experience gained during his travels through Portugal, the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea between 1809 and 1811. The "Ianthe" of the dedication was the term of endearment he used for Lady Charlotte Harley, about 11 years old when "Childe Harold" was first published. Charlotte Bacon, "née" Harley, was the second daughter of 5th Earl of Oxford and Lady Oxford, Jane Elizabeth Scott. Throughout the poem, Byron, in character of Childe Harold, regretted his wasted early youth, hence re-evaluating his life choices and re-designing himself through going on the pilgrimage, during which he lamented various historical events including the Iberian Peninsular War among others.  Despite Byron's initial hesitation at having the first two cantos of the poem published because he felt it revealed too much of himself, it was published, at the urging of friends, by John Murray in 1812, and brought both the poem and its author to immediate and unexpected public attention. Byron later wrote, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous". The first two cantos in John Murray's edition were illustrated by Richard Westall, well-known painter and illustrator who was then commissioned to paint portraits of Byron.  Published on March, 3, 1812, the first run of 500 quarto copies sold out in three days. There were ten editions of the work within three years. Byron was deeming the work "my best" in 1817, a year before adding a fourth canto.  Byron chose for the epigraph for the 1812 edition title page a passage from "Le Cosmopolite, ou, le Citoyen du Monde" (1753), by, in the original French. Translated into English, the quote emphasizes how the travels have resulted in a greater appreciation of his own country: The universe is a kind of book of which one has read only the first page when one has seen only one's own country. I have leafed through a large enough number, which I have found equally bad. This examination was not at all fruitless for me. I hated my country. All the impertinences of the different peoples among whom I have lived have reconciled me to her. If I had not drawn any other benefit from my travels than that, I would regret neither the expense nor the fatigue.

Structure.

The poem has four cantos written in Spenserian stanzas, which consist of eight iambic pentameter lines followed by one alexandrine (a twelve syllable iambic line), and has rhyme pattern ABABBCBCC.  Lyrics in a different form occasionally punctuate these stanzas: the farewell to England following Canto I's stanza 13 and later the address "To Inez" following stanza 84; and in Canto II the war song that follows stanza 72. Then in Canto III there is the greeting from Drachenfels following stanza 55.

Plot.

The youthful Harold, cloyed with the pleasures of the world and reckless of life, wanders about Europe, making his feelings and ideas the subjects of the poem. In Canto I he is in Spain and Portugal, where he recounts the savagery of their invasion by the French. In Canto II he moves to Greece, uplifted by the beauty of its past in a country now enslaved by the Turks. Canto III finds him on the battlefield of Waterloo, from which he journeys down the Rhine and crosses into Switzerland, enchanted by the beauty of the scenery and its historic associations. In Canto IV Harold starts from Venice on a journey through Italy, lamenting the vanished heroic and artistic past, and the subject status of its various regions.

The fictive narrator.

For the long poem he was envisaging, Byron chose not only the Spenserian stanza but also the archaising dialect in which "The Faerie Queene" was written, possibly following the example of Spenser’s 18th century imitators. Thus in the "Pilgrimage's" first three stanzas we find "mote" (as past tense of the verb'might'); "whilome" (once upon a time) and "ne" (not); "hight" (named) and "losel" (good-for-nothing). If such stylistic artificiality was meant to create a distance between hero and author, it failed - protest though Byron might in the preface that his protagonist was purely fictitious. No sooner had Walter Scott read the work than he was commenting in a private letter to Joanna Baillie that "the hero, notwithstanding the affected antiquity of the style in some parts, is a modern man of fashion and fortune, worn out and satiated with the pursuits of dissipation, and although there is a caution against it in the preface, you cannot for your soul avoid concluding that the author, as he gives an account of his own travels, is also doing so in his own character."  In the public sphere, the "Anti-Jacobin Review" came to the similar conclusion that Childe Harold "appears to be nothing but the dull, inanimate, instrument for conveying his poetical creator's sentiments to the public. Lord Byron avows the intent of this hero's introduction to be the 'giving some connection to the piece'; but we cannot, for the life of us, discover how the piece is more connected, by assigning the sentiments which it conveys to a fictitious personage, who takes no part in any of the scenes described, who achieves no deeds, and who, in short, has no one province to perform, than it would have been had Lord Byron spoken in his own person, and been the 'hero of his own tale'.  In the face of unanimous scepticism, Byron gave up the pretence and finally admitted in the letter to his fellow-traveller John Hobhouse that prefaced Canto IV: "With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line which everyone seemed determined not to perceive."

Imitations.

The first two cantos of "Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage" had scarcely been published before its world-weary hero was satirised in the popular "Rejected Addresses" of 1812. "Cui Bono?" enquires “Lord B.” in the Spenserian stanza employed by the original:  Byron was so amused by the book that he wrote to his publisher, “Tell the author I forgive him, were he twenty times our satirist”.  He was not as forgiving of the next tribute to his work, "Modern Greece: A Poem" (1817) by Felicia Hemans, which was dependent for its subject on the second canto of the "Pilgrimage". At first published anonymously, it was even taken to be by Byron himself in one contemporary review. While it was written in a similar rhetorical style, her poem used a slightly longer 10-line stanza terminating in an alexandrine. This too deplored the land’s Turkish enslavement and mourned its decline, although pausing to admire the occasion in the past when "woman mingled with your warrior band" (stanza 50) in resisting invasion. Where the author diverged to take direct issue with Byron was on the controversy over the Elgin Marbles, championing instead their removal to a land that can still cherish their inspiration. To Byron’s assertion that  she had replied Over the years, others wrote works dependent on the "Pilgrimage" to a greater or lesser degree. George Croly celebrated the victory at the Battle of Waterloo with his "Paris in 1815: A Poem" (London, 1817). It was prefaced by 21 Spenserian stanzas in the Byronic manner, followed by many more sections in couplets. This was followed in 1818 by the anonymous collection "Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage to the Dead Sea (and other poems)". There the Byronic outcast of the title poem relates a catalogue of sins through thirty pages of irregular couplets, wound up by a call to last minute repentance. By 1820 the habit of imitation had crossed to the USA, where five Spenserian stanzas dependent on the "Pilgrimage"’s Canto II were published under the title "Childe Harold in Boetia" in "The Galaxy"..  But the Childe was to be found applying himself to other activities than travel. The 62 pages of Francis Hodgson’s "Childe Harold's Monitor, or Lines occasioned by the last canto of Childe Harold" (London 1818), are given over to literary satire in the manner of Byron’s "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers". Written in heroic couplets, it champions the style of the Augustan poets against the emergent Romantic style, particularly of the Lake Poets. "Childe Harold in the Shades: An Infernal Romaunt" (London 1819), displays much the same sentiments. The poem is set in the Classical underworld and its anonymous youthful author has since been identified as Edward Dacres Baynes. Byron’s death in the Greek War of Independence initiated a new round of imitations. William Lisle Bowles responded to his interment with a generous elegy in the six stanzas of "Childe Harold's Last Pilgrimage" (1826). These were written in the same form as Byron’s poem and, forgiving the bitter insults that had passed between them in the course of a public controversy, now paid a magnanimous tribute to the manner of his dying.  There was also a crop of French imitations on this occasion, of which the foremost was Alphonse de Lamartine's "Le Dernier Chant du Pélerinage d’Harold" (Paris, 1825). Despite the poet's assertion of the originality of his 'Fifth Canto', a contemporary English review found it often dependent on Byron's works. Its English translation by J. W. Lake, "The Last Canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", was published from Paris in 1826. Another in heroic couplets followed from London in 1827. Another French enthusiast, Jules Lefèvre-Deumier, had actually been on the way to join Byron in Greece in 1823 but a shipwreck robbed him of the opportunity to join the cause. He too recorded a pilgrimage from Paris into Swizerland in "Les Pélerinages d’un Childe Harold Parisien", published in 1825 under the pseudonym D. J. C. Verfèle. In the following year Aristide Tarry published the pamphlet-length "Childe-Harold aux ruines de Rome: imitation du poème de Lord Byron", which was sold in aid of the Greek combatants.  A later imitation of "Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage" lay unacknowledged for more than a century. John Clare had started to compose his own “Child Harold” in 1841, during the years of his madness, sometimes identifying himself as Byron, sometimes as a bigamist Byronic hero. Its intricate narrative stanzas are interspersed with many more lyrics than had been Byron’s poem, often on the subject of Clare’s youthful love for Mary Joyce. But, though "more sustained in thought than anything else he ever attempted", it was written piecemeal and the fragments were never unified or published until midway through the 20th century.

Influence.

The Byronic hero.

The protagonist of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" embodied the example of the self-exiled Byronic hero. His antinomian character is summed up in Lord Macaulay's essay on "Moore’s Life of Lord Byron" ("Edinburgh Review", 1831). "It is hardly too much to say that Lord Byron could exhibit only one man - a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow, and misery in his heart; a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection...It is curious to observe the tendency which the dialogue of Lord Byron always has, to lose its character of dialogue and to become soliloquy."  The type was caricatured as the melancholy Mr Cypress in Thomas Love Peacock’s "Nightmare Abbey", published in 1818, following the appearance of the "Pilgrimage's" Canto IV. The poet's misanthropic and despairing announcement there sums up the 'heroic' point of view: "I have no hope for myself or for others. Our life is a false nature; it is not in the harmony of things; it is an all-blasting upas whose root is earth, and whose leaves are the skies which rain their poison dews upon mankind. We wither from our youth; we gasp with unslaked thirst for unattainable good; lured from the first to the last by phantoms – love, fame, ambition, avarice – all idle, and all ill - one meteor of many names, that vanishes in the smoke of death." Almost every word is transcribed from two of the canto's stanzas, 124 and 126. Once Byron's poem had launched the heroic prototype, it went on to be an influence on Alexander Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" (1825 – 32), where the poem's protagonist is compared several times to Childe Harold. Onegin shares the hero’s melancholy that cannot be pleased (1.38) and his dreaminess (4.44); but perhaps his mixture of behaviours are only so many masks, and in this respect he is likened to Melmoth the Wanderer as well as to Childe Harold (8.8). Tatiana too ponders whether Onegin’s guises make him “a Muscovite in Harold's dress, a modish second-hand edition” (7.24).  But however much that pose may have been appreciated in the first half of the 19th century, by World War 2 the reaction to the hero’s attitudes had veered to scepticism. C. S. Lewis, in "The Screwtape Letters" (1941), bracketed Childe Harold and Young Werther as Romantic types "submerged in self-pity for imaginary distresses" for whom "five minutes' genuine toothache would reveal [their] romantic sorrows for the nonsense they were". Equally, the bluff hero of C. S. Forester's "The Commodore" (1945) dismissed Byron's poem as "bombast and fustian" while flipping through its pages for inspiration.

Music.

The first two cantos of the poem were launched under the title "Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: A Romaunt, and other poems". There were twenty of those "other poems", for the most part arising out of Byron’s tour. These supplemented the three lyrics already mentioned that were incorporated into Cantos I and II. Five of the supplementary songs were set by composers, mostly during the course of the 19th century and sometimes in translated versions. "On Parting" ("The kiss, dear maid, thy lip has left"), for example, was set by Ludwig van Beethoven and some 25 other composers; the song "Maid of Athens, ere we part" had a setting by Charles Gounod as well as others in German and Italian.  The song "Adieu! Adieu! my native shore", which appeared in the first canto of the "Pilgrimage", was set as early as 1814, but with the wording "My native shore adieu", and was apparently incorporated into the long-established opera "The Maid of the Mill". It was also set by some twelve other composers as well as in German and Danish translations. And in addition to the songs, just two Spenserian stanzas from the "Pilgrimage"’s Canto III have had musical settings: stanza 72 by the American composer Larry Austin in 1979 and a German translation of stanza 85 by Robert von Hornstein (1833 - 1890).  There were also two European Romantic composers who referenced "Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage" in their programmatic works. Hector Berlioz recorded in his memoires that, in composing "Harold en Italie" (1834), he wished to draw on memories of his wanderings in the Abruzzi, making of the solo for viola at its start "a sort of melancholic reverie in the manner of Byron’s Childe Harold" ("une sorte de rêveur mélancolique dans le genre du Child-Harold de Byron"). Nevertheless, Donald Tovey has pointed out in his analysis of the work that "there is no trace in Berlioz's music of any of the famous passages of "Childe Harold"".  Several of Franz Liszt’s transcriptions of Swiss natural scenery in his "Années de pèlerinage" (composed during the 1830s) were accompanied by epigraphs from Canto III of Byron's poem, but while the quotations fit the emotional tone of the music, they are sometimes contextually different. Thus Liszt’s second piece, "Au lac de Wallenstadt" (By Lake Wallenstadt), with its evocation of rippling water, is accompanied by Byron’s description of the still reflective surface of Lac Leman (stanza 68). Between the next few quotations there is greater congruence, however. Liszt’s fifth piece, "Orage" (Storm), comes with Byron’s equating of meteorological and emotional weathers from canto 96. The change of tone in the sixth piece, "Vallée d’Obermann", is signalled by the transition of mood at the end of Byron’s following stanza 97; and the peaceful beginning of stanza 98 accompanies the succeeding "Eglogue" (Eclogue). After this sequence drawn from three contiguous stanzas, the final piece, "Les cloches de Genève" (Geneva bells), returns to the Lac Leman sequence of stanzas in the poem and provides another dissonance. The two lines quoted from stanza 72 fit the serene tone of the music, but only by ignoring the rejection of "human cities" two lines later. In the case of both Berlioz's and Liszt's pieces, their association with "Childe’s Harold’s Pilgrimage" is an indication of how they are to be interpreted, in that all three works are subjective and autobiographical. The music, however, is independent of the text.

Painting.

J. M. W. Turner was an admirer of Byron’s poetry and made scenes from the "Pilgrimage" the subject of several paintings. In addition he was among those commissioned to provide drawings to be engraved for William Finden’s landscape illustrations to Byron (1832), which also included views from the poem. One of Turner’s earlier paintings was of the carnage on "The Field of Waterloo" (1818), which was accompanied by Byron's descriptive lines from Canto III, stanza 28. For this, the poet had visited the battlefield in 1815 and Turner in 1817. Then in 1832 he exhibited a painting referencing Byron’s poem in its title, "Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage – Italy" (1832), accompanied by lines reflecting on the passing of imperial might from Canto IV, stanza 26. Turner's "Ehrenbreitstein" (1835) was still another landscape carrying an epigraph, this time from the subject’s appearance in Canto III, stanzas 61-3. It had captured the painter's imagination on his first visit there in 1817 and he had made studies of the place many times since then. Though the painter might first have been drawn to the spot on account of Byron's poem, what he made of it came from close personal acquaintance over the intervening years.  The American Thomas Cole also went to Byron for the subject of one painting, though it was to "Manfred" in this case and is typically an imaginative reinterpretation. So too was his series of paintings "The Course of Empire" (1833-6), in reference to which he quoted the lines on the rise of cultures through civilisation to barbarism, from the "Pilgrimage's" Canto IV, stanza 108. In addition, his "The Fountain of Egeria" (painted at about the same time and now lost) was accompanied by lines from the same poem.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a long narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. The poem was published between 1812 and 1818. Dedicated to "Ianthe", it describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man, who is disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry and looks for distraction in foreign lands. In a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The title comes from the term "childe", a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood.

《恰尔德·哈罗尔德游记》(Childe Harold's Pilgrimage)是拜伦的长篇叙事诗,也是他的成名作,1812年-1818年出版,献给Charlotte Harley夫人。诗中主人公恰尔德·哈罗尔德是一位高傲叛逆的拜伦式英雄,第一章叙述他在葡萄牙看到了美丽的风景和普通百姓的苦难,在西班牙见识了西班牙人反抗拿破仑侵略的斗争。第二章叙述在希腊、阿尔巴尼亚的游历,反应了对希腊民族解放运动的思考。第三章写滑铁卢战役之后,普通人的境遇并无根本改善,传达了死亡是一种解脱的思想。第四章是在意大利完成的,号召意大利人团结推翻奥地利的统治。贯穿全诗的是拜伦对自由的歌颂。


Plot.

On the eve of the Double Ninth Festival, the Emperor ["King" in the Chinese version] (Chow Yun-fat) and the second of his three sons, Prince Jai (Jay Chou), return from their military campaign to Nanjing so they can celebrate the holiday with their family. However, the Empress ["Queen" in the Chinese version] has been in an affair with the first son, Crown Prince Wan (Liu Ye), who was born of the Emperor's previous wife. At the same time, Crown Prince Wan has been in an affair with Jiang Chan (Li Man), daughter of the Imperial Doctor, and is keen on rejecting the throne so that he may run away with her.  Prince Jai notices the declining health of his mother, and is confused by her sudden interest in chrysanthemums, the golden flowers. The Empress explains that the tea she drinks has been poisoned for some time by the Emperor, but that she is planning a rebellion to overthrow him. Prince Jai agrees to be the leader of the rebellion. The Empress hires a mysterious woman to discover the type of poison which she is suffering from, but the woman is captured by Crown Prince Wan and taken to the Emperor. As it happens, the woman is Jiang Shi (Chen Jin), the Imperial Doctor's wife, whom the Emperor imprisoned a while ago and who was believed dead, but somehow escaped. The Emperor decides to pardon her and to promote the Imperial Doctor to governor of Suzhou. When Crown Prince Wan meets with Jiang Chan to say goodbye, she informs him that the Empress has woven 10,000 scarves with golden flower sigils. Crown Prince Wan confronts the Empress, and when she admits to planning a rebellion, he is anguished, and tries to kill himself with a knife, but survives.  On the way to Suzhou, the Imperial Doctor's household is betrayed and attacked by the Emperor's black assassins, resulting in his death. Jiang Shi and Jiang Chan run back to Nanjing and confront the Emperor, who refuses to answer, whereupon the Empress explains to Jiang Chan that Jiang Shi was the Emperor's first wife and Crown Prince Wan's mother, meaning that Jiang Chan and Crown Prince Wan are half-siblings. Jiang Chan is horrified by this news and runs from the palace. Jiang Shi chases after her, whereupon both are murdered by more assassins. At this point, the third son, Prince Yu, suddenly murders Crown Prince Wan and reveals he has been aware of the corruption of both the Emperor and the Empress. Summoning a group of his own soldiers, Prince Yu demands the Emperor abdicate and offer him the throne. However, even more assassins descend from the ceiling, and they easily defeat Prince Yu's soldiers. The Emperor proceeds to whip Prince Yu to death using his belt.  Meanwhile, the outer square of the palace is assaulted by 10,000 soldiers wearing golden armor and golden flower sigils, with Prince Jai in the lead. They overpower the assassins and proceed to the inner square of the palace, trampling upon the bed of golden flowers arranged for the ceremony. However, thousands of silver armored soldiers appear, being the reserve army of the Emperor, bearing shields, pikes, and bow-and-arrows, and they slaughter the golden soldiers down to the last man. Prince Jai rises from the sea of bodies and is taken captive. Behind him, the courtyard is cleaned with mechanical efficiency by a legion of servants, with bodies being removed, floors being scrubbed and laid with carpets, and pots of yellow flowers being replaced, making it seem as if the entire rebellion never even happened. At midnight, the Double Ninth Festival begins as scheduled. At the table, the Emperor expresses disappointment with Prince Jai, saying that he was already planning to give Prince Jai the throne. Prince Jai says that he did not rebel to obtain the throne, but for his mother's sake. The Emperor responds by offering to pardon Prince Jai if he cooperates in the Empress's poisoning. Prince Jai refuses and kills himself, and as he does so, his blood spills into another cup of poisoned tea that has been brought to the Empress, turning the tea red. Horrified, the Empress slaps the tea away, and the liquid is shown to corrode the table's wood, along with the golden flower image engraved into the wood.

Title.

The Chinese title of the movie is taken from the last line of a Qi dynasty poem written by the rebel leader Huang Chao who was also the Emperor of the Qi Dynasty that was at war with the Later Tang Dynasty. Huang Chao had composed the poem "On the Chrysanthemum, after failing the Imperial Examination" () or simply "Chrysanthemum":  Due to the film's high-profile while it was still in production, its title, which can be literally translated as "The Whole City is Clothed in Golden Armor", became a colorful metaphor for the spring 2006 sandstorms in Beijing and the term "golden armor" (黄金甲, huángjīnjiǎ) has since become a metaphor for sandstorms among the locals.

Historical perspective.

The screenplay is based on "Thunderstorm", a renowned Chinese play written by Cao Yu in the 1930s. The plot could also be possibly based on King Lear according to James Berardinelli.  The two protagonists are known in the Chinese version as "King" and "Queen", which in the English version has been upgraded to the more stereotypically Chinese "Emperor" and "Empress". The distinction is not trivial, as the lower title "king" only lays claim to a defined region whereas the supreme "emperor" claims overlordship over the entire (Chinese-speaking) world. The choice of title therefore implies that despite the splendour of its court the polity depicted in the film does not actually rule all of China.  The English language version states that this movie is set in the "Tang dynasty" in the year 928. The Chinese version doesn't specify a time period. The film's published screenplay indicates it is set during Later Shu of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Neither the Tang dynasty (618–907) nor Later Shu (934–965) existed in the year 928, although another state named "Tang" — known as Later Tang in history — was, as well as other Chinese states Wu, Chu, Min, Southern Han, Jingnan and Wuyue, in addition to the Khitan-ruled Liao dynasty (known as just Khitan in 928). However, Later Tang rulers were known as "Emperor" (皇帝) and never "King" (大王), and of all the states mentioned above, only Chu, Wuyue, Min and Jingnan rulers could be called "King" by their subjects in 928.  Suzhou is evidently under the jurisdiction of the state featured in the film, as the King is able to appoint Dr. Jiang its governor. This narrows the number of candidates to the states with territory in the Yangzi River Delta.

Release.

Critical response.

The US release garnered a generally positive reception.  Richard Corliss of "Time magazine" praised the film's lurid operatic aspect: "this is high, and high-wire, melodrama...where matters of love and death are played at a perfect fever pitch. And grand this Golden Flower is." Jeannette Catsoulis of "The New York Times" states: "In "Curse of the Golden Flower" Mr. Zhang achieves a kind of operatic delirium, opening the floodgates of image and melodrama until the line between tragedy and black comedy is all but erased." Kevin Thomas of the "Los Angeles Times" described the film as: "A period spectacle, steeped in awesome splendor and lethal palace intrigue, it climaxes in a stupendous battle scene and epic tragedy" and "director Zhang Yimou's lavish epic celebrates the gifts of actress Gong Li while weaving a timeless tale of intrigue, corruption and tragedy." Andrew O'Hehir of Salon said: "the morbid grandiosity of "Curse of the Golden Flower" is its own distinctive accomplishment, another remarkable chapter in the career of Asia's most important living filmmaker."  Stephen Hunter of "The Washington Post" wrote: "Zhang Yimou's "Curse of the Golden Flower" is a kind of feast, an over-the-top, all-stops-pulled-out lollapalooza that means to play kitschy and grand at once" and Hunter further states: "It's just a great old wild ride at the movies."  Matt Brunson of "Creative Loafing" felt that the film was a poor reflection of director Zhang Yimou's acclaimed previous works. Bruce Westbrook of "The Houston Chronicle" though praising the film's spectacular visuals, stated "Visuals alone can't make a story soar, and too often this one becomes bogged down by spectacle..." Kirk Honeycutt of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote the film is "A disappointing misfire from a great director." Gene Seymour of "Newsweek" said: ""Curse of the Golden Flower" is to the feudal costumed adventure what Nicholas Ray's "Johnny Guitar" is to the Western. Both bend their genres to the extremes of operatic grandeur with such force as to pull up just below the level of High Camp." However Seymour wrote that the film was overly melodramatic and ludicrous to absorb.  The film received a score of 70 out of 100 from film critics according to the review aggregator Metacritic and holds an average rating of 66% by film critics on the review ranking site Rotten Tomatoes. Yahoo! Movies gave the film a B grade based on critical consensus. It has grossed over $78 million worldwide. It was also the third highest grossing non-English language film in 2006 after "Apocalypto" and "Pan's Labyrinth".

Soundtrack.

Besides starring in the film, Jay Chou has also recorded two songs to accompany the film, one titled "Chrysanthemum Terrace" (), released on his 2006 album "Still Fantasy" and one included in his "Curse of the Golden Flower (EP)". The EP includes Jay Chou's song "Golden Armor" ().

Awards and nominations.

"Curse of the Golden Flower" won four awards out of 14 nominations from the 26th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2007.

Curse of the Golden Flower () is a 2006 Chinese epic wuxia drama film written and directed by Zhang Yimou. The Mandarin Chinese title of the movie is taken from the last line of the poem written by the rebel leader Emperor Huang Chao who was also the Emperor of the Qi Dynasty that was at war against the Later Tang Dynasty.

《满城尽带黄金甲》(英语译名:"Curse of the Golden Flower")是一部张艺谋导演的中国历史古装电影,2006年11月12日在洛杉矶举行全球首映,同年12月14日全球同步公映。此片耗资4,500万美元,该片被美国《时代周刊》评选为2006年度十佳电影之一。


Early life.

Born Sultan-Muhammad Mirza in Tabriz, Muhammad was named titular governor of Herat at the age of four, shortly after the city was recovered from the Uzbeks in 1537. The real power was his "lala" (tutor-mentor), the Qizilbash amir Muhammad Sharaf al-Din Oghli Takkalu, who was responsible for the massive public works in the 1540s which brought irrigations complexes, gardens, shrines and other public buildings to Herat. These efforts met with the approbation of Shah Tahmasp, and attracted to the city poets, illustrators and calligraphers, with whom Muhammad became acquainted.  Muhammad was named governor of Shiraz in 1572. He had acquired a reputation as a poet in Herat, one "noted for his education and cognative acuity," according to Sam Mirza, a contemporary biographer of poets. Muhammad brought a retinue of artists and pets with him to Shiraz, a city that had been a center of philosophic inquiry since the late fifteenth century and more recently as a venue for widely regarded manuscription illumination. Muhammad was at Shiraz when his brother, the shah, died.

Initial power struggle.

On 25 November 1577, Mohammad Khodabanda's younger brother Ismail II died abruptly and without any initial signs of bad health. The court doctors, who checked the corpse, surmised that he may have died from poison. The general agreement was that his half-sister Pari Khan Khanum had resolved to have poisoned with the help of the mistresses of the inner harem in retaliation for his bad behaviour towards her. With Ismail II out of the way, Pari Khan Khanum regained her authority and control. Every state grandee, clan chieftains, officers and officials carried out the orders delivered by her deputies and served according to her word.  In order to clear up the succession crisis, the Qizilbash chieftains agreed to appoint the future shah after a conference with each other and then notify Pari Khan Khanum of their settled choice. At first, they discussed the resolution that Shoja al-Din Mohammad Safavi, the eight-month-old infant son of Ismail II, should be crowned as shah while in reality state affairs would be taken care of by Pari Khan Khanum. This suggestion, however, did not get the green light of most of the assembly since it would have swayed the balance of power among many Qizilbash clans. Ultimately the assembly agreed to appoint Mohammad Khodabanda as shah.  The appointment of Mohammad Khodabanda was supported and approved by Pari Khan Khanum, due to him being a man of old age, almost blind, and pleasure-seeking. Thus he was the appropriate successor, so Pari Khan Khanum could take advantage of his weakness and rule herself. She made an agreement with the Qizilbash chieftains that Mohammad Khodabanda would remain shah in name, whilst her and her envoys would continue controlling the interests of the state.  When Mohammad Khodabanda was crowned shah, the Safavid aristocracy, officers, and provincial governors wanted approval from Pari Khan Khanum to give him a congratulating visit. Pari Khan Khanum's sphere of influence and authority was so dimensional that no one had the courage to visit Shiraz without her unambiguous approval. From the day Mohammad Khobanda was appointed shah, his wife Khayr al-Nisa Begum, who was better known by her title of Mahd-e Olya, took control of his affairs. She was knowledgeable of her husband's deficiency and to atone for his lack of uprightness and quality she resolved to try to become the practical ruler of the Safavid state.  Mohammad Khodabanda and Mahd-e Olya entered the environs of Qazvin on 12 February 1578. This brought an end to the indisputable rule that Pari Khan Khanum had enjoyed for two months and 20 days. Although she was still the practical ruler of the state, she would now meet opposition from Mahd-e Olya and her allies. When they reached the city, Pari Khan Khanum showed up to gladly receive them with great grandeur and parade, sitting in a golden-spun litter, whilst being guarded by 4,000–5,000 private guards, inner-harem personal assistants and court attendants. However, Pari Khan Khanum was eventually strangled the same day by Khalil Khan Afshar under the orders of Madh-e Olya.  Mahd-e Olya now took personal control of Iran and began to promote the career of her elder son, Hamza Mirza (she cared little for her younger son Abbas Mirza). But she antagonised the Qizilbash who eventually asked the shah to remove her from power. When she refused to concede to their demands, a group of Qizilbash conspirators burst into the harem and strangled her on 26 July 1579.

Conflict over succession.

The Qizilbash factions increasingly came to dominate Iran. In 1583 they forced the shah to hand over his vizier, Mirza Salman, for execution. The young Hamza Mirza took over the reins of state but on 6 December 1586 he too was murdered in mysterious circumstances.

Foreign threats.

Foreign powers took advantage of the factional discord in Iran court to seize territory for themselves. Uzbek bands attempted to invade north-east Iran before being repulsed by the governor of Mashhad. The most important event of Mohammad’s reign was the war with the Ottomans. In 1578, the Ottoman sultan Murad III began a war with Safavid Iran which was to last until 1590. In the first attack, the sultan's vizier Lala Mustafa Pasha invaded the Safavid territories comprising Georgia and Shirvan. Shirvan fell before the end of the summer of 1578, by which fact the Ottomans had now control of almost all territories west of the Caspian Sea coast, and it also opened the way for an attack on what is nowadays the core of Armenia and Azerbaijan, which were subsequently attacked in 1579 by a large contingent of Crimean Tatars, led by Adil Giray Khan, but he was captured in a remarkable counterattack led by Mirza Salman Jabiri and Hamza Mirza, and later executed in Qazvin, the Safavid capital at that time. Another Ottoman army under the leadership of Osman Pasha and Ferhat Pasha crossed into Iran and captured Tabriz in 1585. Sultan Mohammad sent Hamza Mirza to fight the Ottomans but the young prince was murdered during this campaign and the city remained in Ottoman hands for 20 years.

End of reign.

When the Uzbeks launched a large-scale invasion of Khorasan, the leader of the Ustalju Qizilbash faction in the province, Murshid Quli Khan, decided the time was right to overthrow the shah and replace him with Mohammad's son Abbas Mirza, who was Murshid's ward. Murshid and Abbas rode to Qazvin where the prince was proclaimed the new ruler of Iran in October 1587. Mohammad made no attempt to challenge the coup and accepted his dethronement.

Final years.

He lived in the capital for a time but was then apparently banished to the prison of Alamut, although Iskandar Beg Munshi records him dying in Qazvin some time between 21 July 1595 and 10 July 1596.

Art and culture.

Mohammad was also a poet who wrote verse under the pen name "Fahmi".

Mohammad Khodābandeh or Khudābanda, also known as Mohammad Shah or Sultan Mohammad (, born 1532; died 1595 or 1596), was Shah of Persia from 1578 until his overthrow in 1587 by his son Abbas I. He was the fourth Safavid Shah of Iran and succeeded his brother, Ismail II. Khodabanda was the son of Shah Tahmasp I by a Turcoman mother, Sultanum Begum Mawsillu, and grandson of Ismail I, founder of the Safavid Dynasty.

穆罕默德·科达班达(波斯语:شاه محمد خدابنده、英语:Mohammed Khodabanda;1532年-1590年-1595年)又称穆罕默德沙或苏丹穆罕默德(波斯语:شاه محمد خدابنده)是伊朗萨非王朝第四任沙阿。他是塔赫玛斯普一世的儿子,母亲是土库曼斯坦人。由于科达班达的视力几近失明,当父亲在1576年逝世时,他遭到忽略,由弟弟伊斯玛仪二世继位。伊斯玛仪二世逝世后,奇兹尔巴什(什叶派土库曼斯坦武装)军队派系推举科达班达为下任沙阿。科达班达为人温和,但意识薄弱,他在统治期间卷入了宫廷与奇兹尔巴什之间的斗争。波斯的死敌奥斯曼帝国乘机攻占波斯领土,包括大不里士。科达班达最后被推翻,由儿子阿拔斯一世继位。


Conception and construction.

Bangkok is divided by the Chao Phraya River into the main eastern part and Thonburi in the west, with several road bridges linking both sides of the city. By the mid-1990s, traffic congestion on these crossings had become particularly severe. Phra Pinklao Bridge, in particular, was regarded as the worst. With suggestions from King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration commissioned studies for the construction of a new bridge north of Phra Pinklao Bridge to alleviate that congestion.  The BMA contracted the British company Mott Macdonald and Thai companies Epsilon and P & Cigna to perform the preliminary survey and designs. Bidding on the project began in 1996, but was halted due to the 1997 Asian financial crisis. The project was revived in 1998 and was awarded as a lump-sum turnkey contract to a joint venture consisting of the Canadian company Buckland & Taylor Ltd., the China State Construction Engineering Corporation, Switzerland-based company BBR Systems Ltd., and the Bangkok-based PPD Construction Co., Ltd. The bridge's design was provided by Buckland & Taylor; its engineers Jorge Torrejon and Don Bergman served as project manager and chief engineer for design, respectively. Both had previously worked on the Alex Fraser Bridge in Vancouver, which was the world's longest cable-stayed bridge for five years following its completion in 1986. Construction of the bridge was carried out by the China State Construction Engineering Corp. BBR Systems supplied and installed the cables, and PPD Construction designed the viaducts. London-based Yee Associates served as architect, and Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick (Thailand) provided design management and site services.  Construction of the bridge began in 1999, and was completed in 2002. It was opened to traffic on 7 May that year. The bridge was named in tribute to King Bhumibol's brother, the late King Ananda Mahidol, who was also known as Rama VIII as he was the eighth king of the Chakri Dynasty. The bridge was inaugurated by King Bhumibol on 20 September 2002, the anniversary of Ananda Mahidol's birth.

Design.

The bridge is of an asymmetrical design, with a single pylon located on the Thonburi bank of the river. The pylon, which is tall, is in the shape of an upside-down Y standing on two legs. The bridge deck passes through the legs of the pylon, carrying two carriageways of two lanes each, as well as shared pedestrian and cycle ways on both sides. Fifty-six cables, arranged in two planes in a semi-fan configuration, support the -long main span, while another twenty-eight cables arranged in a single plane with a near-harp configuration connect the tower to the median of the anchor span. Most of the bridge, which is in length, is constructed of reinforced and prestressed concrete, except for the main span, which has a steel structure with a composite concrete deck. At its completion, the bridge was one of the world's largest asymmetric cable-stayed bridges. The bridge's architectural elements include lotus motifs, which appear in the pedestrian railings, as well as references to King Ananda Mahidol. The cables have gold-coloured sheaths, and other steel elements are painted accordingly. The bases of the tower are enclosed in octagonal enclosures resembling the feet of an elephant. The top of the tower features a glass observation deck, which is enclosed in a -tall metal frame in the shape of a lotus bud and is accessible by a lift inside the tower. It is the tallest bridge observation deck in the world, but is not currently open to the public. Viaducts connect the bridge to Wisut Kasat Road on the east side of the river and Arun Amarin Road and the Borommaratchachonnani Elevated Highway on the west side. Lift towers and stairs allow pedestrian access to the bridge from each bank. The area around the base of the pylon has been developed into a public park. It features a larger-than-life statue of Ananda Mahidol, which was unveiled by king Bhumibol on 9 June 2012.  The bridge received several engineering awards: the 2003 Eugene C. Figg Jr. Medal For Signature Bridges, given by the Engineers' Society of Western Pennsylvania; a 2003 Award of Excellence from "Canadian Consulting Engineer", given to Buckland & Taylor for its design of the bridge; and an Award of Merit at the 14th Annual CEBC (Consulting Engineers of British Columbia) Awards for Engineering Excellence. The bridge is depicted on the back of the Series 15 twenty baht banknotes, behind a portrait of King Ananda Mahidol.

Major repairs.

The 3 September 2017 issue of the front page of the "Bangkok Post" shows the Rama VIII bridge with the caption, "Troubled bridge over water." A one-sentence note explains that damage has been detected in several places on the bridge structure, especially the suspension cables. The bridge will undergo "...major repairs and maintenance work."

The Rama VIII Bridge is a cable-stayed bridge crossing the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, Thailand. It was built to alleviate traffic congestion on the nearby Phra Pinklao Bridge. Construction of the bridge took place from 1999 to 2002. The bridge was opened on 7 May 2002 and inaugurated on 20 September, the birth anniversary of the late King Ananda Mahidol (Rama VIII), after whom it is named. The bridge has an asymmetrical design, with a single pylon in an inverted Y shape on the west bank of the river. Its eighty-four cables are arranged in pairs on the side of the main span and in a single row on the other. The bridge has a main span of, and was one of the world's largest asymmetrical cable-stayed bridges at the time of its completion.

拉玛八世大桥()位于泰国曼谷,是一座跨越湄南河的斜拉桥,为缓解附近帕宾劳大桥的交通堵塞而兴建。大桥建于1999年至2002年,2002年5月7日通车,并于同年9月20日——已故泰国国王拉玛八世的诞辰纪念日当天举行了启用仪式,并以其名号为大桥命名。


History.

The FIX Protocol specification was originally authored in 1992 by Robert "Bob" Lamoureux and Chris Morstatt to enable electronic communication of equity trading data between Fidelity Investments and Salomon Brothers. FIX initially addressed information between broker-dealers and their institutional clients. At the time, this information was communicated verbally over the telephone. Fidelity realized that information from their broker-dealers could be routed to the wrong trader, or simply lost when the parties hung up their phones. It wanted such communications to be replaced with machine-readable data which could then be shared among traders, analyzed, acted on and stored. For example, broker-dealers call with an indication of interest (IOI) to buy or sell a block of stock. The FIX initiative created new messages such as the IOI.  According to the FIX Trading Community, FIX has become the de facto messaging standard for pre-trade and trade communication in the global equity markets, and is expanding into the post-trade space to support straight-through processing, as well as continuing to expand into foreign exchange, fixed income and derivatives markets.

FIX Trading Community.

The FIX Trading Community is a non-profit, industry-driven standards body with a mission to address the business and regulatory issues impacting multi-asset trading across the global financial markets through the increased use of standards, including the FIX Protocol messaging language, delivering operational efficiency, increased transparency, and reduced costs and risk for all market participants.

Users.

FIX is widely used by both the buy side (institutions) as well as the sell side (brokers/dealers) of the financial markets. Among its users are mutual funds, investment banks, brokers, stock exchanges and ECNs. See FIX Trading Community Organization for an extensive list of major FIX users.  FIX has become the standard electronic protocol for pre-trade communications and trade execution. Although it is mainly used for equity transactions in the front office area, bond, derivatives and FX-transactions are also possible. One could say that whereas SWIFT is the standard for back office messaging, FIX is the standard for front office messaging. However, today, the membership of FIX Protocol Ltd. is extending FIX into block trade allocation and other phases of the trading process, in every market, for virtually every asset class.

Technical Specifications.

Originally, the FIX standard was monolithic, including application layer semantics, message encoding, and session layer in a single technical specification. It remained monolithic through FIX version 4.2. Thereafter, message encodings and session layer specifications began to be split into separate documents, and ultimately, FIX evolved into a family of related technical standards.

Message Encodings.

Message encoding, called Presentation Layer in the Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI model), is responsible for the wire format of messages.

Tagvalue encoding (classic FIX).

The original FIX message encoding is known as tagvalue encoding. Each field consists of a unique numeric tag and a value. The tag identifies the field semantically. Therefore, messages are self-describing. Tagvalue encoding is character-based, using ASCII codes.

FIX tagvalue message format.

The message fields are delimited using the ASCII 01 <start of header> character. They are composed of a header, a body, and a trailer.  Up to FIX.4.4, the header contained three fields: 8 (codice_1), 9 (codice_2), and 35 (codice_3) tags.  From FIXT.1.1 / FIX.5.0, the header contains five mandatory fields and one optional field: 8 (codice_1), 9 (codice_2), 35 (codice_3), 49 (codice_7), 56 (codice_8) and 1128 (codice_9 - if present must be in 6th position).  The content in the body of the message is specified by (tag 35, codice_3) message type defined in the header.  The last field of the message is tag 10, FIX Message Checksum. It is always expressed as a three-digit number (e.g. codice_11).  Header+Body+Trailer : FIX Content  Example of a FIX message : Execution Report (Pipe character is used to represent SOH character)  In the above FIXMessage Body length 9 is correct and checksum 10 was checked out by using the source available from QuickFIX, an open-source FIX implementation.

Body.

FIX messages are formed from a number of fields; each field is a tag value pairing that is separated from the next field by a delimiter SOH (0x01). The tag is an integer that indicates the meaning of the field. The value is an array of bytes that hold a specific meaning for the particular tag (e.g. tag 48 is securityID, a string that identifies the security; tag 22 is IDSource, an integer that indicates the identifier class being used). The values may be in plain text or encoded as pure binary (in which case the value is preceded by a length field). The FIX protocol defines meanings for most tags, but leaves a range of tags reserved for private use between consenting parties.  The FIX protocol also defines sets of fields that make a particular message; within the set of fields, some will be mandatory and others optional. The ordering of fields within the message is generally unimportant, however repeating groups are preceded by a count and encrypted fields are preceded by their length. The message is broken into three distinct sections: the head, body and tail. Fields must remain within the correct section and within each section the position may be important as fields can act as delimiters that stop one message from running into the next. The final field in any FIX message is tag 10 (checksum).  There are two main groups of messages—admin and application. The admin messages handle the basics of a FIX session. They allow for a session to be started and terminated and for recovery of missed messages. The application messages deal with the sending and receiving of trade-related information such as an order request or information on the current state and subsequent execution of that order.

Header.

Body length.

Body length is the character count starting at tag 35 (included) all the way to tag 10 (excluded). SOH delimiters do count in body length.
 For Example: (SOH have been replaced by'|')
  Has a Body length of 65.
 The SOH delimiter at the end of a Tag=Value belongs to the Tag.

Trailer: Checksum.

The checksum of a FIX message is always the last field in the message. It is composed of three characters and has tag 10. It is given by summing the ASCII value of all characters in the message, except for those of the checksum field itself, and performing modulo 256 over the resulting summation. For example, in the message above, the summation of all ASCII values (including the SOH character, which has a value of 1 in the ASCII table) results in 4158. Performing the modulo operation gives the value 62. Since the checksum is composed of three characters, 062 is used.

FIXML.

FIXML is an XML schema for FIX messages. It is semantically equivalent to tagvalue encoded messages but takes advantage of XML parser technology. FIXML is commonly used for back-office and clearing applications rather than trading.

Simple Binary Encoding (SBE).

Simple Binary Encoding defines a wire format using primitive data types that are native to computing systems. Message encoding and decoding is therefore much lower latency than character-based protocols since no translation is needed to put data into a format that computers can use. Aside from latency advantages, performance is more deterministic because SBE messages are constrained by templates and fixed-length data elements are preferred. Another consequence is that fields are generally at a fixed position so that message filters and routers do not need to crack an entire message to access key fields.  SBE was developed by the FIX High Performance Working Group to support high performance trading. Tagvalue encoding was deemed no longer fit-for-purpose since it is character based rather than binary and its variable-length fields and messages result in non-deterministic performance.  Unlike tagvalue and FIXML, an SBE message is not self-describing. Only data is sent on the wire with a minimal header to identify the template that controls a message. Metadata that describes a message layout is exchanged out-of-band between peers.  FIX Trading Community publishes an XML schema for SBE message schemas. A message schema may contain any number of message templates. A template describes the fields that constitute a message. Additionally, a schema provides a listing of simple and composite data types that may be reused by any number of fields.

Other FIX Encodings.

FIX Trading Community has also developed standard mappings between FIX and other message protocols, including:

Session Protocols.

Session layer is responsible for message exchange including checkpoint recovery mechanisms.

FIX Transport (FIXT).

The original FIX session protocol did not have its own name since it was part of a monolithic specification covering application layer semantics and message encoding as well. However, starting with FIX version 5.0, the session layer was split off as an independent specification with the introduction of FIXT. FIXT was largely the same as the original unnamed session layer in version 4.x, but it offered one significant innovation--it provided a mechanism to mix FIX application layer versions over a common session version. The current FIXT version is 1.1.  Theoretically, FIXT is transport independent. However it is usually employed over Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).  FIXT is a point-to-point protocol. It guarantees message delivery in both directions. Messages sent in each direction carry a message sequence number in the message header. If there is a communication fault, a peer may request retransmission of missed messages. Message delivery is supported even in the event of disconnection and later reestablishment of a session.  To implement session establishment and guaranteed delivery, FIXT and classic FIX 4.x define these session message types:

FIX Performance Session Layer (FIXP).

FIXP was developed by the FIX High Performance Working Group to meet the needs of high performance trading. The primary need is for low latency message encoding and decoding and control over message delivery guarantees.  To provide low latency, binary message encodings are supported both for session layer and application messages. The actual wire format is abstracted in the FIXP specification, so users may select a FIX encoding of their choice, so long as peers agree on a protocol to use. Early development has used Simple Binary Encoding.  FIXP covers both point-to-point and multicast use cases with common primitives.  When a point-to-point session is established, peers negotiate delivery guarantees from among the following choices:  Delivery guarantees may be asymmetrical. For example, a trader may enter orders over an idempotent flow while executions are returned over a recoverable flow. In fast moving markets, the delay inherent in retransmission is often undesirable, resulting in missed opportunities or bad trades.

Diagrammatic representation of FIX system.

Below is a diagram of how FIX messaging looks between Buyside/Customer and Sellside/Supplier.

Latest developments in FIX protocol.

The latest version of FIX Protocol implements "Transport Independence" by permitting multiple versions of application messages to be carried over a single version of Transport Independent FIX Session (FIXT.1.1 and higher).  Transport Independence also paves the way for transport protocols such as message queues and web services to be used instead of traditional FIX over TCP.  FIX now supports algorithmic trading by use of FIX Algorithmic Trading Definition Language FIXatdl.  FIX Protocol Limited has released FAST protocol which stands for FIX Adapted for Streaming. FAST is a binary protocol and used mostly for sending Multicast market data via UDP connections.

Testing Tools.

Many companies offer FIX testing products and services:

The Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol is an electronic communications protocol initiated in 1992 for international real-time exchange of information related to securities transactions and markets. With trillions of dollars traded annually on the NASDAQ alone, financial service entities are investing heavily in optimizing electronic trading platforms and employing direct market access (DMA) to increase their speed to financial markets. Managing the delivery of trading applications and keeping latency low increasingly requires an understanding of the FIX protocol.


Historical overview.

Origins.

The geography Lan Xang would occupy had been originally settled by indigenous Austroasiatic-speaking tribes, such as Khmuic peoples and Vietic peoples which gave rise to the Bronze Age cultures in Ban Chiang (today part of Isan, Thailand) and the Đông Sơn culture as well as Iron Age peoples near Xiangkhoang Plateau on the Plain of Jars, Funan, and Chenla (near Vat Phou in Champasak Province).  The Han dynasty's chronicles of the southward expansion of the Han dynasty provide the first written accounts of Tai–Kadai speaking peoples or "Ai Lao" who inhabited the areas of modern Yunnan and Guangxi, China. The Tai peoples migrated south in

The Legends of Khun Borom.

The cultural memory of the early migrations and the mixing of Tai influence with the indigenous, Mon, and Khmer peoples were preserved in the origin myths and traditions of Lan Xang. The cultural, linguistic, and political roots which highlight the commonality of these early legends can help to

The Conquests of King Fa Ngum.

The traditional court histories of Lan Xang begin in the "Year of the Nāga" 1316 (the nāga a mythical serpent of the Mekong and a protector spirit of the kingdom) with the birth of Fa Ngum. Fa Ngum's Grandfather Souvanna Khampong was king of Muang Sua and his father Chao Fa Ngiao was the crown prince. As a youth Fa Ngum was sent to the Khmer Empire to live as a son of King Jayavarman IX, where he was given princess Keo Kang Ya. In 1343 King Souvanna Khampong died, and a succession dispute for Muang Sua took place.  In 1349 Fa Ngum was granted an army known as the "Ten Thousand" to take the crown. At the time the Khmer Empire was in decline (possibly from

King Samsenthai and Queen Maha Devi.

Fa Ngum again led Lan Xang to war in the 1360s against Sukhothai, in which Lan Xang was victorious in defense of their territory but gave the competing court factions and the war weary population a justification to depose Fa Ngum in favor of his son Oun Huean. Fa Ngum became an exile in Muang Nan, where he died between 1373 and 1390.  In 1371, Oun Huean was crowned as King Samsenthai (King of 300,000 Tai) a carefully chosen name for the Lao-Khmer prince, which showed preference for the Lao-tai population he governed over the Khmer factions at court. Samenthai consolidated the gains of his father, and fought back Lanna in Chiang Saen during the 1390s. In 1402 he received formal recognition for Lan Xang from

The White Elephant War with Vietnam.

In 1448 during the disorder of the "Maha Devi", Muang Phuan and some areas along the Black River were annexed by the Đại Việt and several skirmishes took place against Lanna along the Nan River. In 1471 Emperor Lê Thánh Tông of Đại Việt invaded and destroyed the kingdom of Champa. Also in 1471, Muang Phuan revolted and several Vietnamese were killed. By 1478 preparations were being made for a full-scale invasion of Lan Xang in retribution for the rebellion in Muang Phuan and, more importantly, for supporting the Ming Empire in 1421.  Around the same time, a white elephant had been captured and brought to King Chakkaphat. The elephant was recognized as a symbol of kingship throughout Southeast Asia and Lê Thánh Tông requested the animal's hair to be brought as a gift to the Đại Việt court. The request was seen as an affront, and according to legend, a box filled with dung

King Visoun and a Flowering of Culture.

Through subsequent kings Lan Xang would repair the damage of the war with the Đại Việt, which led to a blossoming of culture and trade. King Visoun (1500–1520) was a major patron of the arts and during his reign the classical literature of Lan Xang was first written. The Theravada Buddhist monks and monasteries became centers of learning and the sangha grew in both cultural and political power. The "Nithan Khun Borom" (Story of Khun Borom) first appeared in written form, along with several transcriptions of the Jataka Tales which recall previous lives of the Buddha. The Tripitaka was transcribed from Pali to Lao, and the Lao version of the Ramayana or "Pra Lak Pra Lam" was also written.  Epic poems were written along with treatises on medicine, astrology

Lanna and war with Ayutthaya.

King Photisarath (1520–1550) was one of the great kings of Lan Xang, he took Nang Yot Kham Tip from Lanna as his queen as well as lesser queens from Ayutthaya, and Longvek. Photisarath was a devout Buddhist, and declared it as the state religion Lan Xang. In 1523 he requested a copy of the Tripiṭaka from King Kaeo in Lanna, and in 1527 he abolished spirit worship throughout the kingdom. In 1532 the period of peace ended for Lan Xang when Muang Phuan rebelled and took Photisarath two

King Setthathirath and the Burmese invasions.

In 1548 King Setthathirath (as King of Lanna) had taken Chiang Saen as his capital. Chiang Mai still had powerful factions at court, and the threats from Burma and Ayutthaya were growing. Following the untimely death of his father, King Setthathirath left Lanna leaving his wife as regent. Arriving in Lan Xang, Setthathirath was crowned as King of Lan Xang. The departure emboldened the rival factions at court, who in 1551 crowned Chao Mekuti as king of Lanna.  In 1553 King Setthathirath sent an army to retake Lanna but was defeated. Again in 1555 King Setthathirath sent an army to retake Lanna at the command of Sen Soulintha, and managed to take Chiang Saen. For his success, Sen Soulintha was given the title "Luxai" (Victorious) and offered one of his daughters to King Setthathirath. In 1556 Burma, under King Bayinnaung invaded Lanna. King Mekuti of Lanna surrendered Chiang Mai without a fight, but was reinstated as a Burmese vassal under military occupation.  In 1560, King Setthathirath formally moved the capital of Lan Xang from Luang Prabang to Vientiane, which would remain the capital over the next two hundred and fifty years. The formal movement of the capital followed an expansive building program which included strengthening city defenses, the construction of a massive formal palace and the Haw Phra Kaew to house the Emerald Buddha, and major renovations

Lan Xang Restored.

Prince Nokeo Koumane had been held in the Taungoo court for sixteen years, and by 1591 was about twenty years old. The sangha in Lan Xang sent a mission to King Nandabayin asking for Nokeo Koumane to be returned to Lan Xang as a vassal king. In 1591 he was crowned in Vientiane, gathered an army and marched to Luang Prabang where he reunited the cities, declared Lan Xang independence and cast off any allegiance to the Toungoo Empire. King Nokeo Koumane then marched toward Muang Phuan and then to the central provinces reuniting

The Golden Age of Lan Xang.

Under the reign of King Sourigna Vongsa (1637–1694) Lan Xang experienced a fifty seven-year period of peace and restoration. During the period the Lan Xang sangha was at the apex of power, drawing monks and nuns for religious study from throughout Southeast Asia. Literature, art, music, court dance experienced a revival. King Sourigna Vongsa revised many of the laws of Lan Xang and established judicial courts. He also concluded a series of treaties which established both trade agreements and boundaries between the

Succession disputes.

The legal reforms which King Sourigna Vongsa put in place applied to the nobility and peasantry equally, and when the crown prince committed adultery with a palace attendant the king ordered his death. When Sourigna Vongsa died in 1694, he left two young grandsons (Prince Kingkitsarat and Prince Inthasom) and two daughters (Princess Kumar and Princess Sumangala) with claims to the throne. A succession dispute took place where the king's nephew Prince Sai Ong Hue emerged; Sourigna Vongsa's grandsons fled into exile in Sipsong Panna and Princess Sumangala to Champasak. In 1705,

Political organization.

The Mekong River formed the political and economic arteries for the Kingdom of Lan Xang, so much so that the Chinese name for the river "Lán Cāng" 瀾滄 is synonymous with the Lao kingdom. The river provided the means for the people, commerce and armies of Lan Xang to move between regional power centers, but also formed important geographic and defensive barriers. Major rapids formed the boundaries between the areas (and subsequent kingdoms) of Luang Prabang, Vientiane and Champasak. The Khone Falls and Si Phan Don region were not navigable and provided a natural defense for Lan Xang from invasion coming upriver.  The major cities of Lan Xang were located in Luang Prabang, Vientiane including the towns in Nong Khai, Muang Phuan, Muang Sa or Muang Champa Nakhon (Champassack), Nong Khai, Sikhottabong (which in later periods would become Thakhek, Nakhon Phanom, and Sakon Nakhon), and Xiang Hun(Jinghong) (later Muang Sing) in Sip Song Panna. These major cities were known as "muang" or "vieng" and were classified based on substantial fortifications and city walls, the Lao chronicles record five supporting cities, and ninety-seven border "muang."  Supporting cities were found along the Khorat Plateau, and were based

Society.

Lan Xang had ethnic diversity from trade and overland ethnic migrations. The multiple hill tribe peoples were grouped into the broad cultural categories of Lao Theung (which included most indigenous groups and the Mon-Khmer) and Lao Sung. The Lao Loum were ethnically dominant and there were several closely related Tai groups which included the Tai Dam, Tai Daeng, Tai Lu, Tai Yuan, and Phuan people. Perhaps because of the complicated ethnic diversity of Lan Xang the structure of society was fairly straightforward, especially in comparison to the neighboring Thai people

Religion.

Theravada Buddhism was the state religion of Lan Xang beginning with King Photisarath in 1527, but had been a growing part of cultural legacy since Fa Ngum. Within the villages, monasteries and towns of Lan Xang much of daily life revolved around the local temple or wat. The temples were centers of learning, and all males were expected to spend at least some part of their life in religious contemplation as a monk or novice. Kings could establish their legitimacy through supporting the sangha and caring for or constructing new temples. Lan Xang had several powerful Buddha images which served as palladiums and spiritual symbols of the kingdom which included the Phra Bang, Phra Keo (the "Emerald" Buddha), Phra Saekham, and Phra Luk (the crystal Buddha of Champasak).  Animism was also one of the earliest, enduring and most important belief systems to the Lao-Tai groups, and the traditions and practices which began in Lan Xang have remained a vital part of Lao spirituality. Among the ethnic hill tribes of the Lao Sung and Lao Theung animism was the dominant religion. The Lao Loum believed that ancient mythical serpents known as "ngueak" inhabited major waterways, carving out the surrounding countryside

Economy.

Lan Xang was at the center of the overland trade routes in Southeast Asia. In the north and northwest the overland trade routes from Burma and Lanna passed through Lan Xang and Sipsong Panna ( Xishuangbanna ) toward Yunnan, where they would join with the Chinese Tea-Horse Road. Trade in Luang Prabang would flow down the Mekong to Vientiane where it could then be transported overland to the headwaters of the Nan and Chao Praya rivers, or overland by ox cart or elephant over the Khorat Plateau to Roi Et.  In the east the Annamite Range formed a barrier, but the areas of Muang Phuan and Xam Neua were regular points of commerce with Vietnam. Trade from Thakhek and Champasak flowed down the Mekong to the Island of Khong, where the goods would then be portaged past Si Phan Don and the Khone Falls to join with the Mekong again and on to the Khmer in the south. Lao merchants ("lam") would travel to Lao Theung and Lao Sung areas to exchange cloth, iron and silver for forest products, which would be floated via streams on bamboo rafts until they met with larger

Decline.

The Lao developed a distinct cultural, linguistic, religious, and political history during the four hundred-year period of Lan Xang. The monarchy in Laos, which was a direct continuation from the traditions of Lan Xang would continue for seven hundred and fifty years through the Khun Lo Dynasty until 1975. The decline of Lan Xang vis-à-vis their neighboring kingdoms was primarily due to geography, weak internal political structures, limited agricultural production, and the international arms trade.  Despite its relative size, Lan Xang was landlocked throughout its history. The Mekong River, formed the major means of transportation in the kingdom, is navigable only along certain stretches. Surrounding Lan Xang were populous and powerful neighboring states: Ming China, Burma, Ayutthaya, Sukhothai, Lanna, the Đại Việt and the Khmer. Politically, a feudal system of relatively independent mueang and nobles held regional autonomy.  The succession of the monarchs was never based solely on primogeniture, as both the "Sena" (a council which could include senior royal family members, ministers, and generals) and Sangha (senior members of the clergy) would choose a suitable successor based on both legitimacy and individual merit. The state bureaucracy as originally designed by Fa Ngum and Samsenthai was along a military structure which included some social mobility through meritocracy. Over time however social distinctions became more entrenched and the bureaucracy became based on hereditary title. The political institutions in Lan Xang created disputes and instability especially during royal successions.  Trade and the economy of Lan Xang were based on high value commodities which could be easily transported using overland trade routes. Agricultural products like rice were too heavy for transport, and were both taxed and consumed by the regional mueang. The narrow valleys and climate along the Mekong was suitable for only certain varieties of glutinous rice. The rice varieties were both low yield, and labor-intensive in comparison to the floating rice grown in Thailand. Both Ayutthaya and Thailand profited immensely from the international rice trade with the Chinese, Muslim and European traders.  The demand for Lan Xang's high value trade commodities had to pass through intermediary kingdoms to reach world markets, thus for example when Japanese demand for forest products increased it was the Siamese which benefited from the trade. Maritime trade routes became more important than the Tea Routes in northern Lan Xang, the river trade along the Mekong and Chao Praya, or the overland trade with Vietnam. Trade with Europeans for weapons began as early as 1511 in Ayutthaya, and by contrast the first European trade mission to Lan Xang was not until the 1640s. Access to advanced European weapons proved decisive during the Burmese invasions of Lan Xang and would become more important in subsequent wars with Vietnam and Thailand during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Lao Kingdom of Lan Xang Hom Khao ( "lān sāng hom khāo", ; "Million Elephants and White Parasols") existed as a unified kingdom from 1353 to 1707.

澜沧王国(1353-1707年。 lâansâang;,Sisattanakhanahut;;),一译兰沧,中国古籍中称南掌,是老挝历史上第一个统一王朝。1353年,法昂建立澜沧王国,定都琅勃拉邦。「澜沧」在老挝语中意为「百万大象」。1560年,澜沧王国国王塞塔提腊迁都至万象。1694年,澜沧王国先后分裂为北部琅勃拉邦、中部万象和南部占巴塞三个王国。1778年至1893年三国沦为暹罗(今泰国)属国。1893年,法国与暹罗签订《法暹条约》(又称《曼谷条约》),琅勃拉邦、万象和占巴塞被并入法属印度支那联邦,1940年9月被日本占领。


Life.

Cheng Xuanying was born sometime around the first decade of the seventh century CE, in Shan Prefecture in modern-day Henan. He lived in Donghai in seclusion until 631, when he was summoned to the Tang capital Chang'an and appointed the head monk of Xihua Abbey by the imperial decree of Emperor Taizong. The New Book of Tang does not mention being accorded the title of Master of Doctrines (), and it is likely that this was a later fabrication of the Song period. Prior to his summoning, he was a philosopher well-known for his commentary on the popular Lingbao scripture, the "Clarified Meaning of the Scripture of Universal Salvation" (). Some scholars alternatively maintain that Cheng was summoned to the capital to serve as the disciple of Liu Jinxi (fl. 620), a major representative of (Chongxuan) Daoist thought at the Institute of Education ().  In 636 and 638 Cheng was present for a series of debates between Daoists and Buddhists at the temple of the monk Huijing ( b.578) along with Cai Zihuang (), a fellow Chongxuan adherent.  Cheng, again along with Cai, participated in the translation of the Daodejing into Sanskrit in 647, headed by the eminent Buddhist monk Xuanzang. Cheng was responsible for explaining the meaning of the Daodejing to Xuanzang in order to translate it. Xuanying wanted to translate the term Dao as bodhi, but Xuanzang rejected it in favor of mārga ( "road/path"). He also requested that the Heshanggong commentary be translated as well, which Xuanzang similarly denied.  In 647 Cheng and Zhang Huiyuan () were commissioned to investigate the major Daoist scripture known as the Sanhuangjing. They determined it was "an absurdly written document, in no way composed in the current time", and all copies of the text were then ordered burned by Emperor Taizong, leading to the near-total destruction of all copies of the scripture.  Cheng was banished to Yuzhou () around 653 following a draught during the Yonghui reign (650-655) of Emperor Gaozong, likely due to his interpretation of the Classic of Changes as explaining the occurrence of natural disasters, which the court saw as a prognostication of the draught. He died sometime between 685 and 690.

Commentaries.

Cheng wrote one of the more significant commentaries to the Zhuangzi, the "Subcommentary to the Zhuangzi" ("Zhuāngzǐ shū" ). His commentary, valued for its concise explanations and character glosses, is a sub-commentary to Guo Xiang's; traditionally, both commentaries have been handed down together. Both commentaries have been handed down to posterity in the Daozang as the Commentary and Subcommentary on the "True Scripture of Southern Florescence" ("Nánhúa Zhēnjīng Zhùshū" ) in 30 juan.  Cheng also wrote 2 juan of commentary on the Daodejing, and 7 juan of subcommentary on the "Laozi kaiti xujue" (). Fragments of these texts have survived in quotations. Cheng's commentary focuses on first using the Mystery ( xuan) to transcend Being ( you) and Nonbeing ( wu), and then to transcend the Mystery itself. Cheng believed that the Dao "is eternally deep and still, it is neither form nor sound, neither personal name nor style; solitary, it alone surpasses the logic of the tetralemma, vague and indistinct it goes beyond the hundred negations.”  Cheng's commentary on the Lingbao "Scripture of Universal Salvation", the "Clarified Meaning of the Scripture of Universal Salvation" (), was extremely popular in its time and likely resulted in his summoning to Chang'an in 631. It is preserved in the Daozang. Additionally, Cheng composed a work in 5 juan on the Classic of Changes, the "Diagram on the Circulation and Development of the Changes of Zhou" (), which is lost and rarely-mentioned. Records of the work say it "examined across and synthesized all sixty-four hexagrams and explained the Nine Palaces, extrapolating the weal and woe of the state down to the months and days." This evaluation coincides with exegesis on the "Changes" found in Cheng's commentary on the "Scripture of Universal Salvation".

Cheng Xuanying (; fl. 631–655), courtesy name Zishi (), was a Daoist monk known to posterity as the "Master of Doctrines at Xihua Abbey“ () and was one of the principal representatives of the "School of Double Mystery" (Chongxuan) during the reigns of the emperors Taizong and Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty. He is mainly known for his commentaries to the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi (also known as the "Nanhua Zhenjing").

成玄英(?-?),字子实,陕州(今河南省陕县)人,唐代道士,后世学者称之为「重玄派」道士。


Life and career.

Uhlenbeck was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to engineer Arnold Keskulla and schoolteacher and artist Carolyn Windeler Keskulla. While she was a child, the family moved to New Jersey. Uhlenbeck's maiden name, Keskulla, comes from "Keskküla" and from her grandfather who was Estonian. Uhlenbeck received her B.A. (1964) from the University of Michigan. She began her graduate studies at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, and married biophysicist Olke C. Uhlenbeck (the son of physicist George Uhlenbeck) in 1965. When her husband went to Harvard, she moved with him and restarted her studies at Brandeis University, where she earned an M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1968) under the supervision of Richard Palais. Her doctoral dissertation was titled "The Calculus of Variations and Global Analysis".  After temporary jobs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California, Berkeley, and having difficulty finding a permanent position with her husband because of the "anti-nepotism" rules then in place that prevented hiring both a husband and wife even in distinct departments of a university, she took a faculty position at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1971. However, she disliked Urbana and moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1976 as well as separating from her first husband Olke Uhlenbeck in the same year. She moved again to the University of Chicago in 1983. In 1988, by which time she had married mathematician Robert F. Williams, she moved to the University of Texas at Austin as the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chairholder. Uhlenbeck is currently a professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, a visiting associate at the Institute for Advanced Study and a visiting senior research scholar at Princeton University.

Research.

Uhlenbeck is one of the founders of the field of geometric analysis, a discipline that uses differential geometry to study the solutions to differential equations and vice versa. She has also contributed to topological quantum field theory and integrable systems.  Together with Jonathan Sacks in the early 1980s, Uhlenbeck established regularity estimates that have found applications to studies of the singularities of harmonic maps and the existence of smooth local solutions to the Yang–Mills–Higgs equations in gauge theory. In particular, Donaldson describes their joint 1981 paper "The existence of minimal immersions of 2-spheres" as a "landmark paper... which showed that, with a deeper analysis, variational arguments can still be used to give general existence results" for harmonic map equations.  Building on these ideas, Uhlenbeck initiated a systematic study of the moduli theory of minimal surfaces in hyperbolic 3-manifolds (also called minimal submanifold theory) in her 1983 paper, "Closed minimal surfaces in hyperbolic 3-manifolds".  In particular, her work is described by Simon Donaldson in a survey of Yang–Mills geometry as foundational in the analytic aspects of the calculus of variations associated with the Yang–Mills functional. A wider survey of her contributions to the field of calculus of variations was published by Simon Donaldson in the March 2019 issue of "Notices of the American Mathematical Society"; Donaldson describes the work of Uhlenbeck, along with Shing-Tung Yau, Richard Schoen and several others, as developing a...

Outreach.

In 1991, Uhlenbeck co-founded, with Herbert Clemens and Dan Freed, the Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI) with the mission to "provide an immersive educational and professional development opportunity for several parallel communities from across the larger umbrella of the mathematics profession." Uhlenbeck also co-founded the Women and Mathematics Program at the Institute for Advanced Study "with the mission to recruit and retain more women in mathematics." British theoretical physicist and author Jim Al-Khalili describes Uhlenbeck as a "role model" for her work in promoting a career in mathematics to young people, particularly women.

Personal life.

Uhlenbeck is a self-described "messy reader" and "messy thinker", with boxes of books stacked on her desk at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. In spontaneous remarks made to Institute colleagues after winning the Abel Prize in March 2019, Uhlenbeck noted that for lack of prominent female role models during her apprenticeship in the field of mathematics, she had instead emulated chef Julia Child: "She knew how to pick the turkey up off the floor and serve it".

Awards and honors.

In March 2019, Uhlenbeck became the first woman to receive the Abel Prize, with the award committee citing the decision for "her pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory and integrable systems, and for the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics." Hans Munthe-Kaas, who chairs the award committee, stated that "Her theories have revolutionised our understanding of minimal surfaces, such as more general minimisation problems in higher dimensions". Uhlenbeck also won the National Medal of Science in 2000, and the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research of the American Mathematical Society in 2007, "for her foundational contributions in analytic aspects of mathematical gauge theory", based on her 1982 papers "Removable singularities in Yang–Mills fields" and "Connections with bounds on curvature".  She became a MacArthur Fellow in 1983 and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985. She was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. She became a Guggenheim Fellow in 2001, an honorary member of the London Mathematical Society in 2008, and a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012. The Association for Women in Mathematics included her in the 2020 class of AWM Fellows for "her groundbreaking and profound contributions to modern geometric analysis; for establishing a career as one of the greatest mathematicians of our time, despite the considerable challenges facing women when she entered the field; for using her experiences navigating these challenges to create and sustain programs to address them for future generations of women. For a lifetime of breaking barriers; and for being the first woman to win the Abel Prize".  She was the Noether Lecturer of the Association for Women in Mathematics in 1988. In 1990, she was a plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians, as only the second woman (after Emmy Noether) to give such a lecture.  Her other awards include the University of Michigan alumna of the year (1984), the Sigma Xi Common Wealth Award for Science and Technology (1995), and honorary doctorates from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (2000), Ohio State University (2001), University of Michigan (2004), Harvard University (2007), and Princeton University (2012).

Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck (born August 24, 1942) is an American mathematician and a founder of modern geometric analysis. She is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, where she held the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair. She is currently a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and a visiting senior research scholar at Princeton University.

凯伦·凯斯库拉·乌伦贝克(英语:Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck,1942年-8月24日)是一位美国数学家。她是德克萨斯州大学奥斯汀分校的退休荣誉数学教授,在那里她担任Sid W. Richardson基金会董事会主席。她目前是普林斯顿高等研究院的访问助理和普林斯顿大学的高级研究访问学者。


Biography.

Yakov Grigorevich Sinai was born into a Russian Jewish academic family on September 21, 1935, in Moscow, Soviet Union (now Russia). His parents, Nadezda Kagan and Gregory Sinai, were both microbiologists. His grandfather, Veniamin Kagan, headed the Department of Differential Geometry at Moscow State University and was a major influence on Sinai's life.  Sinai received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Moscow State University. In 1960, he earned his Ph.D., also from Moscow State; his adviser was Andrey Kolmogorov. Together with Kolmogorov, he showed that even for "unpredictable" dynamic systems, the level of unpredictability of motion can be described mathematically. In their idea, which became known as Kolmogorov–Sinai entropy, a system with zero entropy is entirely predictable, while a system with non-zero entropy has an unpredictability factor directly related to the amount of entropy.  In 1963, Sinai introduced the idea of dynamical billiards, also known as "Sinai Billiards". In this idealized system, a particle bounces around inside a square boundary without loss of energy. Inside the square is a circular wall, of which the particle also bounces off. He then proved that for most initial trajectories of the ball, this system is ergodic, that is, after a long time, the amount of that time the ball will have spent in any given region on the surface of the table is approximately proportional to the area of that region. It was the first time anyone proved a dynamic system was ergodic.  Also in 1963, Sinai announced a proof of the ergodic hypothesis for a gas consisting of "n" hard spheres confined to a box. The complete proof, however, was never published, and in 1987 Sinai declared that the announcement was premature. The problem remains open to this day.  Other contributions in mathematics and mathematical physics include the rigorous foundations of Kenneth Wilson's renormalization group-method, which led to Wilson's Nobel Prize for Physics in 1982, Gibbs measures in ergodic theory, hyperbolic Markov partitions, proof of the existence of Hamiltonian dynamics for infinite particle systems by the idea of "cluster dynamics", description of the discrete Schrödinger operators by the localization of eigenfunctions, Markov partitions for billiards and Lorenz map (with Bunimovich and Chernov), a rigorous treatment of subdiffusions in dynamics, verification of asymptotic Poisson distribution of energy level gaps for a class of integrable dynamical systems, and his version of the Navier-Stokes equations together with Khanin, Mattingly and Li.  From 1960 to 1971, Sinai was a researcher in the Laboratory of Probabilistic and Statistical Methods at Moscow State University. In 1971 he accepted a position as senior researcher at the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics in Russia, while continuing to teach at Moscow State. He had to wait until 1981 to become a professor at Moscow State, likely because he had supported the dissident poet, mathematician and human rights activist Alexander Esenin-Volpin in 1968.  Since 1993, Sinai has been a professor of mathematics at Princeton University, while maintaining his position at the Landau Institute. For the 1997–98 academic year, he was the Thomas Jones Professor at Princeton, and in 2005, the Moore Distinguished Scholar at the California Institute of Technology.  In 2002, Sinai won the Nemmers Prize for his "revolutionizing" work on dynamical systems, statistical mechanics, probability theory, and statistical physics. In 2005, the "Moscow Mathematical Journal" dedicated an issue to Sinai writing "Yakov Sinai is one of the greatest mathematicians of our time... his exceptional scientific enthusiasm inspire[d] several generations of scientists all over the world."  In 2013, Sinai received the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement. In 2014, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters awarded him the Abel Prize, for his contributions to dynamical systems, ergodic theory, and mathematical physics. Presenting the award, Jordan Ellenberg said Sinai had solved real world physical problems "with the soul of a mathematician". He praised the tools developed by Sinai which demonstrate how systems that look different may in fact have fundamental similarities. The prize comes with 6 million Norwegian krone, equivalent at the time to $US 1 million or £600,000. He was also inducted into the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.  Other awards won by Sinai include the Boltzmann Medal (1986), the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics (1990), the Dirac Prize (1992), the Wolf Prize in Mathematics (1997), the Lagrange Prize (2008) and the Henri Poincaré Prize (2009). He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is an honorary member of the London Mathematical Society (1992) and, in 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Sinai has been selected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1983), Brazilian Academy of Sciences (2000), the Academia Europaea, the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society of London. He holds honorary degrees from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Warwick University, and Warsaw University.  Sinai has authored more than 250 papers and books. Concepts in mathematics named after him include Minlos-Sinai theory of phase separation, Sinai's random walk, Sinai–Ruelle–Bowen measures, and Pirogov–Sinai theory, Bleher-Sinai renormalization theory,etc. Sinai has overseen more than 50 PhD candidates. He has spoken at the International Congress of Mathematicians four times. In 2000, he was a plenary speaker at the First Latin American Congress in Mathematics.  Sinai is married to mathematician and physicist Elena B. Vul. The couple have written several joint papers.

Yakov Grigorevich Sinai (; born September 21, 1935) is a Russian mathematician known for his work on dynamical systems. He contributed to the modern metric theory of dynamical systems and connected the world of deterministic (dynamical) systems with the world of probabilistic (stochastic) systems. He has also worked on mathematical physics and probability theory. His efforts have provided the groundwork for advances in the physical sciences.

雅科夫·格里戈里耶维奇·西奈(, 英语:Yakov Grigorevich Sinai,1935年-9月1日),出生于莫斯科,俄罗斯数学家。他是俄罗斯科学院院士、普林斯顿大学教授。西奈以对有序与无序之间联系的研究而知名,并以概率论、测度论研究动力系统,在遍历性理论和统计力学方面也取得了突破。曾获沃尔夫数学奖、狄拉克奖章、阿贝尔奖等多项荣誉。


History.

The six-story base of the headquarters building was commissioned by the founder, William Randolph Hearst, and awarded to the architect Joseph Urban. The building was completed in 1928 at a cost of $2 million and contained. The original cast stone facade has been preserved in the new design as a designated Landmark site. Originally built as the base for a proposed skyscraper, the construction of the tower was postponed due to the Great Depression. The new tower addition was completed nearly eighty years later, and 2,000 Hearst employees moved in on June 26, 2006.

Architecture and design.

The tower—designed by the architect Norman Foster, structurally engineered by WSP Cantor Seinuk, and constructed by Turner Construction—is 46 stories tall, standing with of office space. The uncommon triangular framing pattern (also known as a diagrid) required 9,500 metric tons (10,480 tons) of structural steel—reportedly about 20% less than a conventional steel frame. Hearst Tower was the first skyscraper to break ground in New York City after September 11, 2001. The building received the 2006 Emporis Skyscraper Award, citing it as the best skyscraper in the world completed that year.  Hearst Tower is the first "green" high-rise office building completed in New York City, with a number of environmental considerations built into the plan. The floor of the atrium is paved with heat conductive limestone. Polyethylene tubing is embedded under the floor and filled with circulating water for cooling in the summer and heating in the winter. Rain collected on the roof is stored in a tank in the basement for use in the cooling system, to irrigate plants and for the water sculpture in the main lobby. 85% of the building's structural steel contains recycled material. Overall, the building has been designed to use 26% less energy than the minimum requirements for the city of New York, and earned a gold designation from the United States Green Building Council’s LEED certification program, becoming New York City's first LEED Gold skyscraper.  The atrium features escalators which run through a 3-story water sculpture titled "Icefall", a wide waterfall built with thousands of glass panels, which cools and humidifies the lobby air. The water element is complemented by a fresco painting titled "Riverlines" by artist Richard Long.

Window cleaning.

The facade of the Hearst Tower is jagged. Plans for a rig, designed by Tractel-Swingstage, to hold window cleaners, took 3 years and $3 million because of the concave window structures at the building's corners, referred to as "bird's mouths". The resulting design incorporates "a rectangular steel box the size of a Smart car, supporting a 40-foot mast and hydraulic boom arm attached by six strands of wire rope to a telescopic cleaning basket, [and housing] a computer that monitors 67 electromechanical safety sensors and switches". The device was installed in April 2005 on of elevated steel track looping the roof of the tower.  On June 12, 2013, two window cleaners were trapped on the window cleaning crane partway down from the top of the tower.

References.

Notes Further reading

The Hearst Tower is a building with the addresses of 300 West 57th Street or 959 Eighth Avenue, near Columbus Circle, in Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is the world headquarters of Hearst Communications, housing most of the numerous publications and communications companies of the media conglomerate under one roof, including, among others, "Cosmopolitan", "Esquire", "Marie Claire", "Harper's Bazaar", "Good Housekeeping", and "Seventeen".

赫斯特大楼(英语:Hearst Tower)是一栋位于纽约西57街300号和第八大道959号路口,靠近哥伦布圆环的大楼。现为赫斯特国际集团全球总部,也是该集团首次将众多通讯和出版事业部门设置于同一栋大楼,包含柯梦波丹,Good Housekeeping和旧金山纪事报。


Overview.

High income countries tend to have less trade barriers than middle income countries which, in turn, tend to have less trade barriers than low income countries. Small states tend to have lower trade barriers than large states. The most common trade barriers are on agricultural goods. Textiles, apparel and footwear are the manufactured goods which are most commonly protected by trade barriers. Tariffs have been declining in the last twenty years as the influence of the World Trade Organization has grown, but states have increased their use of non-tariff barriers.  According to Chad Bown and Meredith Crowley, world trade is "probably" vastly more liberal in current times than was the case historically. According to Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, "for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries trade barriers and transport costs were the most important barriers to trade". They also write, "during the mercantilist era price gaps were as likely to be due to trade monopolies, pirates, and wars as to transport costs and tariffs, which are more easily quantifiable."  Georgetown University Professor Marc L. Busch and McGill University Professor Krzysztof J. Pelc note that modern trade deals are long and complex because they often tackle non-tariff barriers to trade, such as different standards and regulations, in addition to tariffs. Due to steadily decreasing tariff barriers since World War II, countries have become increasingly likely to enact trade barriers in forms other than tariffs. National firms often lobby their own governments to enact regulations that are designed to keep out foreign firms, and modern trade deals are one way to do away with such regulations.  The barriers can take many forms, including the following:

Impacts of trade barriers on business.

Trade barriers are often criticized for the effect they have on the developing world. Because rich-country players call most of the shots and set trade policies, goods such as crops that developing countries are best at producing still face high barriers. Trade barriers such as taxes on food imports or subsidies for farmers in developed economies lead to overproduction and dumping on world markets, thus lowering prices and hurting poor-country farmers. Tariffs also tend to be anti-poor, with low rates for raw commodities and high rates for labor-intensive processed goods. The Commitment to Development Index measures the effect that rich country trade policies actually have on the developing world.  Trade barriers are mostly a combination of conformity and per-shipment requirements requested abroad, and weak inspection or certification procedures at home. The impact of trade barriers on companies and countries is highly uneven. One particular study showed that small firms are most affected (over 50%).  Another negative aspect of trade barriers is that they result in a limited choice of products and would therefore force customers to pay higher prices and accept inferior quality.  Trade barriers obstruct free trade. Before exporting or importing to other countries, firstly, they must be aware of restrictions that the government imposes on the trade. Subsequently, they need to make sure that they are not violating the restrictions by checking related regulations on tax or duty, and finally they probably need a license in order to ensure a smooth export or import business and reduce the risk of penalty or violation. Sometimes the situation becomes even more complicated with the changing of policy and restrictions of a country.

Trade barriers are government-induced restrictions on international trade.

贸易壁垒,或贸易障碍是一些国家阻止国际贸易的政府政策或规则,可以各种不同形式出现。 贸易壁垒包括: