rivers and lakes / all corners of the country / remote areas to which hermits retreat / section of society operating independently of mainstream society, out of reach of the law / the milieu in which wuxia tales play out (cf. 武俠|武侠[wu3xia2]) / (in late imperial times) world of traveling merchants, itinerant doctors, fortune tellers etc / demimonde / (in modern times) triads / secret gangster societies / underworld
old: to reap the consequences of one's words (idiom, from Mencius) / modern: to go back on one's word / to blow hot and cold / to contradict oneself / inconsistent
the not-very-distant past / modern times, excluding recent decades / (in the context of Chinese history) the period from the Opium Wars until the May 4th Movement (mid-19th century to 1919) / capitalist times (pre-1949)
the four tones of Middle Chinese: level tone 平聲|平声, rising tone 上聲|上声, departing tone 去聲|去声 and entering tone 入聲|入声 / the four tones of Modern Standard Mandarin
(in classical literature) young military officer of high rank for his age / (during the Cultural Revolution) young militant in the Red Guard / (in modern usage) rising star (in sport, politics etc)
Yan, a vassal state of Zhou in modern Hebei and Liaoning / north Hebei / the four Yan kingdoms of the Sixteen Kingdoms, namely: Former Yan 前燕[Qian2 Yan1] (337-370), Later Yan 後燕|后燕[Hou4 Yan1] (384-409), Southern Yan 南燕[Nan2 Yan1] (398-410), Northern Yan 北燕[Bei3 Yan1] (409-436)
the Twenty-Four Histories (25 or 26 in modern editions), collection of books on Chinese dynastic history from 3000 BC till 17th century / fig. a long and complicated story
(bound form) a person in servitude / low-ranking subordinate / (bound form) to be subordinate to / (bound form) clerical script (the style of characters intermediate between ancient seal and modern regular characters)
Jonathan D Spence (1936-), distinguished British US historian of China, author of The Search for Modern China 追尋現代中國|追寻现代中国[Zhui1 xun2 Xian4 dai4 Zhong1 guo2]
surname Cheng / ancient area of modern-day Danyang City, Jiangsu Province
The four tones
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