Objectives: I started compiling this online encylopedia (October 2000) at a time when the internet just began to conquer the world, including that of science. Knowledge hitherto extracted from books is presented now in various online dictionaries and encyclopedias in a very comfortable way. The great advantage of course is that data stored in books can now be found in a very easy way in digital format. This is especially true for encylopedic knowledge the access to which is often hampered by the sheer size of the books. After ten years of experience with online encyclopedias I am aware that there are still data not covered yet by freelance encyclopedias like Wikipedia or Baidu 百度 and Hudong baike 互动百科 (in China), and that the articles there are often not really a reliable source for students and scholars. Another incentive was to present as much facts about China, past and present, as possible, in one single and compound site. My Chinaknowledge encylopedia is therefore a tool to provide my own students - but of course, also everybody else interested in Chinese culture - with data that are mainly derived from Chinese sources. Because Chinese studies is a very vast field I am not able to cover all aspects of Chinese culture but I selected a series of fields that are of special interest for academic purposes, namely history, literature, and arts, and - to a minor extent - music, religion, and the Chinese script. While my first purpose is to give access to Chinese primary sources my second purpose is to give trustworthy sources. I will therefore in the course of time polish all pages and indicate my sources. I systematically use the modern Hanyu pinyin 漢語拼音 transcription, except for some names common outside China with other transcriptions (like Chiang Kai-shek, Taipeh or Hong Kong. Beijing is Peking.). Except in tables concerning the People's Republic of China I constistently use traditional characters (fantizi 繁體字). Politics: I am not commercial, all my sites are freely visible and copyable. Yet I would acknowledge if students cite my page as their source, if using material from my pages. I will not make any advertisements for profit-oriented companies on my site. And I will not buy nor resell your products. I am no company. I will not deliver expertise on art objects. Yet I welcome any suggestions concerning content and language. Sources: The sources I use are scholarly standard books on China and her environment published in different European and Asian languages. I have not copied any sentences from these works except translations of Chinese literature. In such cases authors and their books are cited, and if the book is still available on the market, I will indicate this. The contents of historical maps are processed on the base of Chinese atlases. Images are scanned from Chinese works not claiming copyright. Acknowledgements: I would like to thank everyone who contributes to the quality of this online encylopedia. I apologize for my mediocre English and try my best to improve it over time. Author: Ulrich Theobald (Tian Yuli 田宇利, style Shudouting 數豆亭 "The [man from the] Nitpicker Studio") "born in a poor family, he started loving books and especially the Confucian Classics already at the tender age of six" 1991-2000 Studies in Biology, Chemistry, Chinese Studies, Politics and Modern History at the University of Tübingen/Germany, and Nanjing University 2000 Master of Arts thesis "The Image of Empress Lü (died 180 BCE) in Chinese Literature" 2009 Ph Dissertation "War Finance and Logistics in 18th Century China: An Analysis of the Second Jinchuan Campaign (1771-1776)" Teaching Chinese History at the Department of Chinese and Korean Studies, University of Tübingen Main research interests: Empresses in Chinese history Chinese financial and economic history The history of science and technology in China Comparative military history Chinese lacquerwork Paleography Climbing Mount Taishan, May 1997 丁丑歲登泰山